British beer has a unique place in the world; no one else can make a pint quite
like the British brewer can.Which makes one wonder why there is such an increase in take up of lager, both
home-brewed and imported.
Whilst style, image, marketing and changes in cultural
identity may have played a part in shifting drinkers away from Real Ale to
mass produced lagers; there are two things that have really not helped ...
The price of a pint, and, the p--s-poor quality of the product, as served in
pubs around the country.
The cost of a pint is excessive compared to other countries because the
government insists on slapping as much tax on it as it can. Excise duty on
British beer is seven times higher than in France.
Although publicans and brewers also try to make as much profit as they can;
the only real way to drastically drop the price is by a reduction in tax
which can only be done by the government.
The issue of quality is equally as important as price, if not more so.
In the area in which I live, there are 32 public houses that can be considered
local to my residence, of which three offer a passable product; usually, but
not always.
I accept that Real Ale is a living product and there always will
be some diversity of taste, colour and consistency between one barrel and the
next, and the brewers themselves do not deliberately churn out poor quality beer
if they can help it. Most brewers take an awful lot of care to make sure that
the product shipped is of the highest quality they can achieve; anything less
and they'd soon be out of business.
The sad fact is that the people who really mess beer quality up are bad
publicans, landlords and landladies.
Now not all publicans are as bad as the rest. Some can deliver perfect Ale
every time, look after their cellars, keep their pipes clean, don't return
beer pulled through the pump back to the barrel and ensure that
every, expensive, pint is delivered to the customer in perfect condition.
Others just don't seem to give a toss and appear not to care less.
When I'm paying over two quid for a pint of beer, I expect it to be in
perfect condition. If I get a bottle of wine that is off I send it back. If
I get a meal that is cold I send it back. If I am taken for a mug I complain
loudly. So, if I get a pint of sub-standard beer, I expect to be able to send
it back and get a replacement of suitable quality.
A pint of beer should not be cloudy ( it means it hasn't settled or it's near
the end of the barrel ). It shouldn't have a vinegary smell or taste to it
and there shouldn't be any funny after-tastes ( both mean it's well past its
sell-by date ). Some beers do have particularly peculiar tastes and
after-tastes that are not to everyone's liking but, in general, a beer should
be pleasant to the taste and have a pleasing aroma.
And in terms of service; a pint should not have an inch of head ( that
is froth to the rest of the non-British world ) on it, except perhaps
when it's a Northern beer served in an oversized, lined glass. A
Southern beer should not normally have a head at all and should
not be pulled through a sprinkler or sparkler.
There are exceptions but these are the general rules. And these rules are
frequently abused by publicans attempting to pass off short measures
to make a few extra pence per pint. Of course an awful lot of money can be
made this way if you don't ask for the beer to be topped up when it
comes complete with an inch of head.
The other poor service issue is the, not uncommon, unacceptable response to a
complaint about the quality of beer.
Complaints of cloudy, vinegary or otherwise defective beer are often met with
the reply, "It's meant to look and taste like that" - Is it f--k !
Worse still is the response, "We've had no complaints from anyone else", which
isn't surprising when no one else is drinking it because it's so bad or the
pub's totally deserted because all the beers are equally bad.
Perhaps the most infuriating response to the returning of a pint, when it tastes
like the barrel is nearing its end, is, "We've only just put the barrel on",
only to find, minutes later, that they are flushing the pipes. Presumably
because the barrel's being changed, because it's run out and not just for the
hell of it ?
On top of all this; there's the publican who will take your defective pint, look
at it ( even though it's doing a passable impression of oxtail soup with added
vinegar ), swig half of it down and declare, "No, there's nothing wrong with
that pint".
It's hardly surprising that if a publican can't tell a good beer from a bad one
that almost every beer they serve up tastes like s--t.
I have lost count of how many half finished pints ( that's if I even get past
the first mouthful ) I have abandoned on a table because the beer was
undrinkable and I dread to think how much money I have lost because a publican
has refused to supply an alternative on the grounds that there's nothing wrong
with the one I've got.
This probably comes as a staggering surprise to readers who are not residents of
the UK and have never sampled a dodgy pint of British beer; yes, there is food
hygiene legislation in the UK but it's so poorly enforced to be a a joke and the
current government seems to care little, the previous one, with its free-market
forces attitude, even less so.
When fed up with poor quality beer, which is overpriced, it is hardly surprising
that many people turn to drinking mass-produced, chemically created, lager over
Traditional Ales; at least every pint tastes like the one before.
So it is not surprising that people are starting to stay in rather than go down
the pub when they can buy cans of lager or beer at half the price that a pub
charges.
And it is only a small step to start drinking foreign beers and lager that can
be brought into the country easily ( especially from France ) that are a
fraction of the prices that even the big supermarkets charge and taste just as
good as home-grown product.
And the government can't understand why there's a booming trade in illegal
beer and lager imports that avoid the paying of all import duties ?
This change in culture obviously affects the British brewing industry as their
sales plummet and directly affects pubs as they start to see their incomes
reduced.
Which means that prices must increase in order that brewers and pub outlets may
survive which means that, with higher prices, they have less customers in the
first place.
Which all makes it a pretty nasty Catch-22 situation.
And, given the dire situation that a lot of pubs are now in, they still manage
to churn out sub-standard beers, expect us to pay through the nose for them and
won't take complaints about inferior or defective beer seriously.
The publicans, landlords and landladies that won't, or can't, provide a decent
Real Ale are destroying the very heart of the industry to which they belong
and, worse, they are dragging down those who do offer an excellent service and
strive to deliver the best pint they can to a customer at a price that they can
afford.
Unless the brewers, who more often than not own the pubs through a tied system,
actually start to make sure that their products are delivered in prime quality,
the exodus from the public house is going to continue.
Although the heavy handed application of excise duty is having a damaging
effect; the brewing industry, as a priority, needs to ensure that it can
control, and ensure, the quality of the product that it manufactures right
up to the point of delivery to a paying customer.
If it can't achieve that; the brewing industry will have no one to blame for its
downfall but itself.
