The Session 63: The Beer Moment

The beer moment. The moment that beautiful amber nectar rolls around your mouth tantalising your taste buds. The satisfying moment you swallow and contemplate the hoppy residue left behind. Except that’s not what it’s ever really about. The beer moment is all about context. It’s all about where you are, who you’re with and how you’re feeling at that moment.

I can think back to lots of beer ‘moments’. Sitting on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, an hour or so before sundown, perfectly relaxed, chatting with my wife and sipping a glass of Moza. Toasting the wonderful news of the engagement of great friends with a pint of standard, mass–produced lager – because that’s what there was. Eating an absolutely astounding burger in the Cheesecake Factory in Union Square in San Francisco with my first ever Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. The synchronised pulling of ring-pulls on our cans of lager as the 8.30am football express pulled out of the station, seemingly on a mission solely to deliver us to the pub in a Northern outpost for opening time. And going back a few years, the confidence booster, the Dutch Courage required to talk to a particular girl or help you feel like the centre of attention.

You see, context is everything. No one beer moment is ever the same, even ones that seem to be. Every day is different, your mood is never the same. You’re with different people, doing different things. And that’s what’s so great about beer, for me at least. Like no other drink, it caters for all of those different needs. Whether it’s putting a bad day behind you, just chilling out or slaking a mighty thirst. Or savouring an amazing steak at a special dinner out, accompanying a meaty pie in the pub or just with a simple sandwich for your lunch. Or feeling part of a group, connecting and bonding with your mates or following a ritual or tradition. Or celebrating a birth, a marriage or remembering someone recently lost. Or just letting go, cutting loose and partying.

That’s why I love beer. It’s the drink for any moment. Any moment can be a beer moment. And the moment is usally a better one for the beer.

Beer travel highlights 2011

I’ve had some great beer in some great locations away from home in 2011. Here are my highlights.

Only here for the beer

I often travel away to watch my football team Yeovil Town in action. In January I returned to my old stomping ground of West London. At the always reliable Magpie & Crown in Brentford I had my first experience of Windsor & Eton’s excellent Conqueror Black IPA. In February a trip to Dagenham started at CAMRA’s pub of the year The Harp, where the Dark Star beers, in particular Six Hop were in great form. The Harp is a pub I highly recommend and I love popping in for a swift pint when I’m in the area. In April the highlight of a trip to Peterborough was, as ever, Charters. This pub is based on an old Dutch barge moored on the river and is quite an experience. If football fans are not your thing you should avoid match days!

A diamond in the Welsh rough

At the end of April we travelled as a family for our first holiday together in Mumbles on the Gower peninsula, west of Swansea. Not an amazing area for pubs, but we were staying in most of the time, which allowed me to sample the entire bottled range from Tomos Watkin, who had some excellent displays in the local Co-op. There was one pub in Mumbles that I loved. The Park Inn scoops the prize for my pub of the year. We went in at about 3pm on a Friday afternoon and were the only people there. This place was pretty close to my idea of perfection. I don’t think I’ve ever been to such a wonderful and atmospheric pub. It nestles in a terraced street, with the only real identification that it’s a pub some barrels out on the pavement. Inside it’s like stepping back into the 1930s, with fabulous old decoration and wonderful historical pictures, letters, press cuttings and antiquities adorning the walls. The welcome was friendly and chatty and the beer was excellent. If you’re ever in the Swansea area, please make sure you pay The Park Inn a visit.

Austria – a beer lover ‘s paradise

In July we spent a week in Seefeld in Austria. This was a great base for walking in the local mountains and travelling by train to Innsbruck and Mittenwald across the border in southern Germany. There was a great choice of beers both everywhere we ate and in the local supermarkets. Hefeweizen, Helles, Pilsener, Bock, Marzen, Dunkles and Doppelbock were all tried: A beer lover’s delight and at about half the price of the UK. The beers from Mittenwald Brewery were particularly good and it claims to be the highest altitude private brewery in the world.

Craft beers down under

August gave me a wonderful opportunity, through work, to visit Sydney, Australia for a week. Unfortunately this was not a holiday and I was working hard and plagued by jet-lag. Of course I managed to fit some beer sight-seeing in though. I had two beery evenings at two very different, but both excellent pubs, courtesy of friends who handily lived round the corner from my hotel. First we visited the Four Pines brewpub in Manly. If I were to set up a café / restaurant cum pub, this would be the model I would follow. It was packed to the rafters on a Tuesday night, with four house beers to try and the brewery itself visible behind a big glass window. With great food and company it added up to a brilliant experience. On my last night we went out to the Lord Nelson in The Rocks area, which is like a classic English pub and one of the oldest in Sydney. It also does great food and brews its own beers on site. Another one to search out if you’re in town! I may be back again this year and I’ll look to add some new places and beers to my list. My only complaint about beer in Sydney was the temperature of it. I’m sure that serving it at only a degree or so above freezing IS very refreshing when it’s 40 degrees outside. But it’s the middle of winter. I have to sit there being asked “something wrong with your beer mate?”, as I let it warm up so I can taste some of the hoppy and malty nuances that the brewer has put time and effort into creating.

A near miss in Glasgow

The autumn bought with it a trip to see my Dad and his wife in Scotland. It wasn’t a trip for visits to the pub, but I did get the chance to sample a few different beers from the supermarket, including Arran Brewery and Williams Bros, that I wouldn’t usually get to see. It’s always worth taking a trip to the beer aisle when in an unfamiliar town and picking up something new. My only real regret on the trip was that I didn’t have time to pop into Brewdog Glasgow for a pint when we visited the excellent Kelvingrove museum. There’s always next time!

2012 has loads of great trips in store. I just need to make sure there’s always time for a beer or two. Any tips for Irish craft beers and breweries to investigate would be much appreciated.

What makes a pub great?

The pub should be the heart of the community where both strangers and friends receive a homely welcome. Drinking beer and other alcoholic drinks has transcended social staus and age group for generations, bringing people together with one common aim: To let go our inhibitions and socialise with like-minded people.

Recently I’ve been discussing with friends (over a few beers of course) what elements go into making the perfect pub. Now, this is quite a subjective thing. Many of our favourite pubs are tied up in special memories of great nights out, our teenage years, meeting a special person, a great football away day or any number of other associations. Individual differences aside, we managed to come up with an agreed list of features. I have listed each feature below and given a quick description of what, in my opinion, makes a pub great.

Staff

Any great business is built on the people who work for it. Friendly staff who are smiling, chatty and welcoming and who get to know the customers give the pub much of its character. If they are also passionate and knowedgeable about the industry and the products they are selling, all the better. And knowing which order to serve people in when it’s busy is good too!

Drinks

I don’t think you can have a good pub without a good drinks range. What people class as a good range will differ. My ideal pub should sell a range of locally produced ales from within a few miles of the pub. Supporting the local economy is important. I’d like to see interesting guest ales from further afield to help broaden my horizons. Lager choice should only be high quality. I’m thinking Budvar rather than Fosters and interesting imports. Wine and spirits should be high quality and also have some interesting local and international brands. And a final metion for soft drinks. They should be good value and there should be free refills for designated drivers.

Tasters

I hate it when I go to a pub and see an interesting looking ale on, buy a pint and then find out I don’t like it. A pint’s not cheap any more, so it’s a risk and can make people stick with what they know. Recently I visited Australia on business. I was impressed in the Four Pines brewpub in Manly that they offered tasters of their beer. Roughly the equivalent of three third-pints for the price of a pint. A great idea which removes risk and encourages your customers to drink more.

Food

When I visit the pub I sometimes want to eat. But I don’t want to feel obliged to eat, or that if I’m only drinking I’m using valuable table space. Personally I’m not a massive fan of pubs that centre on food, but I can see the value in certain cicumstances. I’d prefer to see a simple range of traditional pub food, but made with high quality local produce and provided at a reasonable price. Another thing I like is when pubs give free tasters and snacks at the bar. Basic hospitality, rather than getting ripped off for tiny bowl of nuts.

The building and the decor

The building should be interesting and fit in with the location. The lighting shouldn’t be too stark or too dim. The furnishing should be comfortable and it should fit with the building and the general decoration. If there’s a theme it should follow all the way through. The temperature should be just like home – comfortable without needing your coat on, but not too hot.

Home comforts

In a pub I want to feel as at home as I do in in my own living room. In my living room I have magazines and newspapers for my guests and it’s cosy, with things to look at on the walls. I also want the toilets to be like home. I expect them to be smart, more like a five star hotel than stinking of piss and out of paper.

TV and music

While I appreciate some home comforts in the pub, music and TV are generally unwelcome additions. Some background music does add atmosphere, but I’d want a carefully curated choice played at a reasonable level through a jukebox where the punters choose the music to suit them. TV is not something I appreciate. I’ve come to the pub to escape X-Factor and the rest. My only exception would be major sporting events when TVs could be bought in especially.

Events

Quiz nights and intelligent themed events and promotions are all fine with me. Meet the brewer. Food and beer or wine matching. Anything that fits with the profile of the customers and their interests.

I’m yet to discover my perfect pub, but I’ll keep trying to find one nearby that ticks all these boxes.

What makes a perfect pub for you? Do you agree or disagree with me? Have I missed anything important? Nominations are welcomed!

5 things to improve Beer In The Evening

Like many of you do, I’m sure, I often check out whether a pub is any good on Beer In the Evening (BITE). It’s probably the best database of pubs in the UK. But it could be SO much better if it followed these six steps:

1. Get more reviews

At the moment there is a dearth of reviews for many pubs, despite the fact that they are full of punters every day. BITE needs to find a way to encourage drinkers  to place mroe reviews. In many other online communities people gain points / rewards /kudos for particpating and making good reviews that others agree with. It could also be a case of working with pubs to get them to encourage reviews.

2. Pub scores should be based on a minimum number of recent reviews 

How many times have I been in a pub, apparently worthy of a score of 7/10 to find it dogged by the smell of stale piss and serving gone-off beer? Too many! Once the problem of number of reviews per pub is sorted then there should be a weighting towards recent reviews and those from respected reviewers. There should also be guidelines to score against so that one person’s 8/10 equates, at least roughly, to another person’s 8/10.

3. More cross-linking of pub details and better, up to date, pub information

How many times have I been assured that a pub sells real ale and is Cask Marque certified and then turned up to a hole with only Fosters and Carling on tap? Well, only once, but once was enough. And then on a recent holiday to South Wales trying to find any pub info at all was impossible. The Gower is a tourist area for crying out loud – it’s awash with potential punters and there is only disjointed, out of date, pub information. Either find a way to encourage and help pus to update their details or get a network of local enthusiasts to help.

4. Improve site searchability and pub classification

Increase the ways the visitor can search for and classify pubs. For example, I’d like to find the most hoghly rated ale specialistswithin 10 miles of Buxton. Make that easy for me!

5. Have a complete site re-design incorporating the points above!

It looks shocking, like something from the turn of the century. I’m sure someone is making a pretty penny out of it, but please, please, please for the sake of UK drinkers, looking for a decent pub in which to quaff their ale, improve your site! The marketing opportunities are endless once you have an attractive vehicle…

A few Horsham pubs

Over the past few months, since moving to Horsham, I’ve been able to get more familiar with some of the local pubs. Not that I get that many evenings out these days. An eight month old baby and a long commute don’t allow me many forays into the local beer scene.

There are three Horsham pubs that have caught my attention as being the best of what I can only describe as an average bunch so far.

First up is Ye Olde Stout House on the Carfax. It claims to be Horsham’s only town centre pub with a bar billiards table and that feature certainly does add to the charm. It’s a pub with a nice, friendly atmosphere and a cosy, inviting interior, including lots of old pictures of Horsham. One thing it could do without are the gaming machines jutting out in the middle of the bar, but otherwise it’s a great little pub. As a former King & Barnes house it’s now Hall & Woodhouse operated. And that’s my only real problem with it: I’m just not a big fan of Badger beers. Now, I don’t dismiss them out of hand. In fact I like some of their seasonal offerings like Pickled Partridge and Hopping Hare and Badger Golden Champion in a bottle is great. But would it be too much to ask to have a guest beer from one of the local breweries on the bar?

That thought brings me onto another Hall & Woodhouse owned pub, which has been gaining great reviews: The Tanners Arms on Brighton Road. The Tanners is an interesting pub. It’s long and thin with a stage for live music and a small garden at the back. It seems to be building its reputation based on the live music it offers, which is good to see because as far as I can tell there aren’t a great many music venues in the vicinity. I visited with my brother-in-law for the Easter Beer Festival. This was a well organised event with a laminated menu included beers from many local breweries. We tried Langham Hip Hop, Hammerpot Shooting Star, FILO Ginger Tom, Dorking Red India Ale and from Dark Star Mai Bock and Golden Gate. It was a great selection, but it made me rue the fact that you can’t usually get these beers in H&W pubs, a chain which dominates Horsham. It seems completely absurd to me that you cannot find Dark Star beers in the nearest sizeable town to the brewery, when you can find them nearly everywhere else in the south-east and beyond.

The closest Horsham has to a proper ale pub is The Malt Shovel, which serves a good range of beers and sells itself as Horsham’s ‘Home of Real Ale’. On my last few visits the beer has been in excellent condition, with some local beer on offer too. You can’t go wrong at all with a pint of Dark Star Hophead Citra for £2.50. I’ve also seen beers from Hepworths, Hammerpot and Surrey Hills, along with some of the now more mainstream ales like Sharps Doom Bar. I was also impressed that drinkers are often treated to free bar snacks. All in all it’s a good pub and certainly seems popular. I’d love to see it really push the ales from the five local breweries more strongly and then get the odd interesting guest in from further afield. If it could tone down the TVs as well that would be nice, although I can understand the need for sports in a busy town centre pub. It’s only a few tweaks away from sealing it’s place as my current number one Horsham pub.

If you have any recommendations for pubs to visit in and around Horsham I’d love to hear them. Thanks for reading!

Increasing choice is not necessarily a good thing

As I travelled into London on the train after work on Monday I was excited. I was going for my first trip to Cask Pub & Kitchen in Pimlico to meet a former colleague for dinner. When I arrived it was packed. It turned out it was a meet the brewer evening for Bristol Beer Factory. In the end we didn’t stay long. We couldn’t get a table to eat and it was a little too packed and noisy to have a comfortable conversation.

Despite the fact that I am knowledgeable and well-versed in beer styles and different breweries, there was something I found quite intimidating about the place. Not in a threatening way at all. I found the type of person in there was the kind of superior beer expert that you sometimes feel looks down their nose at you as you peruse the choice on offer. And what a choice. There were ten beers on from Bristol Beer Factory and then countless others on keg and in bottles, many of which I was unfamiliar with. It was probably this vast choice that caused most of my discomfort.

In marketing, particualrly relating to retail, there’s a phenomenon known as the ‘tyranny of choice’. As we have become collectively richer and as distribution channels have become increasingly efficient, more and more products have become available to us. In the seventies the average supermarket carried about 10,000 lines. Nowadays that figure is closer to 50,000. There was a time when you had a choice of two or three different types of orange juice at the supermarket, now it’s probably about 30. The received wisdom would have us believe that increasing choice will make us happier, but in fact the reverse can be true. While an increasing choice of options appears to have improved life immeasurably in the Western world, in actual fact there comes a point where increased choice becomes stressful.

For an example of this, one simply has to walk into the local purveyor of mobile phones and be bamboozled by the choices on offer. Handsets, price plans, insurance options. I just want a phone! The information I have to take in is too much and I leave befuddled to do some more research online. That’s why the insurance comparison sites have done so well. They curate the mass of choices down to a manageable number for you to compare based on your basic needs.

When you walk into a pub though, you don’t have the luxury of being able to go away and do some research. You need to try a beer at least twice before you can form a real opinion on it. So what to do then, if like me you’ve walked into a packed pub and you are faced with the choice of 300 or more beers? Well me, I like to try new things, so I just started on the left of the bar, checked the ABV wasn’t too high (it was a Monday night!) and tried the first couple. That fact it was so busy meant I didn’t feel that I could ask the barman for advice and there didn’t appear to be any literature on the beer range to help me.

Obviously Cask is an extreme example aimed at the real experts, but it goes to show that pubs hoping to cater for a more mainstream crowd have an educational job to do to convert traditional lager drinkers to different beers. As more micro-breweries spring up and a never ending range of syles is introduced or re-introduced this is only going to get harder. The publican needs to become the curator, selecting the beers and teaching his or her customers about them. Offering free tasters to curious punters is one option I’ve seen work well. Pubs must also make sure that they do keep a regular line-up behind the bar. People don’t naturally adapt well to continuous change and as we have seen, too much choice can cause stress. Tasting evenings and meet the brewer events could also be good, but whatever you do, try to be inclusive and not just appeal to the beer ‘geeks’.

For more on the ‘Tyranny of Choice’, see this excellent article from the Economist.

The Session: Regular Beer

I’ve noticed in the beer world that there is a regular event, where bloggers come together and write on a specific topic. This week it’s all about ‘Regular Beer’.  Here’s my spin on it:

To me ‘Regular Beer’ is more a description of my diet, than  a particular brand I like to drink.

My Dad has a ‘Regular Beer’. He likes San Miguel in a bottle. I think this is becuase it was a sign of being premium in the seventies and eighties to sup from a classy looking bottle of foreign fizz. And old habits die hard. He will switch to different lagers, but they will tend to have something of the exotic and foriegn about them.

I promise to myself that I will always search out new and different things and challenge myself with difficult styles, which at first taste I may not get along with that well. For, according to the excellent New Beer Rules, you must have at least two servings of a beer before passing judgement on it.

It was not always so. I have never been a ‘look at me’ fashionista, but as a teenager it’s rather awkward not to drink what everyone else is having. And what everyone else is having is either the thing that will get them pissed quickest (hello Stella, my old friend and adversary!) or the thing with the coolest advertising (the first pint I bought in the pub was Boddingtons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mp646_H_xo).

I was just glad that I eventually listened to some older and wiser friends and joined them in attending some beer festivals. My first was in Ealing, when it still took place in the town hall in the Autumn time. The real turning point was the GBBF in 2002 at Olympia. That’s when I discovered that I had discerning tastebuds. Since then I have sought out new and different.

I lived in Chiswick for nearly a decade, so if I did have a ‘Regular’ it might have been London Pride, but in fact I pride myself on the fact that if I go into a pub anywhere I will try something new. I do have a ‘Regular’ style though. I love IPA. My favourite is Goose Island IPA. If there’s a new IPA to try that’s what I’ll try first.

On holiday with my Dad and the family in Northumbia last summer I held a beer tasting evening. The winner from all the local brews was Alnwick IPA. To my surprise my Dad piped up with the information that in the sixties IPA was the expensive drink that he used to drink to impress people in the lounge bar. It used to be his regular, but for very different reasons to me!

What goes around comes around. Fashions rise on the tide and ebb away again unnoticed. Will I be telling my son about how I used to drink Stella back in the nineties, when he holds an exotic lager tasting session in 30 years time?

Proud of British Beer

I watched this video and it has urged me to get back into the blog. It’s absolutely essential that we support one of this country’s last, great manufacturinfg industries.

Watch the video and write to your MP to stop the duty rises planned in the forthcoming and future budgets.

My favourite beers and pubs of 2010

Snow, Christmas parties, kitchen refits and more snow have not given me much time to write over the last couple of weeks. I have had some time to reflect on a great year of beer though.

I often combine discovering new beers and pubs with another passion, my support of Yeovil Town FC. Trips to Wycombe and Norwich early in the year saw visits to some brilliant pubs.

First up is the White Horse at Hedgerley. This was a little remote, despite being so close to the ‘civilisation’ of Slough and you could only get there by driving. If I lived in a village with a pub like this I’d probably never leave it, other than to watch the red kites circling. Check out the Beer In The Evening reviews to understand my reasons.

In Norwich, the Coach and Horses, close to the station, was a great place to start a pub crawl of one of the finest drinking towns in Britain. The Ketts Tavern was also superb and a trip to East Anglia would not be complete without a visit to the Fat Cat. There were many more pubs, aside from these stand-out ones, which would grace any town or city in the land. A trip to Norwich for a beer tour comes highly recommended.

Perhaps my favourite beer of the year was Bengal Lancer from Fullers. I began the year living about a mile from the brewery in Chiswick, so was lucky enough to be able to find it quite easily. Pale ales are probably my favourite beer style and this one certainly doesn’t disappoint.

During the summer I went to Antwerp as part of my brother-in-law’s stag party. We drank plenty of the wonderful local brews from De Koninck. However, the big discovery of the weekend was a great beer called Omer Traditional Blond. At 8.0% ABV it was dangerously smooth, tasty and drinkable, as some of us found to our cost! I later discovered it was a gold medallist at the Beer World Cup and I can see why.

I blogged a few weeks ago about my discovery of the WJ King brewery around the corner from my new house in Horsham. Finding that my town has some great brewing of its own has been another highlight. Since then I’ve also had a delivery of beers from Beermatt, who also bought me a copy of Sussex Drinker to read, which has left me much better informed on the local scene.

Next up I’ll be checking out some of Horsham’s town centre pubs, with a few festive ales on Thursday and then I’ll be off to Sheffield’s ‘Valley of Beer’ on 28th December, weather-permitting, as Yeovil take on Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough. Beer report, rather than match report to follow!

Buy locally – it makes sense!

I read an article in The Publican yesterday, by Pete Brown, about branding in pubs. It resonated strongly with me and how I feel about giving back to the local economy.

Here’s an excerpt:

“This is important because if you spend £100 in a chain store or supermarket, £60 of that leaves the local economy straight away, to pay shareholders and distant suppliers… But if you shop locally, that money is reinvested in the community. That same £100 can effectively end up being spent three times in the same street, so the community benefits.”

You can read the article here. I strongly recommend that you do.