CALLED TO THE BAR

Embrace those chinks of light on the horizon

As I write these words it’s a gloomy end-of-January kind of day. Record amounts of people have been dying daily due to COVID-19, while countless lives have been turned upside down and inside out. With each of these individual tragedies it seems almost inconsequential to point out that our pubs remain closed while a majority of breweries are furloughed, and those that are open are only producing beer to be packaged. However, hospitality is an important part of our lives and will remain that way and so here I go.

May is touted as when pubs might open, presumably with all kinds of restrictions and strictures (anyone for a substantial meal again?). How many of them, though, will ever open again? Meanwhile I presume some breweries will decide that the game is no longer worth the candle. We have already seen the end of Brains as a brewing force and I wonder if other pub-owning family breweries will follow. With all this in mind, there’s not a lot to be cheerful about is there? Or is there?

Instead of wallowing in the mire of uncertainty and disillusionment, I wanted to go in search of optimism, possibly a rare beast to discover during this third lockdown, in which there seems to be a tiredness and even an absence of the positivism that for me marked the first lockdown. I still recall the tweet from last March from the founder of a fairly new brewery, of how he’d built up the business and wasn’t got to let it falter whatever happened; he is still brewing.

Still, I wanted to take that journey. I wanted to discover what both publicans and brewers thought of their future prospects, how they were going to re-integrate their businesses back into a post-pandemic world (or something resembling an ordinary life). Will we still be holding Zoom drinks and supporting our local breweries, for instance?

Alasdair McNab is the landlord of The Pursuit of Hoppiness in the Dorset town of Bridport, a wet-led operation that focuses on both keg and cask beers from some of the best breweries in the UK. There was also a companion Pursuit of Hoppiness in Exeter, which I frequented several times a week, but sadly it did not survive the first lockdown. He describes himself as an optimist with an ambition of getting people back in the pub safely and legally, and making them feel as relaxed and as happy as possible, but admits that getting straight back to normal might take some time.

‘Drinkers will most likely have COVID-19 hang ups long after the entire population has been vaccinated,’ he says, ‘so it would make sense for cleanliness to become a more important attribute of what makes a good hospitality venue, in particular wetled pubs, many of whom could get away with being “a bit grotty” in the past. It’s a fine line making the pub environment as stress free as possible in these circumstances but that’s the skill of hosting, so I look forward to doing that.’

Back in March last year, if you had mentioned Zoom to me I would have had vague memories of a rocket-shaped, tricoloured ice lolly from my childhood. That soon changed as Zoom drinks, catch-ups and beer judging become a normal part of life. It was good to keep up with people, but a couple of months ago I felt a Zoom fatigue set in as I wanted to see people again, visit breweries and judge beer in the company of others. On the other hand, taking up McNab’s comment on people’s COVID-19 hangups, does this mean that zoom drinking will hit pubs, but conversely help breweries with their off-sales?

I next spoke with Three Hills Brewing’s founder Andrew Catherall to see how Zoom had affected his business and his thoughts on how it would shape hospitality’s future.

‘During the pandemic, Zoom has filled the space of the pub to a certain extent and breweries that have adapted to selling small pack have survived,’ he tells me, ‘but it’s not been a boom, at least not for us. Overall, people seem to be drinking less, especially in lockdowns two and three. When the pubs re-open people will return, as you just can’t beat face-to-face interaction over a beer(s) and some food in a friendly atmosphere. Breweries that can quickly adapt to shifts in the market will continue to grow, but it’s likely to continue to be tough with the economic pressure of rising unemployment in many sectors.’

Catherall also added that the brewery would be opening their own London taproom when possible, with long term plans for building an environmentally friendly, state-of-the-art, facility with restaurant and tap, in the Northamptonshire countryside as well. ‘Hosting a festival out here would be nice too,’ he said.

Taprooms have been a boon to breweries during the pandemic, even if they’ve only been able to offer a click-and-collect service. So I won’t be surprised to see even more breweries operate their own taproom. This is certainly the case with Duration Brewing as co-founder Miranda Hudson told me.

‘We are in talks about our taproom now,’ she says, ‘and we 100% hope to see a post-COVID-19 utopian dream where people really engage with their neighbours and mingle happily in a community setting made all the more nostalgic and brilliant for the events of the past year! We are an industry that relies on a symbiotic relationship with beer servers, publicans, beer bars, micro-pubs and bottle-shops and they are our closest advocates and ambassadors and we long for the day they can do what they do best and cellar and serve kegs upon kegs of our beers.’

Even in the darkest of nights, there are chinks of light on the horizon that suggest dawn will rise once more.

Adrian Tierney-Jones