Added value

Beer sales overall are dropping. They are dropping much more in pubs. This is a fact that can be backed up by hard evidence. I have here a copy of the 2011 BBPA Statistical Handbook. It is very good indeed. It shows for instance that beer sales in on "On trade" was around 67% of the total in 2000. In 2010 it was just under 51%. "Off sales" by comparison was less than 32% in 2000 but in 2010 only a shade under 50%. For the first time in history beer consumption in pubs, when you bear in mind "on trade" includes restaurants, hotels and other public drinking establishments, is no longer the dominant beer market.

There are many factors that are causing this. One, of course, is the fact that the traditional pub is no longer fashionable, or at least not as much as it used to be. Eating out has become much more popular and it is very evident that fewer and fewer pubs can survive with a pure wet trade.

An increasing awareness of the health harm that can result from excessive consumption of alcohol, and an increasing social stigma being associated with "binge drinking" and "alcohol related crime" led in part by the tabloid press, further damages the industry.

While some are worried that beer is becoming pompous and somehow above itself¹, I have consistently and repeatedly argued that this is a good thing. People are turning away from beer and pubs in favour of the grape, home drinking and restaurants. Overall alcohol consumption is dropping, although having only dropped back to around the same level as the year 2000. More importantly the number of cases of drunkenness has decreased from around 20 cases per 10,000 people in it's peak in the 1970s to less than 5 per 10,000 now. The thing that does bother me a little about this figure is that the police may be less inclined to prosecute purely for drunkenness these days. Good job really, otherwise I suspect I may have been prosecuted by now, and perhaps some of my readership too.

Whilst the supermarkets and their relatively low pricing of alcohol must surely be damaging the industry, there is very little we can realistically do about this. The vast majority of the general public see the supermarket as a good thing. The pricing is perceived as good, everything is under one roof and you can park your car right outside the door. However, the supermarket does not provide for a smaller proportion of the population who want something different. I rarely buy beer in the supermarket because they rarely have the beer I want to buy. I often go to the pub and buy beer, sometimes it's even the beer produced in my own brewery. I do so for a very good reason.

Hardknott beers at Craft Beer Co - one of an emerging number of contemporary beer bars

I could set up a cask, or even a keg, in my brewery, or in my garage or kitchen and enjoy my own beer at a much lower price. And I have done on occasions. I prefer to pay a little bit more and drink it in a pub. Why?

Because the pub is warmer than the brewery. Because I can sit and talk rubbish about nothing with the friends I have at the pub. Because someone gives me my beer in a clean glass and wipes the tables down, the decore is better and overall the experience is much better than at the brewery or at home.

It bothers me a lot that there are repeated noises from many people about how the supermarkets are damaging the pub and beer industry by their cut price alcohol. Whilst this may well be true what we inadvertently do is reinforce this commonly held belief. We are telling people that beer is cheaper in the supermarkets, so people now believe that more than ever.

Pubs are special because they add value to the drinkers experience. Special beer in a growing specialist beer market providing added value because the beer is more flavoursome, stronger, shipped from lands afar or perhaps just a little bit daft only goes to strengthen the beer market and helps to grow the businesses that I hope the reader would like to see flourish.

Beer snobbishness is good for beer, not bad.

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¹I was going to link here to several posts by other bloggers, but I realise that none of them quite say that. But there does seem to be an undertone of the old "beer is the drink of the common people" and "Beer should not be too expensive or snobby"

Here are some posts, although I suspect the reader has already seen them.

Boak and Bailey and again
Tandleman

There are of course good points made, but I can't help feeling that there is a lack of joined up thinking when it comes to how we worry about how beer is sold, marketed and priced. It was the Daily Mail piece this morning that caused me to write this piece.

The making of the Hardknott film

I have a beard. Some people think I'm quite weird¹. I drink beer, quite a lot of it, but despite all of that I also like to remain fit and healthy. My beard is kept short, I avoid wearing sandals unless it's very hot and I'm on holiday, and hope to remain in good shape by occasionally partaking in a little light exercise other than the simple act of raising around 700g with my right hand.

In one of our local pubs there are many regulars who remain fit and healthy, despite my suspicion that they drink more than the government recommendation. I believe they remain healthy due to an interest in the great outdoors; climbing, walking, caving, that sort of weird nonsense. Their irritating youthfulness may also help. Some of them may have weird beards and occasionally wear sandals, but we'll gloss over that point. CAMRA membership status is unknown, I'd actually hope some of them are members, however, they rarely use the term Real Ale and prefer to talk about cask beer instead.

It turns out that they all like Hardknott beer, which is handy because despite the pub being a managed house and having an owner who doesn't give the manager quite enough free-reign as we'd like, we have negotiated hard and offered volume discount and now have our beer on-sale reasonably regularly. The pub does not sell craft keg and I suspect it is likely to be a long time until they do, if ever.

I like the pub a lot. It ranks as one of my top 10 in the area and we spend far more time in it drinking than we should.

Planning the film

With the above as background, when we were offered a rare opportunity for a very low cost but high quality promotional film we had to think of an idea for a "script". Mark, from PiciFilms, who was to be camera man, director and editor, came to see me at the brewery to try and work up ideas for the film. We started talking about target demographics and the local beer market, tourism, extreme sports, younger drinkers and the image of Ale.

There are two main styles of attraction in The Lake Dirstict. One is the very traditional picture postcard scenery, fudge, gingerbread, sticky toffee pudding, local traditional ale, Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter, lake steamer rides and gentle walks on the fells. This one is very strong and successful and I have far more affection for it than much of my writing would betray.

There is another attraction style that is much less popular and with international travel becoming an ever smaller reason for visiting The Lakes. Perhaps they are niche activities and not at all popular with the mainstream, but still, I have an affinity with people who enjoy extreme sports, partly perhaps because the very best times in my life have been when I have been high in mountains, deep in a cave, or perhaps momentarily stuck in a crevasse in an Alpine glacier, sliding down a slippery icy slope on a couple of planks or, as in the film, just larking about on a sunny day on a lump of Borrowdale volcanic rock scaring myself silly.

My beery activities have taken me further away from such a lifestyle than I am happy about. However, I know a great many people who engage in such outdoor activities and many are very physically fit beer drinkers. Many also search for much more exciting activities than the generally perceived safety of Cumbria. Alpine peaks, Himalayan foothills, trekking in the Andes, white water rafting down the Amazon or an assault on Kilimanjaro are much more likely to excite this contemporary looking demographic. Their tastes in beverages are much more likely to be Rioja than Dusky Old Ferrets Jock Strap. For that matter, because it seems to be cleaner and fresher, there is a proportion of this demographic who choose lager over ale. Their tastes are much more likely to be contemporary and international than traditionally British.

I am aiming at people who are more likely to holiday in Zermatt, Chamonix, Kathmandu or even explore Latin America, Africa or Asia. These people are far too broad minded to simply buy the traditional drink, one made with British hops and barley to the same old recipe that has been handed down from brewer to brewer. The demographic I'm thinking about know that making great beer needs a firm sight on new varieties of hops from further afield than Kent, and technology that involves more than just traditional open square fermenters. But what we were not pushing was keg beer. Indeed the bar transformation scene shows our concept for contemporary handpulls, in the main, and only has one keg font shown.

We wanted a film that would be funny, poke a little bit of fun at the traditional unhealthy British beer drinker image and suggest that drinking beer is not necessarily an exclusive pass-time of the unfit. I would hope that some of the demographic I describe, the progressive, outgoing, fit and healthy extreme sport activist, or even casual observer of such activities, might find the film more entertaining than if I just rambled on about hops and malt.

Moreover, I hoped that it would be amusing to a broader cross-section of people. It's supposed to be funny, light hearted and even to some extent self-deprecating. As I said when opening this piece, I AM a beardy weirdie, and proud to be so. The fact that in the original post, the one in which I launched the film, there are comments that seem to not get this is a little worrying. As I say, I'm objecting to the image that seems to be attached to micro-brewed beer and the insistence that this image has to stay is divisive.

At Hardknott we are very keen to promote food and beer matching. I'll be returning to my Saturday Kitchen objection and related activities. We wanted to not only include extreme sports but also food and beer matching in our film. Extreme cheese boarding might be included in the Olympics one day, you never know. Actually, it came as a bit of interesting revelation that despite the concentration required during filming, the Granite I drank really does go with cheese especially well.

The Music

During planning it became evident that music would be required. Mark had suggested that stock music could be used at a cost. We talked about genre and how it might tie into the demographic we imagined. Rightly or wrongly we chose 90s rock as a model.

I messed a little with a lesser well known song "Don't look back in anger" and found it to fit reasonably well. At this point I was not expecting my rusty musical skills to be adequate. However, what I did find was that involving real musicians was likely to be expensive and troublesome. After talking to several significantly better artists than myself it became apparent that pro-activeness was to be hindered by differences of artistic opinion.

I dug out my little recording studio and started messing around. That turned out to be a pleasure all on its own. Writing, be it words or music, are one of the few pleasures I can have by myself. All of the music on the film was produced by me with a little bit of help from my step-son to make some rhythmic bashing sounds.

Is it good music? I don't know, but I enjoyed making it.

The full track is here in case the reader is daft enough to want to listen to it.

The Filming

Filming on the day was both fun and tiring. Mark, Ann, Andrew and I met at the brewery just after 9am. We headed off to do the main "stunt" which involved me abseiling off a crag. I chose what I thought was a reasonable location combining good scenery with a sense of exposure. Unfortunately, in rash puritanical action by The British Mountaineering Council, this particular crag has been un-bolted. I have always viewed this crag as a training crag and good solid bolt anchors totally appropriate when teaching young people to climb. The BMC oppose any artificial anchors on Lake District crags even those, like this one, that have historically had them for decades. But, I suppose it's one of them thin end of the wedge things that allows for no grey areas.

I spent some time setting up traditional anchors. If I had some Rawl bolts I'd have used them in the still clearly visible holes. Still, having two lengths of rope and there being some hefty rock blocks, I made fairly safe anchors ensuring, to the disappointment of some, my continued existence.

Unfortunately the sun was casting shadow across the crag face. We had to wait until well after 12 noon (11 GMT) before the sun was high enough in the sky to work on the near vertical, north-facing cliff. Practising the abseil was useful, but walking back up the 25 metre more than a dozen times left me more fatigued than I'd have liked. Also, our late afternoon studio session was going to get knocked back.

Finally we got the main shot "in the can" and proceeded to the riverside location. Unfortunately I had forgotten about the inevitable tourists. It would have been fine but for the fact that the few people around the river turned out to think they owned it. A rather wet dog threatened to eat my cheese and knock my bottles of beer in the river. My gentle nudge with my lower leg was incorrectly interpreted and Andrew overheard the objectionable woman say "don't kick MY dog" - bless that dog, not its fault, it was having a nice time in the river but the owner was a little unaware that it should be kept under control. Aforementioned woman also dumped a used nappy by the river. The little girl who had been responsible for the contents of the nappy was quite charming. Mark heroically removed the nappy, which I feel was not his responsibility.

Back at the brewery we had mocked up a "marquee" borrowed from the pub mentioned earlier. I began to realise my hairless crown was feeling the effects of a glorious day out in the sun. Luckily it doesn't seem to show on the video.

Tiredness reduced my ability to hang on a rope and perform the final cheese board filming was less than ideal. Keen viewers will notice involvement of people both in shot and out of shot passing the cheese board etc.

However, Jeff Pickthall² got right into character and seemed to revel in his various roles. Looking particularly cool as bass player we are all wondering if he might branch out into a new career.

The final edit and release

Mark went away and cut together the film. I bit of editing of the soundtrack requested of me to give the "before" sound and halting. After a few comments from me the final version went online at Vimeo

Hardknott Beer from PiciFilms on Vimeo. or alternatively view on YouTube

The local paper picked up the story and did a nice little piece which made page 3. They are good to us, although the original version put online had a rather badly hacked download which Mark had to request they change.

All in all we are happy with the results. OK, there has ensued the usual CAMRA verses anti-CAMRA debate on my previous posts and some people in real life have accused it of being embarrassing, but generally I think it's been received with the level of amusement I'd hoped for, including some local beer drinkers.

We really did try and avoid accusations of anti-CAMRA and are simply highlighting what we believe is bad about the image that some people portray. I'd like to continue to make progressive beer much of which is either bottle conditioned or cask. Those that don't like our style because it jars with some of the traditionalists views doth protest too much, methinks.

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¹It is unclear as to the overall proportion of people who know me who also think I'm weird. It seems to be that as a person increases in age they also become significantly less concerned about their own eccentricities. Having always been a person who preferred to follow off-the-wall trends anyway, things don't look good for my future.

²Yes, I know including Jeff only increases the suspicion of anti-CAMRA activity. But he's a good friend and lets face it, the film wouldn't have been half as good without him.

Mild? In May? or any time for that matter?

It has always been something that has intrigued me; the fact that the beer world likes to defend traditional quirks that seem to be in decline. The Pub, for instance, that long established British tradition of the local is under threat as we well know. I view these things as an unfortunate inevitability. Large establishments like Wetherspoons who provide cost effective drinking places and ever more competition for the spare pounds in our pocket, shout as we will, pubs will continue to close.

It's May, apparently. We should all be drinking mild, apparently. I ought to be brewing mild if I listened to the supporters of that particular beer style. But I haven't brewed a mild for ages, and I'm certainly unlikely to brew it again any time soon. It's not out of defiance of the concept of mild or to attempt to antagonise the mild supporters, they are entitled to champion their preferred beer if that is their wish, I just don't really want to be part of it.

I have brewed mild, and some have even commented that it was one of the very best milds they have ever tasted. Unfortunately, whenever anyone who was an expert¹ on mild tasted mine they re-classified it as a porter. You see, I like to brew progressive beer with flavour rather than to conform to some traditional stylistic ideal that is better consigned to the dustbin.

It is possible to brew a truly fantastic mild. Further more, some very exceptional, award-winning pale beers classify as light milds and don't need a special month to promote them.

However, most people think of mild as a low gravity dark beer that tastes of nothing very much, doesn't keep well and just isn't worth the bother. Moreover, the style is much better suited to winter months rather than the typically nice weather that we tend to get in May.

Now, you'll have to excuse me, I have some beer to transfer to conditioning tank where it will mingle with a large amount of American varieties of dry hops.

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¹Expert = Ex Spurt - a former drip under pressure. Just don't start thinking in terms of bodily fluids......