PDA

View Full Version : Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - The Alpine Gasthof: Let’s Crack This



Blog Tracker
28-09-2017, 08:39
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (https://boakandbailey.com/2017/09/alpine-gasthof-lets-crack/)

We’ve been working on an article about German Bierkellers in English towns in the 1970s and as a side quest found ourselves looking into one of the UK’s weirdest pubs: The Alpine Gasthof, Rochdale. We’ve never been, though it’s very much on the wishlist, but Tandleman wrote about his visit earlier in the year (http://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/the-alpine-gasthof.html):

Perhaps the oddest of Sam Smith’s pubs is its take-off of a German local pub, uprooted it seems, in looks if nothing else, from Garmisch or some other Alpine resort. Only it is in Rochdale. Not only is it in Rochdale, but it is on a busy main road, which if you follow it for not too long, will take you to Bacup. This is the Land that Time Forgot. Don’t do that… Not only is it incongruously in Rochdale, but it is in a less than salubrious part of town… The pub has the usual German style high sloping roof and inside is, well, a sort of pastiche of a German pub, but done, unusually for Sam’s, sort of on the cheap.
Although there are lots of photos, and though everyone seems quite fascinated by the place, there don’t seem to be many concrete facts. When was it built? Why?
We didn’t hold out great hopes for any information from the brewery which is notoriously tight-lipped but did get this, which is a start:

The Alpine Gasthof was built in the 1970s (don’t have the exact date to hand) because the previous pub we had on that site had to be demolished for road widening. To have a bit of fun we decided to build a pub modelled on the Brauerei Gasthof Hotel in Aying, Germany because at that time we were brewing Ayinger beer under licence.
We can well imagine Sam Smith’s execs going to Aying during licence negotiations and being charmed by the original, pictured here in a shot taken from*the gallery on the hotel website (http://www.brauereigasthof-aying.de/en/galerie/gasthof/):
https://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/aying_gasthof.jpg?resize=650%2C433&ssl=1
Although, oddly, the pastiche doesn’t look that much like it. Here it is*photographed in 2013, via Ian S on Geograph.org.uk*under a Creative Commons Licence (http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3517878):
https://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/geograph_alpine_gasthof.jpg?resize=650%2C477&ssl=1
With a*bit more to go on we reckon we can guess that the date of its construction was around 1972, at the tail-end of the theme pub craze (Further reading: Chapter 5 in*20th Century Pub) and just as the German Bierkeller trend was kicking in. That’s also when Sam Smith’s started brewing Ayinger-branded beers (https://www.duedil.com/company/gb/01047182/ayingerbrau-lager-u-k). But we’re awful short on actual evidence. We thought this might be something…
https://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/book_reference.jpg?resize=650%2C142&ssl=1
…but there are two problems. First, though Google Books has the date of publication as 1972 the particular issue referencing the Alpine Gasthof might be from, say, 1978. We’ve come across this problem in the past. It’s hard to know until you have the journal in front of you, fully readable. Secondly… It says Wetherby, Yorkshire. Surely some mistake? But, no, apparently not — there is at least one other (slightly odd) reference to an Alpine*Gasthaus in Wetherby, giving the address as Boroughbridge Road, LS22 5HH. That led us to this local news story (http://www.ripongazette.co.uk/news/blaze-destroys-disused-pub-1-2625350) about the burning down in 2005 of the Alpine*Lodge, a two-storey chalet-style building in Kirk Deighton (Wetherby). There are various other bits out there including this interview with the couple who ran it for several decades (http://www.ripongazette.co.uk/news/former-landlords-celebrate-64th-wedding-anniversary-1-2651153)*and a teasingly indistinct photo taken from a moving car in bright sunlight on this Facebook nostalgia website (https://www.facebook.com/WeAreWetherbyLS22/photos/a.975154352510583.1073741897.764379633588057/1393298500696164/?type=3&theater). We’ve taken the liberty of reproducing it here, with some tweaks — hopefully no-one will mind.
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/alpine_lodge.jpg?resize=660%2C504&ssl=1
What a bizarre building to find there on the side of the A1.
And that leaves us with two Alpine-style Sam Smith’s pubs to be puzzled about.
So, do drop us a line if you know anything concrete about the origins of either pub (that is, not reckonings or guesses); have friends or family members who might have drunk in them; or live near either Rochdale or Wetherby and fancy popping to your local library to look at newspapers for 1972.
The Alpine Gasthof: Let’s Crack This (https://boakandbailey.com/2017/09/alpine-gasthof-lets-crack/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)


More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2017/09/alpine-gasthof-lets-crack/)