News, nuggets and longreads 7 September 2024: Salata Aswad

Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs that grabbed our attention in the past week, from collabs to club singers.

First, some minor news that nonetheless strikes us as significant: Adnams has collaborated with Five Points on a new Landbier. “Otherwise known as a country beer, the 4.5% ABV slightly hazy amber brew celebrates locality, harvest time, and culture.” Why significant? Because earlier in the year we also enjoyed a beer Adnams had brewed with New Bristol Brewery. It is, in fact, a contender for our beer of the year. This willingness to get out and connect with newer breweries seems like a good sign from an old regional family brewery that has had its struggles of late. It’s certainly helped Adnams get into a wider range of venues, and reach a different group of drinkers. It’s a good strategy. Good luck to them.

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At Episodes of My Pub Life on Substack David Jesudason continues to find historic examples of the colour bar in action, while also telling stories about British drinking culture. His latest piece is about the Willesden Legionaire Club:

Alex Samos was a New Zealander of Polynesian parentage, a teacher who came to Britain in 1967 around the age of 29. He became a musical act shortly after he arrived after undertaking singing lessons with a British tutor… Alex was booked to play the Legionaire in December 1984 for a £60 fee. This was the third time he had played the club and he was prepared for hostility because the club entertainment manager had tried to bar him on his last visit… During that second booking he had said to Alex: “You can’t go on because you’re coloured.” After a major row, Alex had eventually been allowed to perform but Hines – the man who had used the racial slur when talking to Brian – rang one of Alex’s representatives to complain… Cindy Denham, Quality Acts, remembered that Hines threatened her by saying “I was to remember the policy of no coloured acts”.

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On the Isle of Man Katie Mather found a pub whose “vibes were immaculate” and wrote about it for her newsletter The Gulp:

The tower-turret on the corner took my breath away. A castle of a pub! Could this really be the “old man pub” I was promised? I said I wanted scruffy and friendly, and was assured that this was it. The immaculate frontage told me something else… The first room on your right is a glowing surprise. The highest ceilings sit loftily over an imposing marble fireplace, a bay window table nestled perfectly into the corner turret, and a gorgeous curved bar polished to within an inch of its life. Natural light soaks the room, despite the clouds outside. Scruffy? Never. Before I can order a pint I’m called into another room by one of our growing group, and on the way out of the stunning front room I glimpse the pool room. I’m being dragged to the “Gent’s Bar”… As deeply chestnut as you’d want it to be, the Gent’s Bar is open to all now, but the unspoken rule is that this is where the locals sit. If somebody wants their seat back, you have to give it to them.

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We enjoyed Chris Dyson’s crawl around the Good Beer Guide pubs of Darwen in Lancashire partly because it evokes the feeling of a sunny day off work pootling around somewhere new:

By 1907, the local trade union, the Darwen Weavers, Winders, and Warpers Association, had more than 8,000 members in the town. As the cotton industry fell into decline and the mills closed, other industries sprung up in the town. Crown Paints are based in the town, Anaglypta wallpaper was invented here, as was Perspex which is still manufactured here today… The Good Beer Guide listed three places, which all seemed from their descriptions to be bars or brewpubs, rather than traditional pubs. I walked down to the bottom of the hill where a police van was stationed opposite a traditional pub with a bouncer on the door. It was only 1pm, but with loud cheers emanating from inside, something was going on. It turned the East Lancashire derby match between recently-relegated Burnley and Blackburn Rovers was on Sky.

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At Beervana Jeff Alworth has made something of a policy statement on the use of the term ‘craft beer’ from a 2024 perspective:

Things have changed. Now little breweries make lite beer and hard seltzer and big breweries make hazy IPAs. “David and Goliath” no longer describes the world of brewery size, either. We have massive brewery collectives, historically large regional breweries, former independents owned by companies known for making beer—but also soft drinks and cannabis products. The language of “craft” is no longer adequate to describe breweries or the beer they make… “Craft beer” is a conceptual cul de sac. We started using it with good intentions, but with a naïveté about how brewing works and how markets function. It now causes more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t have any problem with the Brewers Association using the terms in their marketing—I certainly would if I were them—but we should recognize it for what it is. I encourage members of the media to consider using different language. It will make us all understand beer better. 

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We’ve written about Watney’s Red Barrel, and Watney’s Red, fairly extensively over the years. Now, Ron Pattinson has a short but sweet post with a recipe for Red Barrel as it was c.1970 – and with a throwaway comment that potentially explains its bad reputation:

The recipe doesn’t look much different to other Bitters of the day… Overall, it looks like a pretty decent beer. That’s before it was pasteurised. Derek Prentice told me that the Truman’s beers of this period always tasted stale because of the heavy pasteurisation. Perhaps that was also the case with Red Barrel. 

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Finally, a plug for Ray’s other project, under his real name. Intervals of Darkness, a collection of 14 weird stories, is out today as an eBook and paperback:

• UK eBook | UK paperback
• US eBook | US paperback

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.