We innovate, the big boys don't

In the Morning Advertiser 23rd July there is a piece by Nigel McNally, the MD of Wells and Young, about how the micro breweries are damaging the regional breweries. It doesn't actually say that, but it's clear from the article that this is where their problem lies. "We invest, the small boys don't" is the title. I don't seem to be able to find it on the Internet. I'm beginning to suspect that Andrew Pring knows just the type of article I'd like to link to and misses it off the web site deliberately.

Cask sales have grown 1.1% in the last quarter with underlying total beer sales dropping 6.3%. Of the cask market the micros are now taking 22% of this. I think that's huge and probably shows that we, the micro breweries, are benefiting from the growth. However, Mr Neilson seems to think that it's due to regionals investing in marketing and crazy things like the new fangled pumps that I reported on previously.

The regionals are also annoyed that SIBA did not back Cask Ale Week. Probably because SIBA knows that cask ale week was really not going to make a huge difference to the drinking habits of the people who choose it's members beers.

The regionals and CAMRA seem to think they are the story. Perhaps they might be part of it but the micros are becoming an ever bigger part to.

Well I'm sorry, but all the evidence I have is that cask brands that become more ubiquitous loose their appeal. Marketing investment tends to turn off the cask market, not the other way round. Worthingtons 1744 by Coors being a case in point. Nigel, tell you what, save your marketing budget and put some money into making interesting beer instead. That's what I do.

The pump clip in the picture is of a new beer of mine. I'm quite pleased with it. It's uses American hops, is dry hopped and uses Belgian yeast. I'm waiting for my beer geek friend to sober up from last night so he can taste it and tell me it's as good as I think it is.

Coming up for Air

I have very little in the way of formal qualifications in brewing. Up until 6 years ago I had very little work experience in the industry. Before that time my job was to count neutrons. Yes, really. That's right, those incredibly small sub-atomic particles that are impossible to see, and actually fairly difficult to detect owing to their lack of any electrostatic charge. You might wonder how I managed to count them. Well I could tell you, but I suspect I'd have to kill you afterwards.

Now neutrons are significantly smaller than yeast cells. Yeast cells can be seen under a microscope and are significantly easier to count. Also, once you counted the yeast cell it is still normally there. Neutrons, on the other hand, refuse to stay where you left them, and in fact, there is some question about their existence anyway. It is something to do with trees falling over in forests when nobody is there. Something to do with blind faith, although to be fair, there is a little more evidence to support the existence of neutrons over that of God.¹

I'm not going to brag about qualifications. I don't believe I need to. What I know is that I have learnt and forgotten more than I have managed to retain as a result of working previously in a highly technical environment. Much of this knowledge is highly transferable and my previous scientific and engineering background has primed me to be able to analyse all manor of diverse technical subjects. I believe brewing can be included as a technical subject and compared to some of the esoteric subjects I have dealt with in the past, something of a doddle.

What I know about brewing is that oxygen is good for getting primary fermentation going. Normally this oxygen is incorporated into the beer as a result of the wort falling through the air into the fermenter after flowing through a heat exchanger, where the previously boiled wort is cooled to pitching temperature. The yeast uses this oxygen as part of it's metabolism during the vigorous primary fermentation and hopefully all this oxygen is consumed, leaving an oxygen free beer. The spoilage bacteria don't stand a chance because the yeast has competed for oxygen and nutrients and by now won with style. It's really a numbers game; billions of yeast cells and only a few hundred other organisms.

The beer is often chilled towards the end of primary fermentation. This enables the CO₂ that is being produced by our friendly yeast cells to be dissolved and retained in the beer; the lower the temperature the more volumes CO₂ that will be retained. At a temperature of 11-12^oC the beer will have a carbonation of around 1.1-1.2 volumes at atmospheric pressure. The beer has to have live yeast in it for this to happen, but providing it is given some time, oxygen is not required for this process to occur. The yeast will settle to the bottom of the vessel, along with any remaining precipitated proteins and other particulates, which might include the vast majority of the unwanted micro-organisms. A small amount, around 5% of the original pitching rate of yeast, is allowed to remain in the beer. Some of this process might or might not be performed in a conditioning tank depending on the brewery.

From this point on, the best brewers will work very, very hard to prevent oxygen coming into contact with the beer. For that matter, eliminating air and therefore spoilage bacteria and wild yeasts is also key. Additionally, if the beer is in contact with oxygen for a significant length of time oxidization of the beer can occur, which most beer connoisseurs consider a bad thing to have happen to your beer. Together, spoilage bacteria and oxygen will react with the beer and create off flavours quickly, adding nothing to the quality of the beer; in any way, shape or form.

Once in cask the remaining yeast will add to the carbonation of the beer. Remaining fermentables allow remaining yeast to progress slow secondary fermentation and a very good cask beer will improve in a sealed cask for weeks, months and sometimes even years. If the beer remains in contact with live yeast it will consume some compounds that result in off flavours.

When it is time to serve the beer it is time to vent the beer. The reason for venting is to release excess CO₂ and so prevents the beer from being too lively on serving. Failure to do this can result in overfobbing and too much head, if head is not your thing. There is no requirement at this point to allow air to come into contact with the beer in the cask other than something has to replace the beer that is removed. There is no purpose served in letting damaging oxygen and microorganisms coming into contact with the beer. The conditioning has already been done. If this venting can be done through a one way valve, such as a race spile, then things are wonderful.

If at this point in time a non-pressurized CO₂ blanket is allowed to rest over the beer, without any air entering, then the beer could actually last for many days or even weeks as this would be no different to it being in a sealed cask. There is no scientific argument that could be applied against this, in my view. Would it still be classed as cask beer? That's for the reader to decide. My view is that cask beer should be matured on live yeast in the vessel from which it is dispensed and have a relatively low carbonation level. That, for me, would be the end of the discussion, but it won't be, and probably shouldn't be.

I like the beer blogging world. I really like all the people who take time to post and comment in this international, largely constructive medium. I do make an effort to understand the things that are being discussed and it can be surprising to find where the best knowledge resides, although the techniques of getting that across might not always be helpful. I care about all who take part and you all mean a lot to me. Sometimes things get out of hand. Discussions develop that become destructive due to entrenched positions where the sides are obviously taking an "I'm not listening" stance. My mother might have said "If you lot don't stop fighting I'll have to bang your heads together"

What is this all about? Check out this post and this post and ensuing comments.

---------

¹Sorry, yes I'm taking the piss out of hardcore physicists a little here, who are similar to hard core beer fanatics and sometimes the same thing. Very few of them, physicists that is, can understand my assertion that nobody has actually proved the existence of the neutron. Beer fanatics probably don't care about neutrons despite the fact that neither them nor the beer would exist without such amazing little things. Rather than proof we just have a model for how sub-atomic particles work and so far nobody has been able to run an experiment that disproves the model. Sometimes the model needs to be adjusted a little as more sophisticated experiments are run. But guys, nobody has ever seen a neutron, we can only observe it's effects.

It's true that the robust model we have of the strange subatomic world is fairly indisputable and better than the "God must exist because you can't prove he doesn't" argument. But most physicists simply have blind faith in what previous physicists have learnt. Sometimes the same can occur in the beer world.

Some days though, I do wonder; is that a yeast cell I can see when looking down the microscope, or am I just plugged into a big matrix so I have no way of knowing what is real and what isn't anyway?

You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.

Morpheus

Blown away

When the economy gets blustery there are things that just refuse to lay down and die. Small breweries are one of those things. The tree in this picture, up on the common land on the way to the Hesket Newmarket brewery, seems to be another.

I have been buying beer from Hesket Newmarket ever since we came to the pub. They are interesting in that it is a village cooperative brewery. Around 70 people own equal shares in the brewery and this is a part of its success. I decided to drag Ann and Sarah along to see it today. Well, I enjoyed the day out.

Within the last few years the brewery has been bottling beers. Their bottling "plant" is so small it staggers me that it makes commercial sense. But they only supply the small outlets and avoid the pricing demands made of the supermarkets, which apparently show an interest, but at 40-50p a bottle that they are prepared to pay, they do right to reject. Loss leading eh? Screwing the suppliers more like. It makes me wonder how little the supermarkets are paying for the really cheap stuff.

Despite having no large retail distribution the demand for Hesket bottled beer has doubled in the last year. Cask sales are also very healthy, it would seem. So, yet again I can report a strong cask and niche bottle market that is doing very well indeed.

Thanks to Arthur for the samples, although it would be nice to be greeted with more than just "I know that face". He said the same when he saw me at the NWAF.

Doris 4.3% was of course in good form, as was Blencathra 3.2%,we are all still trying to decide on Dead Bunny Mild (No Hops, get it?) but then mild isn't what I normally choose to drink anyway. "All milds taste kinda soapy" says Arthur. Sarah enjoyed the saccharine laden lemonade, fine vintage apparently and matured nicely in Arthur's beer store. Not as nice, it was claimed, as the 10 year old farm made lemonade Arthur found in a hedge, but then he is a self professed bottom feeder. One expects top entertainment from the in-house character.

Sorry, no footnotes today, just a finishing asside about footnotes. I know, some of you don't like them. Tough, it's my blog.

A changing market

The recent news report highlights just how much the pub industry is changing. The point of the piece is not to detail that the industry is changing but to lament the rapid closures of pubs. But can we really do anything about this? I'd argue that the answer is "NO". OK, some would say that restricting the tie system in some way might help. Some would say that overturning the smoking ban would help. Personally, I think that it's inevitability. I know this goes against some things I've written in the past, but perhaps I can change my mind.

Our socialising culture is changing. It's been changing for years. Pubs that hang on to the spit and sawdust, old fashioned model of a pub are finding that it no longer works. Depending on volume sales of ubiquitous brands, except where there is a volume market to be had by default, will almost certainly result in poor trading.

We wonder why so many pubs are turning their style over to restaurant format, or apparently becoming "Gastro pubs", perhaps we miss the point that this is where the money is, and it's been going that way for some time. The bistro, trendy, modern bar that serves a combination of progressive cask ales and more individual continental beers are becoming all the more successful. This might well be at the distress of some traditionalists, but this is the way it goes.

Additionally to this, although the consumption of alcohol might be reducing, and more over might be reducing more in "community pubs" this does not account for the apparent overall reduction in pubs. What I believe is having a greater effect is the move to larger, more efficient pubs, the likes of Wetherspoons, that can clearly manage to achieve economies of scale that smaller community pubs cannot. One large Wetherspoons for instance, will probably manage to turnover the same money as up to 10 ordinary, small, community pubs put together. If Wetherspoons is the thing that people want, perhaps this is what we should accept.

The remainder of the market is going to be the more trendy, restaurant style pub or the specialist beer bar. The style of business where spends per head can be maximised. The remote, small rural pubs are going to find it more and more difficult to survive and the industry would, in my view, would be better off accepting this.

There are a couple of good posts that look directly at the BBPA assertion that 52 pubs per week are closing. One on Jeffo's blog and one on Southport Drinkers blog. The comment threads are worth looking at.

Update: As I was writing this it seems a post from Tandleman and a post from Curmudgeon have also been written at a similar time. Just for completeness, and to prove I do take notice.

Beer Temperature

It's probably one of the easiest faults to identify in beer; the wrong serve temperature. We all hate beer that is too warm. Some of us also object if the beer is served too cold, although arguably this is less of a problem because one can always wait for it to warm up.

Maintenance of cooling equipment can be a small headache for the publican. Apart from the fact that cooling eats power, and I mean really eats it, there is the problem of making sure it is working and set up right.

An advantage of big breweries is that they will usually help the publican to maintain his equipment. A tied house would expect, as part of the tie agreement, full maintenance and servicing of the cellar equipment¹. If the beer starts coming out of the fonts² warm then a simple call to the brewery or pubco will have it sorted in a jiffy. A free house may be disadvantaged in this respect. If the main supply of beer is through a single or maybe a couple of suppliers then cellar service might be easy to arrange. However, there will be some equipment, as detailed below in the footnote¹ that will require independent contractors. This can end up being costly³.

If there is no major supplier, as in our case, all the maintenance becomes the publicans responsibility. The good news is that it's not that difficult if you're at all handy. Drinks technicians like to let you think it's a black art. It's not. OK, there are some basic mistakes which could end up costly, like continually topping up a glycol system with pure water, but there are some basics that can help.

What can a publican do to make sure his beer is at the right temperature? Perhaps drink it occasionally. Yes, I know it's a tough job, one I dread doing, but it does help you keep your finger on the pulse. If you have a kitchen thermometer⁴ use this to check the dispense temperature of the beer, using a cool glass of course, not one straight out of the glass washer. Checking the levels of coolant in the reservoirs in all remote and under-bar flash coolers, perhaps once a week, is good. Keep ventilation grills clean and free from dust and clear of obstructions. Tell that bar tender to move his fleece away from the cooler grill. Finally, find a cooling technician who you trust and who can respond quickly and learn from him.

¹What do you mean the cellar air cooler is your responsibility? Nope, they want you to buy all the wet product off them they can jolly well make sure the cellar air temperature is right. You wouldn't need an air cooler in the cellar if it wasn't for the wet trade. It should be written into the contract.

²A font is the thing beer comes out of on the bar. Here, we normally don't include handpulls in this rather vulgar nomenclature.

³My cellar air cooler has probably cost me £2,000 to maintain since I came here 5½ years ago. But it's worth it, especially on a hot⁵ day when the cellar is the place to be.

⁴You have got a kitchen thermometer, haven't you? No? How can you possibly comply with HACCP?

⁵Yes Mr Bell, it can get hot, even up here in Cumbria.

Tie Economics

Yes, sorry, I'm going to comment on the tie again. For the free marketeers who support the tie, I am going to take your side for the purpose of this discussion. The agreement between a lessee and his building owner are a business agreement that is freely entered into. This is true; The details of the lease are there to see when a prospective lessee is considering entering into the agreement.

From early in my drinking career¹ many of the people I drank with had the same view of brewery owned pubs as myself. Perhaps they were OK to drink in but whenever talking to landlords on the subject the overriding view was that they paid too much for the beer and then if the pub started to do OK, due to the efforts of the publican, the brewery put the rent up negating any reward for the effort. This opinion is the basis of my objection to the tie.

If every publican who starts out understands the terms then they have little to complain about when taking on a tied house. I have no argument in this respect. My problem is that I'm not sure that every publican really understands the effect this might have on the profitability of their business before they start out. One of the motivations behind this blog is to tell it how it is from behind the bar. If that stops one person from making a poor life choice, then all my efforts here have been worthwhile.

Recently I have visited two very nice tied houses. One was buying outside the tie, without the pub companies knowledge. In conversation the licensee told me he was able to get away with it because the landlord had not put a meter on the line. The difference between the tied beer wholesale price and the untied price was £25 per firkin.

A day or so later I visited the other pub on a trip out. A regular in my pub had recommended this house to me and I was delighted to see a wide range of beers on sale when I got there. This could not be a tied house on the grounds that the choice was too great and too diverse for that. It turned out I was wrong. It was in fact owned by one of the biggest two offenders. So how did the victualler manage to achieve the vast range of wares?

"We pay for it" came the response. I can only assume this means corkage² charges. I didn't feel comfortable getting into a full scale discussion about the situation but there came a second comment along the lines that if they didn't keep the range of beers they might as well "shut up shop". It is certainly a good pub and the management are doing a good job despite their tie.

Now, whether it be corkage or the premium charged by the brewery or pub company, it seems to me, without gaining more empirical evidence, that the going rate on a firkin is around the £25 previously mentioned. That's £100 per brewery barrel³. Consider a mediocre pub of a barrellage⁴ of around 200 barrels⁵ a year. This equates to £20,000 per year extra that the publican is paying. That's a similar amount I pay for my mortgage, but I don't pay rent.

So, are we really sure that if a prospective publican can't afford to buy a free house he can afford to lease a tied house? I'd argue he can do neither⁶.

I am very interested in the economics of the free trade verses the tied trade. I believe that in general the tied trade is being ripped off, but then I've always believed that. If any reader has empirical data I can use I would be happy to receive this. In return, discretion would naturally be assured.

¹Definition of career: To hurtle uncontrollably. To move rapidly straight ahead, especially in an uncontrolled way.

²Corkage is a charge levied by a premises for consumption of a customers own drink. Not uncommon in a restaurant and for a bottle of wine for instance can easily be £5 and often more. The same can be applied to a lessee who wishes to sell beer legally outside the tie.

³A brewery barrel is a unit of measure, NOT the container that beer is delivered in. A barrel is 36 gallons or 288 pints. About 164 litres.

⁴Barrelage is a good measure of a pubs wet trade. It normally includes wines spirits and often soft drinks. Most tied houses are tied for the majority of this volume of sales.

⁵I would consider a 200 barrel a year wet led pub not to be viable. Match this with at least the same again of other revenue and things might look a bit better. Either that or double the barrelage, which for a tied house would double the cost of the tie to £40,000 per year. Are your eyes watering yet?

⁶I admit that in a town centre the volumes of trade can make for significantly different slant. Many large town centre properties enjoy a comfortable relationship between the business operator and the property owner.

The Taster

My last post was a little negative and really an outpouring of my feelings about how difficult it is to match the expectations of many, and indeed my own expectations of a pub. I found an interesting post on Fuggled about bars in the USA that serve a dazzling selection of obscure beers. Now whilst the main post was interesting enough, there was a comment by Cooking Lager that I thought was very good indeed. So much so that I'll copy directly here. Perhaps I'm a bit naughty for stealing his words, but it'll make me feel better about him stealing branded glasses.

Variety more than just numbers is preferable. In a pub with dozens of taps, many will be fairly similar. A choice of fairly identical fair is a false choice. You only need one good example of a beer style.

A more important feature is customer service. Something done better in your country than mine.

Punters are not intimidated if in a friendly environment where there is no such thing as a daft question. Offer tasters to the unsure.

Here in Blighty you can go in a pub with dozens of pumps, all of which have daft names rather than detail of what style of beer it is, and bar staff that have no customer skills and expect the punter to be aware of every small micro, its products and treat the unfamiliar punter like dirt.

Be aware the product is a niche and welcome the unfamiliar customer, and beer ticker alike.

A lot of good advise for any niche pub. The taster in particular is something I could evangelise about, something that I really do believe in. I'm not sure that we, here in my pub, do it enough. It's my fault for not pressing home to the staff just how important it is to provide a taster for any customer that is unsure of the product. It really works. Once a customer has tasted a couple and chosen what is preferred, not only did the customer get what was wanted, but has also gained invaluable confidence in the establishment.

Here I go, making demands on the pub industry, which is possibly just the thing I was objecting to previously. But, I wholeheartedly commend tasters and if you go to a pub and are unsure of the selection, ask for a taster, any pub should be happy to provide a taster if it takes beer seriously. If you do run a pub and wonder why you should be giving away free beer, trust me, the confidence it give the customer about you is priceless. Get a number of shot glasses, that way you're not really giving very much away at all.

Now watch it Cooking Lager, there is a big danger of me taking you seriously.

I'm trying to not reduce the size of the font for asides at the end of a post, but sometimes I just can't resist the temptation.