British Lager - Part One

In a previous post about The Death of the English Pub, I described some of the problems facing the pub trade back in the early 1970's. These were highlighted in the book of the same title.

One subject that barely received a mention in the book, was that of British Lager. This is perhaps hardly surprising, as back then lager counted for about 2% of total beer sales. The only reference I recall was to Carlsberg and Tuborg Lagers, brewed under licence at the time by Watneys and Trumans respectively. Decrying their pitifully low strength, a reviewer from the Daily Mirror had made the comment "We think these two lagers more suitable for a maiden aunt of moderate habits than a man who uses his muscles." That comment sums up the main problem with British Lager 40 years ago; namely it was as weak as gnat's piss!

I can remember when lager as a drink first entered my consciousness. I was aged 17, and was with a group of school friends on a night out in Folkestone. With the exception of a friend of a friend, who had joined us for the evening, none of us was legally old enough to be drinking in a pub, but that didn't seem to really matter back then. I can't recall the name of the pub, and I don't think it was anything special, but it was in the centre of Folkestone, and I remember the aforementioned "friend of a friend" ordering a pint of "lager and lime". (By the way, I never got to know the real name of this character. He was referred to as "Dinky Dalton", and as he seemed a bit effeminate I didn't like to enquire further!).

At first I thought this was a soft drink, and I wondered why Mr Dalton, who was trying hard to project an image of sophistication, was drinking such a drink. I was vaguely aware from childhood of a concoction called Limeade and Lager, but this was something different). I have to say the drink looked appealing in the glass, even if it was only Harp Lager! For a start it came in its own stylized glass, and second being chilled, and with the beads of condensation running down the side of the glass, it was worth ordering one myself. Before doing so I asked Mr Dalton what the purpose of the lime was? His reply was it took the edge off the beer. I skipped on the lime, but found the beer itself totally unremarkable (perhaps it would have been better with a shot of lime in it!). This lack of any real endearing characteristics was hardly surprising as, apart from the might of the Guinness empire behind it, Harp never really had much going for it. (You could say a real triumph of style over substance!)

Harp was probably the most widely distributed British-brewed lager during the early 1970's, but it was closely followed by Heineken, which was stocked by Whitbread in most of their pubs. However, with an abv of only 3.4%, it was nothing like its continental namesake, which is brewed to a respectable strength of 5%. The story goes that when Colonel Whitbread approached Freddy Heineken when he was first looking for a continental-style beer to sell in his company's pubs. However, he was convinced that a five percent strength beer would be too strong for British drinkers, used to supping milds, bitters and light ales most of which were brewed to a strength about 3.5%. He managed to persuade Freddy and the rest of the Heineken management to allow Whitbread to brew a much weaker version of their famous beer under licence, which is how the ultra-weak Heineken came to be sold in the UK.

Like I said earlier, not only was this British-brewed lager as weak as gnat's piss, but it tasted pretty much like it as well! There is a good reason why classic European Pilsner-style lagers are brewed at around 5%; they need sufficient body not only to counter the high hopping rate, but also to allow the necessary maturation period to take place. As I write I am drinking a bottle of Pilsner Urquell; it may have lost some of it's character over the last couple of decades, but it's still a classic beer light years removed from such horrors as Harp, Whitbread-brewed Heineken, Skol etc.

Other lagers popular at this time were the aforementioned UK-brewed versions of Carlsberg and Tuborg, plus that old favourite Carling Black Label. Now I'm no fan of Carling, but it is one British lager that does seem to have stood the pace of time and is a rare survivor from 40 years or so ago. It's slightly higher strength of 4% may have helped it's longevity, as well as some clever advertising campaigns.

As the seventies unfolded, many of Britain's independent brewers decided to jump on the band waggon and started producing their own lagers. Most were instantly forgettable; I remember "lagers" such as Einhorn from Robinsons, Regal (a palindrome of lager) from Holts, Grunhalle Lager from Greenall Whitley and Brock Lager from Hall & Woodhouse to name but a few. All pretty dire, and all best forgotten! The story was that most of these ersatz lagers were brewed using an infusion mash, rather than the traditional continental decoction mash, were bittered using UK hops, and only received the minimum amount of maturation (lagering); nothing new there then, as many of today's international brands, also receive little or no proper lagering either!

Despite it's lack of taste, and total absence of any real pedigree, lager sales went through the roof during the later half of the 1970's and into the 80's. In the next part of "British Lager", I'll be looking at the rise of Premium Lagers, and the so-called international brands.

A Walk in the Country

I spent a most enjoyable day out walking in the pleasant Kent countryside today, in the company of two friends and fellow CAMRA members. We walked out to a pub a little off the beaten track, and one that we don't often get the chance to visit. The pub in question was the Chafford Arms, in the small village of Fordcombe, roughly four miles from Tunbridge Wells.

It was from the latter town that we set off, shortly before midday, in the bright late October sunshine. Our walk took us up over Tunbridge Wells Common and then on into the suburb of Rusthall. From here our route took us across some undulating country, part patchwork fields and part woodland. We reached the pub around half one, having built up a bit of a thirst and also quite an appetite.

Things were somewhat different to when I last visited the Chafford. I'd walked there on that occasion, but that was back in June as part of the Wealdway Walk, and temperatures were in the low 30's. This time the weather was much more pleasant for walking, which probably explains why we made such good time in getting there.

The Chafford is unusual these days in still possessing a public bar. This was a bonus for walkers like ourselves, as it meant there was no need to remove our boots, (they weren't that muddy, but in a carpeted bar we would have felt obliged to take them off). The bar was fairly full, but most of the other diners were in the adjacent saloon, allowing us to grab a table without any difficulty. For drinks we had the choice of Larkins Traditional or Harvey's Best. My companions tried both, but I stuck to the low gravity (3.4%), but full-flavoured Larkin's; surely the ideal lunchtime pint?

We enjoyed the home-cooked food served up in the pub; my fish pie being especially tasty and filling, but the main purpose of our visit was to present landlord Paul and landlady Jackie with their Licensee's Pack informing them that the Chafford Arms has been selected for, and is in, the 2011 Good Beer Guide. The couple were obviously pleased with the pub's inclusion, something that is in my opinion, well deserved.

We took a slightly longer route back to Tunbridge Wells; arriving in Rusthall just as the heavens opened. We decided there was time for a quick farewell pint, so headed down to the Pantiles area of town. We called in at the Sussex Arms where we were pleased to see Skinner's Betty Stoggs on sale. It made a good pint to end on before catching the train back to Tonbridge and home.

Dark Beer Night

It's definitely a dark beer night tonight. Nothing to do with Halloween; it's just that I happen to have two bottles of fine dark ales to savour this evening, and enjoy them I certainly will!

First up is Double Stout, from Hook Norton, a superb dark stout brewed to a 100 year old recipe. Poured into the glass, it is a jet black beer with a real thick creamy head. Taste-wise, it is a full-bodied beer, dry in taste, with roasted malt and chocolate flavours and just the right degree of bitterness to match. It is also bottle-conditioned as well, and drinks far stronger than its 4.8% abv suggests.

Next up is an old favourite; Fuller's London Porter. Slightly stronger at 5.4%, and not quite as dark; this is another recreation of an old recipe. Brewed using pale, crystal, brown and chocolate malts and bittered with Fuggles hops this is a stunning, silky-smooth beer with wonderful chocolate notes to the fore, and just the right degree of subtle bitterness in the background. It doesn't pour with quite the same thick, creamy head as the previous beer, and despite its extra strength, doesn't taste quite as strong as the Hook Norton stout either, but it's still a world-class beer in my book. I hope to see it on draught some time over the next few months, alongside my all time favourite Porter; that brewed by Larkins of Chiddingstone.

More on "Top Pressure"

It seems my recent post about the Pubs of my Youth has sparked a bit of debate, especially with regard to the subject of "top pressure". Our friends in the north have commented that this system was virtually unknown in the northern heartlands, and yet it was pretty common down south. Basically it was a system designed to serve cask-conditioned beer using "top pressure" CO2, which was applied, via an adaptor, to the shive hole of the cask and then, when a tap was opened on the dispenser on the bar, used to force the beer out of the cask and into the customer's glass.

The brewers claimed that the system kept beer better, and prevented it from going off. Whilst the latter was undoubtedly true, the former was not, as the gas applied to the beer had a tendency to dissolve and make the beer overly gassy, and at times quite unpalatable. Nevertheless, during the early 1970 this system was adopted by several of the large brewing conglomerate's that had sprung up during the previous decade, and was particularly favoured by both Courage and Whitbread who owned the majority of the pubs in the part of East Kent where I grew up. To say that "top pressure" was actively encouraged by the brewers is an understatement, and it was the "norm" in most of the local pubs. But not everywhere, as I am about to relate.

Back in 1974, during the summer break from university, I popped my head around the door, for the first time, of what for a while became one of my favourite pubs in my home-town of Ashford. This was at a time when I had started to take a firm interest in Real Ale and real pubs. The pub was called the Trumpeter and, as it was a Whitbread house, I ordered a pint of Trophy. To my surprise the landlady went to a bank of antique looking hand pumps and pulled me a pint. Although my village local sold "Real" Trophy, this beer in an un-pressurised form was like gold dust, especially in Ashford itself. However, here I was in a pub which I had never been in before, drinking a pint of Whitbread Trophy that wasn't full of bubbles.

I told a friend, and fellow CAMRA member, the good news, and he hot-footed it down to the Trumpeter to see for himself. However, on my next visit to the pub I ended up being served a fizzy pint from a gas tap, fitted to the outlet of one of the other pumps. Thinking that the brewery conversion team had been in, and fearing the worst, I enquired about the means of dispense, only to be told that the real thing was still available, but was reserved for regulars only, plus "those in the know"!

The reason for this clandestine approach was that, so far as the brewery were concerned, the Trumpeter sold only pressurised Trophy. However, the locals were not at all keen on having their beer gassed up, so unbeknown to Whitbread, one hand pump had been left in working order and was still connected. I was sworn to secrecy over this matter, as was my friend when he joined me for a drink later that evening. The last thing the landlady and her regulars wanted was for the brewery to get wind of the fact that one of their pubs was serving cask beer by “non-approved” methods.

As well as serving traditional beer, the Trumpeter was an unspoilt traditional town pub. Over the course of the summer, until my return to university, I became quite a regular there and eventually ended up on first name terms with the landlady. Her name was Ethel, and in common with other legendary female licensees, ran the pub single-handed in the time honoured tradition, standing no nonsense and governing proceedings with a rod of iron. Despite this, she always had a friendly smile and a greeting for customers - with the exception of representatives from the brewery that is!

I have related the above story, in depth, to illustrate the point that "top pressure" wasn't universally welcomed by drinkers, and was even unpopular with certain licensees. It was the real "bug-bear" of CAMRA back in the early days, especially as it ruined otherwise perfectly acceptable beer.

I have scoured Google Images for pictures of the Trumpeter (demolished as part of a road-widening scheme during the 1980's), but so far without success.

Upmarket "Pong"

Although budget supermarket chain, Lidl are continuing to crank out cut-price bottles of ale from the likes of Marstons and Shepherd Neame, upmarket Waitrose are currently mid-way through an excellent promotion on bottled beers. A wide range of bottles from the likes of Brakspears, Fullers, Hook Norton and Jennings are on sale at two for £3.00, and what's even better is you can mix and match!

Some of the beers included in the offer are extremely good value when purchased in this manner. They include Fuller's 1845 and Brakspear's Triple; both premium strength beers, and both fine examples of the brewer's art. Fuller's London Porter, which is another old favourite of mine also features on the list, as does Hook Norton Double Stout. I also noticed Pilsner Urquell on sale at the same two bottles for £3.00, but this might be a different promotion.

My advice therefore is get down to Waitrose quick, whilst stocks last. The promotion runs until 9th November, but with such good bargains available, some beers could run out long before this!

The Pubs of my Youth - Part I; Country Pubs

A few weeks ago I posted a piece about why I stopped going to the pub on a regular basis. Here I describe my introduction to the world of pubs and beer as a teenager back in the early 1970's.

I spent my formative years living in East Kent, and the pubs I knew in my youth were a mixture of both town and country ones. When I first started drinking, most of the pubs I visited were real in the sense that they were unspoilt "pubby" type pubs, even though most of the beer sold in them was not, certainly in the CAMRA accepted meaning of the word. (Most of the beer was cask-conditioned back then, but served by "top-pressure" dispense.)

I first began to explore local pubs when I reached the age of seventeen. Shortly after my birthday, my parents bought me a motorbike. It wasn't exactly the sort of thing teenage dreams were made of, but I was grateful to them nevertheless. The vehicle in question was a Honda C 90; a semi-automatic, 3-gear, 90cc machine. The reasoning behind their purchase was to save my father having to ferry me about. Living in the country is all well and good, but when you're a teenager you want to be where the action is, which normally means reaching the nearest town. The other idea was to get me out of the house more. My parents were concerned that I was spending too much time in my bedroom, listening to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull etc. and the motorbike certainly certainly achieved this, as I am about to relate.

One of my school friends had a similar machine, so we decided to make the most of the light evenings of early summer and explore some of the local country pubs. My friend had a head start on me, in this respect, as he had already been "dragged" round quite a few of them by his older brother. He was thus the ideal person to introduce a somewhat shy and introspective sixth former, as I then was, to the delights of some of south-east Kent's best country pubs.

We visited some superb pubs, a few grotty ones and some in between. What most of them had in common though was the fact that they still functioned as traditional pubs, acting as focal points for the communities they served. Most had separate public and saloon bars, the former particularly appealing to the pair of us, as we both were aspiring dart players. Beer was inevitably cheaper in the public bar, the furnishings fairly basic, with lino or tiled floors being the order of the day. The saloon bars, on the other hand, tended to be more comfortably furnished and were earmarked as places where one could take a girl to, should we be successful in asking one out!

Whilst not all the rural pubs we visited fitted the archetypal image of the unspoilt, traditional country alehouse, run by the same family for generations, complete with stone-flagged floors, scrubbed oak tables, high-backed, wooden settles, a simple serving hatch for a bar, behind which casks of beer are stillaged waiting to be drawn off by gravity, most of them existed as pubs which still served their original purpose, i.e.. to serve the local community. These days many have become upmarket restaurants or, worse still, closed altogether.

I have many happy memories of those pleasant summer evenings, spent riding out to local pubs. The territory we covered ranged from Romney Marsh (still home to a couple of real gems), through to the area of the North Downs between Ashford and Canterbury. I won't name the pubs, as they are unlikely to mean much to most readers. More to the point, many of them are either closed now, or altered out of all recognition. What seems remarkable now though is that as seventeen year olds we had no trouble getting served in these pubs. We were accepted by landlords and locals alike and, as I said earlier, happily took on some of the latter at darts, even though we invariably lost!

I look back on those days with a considerable amount of nostalgia. Life in general was much simpler then, with far less restrictions, rules and regulations. Landlords were free to police their own pubs, without interference from, or "sting operations" by the likes of trading standards officials or public health inspectors. Licensees were also much more free to run their own businesses as they saw fit, rather than as the owning brewery or pub company dictated to them. I belong to a generation that was lucky to have known this unspoilt world of pubs, even though it was soon to disappear. As they say, "those were the days!"

Even More Cheap Supermarket "Pong"

Lidl's have done it again with their cheap bottled beer offers. I chanced upon their latest offers earlier this evening, when I picked my son up from the station after work.

First there were two offerings from Shep's, Tapping the Admiral and Dragonfire, both 4.0%. I'm glad I didn't buy the former, having read Beer Nut's rather unflattering review of the beer; but I did succumb to a bottle of the latter, purely out of curiosity as the label claims it is brewed from a blend of oats, rye and wheat, as well as malted barley. I haven't tried it yet, but will let you know what it's like when I have.

Also on offer were two beers from the Marstons stable; Burton Bitter and Banks' Bitter (both at £1.00 each), plus two from Wells & Youngs; Young's Bitter and Bombardier, (£1.19 each). I bought a couple of the Marston's group beers; at a pound each it was foolish not to. Presumably Shep's, Marstons plus Wells & Youngs must be subsidising these cut price deals, but I for one don't mind taking advantage of them from time to time.