Hop and Barley

The success of this blog peaked late 2009 when I came runner up at the British Guild of Beer Writers awards. For a very short time I had the idea I might actually get paid for writing about beer. Many people told me this was not an easy thing to manage. Four and a half years later I have come to believe them.

A topic of conversation that has on occasions bothered members of The British Guild of Beer Writers has been the lack of decent periodicals about beer. There are those published by CAMRA, Beer in particular is very good. Other than that there are not many beer-ralated publications that might commission paid beer writing work.

Fuelling the frustration is the disproportionate unbalance there is when it comes to column inches or TV airing when comparing beer with other beverages. I could mention a certain food program, maybe.

The debate rumbles on about how viable a proper beer magazine could be. Some point to the fact that it is expensive to distribute onto news stands. Others think that it would work if only someone would fund such a thing. I've always taken the view that if something is viable, and enough people want it to happen, eventually someone will have a go. If it truly has wings, then it'll fly.

At the weekend I was thrust a copy of a new concept of beer publication called Hop & Barley. A crowd funded project that promises to be a bi-monthly quality volume, with limited advertising so as to not detract from subject matter and delivered direct to your door.

It looks professional. Well designed, and binding and finish¹ done to give a sense of style and quality. There is a good mix of subject matter, including brewery information, event reviews and a beer cooking article.

Hop & Barley looks like a good idea. If successful it should help provide a new and fresh approach to beer publishing. Being a subscription publication it should cut down on that killer distribution cost. It will no doubt provide an outlet for writers to contribute, although I'm not familiar with any in this preview first edition that I have. Perhaps this will be a new wave of writers, younger, fresher and more in tune with the ever changing beer scene.

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¹Perfectly bound, I believe is the term. What do I know? I'm not a publisher. Well, only on-line, and we all know internet writing doesn't count as much a print.

What next?

Of course, over the next week I need to write up my interesting trip to London and all the excitement that this country lad had in the big bad city. First though, I want to consider where this beer writing nonsense is going for me over the next year or so.

I'm the one on the right ->

I could plan to win Beer Writer of the Year in 2012. I could have chosen 2011 but our brilliant Mark Dredge has already thrown down the gauntlet on that one. They say the secret of being successful is knowing which fight to pick and this one I'll concede right now. But I guess that providing I have work good enough to enter I'll still have a go. Despite the award being important, it doesn't pay the bills and for this reason, as well as perhaps some others, my writing needs to concentrate in other areas.

When I first started talking about my entry to the British Guild of Beer Writers annual awards it must have seemed to some that I was being self-indulgent. Perhaps there is a little bit of truth in this. However, I justify my honest excitement and subsequent pride with a more important overview which is of course, a concern for beer and pubs. After all, this is broadly how I make my living. Beer writing is nothing more than an interesting extension bringing little in the way of tangible returns. Indeed, my prize money only just about covered my trip to London, although I would have still gone even if I had no chance of winning, that's not the point.

I always have an eye on the money, although this is in conflict with my principles, which run far too deep. This conflict gets me into trouble with both myself and others close to me far too often. Customers can sometimes get embroiled in that mêlée of opposing desires too. Entering and winning a prize has come at quite a cost, besides the man-hours and distractions to my core business there is the wearing of the patience of my partner and family. I have to find a reason to do this which is more than just winning a prize that doesn't cover the overall costs. I have to spend the next year or two turning this into a paying concern and it would seem that beer writing by itself is not the way to go.

Don't get me wrong, I understand and appreciate the intangible benefits. Not least of which is the increased traffic to my pub's website. Well over 50% of my trade comes via that route and without it my business would not be viable. My blog tells people what we are about, what we do, what we stand for. It helps to prevent people coming to us and being disappointed and it also helps to direct the type of people to us that appreciate what we do. Moreover, I've had many people come to my pub as a direct result of my blog, I've made many good friends and there are less obvious business benefits gained through these friendships for which I'm very grateful.

Despite this I'm not sure the time spent at the keyboard is entirely commensurate with these benefits. I’m interested in knowing how to maximise reward and I suspect I'm not going to do this alone. This is my ulterior motive for talking about the awards, not because I think they are important, although of course they are, but more because I want to make them a little more important to other people. Despite beer being still the most popular drink of the British drinker, beer writers don't get the kudos which I believe we deserve. Wine, for instance, has several notable celebrities who further its quality appeal; Oz Clarke for instance, to name just one. I know Pete Brown and Roger Protz have made T.V. appearances, but we have nobody in the Guild who makes it as a household minor celebrity (OK, unfair to Oz Clarke, who does happen to be a Guild Member).

I want to make the work of the members of the Guild more noticed. Sure, by doing that my own notoriety will be boosted a little, but as a small fish amongst better writers I'm unlikely to reach great heights, but you never know. More important to me is to improve the overall kudos of beer as a quality drink. For far too long beer has been seen as "dirty". The drink of drunken chauvinistic rugby players and yobs that vomit on the street, piss in shop doorways and cause whole town centres to be no-go areas. What we all know is that beer is not the cause of this but the attitude of the drinkers and volume producers. Beer is no more responsible than, say, white rum.

I'd like to see Pete Brown on the T.V. more often. Why can't we have a T.V. show that includes a weekly beer choice? Perhaps Saturday Morning Kitchen could feature a few interesting beers. I want to get involved with the Guild in putting together a stronger pitch at the T.V. companies to get beer into their food and drink programs. I’d like to see this done collectively as a Guild rather than each member pitching their own ideas; the total greater than the sum of the parts and all that.

Returning to the problem of money; there were 150 or so people at the dinner on Thursday evening, many actual beer writers and some people from the beer industry. The prize money and some of the beers were given by breweries by way of thanks to the Guild Members. However, in an industry that is worth many millions of pounds I think the prize money is small thanks. Why is this? Well, for a start most beer writers have little time for the output of the vast majority of the industry. Only a small proportion of the revenue from the industry is the "craft" sector. The rest of the industry couldn't care a great lot about beer writers, who tend to only talk about artisan beers. For this reason we are out on a limb.

I want to look at how we can encourage more of the industry to concentrate on brand enhancement. During my recent visit to Fullers it was clear that this is a big part of how they remain focussed on providing a bridge between what some beer enthusiasts see as mass produced uninteresting beer like London Pride and much more interesting beers like Fullers Vintage and Golden Pride. I will be writing a large post on Fullers, partly because I owe the brewery at least for their hospitality but moreover because there are plenty of good things they do there that are often overlooked by the hardcore beer geeks. Even Coors are maintaining this brand enhancement with the White Shield brewery. These things are more than just nice little gestures; they deserve great recognition irrespective of the size of the organisation behind the brewery.

We have to remember that many of the smaller breweries which we love so much have small marketing budgets. Many beer writers are now writing blogs and in doing so are providing free marketing for these breweries. This is good, but it doesn’t pay for the man hours of time spent writing. Such writers perhaps don’t want anything in return, and the ever growing number of quality bloggers is good for beer in general. For me, I do feel I need to work out how to pay the bills. I do get some discretionary exchanges and I’m very grateful for that when it occurs. It is however insufficient to enable even the beer writers that are better than me to make a living out of the job. Some breweries, I am starting to think, work us beer writers very well indeed and give back almost nothing in return. Perhaps they might think a little bit about that.

Beer writers and the beer industry have to work hand in hand. Beer writers love interesting quality beers. When presented with them we like them and often write about them. Sometimes we might disagree about what is good and what is pushing the boundaries too far, but generally we’ll talk about them. If as writers, we want to get something out of the industry, we have to put something useful in as well. To that end I have some ideas that I want to follow up and so here I present, for want of a better word, my manifesto for the next year.

One thing the artisan beer world in this country has to sort out is consistency of the product in the glass. It really can let the side down. The brewer has to make consistently good beer. This is of course different to a consistent but boring product. We expect some variations in a quality beer. If it is made from malted barley and whole cone hops there is always going to be some seasonal and gyle variations and we forgive that. We do however expect unwanted flavours to be controlled, for instance DMS, dactyl and phenols are very easy to control if brewers understand their causes. Despite having a poor palate for these things I have started to notice these problem flavours more and more. Simple training of brewers at the microbrewery level needs to be considered. As beer writers I believe we can gently encourage newer smaller breweries to improve their products by reinforcing the various avenues available for training and information. There is a great deal of false information in the microbrewery world about how to make good beer, lots of myths that really could do with being tackled.

Of course, the other key to a good glass of beer is how it is looked after in the pub. In this we have the biggest myth of them all. We consider cask beer to be the only quality beer in the UK. Increasingly, I become convinced this is a little bit of a misnomer. Cask beer can indeed be a very high quality product and one that I love when it is done right. It can however be a complete disaster simply because it is not understood by the pub. I want to work to improve methods for serving cask beer reliably in good condition but further I want to make keg beer more respectable amongst beer fans. I don't want to do this to undermine cask but more to explore where there is a missing link in the whole of the industry. I believe that there is a missing market for draft beer; in the restaurant market for instance. This is starting to be filled with craft bottled beers but there is a chance for quality craft keg beer to make in-roads. I want to help explore how this can be nurtured and encouraged by breweries from the smallest to the biggest, it isn't rocket science.

More immediately for me I have one book proposal in early stages of acceptance with a publisher. I have another longer term project which I need to focus on honing some detail on the proposal. I have also been independently invited to contribute to another book. The really nice thing is that all this was before I won my award, so hopefully things are looking up.

Does beer need a better champion?

Currently in the mass media we are constantly bombarded with bad news about how alcohol is causing much social grief. Binge drinking, alcohol related crime and town centre no go areas where disorder is rife at night. We are also heavily censored by the Portman Group over drinks advertising to the extent that even progressive brewers like BrewDog have come under attack.

Now I'm not going to try and tell the reader that we should not worry about such things. Indeed as a licensee I sometimes think the powers we, the good old fashioned landlord used to enjoy, have been diminished by the "customer is always right" attitude of today. But the neo-prohibitionist is certainly undermining the beer market as a revered beverage. It has to be the case that we have already, as a nation, curtailed the worst of the problems and the drinks industry needs to regain acceptance.

Many bloggers have commented on advertising censorship. Recently Pete Brown has posted about the imagery in the media that shows beer as a demon drink. It certainly seems to be the case that mass media exposure for beer is largely either crass advertising by the big brewers or news items showing unsavoury behaviour.

The Oz and James drink to Britain was fun and informative without going too far into a geeky perspective. It featured some interesting brewers and beers and might just have helped to strengthen feelings amongst those consumers who respect beer as well as opening up ideas for beer drinkers who might otherwise have not been so adventurous. My worry is that it's slightly loutish behaviour by overgrown men would probably not help a more sophisticated approach to the beer market.

Oz and James also focused closely on British beer, which of course was the remit of the program. Their eagerness to belittle the position of British lager was criticised by beer writers that appreciate properly made lager, but perhaps not inappropriate seeing as mass produced British lager deserves no reverence whatsoever.

For all the good work that CAMRA does to promote beer it seems to have failed in one area that I'd like it to succeed in; the wholesale promotion of beer as a great and quality product. There is the very valid argument that this is not the purpose of CAMRA. If that is the case who else is going to do it?

There is of course the Guild, of which I am a member. The majority of the guild members are trying to eek a living out of writing about beer. I'm just playing at it for the time being. I'd like to think that one day I'll transfer into being paid, but there is inevitably a catch to that. I would have to start thinking about my audience. Beer writers who get paid presumably have to produce material that publishing companies, papers, radio or T.V. want to pay for. This does not necessarily match what the writers want to write about.

There are some good books that explore the beer world in a more global manner. Pete Browns book Three Sheets to the Wind was loaned to me recently. When somebody loans their signed copy you know they want you to read it. I'm half way through and currently the story is leading me to Portland in Oregon. It is indeed an excellent book and if you have not read it then do so, soon. What we need though is for the information contained in such books to become more digestible to the lazy masses. Some distillation into newspapers, magazines, radio and T.V. is required.

In essence then I feel there is a gap in the beer communications arena. A gap between the mass media, of which the professional beer writers are inevitably tied and that of the one beer consumer group in the country. The blogosphere does in some way fill that gap, but it's not anywhere near mass media, at least not yet. Additionally, blogging can get a little messy and personal as occasionally there are fall outs when disagreements go too far.

I am keen to explore what can be done, but currently have a pub to run. We're into what I hope is a busy season, the sun is shining and so I have to go and make bread. While I knead the dough I will think some more about how we can better capture the positive attention of the mass media.

Beer writing

I like the beer blogosphere. It enables me to rant on about things that bother me in my mission to provide a quality hospitality service to discerning customers. It also provides me with plenty of ideas and opinion from other bloggers both by reading their blogs and comments left on mine. The free speech and democratic nature makes it a very exciting and powerful media that I believe is going to grow over the next few years. Freedom and interactivity are the things that make it so powerful as a communication method.

My pub is probably what you would call a specialist pub. We don't sell products that many standard pubs would consider bread and butter. A standard "cooking" lager for instance is something we don't serve. We are slowly shaping our customer base to match our product, but its frustrating when you know a small proportion just don't "get it"

This frustration was another reason why I started this blog. I knew that there was a proportion of the general public understood that there was more to beer than cream flow and extra cold and beers that only owe their success to sponsorship of major sport rather than providing a quality product. I am obviously keen to increase the number of people from this group who visit my pub and I am also keen to increase the overall number of people that understand quality beer and accepting of pub specialisation.

When I started blogging I was aware of an organisation called the British Guild of Beer Writers. Their aim is:

"To improve standards of beer writing and extend the public knowledge of beer."

I'll buy into that I thought. But of course I didn't think I'd ever consider myself worthy of joining an organisation of such stature. After all, I failed my English "0" level. Indeed failed with such a significant margin that the risk of me passing was more remote than the risk of me losing my cherry, which trust me, at 16 was also a low risk.

To my delight it was suggested that I should join the Guild. It seems I've left my secondary school education behind long ago and my subsequent application was accepted. Thank god for technical college, distance learning, and spell checkers, it seems my writing is good enough after all. I feel I now need to take the roll of beer writer seriously. There is much still to do if we are to  further explore the extension of "the public knowledge of beer"

That was perhaps quite a long introduction to the main point of this post. This point might actually be at odds with the thing that makes blogging so powerful, the freedom and accessibility of it as a medium. It is incredibly important to me to defend the position of every blogger to be able to apply their own style, language, opinions and subject matter almost without fear or favour. However, do we bloggers need to consider the image we project about beer to casual visitors?

I know my blog gets hits from Google searches. People are looking for information on beer or pubs on the Internet. I'm guessing other bloggers get the same hits on their sites, which of course is fantastic. But do we give the right impression?

There are discussions regarding accessibility of beer to the relatively disadvantaged, perhaps seen as "the drink of the working man". This is counterpoised by the desire by some to intellectualise about beer and make it more revered. Perhaps even to make it trendy. There are debates on the relative benefits or pitfalls of Wetherspoons compared to Gastro pubs. Kids in pubs, pets in pubs and many other relevant and interesting discussions take place. I enjoy them all. Extraneous CO₂ also triggering thoughtful discussion, as well as the good old sparkler, if debate should fizzle out.

Perhaps the most relevant, interesting and provoking debate is the relationship that CAMRA has with the beer world as a whole. This one can really get people going. Bloggers can get very agitated when the subject is discussed. I think the discussion is good, but perhaps we need to think about how it might look to outsiders if we start getting into playground "my dad is bigger than your dad" type fights.