Blog Tracker
26-11-2017, 07:09
Visit The Pub Curmudgeon site (http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2017/11/it-does-happen.html)
Last month, I wrote about how there was a collective delusion in the British pub trade in refusing to accept that over-ranging was a major factor in poor cask beer quality (http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/waiting-for-other-guy-to-blink-first.html). One aspect of this is the very prevalent attitude in CAMRA that adding an extra handpump is pretty much always a good thing.
I am fortunate in my own branch in that one of our current Good Beer Guide entries, the Boar’s Head in Stockport, only sells one cask beer (although it shifts three full barrels of it a week) and indeed was our Pub of the Year in 2016. But other areas aren’t so enlightened.
There have been plenty of reports of pubs being told that they couldn’t go in the Good Beer Guide because they didn’t stock enough beers, or because their range was too dull and didn’t include any guest beers. “Nonsense,” people have replied, “it’s just hearsay.” But Martin Taylor has now unearthed the evidence on the ground (https://retiredmartin.com/2017/11/25/heads-in-the-clouds-at-heathrow/) at the Green Man at Hatton near Heathrow.
The landlady was very chatty... I congratuated her on their Beer Guide place, and told her the Starry Night (NBSS 3+) was good. Beer Guide standard. Then she told me she’d had a visit from “one of those CAMRA people” last week.
He’d been very upset about the beer range, as one of the three had just gone, and told her she couldn’t be in the Beer Guide with just those beers on. If we can’t support and encourage suburban dining pubs with good quality beer to keep the appropriate range of beers on, we’re stuffed.
Get your heads out of the clouds.And, until this attitude changes, it will continue to be a major reason behind poor beer being sold to unsuspecting customers. If cask beer is to be saved, we need to go back to the days when the one- and two-beer pub was the norm.
More... (http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2017/11/it-does-happen.html)
Last month, I wrote about how there was a collective delusion in the British pub trade in refusing to accept that over-ranging was a major factor in poor cask beer quality (http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/waiting-for-other-guy-to-blink-first.html). One aspect of this is the very prevalent attitude in CAMRA that adding an extra handpump is pretty much always a good thing.
I am fortunate in my own branch in that one of our current Good Beer Guide entries, the Boar’s Head in Stockport, only sells one cask beer (although it shifts three full barrels of it a week) and indeed was our Pub of the Year in 2016. But other areas aren’t so enlightened.
There have been plenty of reports of pubs being told that they couldn’t go in the Good Beer Guide because they didn’t stock enough beers, or because their range was too dull and didn’t include any guest beers. “Nonsense,” people have replied, “it’s just hearsay.” But Martin Taylor has now unearthed the evidence on the ground (https://retiredmartin.com/2017/11/25/heads-in-the-clouds-at-heathrow/) at the Green Man at Hatton near Heathrow.
The landlady was very chatty... I congratuated her on their Beer Guide place, and told her the Starry Night (NBSS 3+) was good. Beer Guide standard. Then she told me she’d had a visit from “one of those CAMRA people” last week.
He’d been very upset about the beer range, as one of the three had just gone, and told her she couldn’t be in the Beer Guide with just those beers on. If we can’t support and encourage suburban dining pubs with good quality beer to keep the appropriate range of beers on, we’re stuffed.
Get your heads out of the clouds.And, until this attitude changes, it will continue to be a major reason behind poor beer being sold to unsuspecting customers. If cask beer is to be saved, we need to go back to the days when the one- and two-beer pub was the norm.
More... (http://pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2017/11/it-does-happen.html)