J'accuse: Wenlock runs out

So Hoxton's Wenlock Arms faces the chop, eh? One co-owner wants to sell and the other cannot buy him out, so it's to the estate agents they go. The dread of redevelopment hangs heavy.

Those unfamiliar with this pub, famous in London at least, will not be aware of just how polarised the debate is over this establishment. Dirty, mean-spirited and clique-ridden? Or ale palace, characterful and charming?

The truth is it is both, but never at the same time. On a day when there's Chas & Dave-style tinkling of the ivories and singalongs and the locals are in on the fun it's a ding-dong right aaaahld Laaaaahndon boozer, with all welcome to join in. But you'll go in the next day to the silence of the disgusted, with tumbleweed the only distraction between you and contemptful locals who would rather sit in an empty pub without your sort. On that day, the service will run the full gamut between silent, inattentive and outright - and even shockingly - rude.

The hipsters so routinely disdained by the locals and barstaff seem to be running a campaign to keep the place open. I certainly welcome that - even if I regard their patience at the Wenlock's unfathomably mercurial mood swings as saintly in the extreme. The current management have had the place for 16 years and fresh blood could tart the pub up (a deep clean might eradicate the retch-worthy stench of foetid, dried urine emanating from the gents) without blitzing what is, all told, a characterful interior. It would be a real pity to lose a 175 year old pub that stands alone in its street as a living link with times gone by and could, in the right hands, continue to offer a great deal to the area.

And yet I cannot tolerate the notion, expressed here in the Evening Standard, that its loss would disfigure London's pub-going scene for good or eradicate 'London's best pub' - for all that it has an admirable focus on excellent craft cask beer.

The Globe in Morning Lane, Hackney, only has London Pride and Young's Bitter on cask - but both are kept well and the service is unfailingly friendly. After a couple of visits, they may not know your name but they recognise you and ask after you. The locals - mostly 50+, working class and mixed between men and women and black and white - are not in the least bothered by the minority of middle class 20-somethings that come in, rallying round to offer seats and organise tables when live jazz is playing on a Sunday. The late night regulars cheer on the midnight karaoke come Saturday ('I Get a Kick Out of You - Swing Version' is considered a bracing challenge). There are teas organised for Monday afternoons and special offers that encourage the odd treat (bottle of Prosecco for £11.50) while not promoting crass binges.

I think you see where I'm heading. CAMRA may have afforded the Globe a place in the Good Beer Guide 2010 (I don't know if it's in the 2011 edition yet) but its safe selection of ales would not excite the beer blogging world and - god forbid - were it under threat, I wonder how much support in the wider media it would muster.

London would miss the Wenlock's potential. But the Globe is a vital community resource, with dedicated staff who put in the hours and refresh the offer.

I know where I've spent most money.

Wenlock Arms photo (Creative Commons Licence) courtesy of Glyn Baker.
Globe on Morning Lane photo (Creative Commons Licence) courtesy of Ewan Munro.

Battle of the beer apps!

Enjoy this guest post from Black Lagoon blogger and TV industry legend Matt Nida. You may remember him from the optimisitically titled Cambridge pub guide video Pubcast #1. This copy was written before CAMRA very recently changed its pricing policy on its GBG app - I've published the original review plus a footnote to demonstrate how wrong it was before and how much better the situation is now.

Demographically speaking, the smartphone crowd is probably more at home in an All Bar One than a traditional pub. But whilst Apple's much-hyped iPhone might now be the archetypal accessory of the Modern London Media Tosser, few people who've actually bought one would deny that having that level of fast, easy, ubiquitous access to the internet is incredibly useful - never more so than when trying to locate a good place to drink in unfamiliar surroundings. To this end, two new applications recently turned up in the iPhone's App Store with the sole purpose of connecting drinkers to watering holes.

CaskFinder is a free app that pulls its data from two different sources: the Cask Marque Trust's pub quality inspection scheme and the Cyclops beer database. This gives you two different ways to find a new pub. Click on the Cask Marque Pubs button and you'll immediately be taken to a map showing your current location (courtesy of the iPhone's handy built-in GPS) with all the nearby Cask Marque-accredited pubs marked clearly with quaint little pint icons. Tapping on a pub takes you to a page which gives you the address and telephone number of the pub (tap again to ring the pub directly), a link to the pub's website and a list of beers currently on offer. These are divided into those tested by Cask Marque and those that haven't been; tapping on one of the tested beers takes you to a page giving you some basic facts about the brew in question, such as alcohol content, colour, taste and smell. From here, you can add your own rating which will be reflected in the average star rating at the top of the page.

Back on the main menu, there's also a Beers button, which takes you to a database of beers that you can view either by name or by brewery. Tapping on a beer will take you to its stats page, at the top of which there's a "Where to Drink?" button. Tap this and you'll be taken to a map showing all the pubs in the surrounding area serving this particular beer (as results are likely to be sparse for most beers listed, you can zoom out to increase the range and thus the likelihood of a pub serving your beer). This is potentially a killer feature, but annoyingly the list of beers itself is somewhat patchy; for example, there are no Harvey's or Timothy Taylor's beers listed at all. Still, it's a neat idea, and Cyclops claim to update the database daily, so hopefully it'll become more useful over time. There's also a couple of other fun features in the form of a "beer of the week", a beer festival calendar and a beer blog by Pete Brown.

Where CaskFinder falls down somewhat is the interface. Whilst I admire the developer's courage in shunning Apple's attempts to standardise all UIs to the same conventions, the rather sickly yellows and Tellytubby-ish icons and typefaces aren't particular polished or pleasant to use, whilst the background, although clearly intended to be a foaming pint of ale, looks rather like a pale blue Aero. Moreover, the lack of any overt curation or comment about the pubs in question ultimately limits the app's usefulness; beyond their certification, there's little indication what a pub might be like to drink in once you get there. Still, if you trust Cask Marque's standards then there's no doubt that CaskFinder will speed up the process of finding a decent pint, and once it's a bit more comprehensive the beer location feature could well prove incredibly useful.

Elsewhere on the App Store is CAMRA's own Good Beer Guide Mobile, an iPhone version of the organisation's hugely successful annual book/bible. CAMRA are by no means infallible, and I could probably argue some of the finer details about their criteria for what makes a good pub, but there's no denying that the GBG is an authoritative and on the whole reliable guide, so you could be forgiven for approaching the app with high expectations. Its premium heritage is reflected in the price - a princely £1.19 - and upon launching you're immediately presented with a much classier, Apple-ish menu than CaskFinder's. The main menu offers you several ways to search for a pub; once again you can use the GPS to look for GBG-listed pubs in your immediate vicinity, or you can search by address, postcode or (neatly) London tube station. Search results are presented in a listed sorted by distance in miles, with a range of icons indicating amenities at each venue. Alternatively, they can be viewed on a map. Tapping on the pub takes you contact details, and tabs at the bottom of the page allow you to pull up a beer menu (with comments on each beer from the GBG), a list of features, a map and the all-important Good Beer Guide review. Tapping a star button at the top of the page let you save the pub to a list of favourites for quick access later on.

And... that's it. There's no access to any of the other editorial features of the GBG, no beer or brewery index, no user ratings, no ability to search for pubs via beers available or indeed using any criteria other than location. It's an unbelievable own goal. Given that the app pulls its data from one of the most comprehensive critical drinking resources on the market, it's incredibly limited in terms of how one can interface with this data. Even a simple full text search would have been nice, but that's too much to ask for. Essentially, unless you're using the GPS feature, it's actually quicker to find a pub that piques your interest by flicking through the paper copy than using the app.

And then there's the pricing. Your up-front £1.19 isn't the only cost. Once you've downloaded the app, you can use it for thirty days, after which time you'll be asked to pay a further £8.99 (!) for another year's access. If you're a CAMRA member this actually makes the app more expensive than a physical copy of the book, despite being significantly less functional and despite the distribution and material costs of the app being a fraction of those behind publishing a book. If you already own the book, you've got no choice other than to pay for it again. In the past I've been critical of the aggressive race-to-the-bottom price wars in the App Store, and am happy to pay a fair price for a decent app, but there's no excuse for the Murdochian "PROTECT THE PRINT REVENUE!!" pricing of digital goods this way.

Ultimately, CAMRA could have sewn up the market here, but in classic foreheard-slapping CAMRA fashion they've dropped the ball badly. The Good Beer Guide text remains useful and dependable, but the really limited interface indicates that no-one really thought through how users might actually want to use this app. The hugely unrealistic pricing is the final nail in the coffin, suggesting that CAMRA developed this app because someone told them they ought to do one in order to keep up - shovelware of the worst kind. CaskFinder, on the other hand, is ugly and patchy in places, but makes a few gestures at dynamic content and has some fun features that give the user a few different options for tracking down a good pint quickly. Plus it's free, so you can use the money that CAMRA would otherwise gouge you for and spend it on, say, some beer.

STOP PRESS!! It seems CAMRA decided very recently to adopt a different pricing model, slashing the £8.99 cost to just £4.99 and allowing users to download the data. This means you still have access to the 2010 Guide on your iPhone if you decide not to renew the subscription in 2011 - fair dos and a big improvement. Good job. Having spoken to Matt, he confirms, however, that his review of the app as an app remains the same.

Finally, take a look at this debate on the Guardian's excellent Word of Mouth blog about which pub guide is best. The comments promise to be entertaining.

Lights, CAMRA, action!

A conversation with Impy Malting led inevitably to the subject of pubs & beer and, for want of something new to say about them, their presence on the silver screen.

Can any cinematic beer moment top this from classic 1958 war flick Ice Cold in Alex?



No, basically. John Mills' able quaffing has me all aflutter - though not, perhaps, as much as the charming Sylvia Syms does.

There is, however, a fierce contender. This depiction of the Wenlock Arms from 1981's An American Werewolf in London stands the test of time. As does the pub itself - it hasn't changed a bit.



So, what other good'uns are out there?

Ale tied up...

The Publican reports CAMRA is mulling whether to mount a legal challenge against the OFT's decision not to refer the casketeers' super complaint fingering the tie up to the Competition Commission. Furthermore, in a logical step, it looks likely the St Albans-based pressure group [full disclosure - I am a member] will lobby the European Commission's steely competition hawk Neelie Kroes.

For those readers unaware, when a brewery or pubco attracts licensees to run its pubs, the latter sign deals through which they agree to pay rent and secure booze through their landlord. CAMRA, among many others, believes this practice makes it difficult for licensees to make a living and considers it to be anti-competitive, restricting the access of smaller breweries into the marketplace (as pubcos buy in bulk for their estates). This said, it fits ill with CAMRA's brief to attack breweries, so it takes the view they ought to be allowed an estate of pubs to get their wares to market while pubcos not in the business of brewing are considered fair game.

There are problems with the tie as it stands. The widespread complaint of unfairly high rents needs greater exploration and a solution could benefit all concerned - scroll down to the bottom of this Morning Advertiser article for a concise rundown from KPMG's Mike Coughtrey; here's a sample:

[...] in some cases the combined rent made up of the standard dry rent, the landlord's margin on the tied beer and machine profits, is not always being set at sustainable levels, making it increasingly difficult for the tenant to trade profitably and sustainably.

However, Coughtrey also points out that the tie offers 'a low cost entry point' into the pub trade with considerably fewer risks than buying freehold. This is unarguably true, but presumes all go into the agreement with their eyes open. I am not sure that this is the case - and by that I mean more research is required, not that I have a fixed view. There is much anecdotal evidence of questionable practices employed to entice wannabe landlords and Jeff Pickthall's recent experience with an Enterprise Inns operative certainly makes for interesting reading.

For all this, I would advise CAMRA to limit itself to lobbying for reform to the tie without the threatening, and thus far unproductive, willy-waving.

As pubco-tied landlord and blogger Jeff Bell has argued, the unshackled free house dream would leave individual pubs with no intermediary between them and mega breweries, who would offer all-in, cheap deals. The tie would in effect remain, but for the consumer variety would diminish. Given the number of competent licensees is not likely to increase, it is probable our pubs would become more ale-unfriendly, akin to the Irish pub scene, where bonhomie is as plentiful as here but beer choice is generally woeful.

'But pubco beer choice is woeful,' you cry. A couple of years ago, I'd have agreed. But those pubcos, previously slobbering over the option of converting their businesses into real estate investment trusts as property prices skyrocketed have taken a sudden interest in their core revenue streams. Readers who like beers from micros such as Mordue, Moorhouse's, Woodforde's and Meantime will have noticed them appearing in greater numbers in solidly-run pubco pubs.

Recent economic turmoil pushed ajar a door that the nudge-nudge of proper market research-led lobbying and representations by savvy licensees is throwing wide open. The consumer has far better choice than two years ago, despite the number of outlets having fallen dramatically. As Pete Brown argues from the cold statistics in his recent Cask Report, ale-friendly taverns are closing at a far slower rate than mega-swill dens - and pubcos are taking note.

This is not an 'in praise of pubcos' eulogy; I believe there is merit in a proper investigation of both how pubcos recruit lessees and whether a more transparent rent setting regime can be implemented. I am convinced licensees ought to be given greater freedom to supply beer to a pump from local micros (say, those within 30 miles, with a small percentage of takings going to the pubco). The latter move might well offset rent concerns.

But CAMRA is wasting its time if it thinks its posturing will secure advances for the beer consumer; legal challenges are desperately unlikely to succeed and will further alienate the organisation from big players in the industry who are actually moving in their direction.

Bye Bunter: an ode to the pub

And so it was an era came to an end. Terry Kavanagh rang the bell last Saturday to call time on a fabulous 17 years as landlord of the St Radegund, King Street, Cambridge. The Rad may not have the fireplace, secret garden or pewter pots of Orwellian design, yet there is perfection in this Cantabrigian institution. Its locals are loyal but not jingoistic, often seen in other pubs. Despite a knowing cynicism, a faint whiff of the bear pit (one of Terry's many taglines extolling the virtues of the pub being 'St Radegund...a better class of insult'), its patrons will, and do, stand by each other.

Readers will understand the communal bonds between disparate men and women forged in the best of pubs. The St Radegund is the best of pubs. Several met wives or husbands there for the first time. When I wanted my wife, then girlfriend, to understand what I was about, taking her to the Rad seemed the finest possible shorthand. She is now a regular, too.

As a student, it was the place to intrigue in shady corners. It is still and ever shall be a place to hail triumphs, see off the day, battle the demons, right public wrongs, castigate bounder politicos, cheer sporting triumph, wallow in defeat and drown immeasurable sorrows.

Of course the beer is good. It stands to reason. And we talk about the beer, chew over it. It's difficult not to when local brewer Richard Naisby of Milton Brewery is in there, supping his own wares and holding forth. And he does hold forth. But we can forgive a man who's brought us the delights of Mammon, the winterly splendidness of Nero and has conjured magic with Hackney's Pembury Tavern. Even if he did go to Oxford.

But the pub itself is also the talking point - so much so there's even a book about its overseas exploits. Steve Haslemere's The Ascent of Mount Hum chronicles a Rad cricket tour to the Croatian island of Vis. Other sports undertaken by Rad regulars include running with the Hash House Harriers ('a drinking club with a running problem'), rowing and conkers.

Those preferring extreme sports should consider the biennial King Street Run, a brutal eight-pint drinking race down a street that used to boast a far greater number of pubs. Don't worry, the good'uns are still there, so competitors double up now. The course record, fact fans, is 14 minutes and was carried out in a monk's costume by a man so skinny you'd assume him abstemious. How wrong you'd be.

Put off by the activity? More a culture vulture? Would the true sackcloth 'drawers of St Radegund' tempt pilgrims? Those of a religious bent ought not to sneer - committed theologians from nearby Westcott House will often drop by to admire the undergarment, parading down King Street holding the bloomers aloft, with Terry ejaculating hastily improvised Latin chants by way of accompaniment.

Perhaps Friday's Vera Lynn Appreciation Society would be more up your alley - listen to the forces sweetheart and indulge yourself with a double G&T aperitif as god intended. On the subject of our 1940s heritage, the Rad has its own homage to the Eagle's famous RAF bar, with names of regulars past and present burned on to the ceiling for posterity. Ex officio of his Blue Flame Club membership (don't ask), jesusjohn is very proud to be up there himself (though, arguably, far less proud to refer to himself in the third person).

The pub is a maelstrom of variety, in no small part courtesy of its patrons. But getting the pub to this point, holding it together, providing the glue, setting the tone, arguing the toss and belligerently ruling the roost has been Terry. He's seen B52s fly over Cambodia. He's done Bali and the Falklands. He's ushered countless students through evenings of unbridled alcoholic vice. And he's pissed in each barrel to make sure it was up to scratch.

He coined the moniker jesusjohn in my very first term as a sign of true belonging. Thanks to him, the St Radegund will always be the pub I go back to.

Cheers Bunter.

The Pubcast video, below, we made a year ago features a long segment on the Radegund and an interview with Terry Kavanagh - watch the whole thing if you've time. If not, scroll to 07:25.

I'd like to take this opportunity also to wish new landlord James Hoskins the very best of luck in taking over the Rad - I'm sure he'll do a cracking job.

The top picture shows jesusjohn in typical Cambridge attire - at the Rad, naturally.

Pubcast #1: Cambridge from The Pubcast on Vimeo.

Home brew

Missed in the beer blogging world, as far as I can see, were BSkyB's stellar 3Q earnings. Pretax profits rose 39.5% y/y while revenues shot to £1.38bn, boosted by the addition of 94,000 subscribers. The twitterati may be spluttering into their lattes about Rupert Murdoch's quaint belief he'll be able to make cash from online content by sticking it behind a paywall, but his son James knows his onions (even if he is, like his dad, a rightwing bastard).

Pubs, normally seen as a stable sector in a downturn, have endured terrible trading conditions in this recession. This reflects a number of changes in society, both its leisure options and attitudes to alcohol. As I've written before, with the likes of facebook making the spontaneous pint a thing of the past, that just-pop-in-for-a-brew trade is dying (see if Steve and Mary fancy a drink, organise where to meet - the tarted up cocktail bar, the Aussie wine place or is it on with the pullovers to that pub with the ales?). We work long hours, so we flop home - these days an attractive place to be, especially with the internet, on demand TV (who needs DVD boxsets?) and an exciting wave of bottled beers available from a range of sources. To the non-beer connoisseur, the price difference is far too much to warrant going to the pub frequently.

The pub is in this recession facing unparalleled leisure competition.

Add to this the puritanical tone of the baying press, constantly howling against 'Binge Britain' and I suspect there are plenty who avoid conspicuous consumption out and about and prefer to indulge at home with the husband, wife, significant other, kids or whoever they see so little of.

In this context, £30 per month for Sky+ is a no-brainer, especially given that's almost the cost of one night out down the pub if you're eating there, too.

Which means one thing - there are too many pubs and many more need to close for the sector to be competitive and for those running them to be able to make a living. This does not mean the fight to retain rural pubs is lost. There can and should be review of planning laws that assumes a community must have a pub as standard and CAMRA ought to more robustly market its knowledge on how locals can jointly campaign to save pubs and even club together to run one.

But the broader picture is this - for pubs to survive there need to be fewer of them and we need margins to rise, especially for real ale - a premium product sold at a ludicrous discount to megabrew swill. Prices will need to jump. Anyone who's boozed in Ireland will know where we're heading.

Roman holiday

While the two-week honeymoon my wife and I enjoyed from Rome through Umbria in September was, perhaps, a little too geographically limited to qualify on the eighteenth century Grand Tour scale of mind expansion (we didn't, after all, visit many brothels), some of the beers we enjoyed certainly did. Italy is incubating a beer culture that looks almost ready to pop out of its parochial shell.

On his blog, Jeff has waxed lyrical about the Trastevere district of Rome and its stellar pub Ma Che Siete Venuti a Fà - none of which will stop me doing the same. First of all, the tiny, long corridor of an interior, with wood smothered in footie memorabilia (chiming with the establishment's nickname as 'The Football Pub') is in itself tremendously imbued with the charm of its locals, exuding warmth and humour. On mentioning I knew Jeff a little, Manuele (pictured above, left with jesusjohn) was generous to a fault and invited his locals to regale us with anecdotes of their trip to see Jeff and experience CAMRA's GBBF a couple of years ago. To hear Romans excitedly claim, seemingly with genuine affection, 'I love Earl's Court - it's a special place' was one of the more surreal experiences of the trip, but lovely for all that.

Manuele's beer selection is first class and his sourcing of these nectars, on questioning, seemed to rely on byzantine links of friends with vans and hauliers able to grab some bottles, a keg or a cask (yes, cask) or two on their way back from other business. All a bit Smokey and the Bandit, I thought.

The mind-boggling collection of international beers was striking (BrewDog Chaos Theory on keg, Tokyo* in its bottle - not many places you'd find that here in Blighty - among many others), but the Italian offering was compelling.

Would that I could wax lyrical about a selection, but Manuele directed me to Urtiga (4.8%) from Milan's very own Birrificio Lambrate and I dropped on that for most of the session. With a slight haze, orange-gold hue and generous head, the impact was gorgeously earthy, with herbal hops and a well-matched body of malt. A superb lesson in the art of balance and proof, if any were needed, that mid-ABV beers can deliver a distinctively pleasing experience (something I think we beer enthusiasts lose sight of all too often in the quest for novelty).

The clientele spilled into the street; young and cosmopolitan, the crowd was split between those there for the beer, those there for the football - crammed round a tiny TV right in front of the bar itself and those who just wanted a good time.

All are well-served by this terrific institution, which could teach bars the world over a thing or two.

Do watch that Smokey & the Bandit video, incidentally (link above).

Here, gratuitously, is a trailer for Andre de la Varre Jr's epic Grand Tour '70, which is described in what I can only assume is de la Varre Jr's characteristically modest tone as 'probably the most important travel adventure you've ever seen'.

I'll let you be the judge of that.

The opening salvo

Pubcast #1: Cambridge from The Pubcast on Vimeo.

Am I a throwback? I'm 25 and most of my friends are totally divorced from the notion of the pub as I enjoy it - as the great leveller, a social hub. When I take a chum into my favourite pub, the St Radegund (King Street, Cambridge) and one of the many cheery barkeeps yelps 'Jesus John!', typically the friend's face becomes a vision of shock. They'll often even say 'it's so wonderful you have this.' But back in their own world, they'll make no effort to become a regular in their local. It's bizarre.

To find out if we were indeed throwbacks and to celebrate the pub as we know and love it, my like-minded good pal Matthew Nida and I made a film about our favourite Cambridge pubs, optimistically titled The Pubcast #1. You can watch it here - I'm the short one with the glasses. It's not in the same league as Jonathan Meades, but it shows an affection for the pubs we visited, I hope, and for the type of joint we like to relax in.

We do intend to make more - the next film is in pre-production, as the industry wags would have it. We're thinking of doing a sweep through Holborn and Clerkenwell, with a stop-off at Stonch's gaff.

The pubs we visited in Cambridge were The Live & Let Live, Cambridge Blue and St Radegund. Click through for details.