Your FREE guide to real ale and pubs in South Oxfordshire
Spring 2016 • Issue 29 • www.soxonale.org.uk
MILLER THE
OF MANSFIELD • GORING
OPENING TIMES Monday - Saturday Lunch 12 - 2.30 Dinner 6 - 9 Sunday Lunch 12 - 3.30 Supper Club 6 - 8
Good Food Guide Readers Restaurant of the Year 2016 18th Century Coaching Inn with 13 Individual Rooms Local Discounts & Corporate Rates Apply.
Wine Dinners 17th March
..with Chef Nick Galer & wine supplier Pierre to answer questions.
£39.00
Weekly Changing Lunch Menu
2 courses £16.00 3 courses £20.00 Sunday Supper Club £12.50 main course & drink.
Nibbles menu now available.
Mothers Day Lunch from 11.45 - 3.30pm
2 courses £34.00 3 courses £39.00 Spaces Limited
Contact Mary for any further enquiries
Miller of Mansfield High Street, Goring, RG8 9AW t: 01491 872 829 m: 07702 853 413 email: mary.galer@millerofmansfield.com www.millerofmansfield.com Miller-of-Mansfield
TheMillerofMan
LOCAL NEWS
Published every three months by the South Oxfordshire branch of the Campaign for Real Ale © CAMRA 2016 SoxonAle is produced and distributed by members of the branch in their own time. Views expressed in SoxonAle are not necessarily those of the editor, publisher or of CAMRA. Edited by: Paul Dixon Email: contact@soxoncamra.org.uk. Design & Production: Daniel Speed - Orchard House Media Ltd 01778 382758 Email: info@orchardhousemedia.co.uk Advertising: For advertising enquiries please contact Jane Michelson on: 07732 393 621 01778 382718 jane@orchardhousemedia.co.uk
Each year, every CAMRA branch selects its Pub of the Year (POTY). This is the first stage in a lengthy competition where the winners progress through county and regional stages, with the select few going on to a final shoot-out at national level. It is left up to the individual branch how it selects its POTY. In the SOX Branch, discussion and agreement at a series of Branch meetings generates a short-list of five. The winner is decided by secret ballot open to all the Branch members. Like a number of other CAMRA branches, to keep things interesting SOX excludes the previous year’s winner from taking part. So the 2015 champ, the Plum Pudding in Milton, wasn’t included in this year. South Oxfordshire’s 2016 POTY is the Bird in Hand, Henley. This is a real testament to licensees Graham and Celia Steward who have now won the Branch title for the fifth time and have been in the Good Beer Guide every year since 1996. In an era where running a pub seems to get ever tougher Graham and Celia have been in post for over 20 years and the SOX Branch has recognised this by presenting them with a long-service award in 2014. It’s not always easy to say exactly why a pub seems so good, but somehow it all comes together and the whole thing works. The main points that branches should look out for are: Continued on page 4
Distribution: 3,000 copies / four times a year Got a short pint? If you believe that you have been treated unfairly in a pub, club or bar, you should contact the Trading Standards service by writing to them at Oxfordshire Trading Standards, Graham Hill House, Electric Avenue, Ferry Hinksey Rd, Oxford OX2 0BY or call them on 0845 051 0845. A wide range of consumer information and advice is also available online from the Consumer Direct website at www.consumerdirect.gov.uk
CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale is an independent, voluntary organisation campaigning for real ale, community pubs and consumer rights.
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Local News - continued
Quality of the beer. This is the most important single factor in judging a pub for a CAMRA award. The pub doesn’t need to sell a wide range of beers to score highly: a pub selling a couple of ales in tip-top condition is better than one selling seven or eight of variable quality. Atmosphere/style/décor. This is partly about the “feel” of the interior – is it a nice place to be? Pubs certainly don’t have to be picture-postcard, unspoilt rural gems to score highly here. Estate pubs, modern city centre bars, back street boozers – all can be excellent in their own terms. Service and welcome. Is the service prompt, efficient and friendly? Do you get full measure or a top up, without having to ask? Clientele Mix. A good pub is one where anyone can go in and feel comfortable, whoever they are. If a pub, intentionally or unintentionally, operates in such a way as to exclude some sectors of the community then that counts against it for this competition. Sympathy with CAMRA aims. Does the pub promote CAMRA’s values? Is cask beer given a positive push here? Is information offered about the ales sold? Good value. This is about value for money but in the widest sense of the term; i.e. not just how cheap the ale is. So having made the effort to come here, having devoted some of your valuable time to the journey and spent hard-earned cash, how good a pub experience have you had? On the subject of awards, four times a year the SOX Branch makes a Pub of the Season award. This often (though by no means always) recognises licensees who have been making an effort to improve pubs that previously may have been under-performing a bit. This certainly doesn’t apply to the Winter Pub of the Season: the Dolphin, Wallingford, which already features in the Good Beer Guide. The Dolphin has been run by Brian Howard for 16 years now. For the first six years he ran it on behalf of someone else, then took sole command ten years ago. The Dolphin is a Greene King pub but has a generous guest beer policy. It also has its own brand ale, The Dolly. The photo shows Brian (left) receiving the award from SOX chairman David Cooper. In the previous edition of SoxonAle we commented on the increasingly dire situation for pubs in Didcot. Didcot, let us not forget, is a prosperous rapidly-growing town with a population about to top 30,000. Two pubs were demolished last year to be replaced by housing, leaving only six still open. Now demolition of the very popular Prince of Wales is a step closer. In mid-February South Oxfordshire District Council’s Planning Committee voted unanimously to approve outline planning permission for the proposed Didcot Gateway scheme. This will redevelop the area of land opposite Didcot Station as far as the old Labour Club, and including what used to be Julians Garage and car park. The area needs rejuvenation, but this proposal includes demolishing the Prince of Wales and replacing it with an eight-storey hotel. 4
Local News - continued
Campaigners, including the Save the Prince of Wales Group and SOX members, opposed the proposal. The Prince is popular with passengers and locals alike. It is also the last publicly-accessible piece of heritage connected with the railway, which led to Didcot's establishment as a town in the mid-nineteenth century. SOX Chairman David Cooper commented: “It is very disappointing that despite many objections to demolishing the pub during the consultation on this scheme, not one committee member defended retention of the Prince of Wales, nor would they include a condition that a replacement pub be constructed as part of the development. The Prince of Wales could have been a distinctive centrepiece of the regeneration scheme, but instead it looks as though Didcot's Gateway will end up looking just like any other modern town. Didcot has only one pub per 5,000 residents, compared with a national average of one per 1,250. Two pubs in the town have been demolished in the past few months, so Didcot can ill-afford to lose any more and actually needs more to be built. Pubs are proven to be important for promoting community cohesion and vitality, but it appears that SODC is not concerned with such minor considerations.� The Plough, Clifton Hamden, has a very long history as an inn, stretching back over 600 years. The current owner gradually stopped operating it as a pub so it now runs just as a small B&B. Then in early December he submitted an application to delicense it completely, i.e. it would no longer be a pub at all. The locals immediately organised to fight this and the planning application attracted a large number of comments opposing it. SODC’s decision is to be made at the end of March. Continued on page 6
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Local News - continued
The Queen’s Arms, Goring, is on the edge of town, near to the train station. It closed in 2013 after Tesco bought it from Greene King with the aim of turning it into an Express convenience store and has stood empty since then. Planning permission is not required for this conversion since pubs and shops are both classed as commercial use. However, Tesco does need planning permission for some of the building works it feels it needs. Recently Tesco applied to extend the building in order to create a 260m2 shop floor. Many Goring people have objected all along to Tesco’s plans: partly because of the loss of a pub, but there is also concern over the effect on existing businesses and the possibility that the town centre will be affected. A survey by Goring Gap Business Network showed local opinion was 40% for and 57% against. Regular readers of SoxonAle will recall the long-running dispute over the White Lion, Cray’s Pond. Briefly, Greene King sold the pub in 2013 to a businessman from Huddersfield who decided to turn it into a family home and set about ripping out the kitchen, two bars and ladies’ toilets. However, in his haste he neglected to obtain planning permission. A long and resolute campaign of opposition by the local people resulted in SODC turning down the planning application and giving the owner one year to stop using it as a house. The latest development is that, at the time of writing, the pub lease is being advertised for £35k per annum for a term of 15-20 years. Early days – but if it all works out well the village could soon get its pub back. Brakspear is one of three shortlisted for the title of Best Brewing Pub Company of the Year. The award is open to pub operators across the UK and is run by leading industry magazine The Publican's Morning Advertiser. This is due to the success of Brakspear’s Bell Street Brewery which opened in 2013. The micro now produces Brakspear Special throughout the year. Brakspear Old was brewed again during January after selling out last year. The winner will be announced in March. Finally, three pubs in South Oxfordshire have been nominated as best places to eat along the River Thames. The Catherine Wheel, Goring, won the restaurant category of the 2015 Best Thames Local Awards.However, having achieved this accolade the two landlords have just announced they are quitting the pub in June. The Little Angel, in Remenham Lane, Henley, was runner-up. In third place for the second year running was the Miller of Mansfield, Goring, which was also highly commended in the pub category. The pubs were shortlisted after being nominated by customers and then winning a public vote. As an indication of how much of an achievement this is, the river between Oxford and London stretches for 180 miles and there are more than 1,800 pubs along it. Newsflash The 2016 Pub of the Year has just been announced - it”s the Sandford Park Ale House
The SOX Branch holds a meeting on the first Wednesday of each month and a social evening on the third Thursday. We vary the venues to cover as much of the Branch’s (quite extensive) territory. For news and events take a look at the Branch website: www.soxoncamra.org.uk. Alternatively email us at contact@soxoncamra.org.uk. 6
NATIONAL NEWS The rate that pubs are closing has fallen - a bit. But CAMRA says that beer duty needs to be cut again Last year a report from the Centre of Economics and Business Research showed pubs and drinkers would benefit from a cut in beer duty. This conclusion is supported by latest figures. Research commissioned by CAMRA and carried out by CGA Strategy shows that 27 pubs a week closed in the second half of 2015; compared with 29 a week in the previous six months. Particularly encouraging is news that closures of local community pubs have fallen, down from 26 closures a week to 20. If the late and unlamented Beer Duty Escalator had not been killed off as a result of CAMRA’s effective campaigning (see previous SoxonAles), the price of beer would have increased by 16p a pint. As a consequence more than 1,000 additional pubs would have closed, 750 million fewer pints would have been sold and 26,000 jobs would have not been created. CAMRA is now calling on the government to continue and strengthen its support for pubs by further cutting tax to help keep beer affordable and pubs open. Tim Page, chief executive of CAMRA said: ‘The latest figures show that the work of campaigners across CAMRA, the wider pub and beer industry and the government is taking effect and arresting the decline in the number of pubs being lost every week. However it's a fragile recovery which could very quickly be reversed if the government fails to build on this positive development and misses the chance to support the British pub and beer industry by reducing tax again.’ Britain’s Pub of the Year 2016 is close to a decision As we said in the Local News section, in March each CAMRA branch select its own Pub of the Year. These pubs then slog it out over the year until the last one left standing is declared the overall winner. The process that started in 2015 is now close to completion. The last four are: Drovers Rest, Monkhill, Cumbria. A traditional country pub close to the Hadrian’s Wall path. Although opened up, the interior still has the feel of three rooms. The pub is very much at the heart of its community. Kelham Island Tavern, Sheffield, Yorkshire. Already a two-time winner of CAMRA’s top pub honour, the two-roomed freehouse showcases rare and local microbrewery beers. A stout and porter are always available. Sandford Park Ale House, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Opened in April 2013, this smart new ale house sells up to seven guest ales, with Oakham Ales a feature. It has a good selection of ciders and foreign beers. Yard of Ale, Broadstairs, Kent. One of the country’s new wave of micropubs, it is housed in a 19th century stable in the village of St Peter’s. It serves cask ales, real ciders and locally produced wines. 8
National News - continued
Tied tenants short changed on rents CAMRA says government has failed to honour the spirit of the Small Business and Enterprise Act and has fallen short on the promised protection for thousands of tied tenants. The first of a two-part consultation on a new pubs code has been published, setting out how the Market Rent Only (MRO) option will work. In the draft the government has reversed its pledge to introduce reforms designed to ensure licensees are protected from unfair practices in the industry and that tied tenants are no worse off than those free of tie. Instead, the draft proposes pub companies would only have to offer a MRO if it increases rent beyond the rate of inflation. In addition, the MRO would only be triggered if there was a significant increase in the price of products or services. Also the option for a Parallel Rent Assessment (PRA) has been removed. The PRA was intended to ensure tenants on tied rent are no worse off than if they were free-of-tie. CAMRA says the draft code differences are such the MRO option cannot be delivered fairly. It believes the changes will dramatically reduce the number of tenants able to seek the MRO option. In addition the changes to the code will create a perverse incentive for pubcos to impose above inflation increases in tied beer prices in exchange for keeping rent increases below inflation. CAMRA says the MRO option and PRA are needed to ensure licensees tied to the large pub companies should be no worse off than those free of tie. A 2013 CAMRA survey found that 57% of tied licensees earn less than £10,000 a year. CAMRA will be working with government, MPs and peers to ensure that the final pubs code is workable and helps keep pubs open. Listings double as push to protect locals ramps up By the time you read this, more than 1,200 pubs will have been listed as Assets of Community Value (ACV) thanks in part to the efforts of hundreds of CAMRA members. The number of pubs nominated as ACVs has doubled in the past six months, following the launch of a joint CAMRA/government initiative to protect England’s most valued pubs. SOX is part of CAMRA’s Central Southern Region, which is the area currently leading the pack in terms of the number of ACVs. ACV nominations give communities the power to safeguard pubs from developers. Pubs nominated as Assets of Community Value cannot be demolished or converted into another use without planning permission or community consultation. CAMRA aims to see ACV-listed pubs increase to 3,000 by the end of 2016 to help stem pub closures, which stands at 29 a week. Nominate your local by visiting: www.camra.org.uk/listyourlocal. Email acv@ camra.org.uk for details. Continued on page 11 9
National News - continued
New UK drinking guidelines - toughest in Europe! The Department of Health recently re-issued guidelines on alcohol consumption that anyone drinking more than seven pints of beer a week is now considered ‘at risk’. Apparently both men and women should drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week – roughly equivalent to six pints of average strength beer or seven glasses of wine. Under the old guidelines set in 1995 the recommended levels for men were 21 units a week and for women 14. The new guidelines do not seem to recognise that alcohol consumption is falling (down 19% since 2004) and so are harmful levels of drinking. From 2005-13, men drinking over the (old!) guidelines dropped from 41% to 34% and women from 33% to 26%. The original recommendations were not based on science. A few years ago, one of the committee which came up with them admitted on the Radio 4 Today programme that they were in response to a government demand for restrictions on drinking and more or less plucked out of the air. The UK now has some of the strictest drinking guidelines in the world. In particular the recommendations for men put the UK well out of line with other comparable countries. The USA has 24.5 units, France 26, Italy 31.5, and Spain 35. In other countries, most guidelines recognise the difference in terms of physiology and metabolism between men and women. The fact is we Brits are moderate drinkers, around 16th in the world league of alcohol consumption. The weekend anti-social behaviour of a tiny minority in some town centres should not distort the true picture of the moderate way in which most of us handle drink.
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National News - continued
Real Ale – still on the up! The relative popularity of ales continues to rise as new research shows fewer people are drinking lager. Research by market intelligence agency Mintel reveals 49% of people drank lager in 2015, down from 54% in 2014. The popularity of beer is being bolstered by so-called ‘craft’ beer and the popularity of particular styles such as IPA. Additionally, it seems cost is having an effect on the nation’s appetite for beer, with as many as a fifth of UK beer drinkers saying they won’t pay more than £3 for a pint. While three out of ten beer drinkers are prepared to pay more than £4 per pint, it’s Londoners who are more willing to open their wallets, with 27% prepared to spend over £4.50. Home brewing in the 21st century American brothers Bill and Jim Mitchell are keen home-brewers who, like others before them, found when they tried the same recipe they never got the same result, even though their brewing systems were very similar. The brewing process is complex and with so many subtle variables can result in very different product. Bill decided to inject some process engineering rigour into the process. His aim was to build a table-top brewery that could brew like the professionals and give the amateur better control. The result is the Pico, a machine not dissimilar to a microwave. The ingredients are contained within a sealed pouch which is loaded into the machine as if it were a hot drinks dispenser. In two hours it produces five litres of beer which is then transferred to a keg to ferment out for a week. The beer recipes are pre-determined but the bitterness and alcohol can be adjusted. If the main aim is to get consistency and quality, then another is to allow the brewer to make their own version of a recognised beer (presumably under license from the originating brewery) and tweak it to give it their own take. It all sounds pretty impressive, but most home brewers enjoy fooling around with buckets and bits of tube. It could be that de-skilling the whole thing will take away most of the fun? Anyway, 2,000 units are being made and will be delivered from April onwards. The price is likely to be around £600: the pouches of ingredients will be £15-£20. Taking it up a notch, in Belfast many pubs are tied houses and the drinker’s choice is limited. This has led to the development of Brewbot, a 1.2 metre square brewing machine which produces 30 litres of beer. The aim is to sell to bars and restaurants so that they can create and brew their own beer. Some existing brewers have also bought them for making experimental brews. It takes four to six hours to make the beer and then, like Pico, it is drained off into a barrel to ferment for two to four weeks. An app keeps the brewer abreast of the various stages of the brewing process and issues prompts to take the necessary actions. So far 150 units have been sold to various bars, restaurants and breweries. At £6,900, Brewbot is aimed more at commercial markets and is unlikely to appeal to most homebrewers. 11
Meantime The Meantime Brewery in Greenwich is reasonably well known, even outside the M25. I was fortunate to have been given a brewery tour for a birthday present, so I took the DLR to the North Greenwich Peninsular to take a look. The brewery is housed in a large industrial unit less than a mile from the O2. The size of the operation came as a bit of a surprise. For some reason I’d had the impression that Meantime was a modest affair, a bit like the micros you find strung along the railway arches in Bermondsey. But actually it’s the second biggest in London and currently produces 25 million pints a year, with plans to increase to 38 million by the end of 2017. Fullers, of course, remains London’s largest brewer producing over three times this amount. The visit starts with a talk and a tasting of five beers which lasts about an hour, followed by a trip around the plant. Meantime was bought out last year by brewing behemoth SAB-Miller. SAB-Miller is of course currently in the process of merging with the even larger InBev. (This was reported in the last SoxonAle, though a couple of the national papers picked up on it too.) Interestingly, during the presentation we were given the distinct impression that InBev is less enthusiastic about small breweries than perhaps SAB-Miller is/was and may be putting Meantime back on the market. Meantime is a ‘craft’ brewer – another way of saying that they produce keg and bottled beer, not real ale. The five we were given to try were:
London Pale (4.3%). This is by far Meantime’s best seller and pretty much as you would expect from its name. It has a reasonably well-rounded flavour, by which I suppose I mean not violently hoppy. London Lager (4.5%). Not radically different from the Pale but with the hops and bitterness a bit more to the fore.
London Stout (4.5%). Meantime doesn’t use any roasted barley, sticking to dark malts to give their take on the traditional stout. Yakima Red (4.1%). This is brewed using five hop varieties that all come from the Yakima Valley in Washington State. The flavour is predominantly hops and fruit. Winter Sun (5.9%). Winter Sun is a dark golden colour, sweetish with a fruity aroma. Meantime does some other heavy-hitters, notably Chocolate Porter and London Porter (both 6.5%), and India Pale Ale at 7.4%. They have just installed a small plant for experimental brews only. The very first one was on sale in the bar and was really very good indeed, and at 6.5% a bit of a beast. The tour was quite impressive. The building is a reasonable size, around 4200 m2, but they have shoe-horned such a large number of stainless steel vessels and pipework into it so that it looks to be bursting at the seams. I can’t imagine how they will get some of the stuff out again if it ever needs replacing. In fact to achieve their growth target plans are in place to expand into a neighbouring plot. So, if you’re up in London the Meantime tour is a good way of spending a couple of hours. The tours are mostly on Saturday, and cost £20. See https://www.meantimebrewing.com/
Paul Dixon 12
BROADWAYS “A popular town centre establishment with a range of keenly priced ales. Food prices are extremely reasonable as well.” - Whatpub.com Opening Hours 10am - 11pm (1am Thu; 3am Fri & Sat); 11am-10pm Sunday
103 Broadway, Didcot OX11 8RG Tel: 01235 814924
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Camden
Each year, on the third Saturday in January, CAMRA’s Central Southern Region holds a pub crawl somewhere in central London. The first one I have a record of was in 2010, but I’m sure they’ve been going on for longer. So a fine, if recent, tradition that has visited Covent Garden, Pimlico, Euston, Holborn, Bermondsey and the Angel. The 2016 event went north to Camden, and to be honest it turned out to be not quite the classic London crawl we’d been hoping for. It got off to a rather slow start in the...
Black Heart [NW1 0AP] which is tucked away down
Black Heart
a side street, close to Camden Town tube station. The pub sign is a black heart and the front of the pub is entirely black apart from the folding glass doors. The inside is pretty dark too in a way that would suit the most ardent goth, with a glass display case with a Madonna, jewelled skulls and specimen jars. It’s in the current Good Beer Guide, but there was no real ale! (Newsflash: It was officially dropped from the GBG two days later!) I made do with a ‘craft’ beer from the Arbor brewery in the USA. It was ok, though too cold, and at £4.80 a pint a taste of things to come.
A short walk took us to Brewdog [NW1 0AG] which is owned by the Scottish craft brewer. No disappointment here – we knew in advance there would be no real ale. There is a wide range of keg beers plus a load of bottled stuff, mainly in the basement. Quite a small place, more of a bar than a pub really. The Proto Black IPA (5.3%) was quite pleasant - £5.45 a pint though! We then headed west though back streets to the Spread Eagle [NW1 7NB] and the first ‘proper’ pub of the day. This is a large 19th century wood14
Brewdog
Camden Crawl panelled traditional pub and very busy early on this Saturday afternoon. It’s a Young’s house with five handpumps – three for the Youngs range and two guests. I had Twickenham Brewery’s Naked Ladies (4.4%). This is a light, fruity beer that won silver medal in CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain in 2014. The Naked Ladies refers to statues of water nymphs in the York House gardens in Twickenham. Heading north along Kentish Town Road we stopped for a while to take a look at the Grand Tapping the Admiral Union Canal that runs through Camden. As it happened, a section of the canal had been drained to enable the lock gates to be replaced and the public could take a walk though the lock. This passed an interesting few minutes before we continued up the Kentish Town Road to Quinns. However, before we got there we had advance warning that they only had one ale, Abbott. So we hurried on to the quaintly named Tapping the Admiral [NW1 8SU]. This was the second Good Beer Guide pub, and fortunately this one had plenty of real ale – eight of them in fact: two regulars and the remainder guests. I tried London Tap (3.8%) from a new London micro, New River Brewery: a reasonable stab at a pale ale. The Admiral is a pretty good town pub. If you’re wondering about the name, according to Wikipedia: ‘In the Royal Navy ... tapping the admiral was the practice of sucking liquor from a cask through a straw. This usually involved making a small hole with a gimlet in a keg or barrel and using a straw to suck out the contents.’ A few minutes’ walk took us to the Grafton [NW5 3LG]: another Good Beer Guide pub, as well as the local CAMRA Summer Pub of the Season in 2013. This is another town boozer, bustling and crowded. Normally there are five changing real ales plus Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, but on this occasion half the pumps weren’t operating! The final stop on the official crawl was the Camden’s Daughter, a beer and snack bar apparently, selling only keg beer. We decided to give it a miss and go off-piste, walking a short distance to the Good Beer Guide Lion & Unicorn [NW5 2ED] then a mile or so from there to the Southampton Arms [NW5 1LE]. This is a sensational pub we know well from a previous SOX crawl. It’s similar to the Nag’s Head in Reading, and that’s very high praise indeed. We called it a night in the Pineapple [NW5 2NX]. Another Good Beer Guide pub and I’m sure it’s very nice, but my memory fails me at this point so I’ve no more to say! So, Camden itself rather disappointed and the quality of the pubs didn’t really pick up until we went some way out towards Kentish Town. But to compensate, our in-house veteran beer-hound Roy Denison has created another of his hand-tooled London crawls for early March – west this time, towards uncharted territory in Wandsworth!
Paul Dixon 15
Key Kegs What are they? How do they work? What’s the point? CAMRA’s technical advisory group explains... Last year, delegates at CAMRA’s Members’ Weekend in Nottingham voted to back the idea that real ale could come from a ‘key keg’. The motion was passed four years after the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) first said key kegs can contain CAMRA-approved real ale. When CAMRA was established in 1971 it fought against the trend for cask-conditioned beers to be replaced by recarbonated keg beers. Over 40 years later the word ‘keg’ still has negative connotations for many CAMRA members. However, what those pioneering members were fighting against wasn’t just the containers but also the product inside: often made with low-quality ingredients, usually filtered and often pasteurised, resulting in a dull flavourless drink. The renaissance of British brewing over the last ten years or so has been accompanied by a rebirth in kegged beers that mostly have little in common with the keg beers of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of these new brewers understand that flavour is reduced by filtering and particularly by pasteurising their beers - so they don’t do it. In some cases the beers these brewers put in their kegs is exactly the same as they put in their casks – complete with live yeast that will provoke secondary fermentation in the keg. The only thing that stops these beers being real ale is that traditional kegs require the application of compressed gas to propel the beer to the bar. This is where membrane kegs come in. Invented in 2006 by a Dutch company the key to the system is the bag-in-a-ball principle. The beer is sealed in a strong, flexible synthetic bag held inside a rigid plastic outer layer. To serve the beer, the space between the bag and the rigid outer layer is filled with gas under pressure, forcing the bag to collapse and pushing the beer out to the bar. It makes no difference which gas is used because it does not come into contact with the beer. Importantly for CAMRA, the way membrane kegs work means if what went into the bag was real ale – unpasteurised, unfiltered beer containing live yeast – what comes out can still be real ale, matured by secondary fermentation in the container, though it may be much more highly conditioned (or gassy) than normal. Disposable membrane kegs are too expensive to replace traditional returnable casks but they can have certain advantages for breweries since real ales can be delivered to irregular or far away venues without the worry of retrieving expensive casks. They also have some technical advantages. Carbon dioxide does not come into contact with the beer; but neither does oxygen which is the cause of real ale going off within a few days. This allows real ale to be served in places that do not normally have enough throughput to sell a cask in three or four days. It also allows pubs to increase their range by stocking slower selling, stronger, speciality styles alongside their regular cask offerings. Manchester’s Runaway brewery is now packaging all its draught beer in membrane kegs, holding them in the brewery for several weeks to allow lengthier conditioning, generating a higher level of natural 16
Key Kegs carbon dioxide in the container. Beers conditioned in this way will tend to retain the carbonation generated at the brewery – meaning they are better protected against losing condition through poor handling. A final point: the main reason that the awful keg beers of the 1960s came into being was that the big brewers found it more profitable. But it’s also worth bearing in mind that in those bad old days before anyone cared much about the consumer a lot of publicans couldn’t, or couldn’t be bothered, to keep cask beer properly.
MEMBRANE KEG vs TRADITIONAL CASK ADVANTAGES:
DISADVANTAGES:
Less oxidation so the beer takes longer to spoil
Some models are difficult to vent
Good for smaller turnover venues and for exports
Difficult to cool except in cellar conditions
Enables lower demand special beers to be stocked Avoids the cost of expensive lost casks Allows for longer conditioning at the brewery
Some models not compatible with handpumps More costly and less eco-friendly if non-recyclable The collapsing bag can cause haziness Beers are very likely to be over-conditioned
Beers retain a high condition
TRIVIAL, BUT INTERESTING To ‘get off scot-free’ means ‘to get away with something without being punished’. Since the familiar English word Scot means someone from Scotland it’s natural to assume that this is a slighting reference to that country. Actually that association seems to have existed since at least the 1500s, when the alternative spelling ‘scotchfree’ (based on the adjective scotch, meaning ‘Scottish’) first appeared. However, the scot in scot-free is an entirely different word. It comes from Old Norse and is another word for various types of taxes, dues, and payments. Of more interest to us there is a compound word: scot-ale. According to the Oxford English Dictionary this referred to ‘a festivity or ‘ale’ held by the lord of a manor, a forester or other bailiff, for which a contribution was exacted and where attendance was probably compulsory’. In other words, a party that you were forced to go to and, when you got there, you had to pay to get in! As one 16th century writer described it, ‘a Scottall or Scot-ale is where any officer of the Forest doth keepe an Alehouse…and by colour of his office doth cause men to come to his house, and there to spend their money, for feare of hauing his displeasure’ These cash-extorting parties were variously described as burdensome duties or an enjoyable booz-up. Either way - no one got off scot-free. 17
REVEALED!
The Mysteries of Fining It has been common practice for centuries for a brewer to use ‘finings’ which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is ‘a substance used for clarifying liquid, especially beer or wine'. The most well known fining agent is isinglass, probably because it is derived from the dried swim bladders of certain fish by treatment with acid. The origin of the word is from the Old Dutch huizenblaas. Huizen is a kind of sturgeon and blaas is a bladder. Isinglass was originally made exclusively from sturgeon, especially beluga, until 1795 when William Murdoch developed a cheaper substitute using cod. An early reference to isinglass is in Every Man His Own Gauger, by James Lightbody, which was published in 1702. This is an instruction manual covering how to make, as well as doctor, all sorts of alcoholic drink and includes advice on ‘To help stinking wines’ and ‘To rectify old decay’d wines’. In fact the practice of fining has been around for three or four thousand years. Quite how it came to be used is a mystery. One theory is that the ancient Greeks found that wine stored in bladders was less cloudy than that stored in pottery amphorae and turned it into part of the production process. Isinglass is almost pure collagen, a protein molecule with long intertwined coils carrying a positive electrostatic charge. Yeast cells carry a negative charge. So when the isinglass is added to the beer it attracts the yeast and they stick together in loose fluffy clumps. The long coils also have a physical action – they act as a kind of net and trap other proteins into the solidifying sediment. It’s not simply a case of just pouring finings into the cask – some judgement and experience is necessary. The beer should have had some time to mature and been in the cask for at least a week. Isinglass will not work if the yeast count is too high and it is not ready to drop. During and after fining the temperature of the beer should be less than 20°C. Isinglass is usually added at the rate of one pint to a nine gallon firkin and the beer should clear within a few hours. Until 50-60 years ago, casks of beer were fined in the pub cellar by the publican as part of his normal routine. The procedure is straightforward. Lay the barrel on its side and remove the shive (the bung, half-way up the side of the barrel). Take off a small amount of beer then pour in the finings. Hammer the shive back in and roll the barrel around a bit to get it fully mixed. 18
The mysteries of finings
It’s unlikely that your local landlord does this sort of thing now. The breweries took on the task of fining beer – originally sending unfined beer out to local depots where the casks were left to condition for a couple of weeks; the finings being added just before delivery to the pub. Nowadays the finings are added at the brewery. Arguably, adding them at the depot is the best way to do it. If the cask is allowed to settle and then repeatedly shaken up again the finings have to work several times and as a result become less effective and you end up with ‘tired finings’. Isinglass isn’t the only material used for fining: others include gelatine, bentonite (a type of clay) and carrageenan (seaweed extract). Less frequently, alginates such as Irish moss can be used as auxiliary finings if there’s a problem with positively-charged protein particles. As noted at the beginning of this article, isinglass and the others only work on negatively-charged particles. Vegans have a bit of an issue over isinglass. In fact a few months ago Guinness announced that after 256 years they would stop using it and have started removing suspended solids by filtration. In fact provided the brewer has done his job properly the isinglass will stay firmly at the bottom of the barrel along with the solids. Landlords generally leave around 1% of a barrel’s contents in the cask so the finings go back to the brewery along with the cask.
Paul Dixon
A TOTALLY CONVINCING ARGUMENT THAT PROVES DRINKING BEER IS GOOD FOR YOU. Cheers was a TV sitcom that many of us will remember from a few years ago. Cliff Clavin and his buddy Norm Peterson were always to be found hanging around the bar dispensing wisdom. One night Cliff remarked: “Well, ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members! In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine! That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.” 19
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Victorian Ale – the (not so?) golden age of beer drinking Drinking for alcohol for pleasure has been going on since we came down from the trees. Not surprisingly the practice has various attracted a number of stereotypes along the way. In the 18th century we think of rakes swigging several bottles of port in an evening, or people passed out in the gutter from drinking dodgy gin. On the other hand, the 19th century drinker is a hearty moustachioed chap, pulling on a ‘proper’ beer whilst puffing on a large pipe. This has a positive image, so inevitably a lot of modern beer marketing seeks to use this image as a sign of quality and tradition. (For some reason modern gin marketing hasn’t really tried to trade on gin’s traditional image.) But how would modern beers compare to their Victorian ancestors in a blind tasting? (Spoiler alert: in 1900 Salford, beer contaminated with arsenic killed 70 people and 7000 were made ill, some permanently.) In the early 19th century most brewers operated out of sheds and yards attached to pubs and brew-houses. When the weather was very cold or very warm they struggled to brew at all, so most beer was produced between September and May. As late as the 1860s beer was advertised by the barrel with the month in which it was brewed as an indication of quality. Porters, stouts, and dark ales dominated the market. With some regional variation these were strong, heavy brews and, because they were dark in colour, they were easy to adulterate. As long as stocks held up they were sold throughout the year, but most beer drinking went on in the winter when poor light and cold limited the amount of outdoor work that could be carried out. Then, as now, brewers worried over the cost of ingredients such as hops and malt. These days, excise duty is paid on the finished product. But before 1880 it was levied on the raw materials and brewers cut costs where they could, particularly where in hops were concerned. The best are usually year-old (‘yearling’) hops, just old enough to have mellowed a little. But to hedge against swings in the market, Victorian brewers stockpiled ingredients for years. Hops that were ten years old might be pressed into service, by which time they were all but flavourless. Technology came to the rescue. By the 1860s larger brewers were taking regular samples of water and learned how to modify their recipes to take account of mineral levels. (High levels of calcium were good for producing bright, bitter beers such as the pale ales of Burton. Dublin water had relatively low calcium content, ideal for brewing stout.) They started to use steam power and cooling systems and experimented with sugar and malt substitutes such as maize and rice, to improve the stability of their brews and to meet the increasing demand for freshness and clarity. By the 1880s brewing was starting to move away from the local, essentially self-taught trial and error brewer and become what we would recognise as an industry. Chemist E R Moritz established the Laboratory Club in 1886, which was a forum where brewers and brewing scientists could exchange information and develop scientifically-based processes. But obviously this best-practice approach wasn’t universal – the mass-poisoning in Salford occurred at the start of the 20th century! And the concept of a recognisable reliable beer brand was still largely unknown – the brewer had to use whatever ingredients he could get and produced a generic bitter, brown ale, etc The fact is, you don’t have to look backwards for the golden age of beer – you’re living in it! 21