Phil Mellows on Posterous

17 Feb 2011

Cantillon: a beautiful brewing bubble

Cantillon Gueuze ages gracefully in oak barrels

There's a theory, which I'm not inclined to test, that if you can stand the itching and don't wash your hair for two months nature takes charge and your hair starts washing itself.
Cantillon Brewery is a bit like that. Hidden away in the backstreets of Anderlecht in Brussels, the brewhouse hasn't seen a drop of cleaning agent for 110 years. As one of the world's few remaining lambic breweries its wonderfully sour and complex beers rely on between 80 and 120 strains of wild yeast to ferment for up to three years in oak barrels. And these magical yeasts live in symbiosis with the building itself. Clean it, and you break the spell.
But now there are murmurings across the city in the highly polished offices of the European Union bureaucrats that this is all a little bit unhygenic. I'm wary of straight-banana style anti-Europe paranoia but if there's any truth in this one - and the people at the brewery are certainly anxious - it needs to be stamped on.
Cantillon is a beautiful bubble of beer that's floated here from a brewing style of the past. So please let's not burst it.

18 Jan 2011

Campaign for a proper lunch. Now!

First sunny day in the new flat so I took a stroll across the park to one of my favourite Brighton pubs, the Three Georges.
I phoned up first to see if they were open and serving food. Most of the pubs around here close during the day and most of the rest don't do lunch.
Not only was the Round Georges doing lunch, it was doing an excellent good value lunch: I had fennel-salted pork chop with root vegetable mash and savoy cabbage, washed down with a pint of Harvey's Best, and a decent amount of change from a tenner.
There was something deeply satisfying about the dish. It called to mind a seminal essay by the great anthropologist Mary Douglas titled 'deciphering a meal' in which she argues that meat and two veg on a plate symbolises the secure familial triangle of mother, father and child. Though I can't remember which is which.
Anyway it was bloody good. The only problem was that for most of the time I was the only customer in the pub, and I was certainly the only one enjoying the food. My spend wasn't even enough to cover minimum wage for the two visible members of staff.
It's tragic. Elsewhere* I've argued that we need a new campaign, a campaign to prise workers away from their crumb-encrusted, coffee-stained desks and into the pub for a proper lunch.
For the Round Georges, and every pub making this kind of wonderful effort, such a campaign could not be more urgent.

*http://www.philmellows.com/PhilMellows_Diary_15_06_10.htm

4 Jan 2011

Swift schooner anyone?

So the government intends to legalise something that's already legal. I'm no mathematician but as far as I can tell, and nobody has ever corrected me, pubs can already serve a two-thirds pint by adding a third of a pint to another third.
It could be yet another case of a government wanting to be seen to be doing something. Anything. Or it could be a serious attempt to encourage the two-thirds pint as an option for those in a quandary about whether to have a half or a pint.
Publicans, too, might well welcome the extra flexibility. The more cynical, or possibly sensible, among them may see it as a way of improving profit margins on a low-margin product by charging the same, or nearly, for two-thirds of a pint as they do for a pint, making up the value with the more stylish glass that's easier to achieve in a smaller size.
But there we hit the first obstacle. Outside of beer festivals I've never seen a two-thirds of a pint glass. Someone is going to have to produce them, and someone is going to have to buy them on the chance that the new size will be welcomed by the drinker.
And what are we going to call it? In Australia, where the two-thirds pint is standard, it's called a schooner. But so are the funny-shaped glasses they used to serve sherry in before sherry didn't become fashionable.
No doubt we'll come up with something should the idea prove a hit. But I'm not holding my breath.

(download)

Schooner? Schooner? Or schooner?

13 Sep 2010

The greatest pubs in the land

Though I do try my best I don't know every pub in the country, a fact brought home to me at the Great British Pub Awards the other night. Eight nominations in each of 16 categories and how many had I been to? A handful.
I suppose I might be forgiven for missing the overall winner, Battlesteads in Wark-on-Tyne. I don't get to Northumberland too often, although I have been to Craster, kipper capital of the world and also supplier of London's kerbstones. It must the the most important small fishing village in the world.
Coming back to great pubs, and not to take anything away from Battlesteads, there are certainly many great pubs that don't enter awards. Like the Basketmakers here in Brighton. I popped out earlier to buy a birthday card and thought I might as well call in for a spot of lunch. It's Monday, I thought. They won't be too busy.
I was lucky to find a small perch but it must have been the last one. People were hanging about by the bar waiting to pounce as soon as somebody left a table. Unable to find a seat, others just turned round and went elsewhere. The Basketmakers is a great traffic driver for pubs nearby.
What's the secret of being busy all the time? Blue, the Fuller's tenant, does nothing spectacular or original. He just does everything well. Over the years he's steadily raised standards and tweaked the menu, but nothing that you'd notice week-to-week.
It's the customers that tell you this is a great pub. I hurried down my pint so another group that was about to give up waiting could have a seat. There's a downside to every success story and I just couldn't bear to see Blue lose out on more custom.

At the Basketmakers

20 Aug 2010

Drying up... but pubs are still wet at heart

You might have noticed a new stat flying around suggesting that, on average, 52% of a pub's takings now come from food. This is plainly wrong. A business that's 50% food is not an average pub, and is still numbered among a small minority.
Nevertheless, 'dry take', as the trade calls it, is certainly becoming more important. Only today Mitchells & Butlers, the biggest managed pubco in the country, announced it had sold off 333 pubs that were, to sum it up, too wet.
M&B has found selling food is more profitable than selling drink, and that's even more true for the majority of pubs that are leased or tenanted and can make very little out of beer because of the 'tie' which forces them to buy it at an inflated price from their landlord.
Despite that someone has bought those 333 wet pubs, the vast majority of pubs continue to be wet-led, and even gastropub operators know that they need a substantial drinks trade in order to generate the informal pub atmosphere those who come to eat are looking for.
To survive today, pubs have to be more than boozers. But drink, specifically beer, is still at the warmly beating heart of what makes a great pub.

15 Aug 2010

On the pork scratching

Above: Black Country pork scratching by Ace

Fascinating Food Programme earlier today, a whole half-hour - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tcz94/Food_Programme_15_08_2010/ - on the pubbiest of pub snacks, the pork scratching
It raised various controversies: scratching, crackling or crunch (a ladies' pork scratching it appears), the gourmetification of pork scratchings (indeed, I had a Gloucestershire Black Spot scratching at the White Horse on Parson's Green a while ago) and, of course, the health question.
I seem to remember a few years ago, around the time of the Atkins Diet, the scratching being held up as a great source of protein. Apart from that, though, it's bad for you, as most things that are tasty and/or fun usually are.
One thing the show stressed was that the scratching is one of those snacks that encourage you to drink more beer. If pubs have to promote public health as part of their licence obligations, as the ConDems plan, we could have a defence campaign to mount.
Meanwhile, check this out: http://www.hairybarsnacks.com/index.php

12 Aug 2010

Whither WiFi?

I'm a big fan of WiFi in pubs, as I've already gone on about (http://www.philmellows.com/PhilMellows_Diary_13_04_10.htm). But I can see why some licensees aren't keen.
I was reminded about that by a story from Los Angeles about a backlash by coffee shops - the pioneers of free WiFi (http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/08/business/la-fi-cafe-wifi-20100808). Apparently, in California some are now switching it off, fed up with customers being glued to their laptop screen and not buying food and drink.
This is the worry you hear from publicans over here. It's a consideration, but I think they're wrong.
One of the most successful pub managers in the land, Osh Rogers, who runs the Ship in Wandsworth and the Orange Tree in Richmond for Young's, once told me that he's not selling food and drink, he's selling time.
Think of it like that and you might feel a little more relaxed about giving people another reason to spend their time at your pub.

8 Aug 2010

Confessions of a beer taster

As someone who doesn't consider themselves to be among the organoleptic elite of beer tasters I was pleased to be invited, for the third time, to join the panel for the Champion Beer of Britain judging at the Great British Beer Festival last week. I may be more experienced than some, but I still feel a novice, one of those 'ordinary' beer lovers Camra drafts in as a reality check on experts who might get carried away with some arcane flavour characteristic the drinking public might turn up its nose at.
The best thing about judging CBOB is that you get there at 10am and are immediately offered beer to drink. This is supposed to tune the palate to what hops etc taste like, but there's a special pleasure in drinking ale at this unfamiliar hour. In fact, I'm not sure I tasted anything better in the competition proper. And I don't even know what this modest brew was, as it came in an unmarked polypin.
Anyway, I was assigned to the Best Bitter 1 panel, and was pretty sure after blind-tasting the nine contenders that the champion wasn't among them. There was some nice beers there - only a couple of duds - but nothing was jumping out at me as being particularly special.
The best of them, my panel agreed, was St Austell Tribute, which is a good beer, so it was quite satisfying to pick it out. But it was beaten by Timothy Taylor Landlord from the other half of the Best Bitter draw, the eventual runner-up.
One thing that bothered me about the beers we judged was that most of them, strictly speaking I felt, fell into a different category - Golden Ales.
It's a relatively new category, introduced because so many brewers were responding to a demand from drinkers for lighter brews flavoured with citrussy hops. And, indeed, it was a golden ale that was named champion this year - congratulations to Nottingham's Castle Rock for Harvest Pale.
I like golden ales, the bitterer ones anyway. Only last night I drank a few pints of Dark Star Hop Head. But some of the 'best bitters' were pale to the point of blending in with my scoresheet, and the "more evident residual maltiness" we were told was a defining characteristic of the best bitter style was barely present in most.
You have to hope that in the gold rush we aren't losing something here.

8 Aug 2010

A definition of harm reduction

At Brighton Pride yesterday I looked on as a young woman, almost certainly under 18, tried to open a bottle of beer with her teeth.
I always carry a bottle-opener on my key-ring (it's a nice brass number, branded Wojak, a Polish super-strength lager) so I went over to offer assistance. She gratefully accepted.
It only struck me later that I could have been accused of facilitating an under-age drinker. But I still reckon I did the right thing. It was a case of her consuming alcohol or breaking a tooth as far as I could see.
The very definition of a harm reduction strategy.

25 Jul 2010

The End of History: beer as agitprop

I expect everyone's already blogged on this? Oh well, never mind. I was away. I missed it. I might say something nobody's said yet. You never know.
The email I got about BrewDog End of History (55%abv, £500 for a 330ml bottle) says "the most shocking feature is the beer's unique stuffed-animal bottles - an intentionally eye-brow raising statement to lift the veil on the mass market beer industry".
Ah, so it's agitprop. To judge it on its own terms, then, does it "lift the veil on the mass market beer industry"?
Now I'm not a fan of the mass market beer industry but I missed the bit where it stuffed squirrels. Or am I being too literal? Is it the sheer exclusivity of End of History that critiques mass production?
Perhaps the name holds a clue. The End of History is a book-cum-theory by Francis Fukuyama that said that now we've done away with communism everything will be all right. Well, he got that wrong.
Oh, I give it up. Can't be arsed. They've all sold out now, anyway. Here's a picture of furry animals with bottles stuffed down their throats.