News In Brief #60

Pontifex = Font effects

CAMRA Pope Grants Indulgences

Due to the current sunny weather, beer drinkers have been found drinking icy cold lager in beer gardens around the country.  Not so the unfortunate members of the Campaign For Real Ale, who have been forced to traipse around provincial town centres looking for brown, weak and flavour-shy beer as part of an ill-advised "Mild Month of May".

Thankfully for these poor people, help is at hand from the top of the organisation itself.  "Let's face it," proclaimed CAMRA Pope Nonextraneous XII "nobody actually likes mild.  Why spend an hour grinding through a pint of watery piss when you could be doing the whole Ice Cold In Alex thing with a pilsner?  Though although we cannot approve the consumption of non-real beer, we at the top of the CAMRA hierarchy have arrived on a solution."

"Simply pay the small sum of two pounds to the local branch treasurer, and he will issue you with a permission slip, signed by me, allowing the member to drink one pint of lager.  If you're seen in a pub supping yellow fizz by other members and chastised for it, simply show them this bit of paper saying that your sin has been noted, but indulged."

Continued His Holiness "Due to this enlightened policy of Indulgences, this heatwave has nearly wiped out last year's budget deficit in our accounts.  Long may it continue!"

Knowing the facts so you don't have to

Craft Brewery Starts News Agency

After a fortnight of rumour-based unpleasantness, London-based brewery Random Brick has decided to take control of its news generations.  "After I read all those tweets and blog posts saying we're gearing up to be taken over by ABInBev, I was incensed!" ranted CEO Damien Fixedgear  "How dare these people have opinions contrary to what we think they should have!"

"So, to counteract this ill-informed nonsense, I've decided to set up the Random Brick News Agency, the funding source for which I will reveal soon.  Using this, we as a company will supply all the bloggers and internet commentators with the real story on what we're doing, which they will publish without amendment."

"And if they deviate from this," shouted Fixedgear "I'll send them a 'Cease & Desist' letter saying they're inviting legal action by potentially harming our business.  That'll teach them to just drink our beer and keep quiet."

Alleged Beer News Site editor and promulgator of stories Curt Mattis of Bud Gear Hunting was nonplussed "We'll go along with this.  As our, like, funding comes from similiar sources, we wouldn't want to jeapordise anything, dudes."

"WARNING - Excessive drinking causes high contrast pictures"

Beer Not Linked To Mental Health Problems, Say Drinkers

In the light of criticism from the inside of the Brewing Industy for it's lack of concern about the potential downsides of alcohol use, habitual pissheads have taken to the internet to say that drinking large amounts of beer in no way has any negative effects on mental health

Bowl food eater and Teku glass slurper Luke Lumberjack-Shirt was indignant about such suggestions "It's not true, man.  I do four or five bar openings and tasting events every day and as a result drink about 50 schooners of 7% craft beer a week.  And I'm, like, absolutely fine.  Those late night tweets about me hating myself and hangover induced apathy the following mornings are entirely normal among people in my sector of the industry,"

Meanwhile, rubicund-complexioned near-permanent tavern resident Bob Barfly also cast doubt on these reports "I've been coming to this pub for years for my daily 4 hour session of 6 pints of bitter.  It's part of my class's culture to socialise here.  In no way am I trying to avoid the emptiness of my home life and distance from my family by self-medicating with intoxicants that result in oblivion.  These so-called researchers know nothing, obviously.  Oh god, that's my wife ringing me now."

Campaigner and general drink-apologist Mudgie Mudgington was shown these reports and muttered something about needing more evidence before coming to conclusions before saying "Oh, look! A kitty!" and running off.

Gary Come Home

GARY!

As someone who is well known for working for a supermarket, I'm often called upon (not exactly "called upon", but that never stops me sticking in my oar on these matters) to explain and elucidate decisions made by the industry.  Whether it's the regular lack of 1 pint semi-skimmed at Stockport Morrisons on a Sunday, or the reasons why minimum-wage shop floor staff aren't trained up to be Awesome Beer Sommeliers, I generally can explain why.  It always amuses me how many people have strange ideas about how a supermarket works, or how their knowledge of retail process is stuck in the 20th Century.

Now that craft beer is expanding into domains where it was previously unknown, beer geeks are finding that sometimes, they will get a can or bottle that tastes past its best.  It could have been sent in short dated and not picked up; it could have been poorly stored in the distribution chain; or it could even been a duff batch to begin with.  Either way, the shop takes the blame, and standard practice is to refund and replace.  That usually satisfies the majority of customers.  But now there's Social Media, and every dodgy can or bottle can be indignantly exposed for the attention of the like-minded.

A few days ago, one tweeter decided to take Big Retail to task about why beer should be refrigerated in the distribution cold chain and at point of sale. Somewhat unwisely, a Sainsbury's social media dude replied to them.

Oh dear.  Had Gary known anything about beer fandom on social media, there's no way he'd have said this.  Throughout the day, enraged beer types dogpiled the Sainsbury's Twitter account.  As often observed, one of the less attractive aspects of Craft Beer Types is their tendency to berate and insult people who disagree with them on a point of principle.  I wonder what the discussions were like that day within the Sainsbury's social media team? Poor Gary.

Amidst this unedifying spectacle, it was pointed out by several people (me included), that Gary (if he even exists at all, and isn't a product of personalisation software used by an outsourced PR company) is unlikely to be a beer geek and is probably unaware of the benefits that refrigeration provides for craft beer.  It's behaviour like this that gives fans of all things a bad name.

I'm closer to the shop floor realities of retail than Gary is, and I can explain why supermarkets don't, as a rule, chill their entire beer supply and display chain.  As stated above, this might be a revelation to those who don't work in my industry.

Let's look at the basic requirements, the fridges themselves.  A quick Google will give you some prices.  Here's a basic overview of the category.  If I took the shop I work in, just to buy the display fridges for our craft beer alone would cost in the region of £4000.  We'd also need additional chiller space in the warehouse to store the back stock.  Then we'd have to get them connected up, probably to somewhere where the pipes and wires aren't located (so more money spent there) requiring an overnight team of engineers for several days.  That's the fixed costs done, we'll say £12,000 as a conservative estimate, guv.  More stuff would mean more fees paid to our maintenance contractors.  And that's not even counting the electricity and gas required to keep the fridges running 24-7, 365 days a year.  Multiply that by how ever many stores you think a supermarket chain has and you get the idea of the spend required.

At the logistics level, the 200 lines of craft beer we do would have to be moved to our Fresh Food department, possibly requiring another unit to be built, but certainly more chillers would be needed to keep them cold.  For the deliveries from distributors who sell us both craft and "regular" beer, someone would have to separate them out by category and have the craft transported up the road to Fresh, where it would have be unloaded into its requisite picking slots.  Then the staff would have to be trained on handling beer and its dating idiosyncrasies.  This would likely cost in low six figures to achieve this.

And that would be for a small chain such as mine.  Can you imagine doing it for Sainsbury's with more lines, more stock and multiple distribution centres.  It would cost millions of pounds. And all to keep a few thousand internet beer geeks happy that their DIPA has been kept at 5 celsius from producer to display.   Have you read the headlines about retail performance recently?  Do you honestly think a supermarket chain would pony up that amount of cash to benefit such a small customer segment.  Do you?

In a way, the nerds are right.  Many beers would benefit from cold chain refrigeration.  But don't expect it to happen unless they're willing to pay an extra 50p a unit for their supermarket craft.  Well, they've been saying for years that beer is too cheap, right?

News in Brief #56

Contains more brains than some beer blog commenters 

New Beer Festival Announced

As the seasons change, the mind of the drinker is drawn towards the Beer Festival season. A new entry in Fest Itinerary for this year has been organised by Dave Driptray, landlord of the Eagle & Child in Albury,  Cambridgeshire.

"Beer events are ten-a-penny these days, so I needed a gimmick. And what better gimmick than a celebration of our most famous local blog commenter? "

As such, the 1st Annual Beer And PY Festival will be held on 28th-30th October. "It'll be great." enthused Driptray  "We're putting on 32 supposedly different pale ales and running tutored events on how to annoy people by quoting Wikipedia out of context and making up facts to support barely-existing arguments. CAMRA members are of course not allowed as they are a load of boring old men with antiquated views."

Tickets go on sale next week, and included is free entry to the opening ceremony where 6 casks of Greene King IPA are tipped into the River Cam.

PY himself is not attending. "No way. It's some attempt to unwarrantedly accuse me of things."

Current contents a mystery

Finishing Barrel Travels Country

Due to the incessant demand by new wave breweries for "(insert thing here) barrel ale", nine gallon oak hogshead Brian Charredstave has found himself travelling the UK to be filled with various stuff.

"It started in May. Back then I was just a plain, simple ex-bourbon barrel from Heaven Hill in Kentucky." explained Brian "then I came to England and was filled with Imperial Stout."

"After that I ended up in Aberdeen to make a limited edition Stout-cask red ale.  Then they filled me up, consecutively with rum, IPA, damson eau de vie and blueberry saison.  Normally barrels in my position get sawn up for ornamental planters by now, but it just keeps on going, man."

Head Brewer at serial beer "innovator" Random Brick Damien Fixedgear was asked why he just didn't add the stuff from the supposed cask to flavour his beer accordingly.

"What? That would be, like, silly, dude."

"But did you pay ENOUGH for it, dude?"

Communicator Pays More For Drink

This week, bodacious beer bro and quality seeker Curt Mattis condemned the practice of discounting in Beer Sales.  "It's terrible. I've heard that otherwise awesome breweries are selling beer cheaper than I think they should."

"So, knowing that I can't set their pricing policies on my say-so, I've,  like, taken matters into my own hands. Whenever I buy a pint of craft at my local pub for less money than I think appropriate,  I add 40% to the stated price and pay that as well."

Continued Curty "I then give my server a pie chart diagram,  breaking down where the extra money should go so they can apportion it correctly. 50% to the Brewer, 35% to the distributor and 10% to the pub. Plus 5% to whomever I, like, deem awesome on the day. I know this info as I'm part of The Industry. If everyone did this, man, it would solve all cash flow problems in the industry."

Barman at the Mattis local, Josh Apathetic admitted. "Curt's been badgering me about this for weeks. I'm not bothered really. I just humour him and chuck the extra into my tip jar."

"Peroni night tomorrow at Spoons!"

Expectation

To be fair, the Morrison's buyer doesn't seem to know much about beer either

I hate getting into arguments online.  No, really, I do.  All I really can easily handle is taking the piss out of something or somebody, being called a twat, and ending it there. As I've said before, I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea so undoubtedly more than a few people find me annoying. What I really don't like however, are those absolutely determined to grasp the wrong end of the stick and who proceed to bash you over the head with it.

The most recent incident happened on Monday.  It started trivially, as these things always do.  Basically, Moor Brewery have got permission to say their canned beer is "CAMRA Approved".  Something to do with secondary fermentation in the can, I believe.  I questioned what your average consumer would make of a can of beer pouring out cloudy.  One particularly well-known "Beer Communicator" replied that it was the job of the shop's staff to inform them that this was entirely normal.

As always with me, things escalated.  I asked the Communicator whether they themselves would expound their specialist beer knowledge for supermarket wages (usually minimum wage)? Naturally, they avoided the question and said that just because I was unhappy in my job it doesn't mean I should take it out on them.  What can you say to that?  Thankfully, I didn't have to, as they used the typical passive-aggressive tactic of saying they no longer wanted to discuss this further.

So, what kind of service should you expect in your average shop that sells beer?  Ideally, somewhere with a reasonably wide range would have someone reasonably knowledgeable on hand to say what the beer is like.  Unfortunately, outside specialist retail, this will very rarely be the case.

A supermarket these is staffed differently than how a lot of people imagine.    The majority of the work happens out of sight of the customer. The shelves are filled up during the night and early morning to minimise distraction and the workers are usually students on short-hours contracts (for flexibility reasons usually, older workers are usually filtered out because they have "commitments"). If there's anyone during the day, it's usually for cosmetic reasons, or to fill up the things that it's not possible to have an entire day's worth on the shelf at any one time.

So when a customer comes in and wants to know what beer or wine to buy, it will be difficult for staff to assist them in a pertinent way, even if there's anyone available to do so.  The best you will typically get is to be told what sells the most "so must be popular".  The days of having Specialist Licenced Department staff are pretty much over.  If you actually know a lot about drinks, you're unlikely to be prepared to work for what the supermarket trade will pay you.

As it happens, at the shop I work at, I'm known for knowing a bit about beer and spirits, so any queries about this inevitably end up directed to me.  To be honest, such things aren't really my job. I'm meant to be doing inventory management, date checking and pricing information.  But I go along and do it anyway, as it's easier to do that than to tell my colleagues "Piss off, I'm busy."

Such things are an exception.  In most places, you won't find anyone to explain why that can of Moor Revival was cloudier than you expected.  If you make enough of a fuss, you'll be given a refund.  But it's doubtful you'll be enlightened about the subtleties of unfiltered beer and can-conditioning.

With the advent of Craft Beer ranges in big shops, this will happen more and more often.  I can't see the retailers splashing out on specialised training for staff who could be used more "efficiently" filling shelves or manning the self-service till.  So, if you want knowledge, go to a specialist shop.  But don't complain you have to pay 33% more for the privilege.

Defibrillating the Campaign

The Future? When has CAMRA ever been about The Future?

I, like presumably every other CAMRA member, received my "Revitalisation Pack" this week. I duly went online and filled in the form like they told me to. I wrote what you'd expect me to : Embrace the Evil Keg. Because it's the future, and the future will catch up with you whether you like it or not. One assumes CAMRA will take as much notice of my opinions as it always has.

Many people I know don't agree with my viewpoint, saying that while it's easy to define "Real Ale", it's harder to define " Craft Beer". I always say Craft Beer is like pornography, nobody can define it exactly, but they certainly know it when they see it. If CAMRA managed to figure out the definition of Real Ale in 1972, I'm sure they can come up with a definition of Craft Beer that satisfies the vast majority of people. Eventually.

It's arguable that Craft Beer actually needs to be "campaigned" for. It's on the up, and even reaching hitherto unpromising places such as Wolverhampton and Doncaster. It's notable that the only "Craft" beer organisation in the UK has been formed by brewers and distributors rather than actual drinkers. Craft is "the future", increasing in market share and thus not under threat.

Whereas Real Ale, despite a record number of breweries making it (if not actual volume produced), has always "needed " protection. It's assumed without CAMRA as a guardian, it would die out and without it, everyone would only have Red Barrel to drink within 18 months.

It could be said that CAMRA needs such a siege mentality to keep going. If there are no threats to the continuing availability of Real Ale, what reason would there be fore it to exist? And that's why Craft Beer will probably never be accepted by the active membership. It's increasingly available and also increasing in visibility, not to mention fashionability.  A CAMRA member just wants his favourite pint at his favourite place, forever.

The results of the Revitalisation Survey are a foregone conclusion. The status quo will be kept, and CAMRA will carry on in its journey to its fate as a middle-aged, middle-class drinking club. The battle has been won, but it will keep going through sheer inertia, propelled by it's active members wanting a social life, and it's paid staff's need of jobs.

Such it the way of humanity. Change never comes until it's far, far, too late.