Tax the beer why don’t you

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I hate the fact that Sarah has International Radio 1 on in each room of the house every morning, but I’ve got quite used to drowning it out. Today though, I couldn’t miss the news, in which the top story was about the new police powers to confiscate alcohol from under-age drinkers and bring in new laws to tackle persistent offenders. What grinded my gears though was the end of the piece, in which the enthusiastic news reader paraphrased the Conservative party’s comment on the news which I’ll re-paraphrase:

“These measures don’t go enough, if we get in we’ll raise taxes on alcopops and high strength beers.”

High strength beers? How are you classifying that? Beers that are over 2 or 3 units? Beers over 10% Anything stronger than a traditional dark mild? No mention of the simple fact that there are tons of other alcoholic drinks that can get you shit-faced a lot quicker and a lot more cheaply than even a head cracking barley wine.

Why does beer get the bad press when it comes to under age drinking? Something tells me I’m not going to see a bunch of 15 year olds (or perhaps 11 is it?!) swilling a bottle of imperial stout on a park bench. Nope, it’ll be a pocket-able bottle of methylated spirit and a few cheap cans from the corner shop. Taxing ‘high strength beer’ will have about as much chance of stopping under-age drinking as Manchester United do of winning the FA Cup this year.

Tags: alcohol, binge drinking, government, tories, under age drinking

First past the post: binge drinking and spin doctoring to election victory

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This week is all about health and alcohol, binge drinking and the ridiculous attempts to win voters round with lies, damned lies and statistics. The debates rages across blogs; off- and online media report the press releases rather than investigating the true stories behind the official papers and reports; and I daresay a fair few people are a bit lost in the fast moving pace of the heated discussion¹. And I’m sure plenty of you will have heard much of what I have to say before as well.

I’m not jumping in with any stats – the job done by Mr PBBB is fantastic in highlighting that Disraeli’s old adage is as true now as it ever has been. Even more so the comments added to his blog and to other blogs, and the subsequent inspired posts (in the UK and beyond) has led to real, interesting debate and points of view that aren’t immediately at the forefront of everybody’s minds.

I’d rather stay clear of quantitative or qualitative data and focus a little more on the reaction to all this, the where do we go from here. Stats aside, alcohol misuse, abuse, even just plain alcohol use does cause society problems, whether in conjunction with other factors of not, and that regardless of if that’s increasing or decreasing, it would be quite nice to stop some of it and make our country a better place.

A few things strike me. One, that alcohol (or should I say the effects of abusing alcohol) is, like anything, intrinsically linked to behaviour and attitude and that isolating it as the sole cause of a specific misdemeanour or health issue seems, statistically, difficult. Anti-social behaviour (vandalism, crime, assaults), health issues (liver disease, injuries from being drunk) and other consequences (drink driving, loss of productivity) are all affected by numerous things – and many of the stats communicated to us by the powers that be seem to ignore this simple fact.

Secondly, it strikes me that there aren’t that many answers in the Great Alcohol Debate of 2010 and that’s not a criticism – it’s a delicate and complex matter. But what have the people sitting in Westminster done about this? Slammed producers of alcohol², branded publicans as irresponsible³ and patronised responsible drinkers who have continental, liberal attitudes⁴. Furthermore they’ve devised simplistic, slapstick tactics planned, from where I see it, simply to trick the public⁵. Banning dentist chairs? You really are out of touch with reality folks.

Two of the simplest points of all that undermine much of the policy makers outbursts have been made what seems like a thousand times (in one way or another) in the last 12 months but get little airplay with any major media outlet.

If people want to get drunk they will.

If an alcoholic wants a drink they will go to Tesco or the corner shop, they will buy a bottle of screw top wine/screw top vodka/ring pull cans of lager or bitter and they will head home, drinking them on the way most likely. If an alcoholic is hiding their problem from their family they will slip the bottle in their jacket⁶. They will hide a bottle under the sink⁷, in the toilet cistern⁸, in the greenhouse⁹.

If a young person wants to be the hardest bloke in town and wants the respect (fear) of everyone that heads out on a Friday night, he will get pissed and start a fight regardless of the price of a vodka red bull. If a young girl wants to throw spirits down their neck every evening and not have a job and shag around and stick two fingers up to society, they will. The price off alcohol won’t put them off.¹⁰

If people want to get drunk cheaply, they won’t buy fine wines or artisan beers

Yep, they’ll head for the offy, for the stack-em-on-the-floor-stack-em-high bargain outlets, for the supermarket. They’ll find it a lot more conducive to forgetting about live if they throw own brand vodka, aluminium beers and £1.99 white wine down their necks than ordering a Tokyo*, waiting 3 days for delivery and watching £17 (including delivery) disappear from their bank account.¹¹

There are lots of other ‘personas’ I can stereotype and situations I can try to second guess, some I have experience of some I don’t. I don’t have all the stats, I don’t have all the facts. But I know some of the psyche of both binge drinkers and alcoholics. I’ve lived the small town mentality of ‘going out’, ‘heading up the club’ and ‘getting smashed’ not that long ago. I matured and went to uni, I ‘got smashed’, I stayed out late, I missed lectures, I made friends for live, we did silly things. But fundamentally my attitudes towards society means that I consider myself a ‘law abiding citizen’, bar some breaches of copyright via music cassettes and being a month late with my vehicle tax. Oh and I owe the car park man £3.50 from last week and I haven’t reminded him on two occasions I’ve seen him since¹².

Some people are going to abuse alcohol, some people are going to abuse the goodwill society shows them and the opportunities they are presented with. Some people don’t have as many opportunities as others and this affects their behaviour in life. Some people have bad starts in live that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and those bad starts result in bad endings (of course many people start this way and end up ‘just fine’ as well). Some people have the best opportunities, great jobs, loving families, and fall into a downward spiral of disease that ruins their live). My point: you can change how you measure alcohol, you can faff about with pricing, you can ban adverts, ban references to alcohol, ban sponsorship and tell everyone alcohol will kill you. But you are never treating the problems.

So, I urge I urge politicians, journalists and all those in the business of selling alcohol (whether on- or off-trade) to take a read of what is being said online this week and listen to a broader spectrum of opinions than less-than-independent-bodies¹³ and the scaremongering press releases¹⁴. Then not just consider, but actually try to do something about the real issues. Education, anti-social behaviour (for which alcohol is often a catalyst rather than a cause), alcoholism. Stop putting your nation of drinkers in one big basket promising to tax the high hell out of everything in easy-target-quick-win PR stunts. Tax where appropriate; tackle the attitudes that cause people to not give two flying fucks about anyone else around them and smash up our towns and cities when intoxicated; find help for victims of alcohol abuse before they fall into an A&E ward; encourage respect for alcohol, respect for the communities we live in and appreciation of the slog, the climb, the rewards of life rather than the quick fix, the instant gratification, the I-want-I-get attitude that underpins society today.

How do we, as a country do that? If I knew I’d be Prime Minister, or the next famous philosopher or anthropologist. But for a start, try being honest about alcohol rather than spinning data into PR-able facts. Be open about alcohol, don’t hide it behind closed doors. If I’m getting really adventurous I’d say let’s spread altruism across our schools and teach our children that they will be rewarded for helping others not punching others. Let’s nip anti-social tendencies and prejudice in the bud early on and encouraging people from a younger age to have a broader ‘group’ mentality. My youthful visions of utopia might not be realistic, but where else do we start?

And start by trawling our blog roll for blogs that have written superb words on the subject this week too…

¹ Me included.
² As an example, BrewDog Tokyo* on which you can find multiple online sources of ridiculous outrage at this beer and it’s potential to either cure binge drinking  or cause a beer based apocalypse, depending on your bias…I mean point of view.
³ Branding the whole industry as irresponsible is a bit harsh, many other sources I’ve read have made clearer distinctions.
⁴ I refer mainly to discussions with drinkers, beer bloggers and friends who feel like they have already adopted a responsible approach to drinking and that policies seem to neglect that and penalise their drinking habits with little effect on the problems they set out to solve (e.g. increasing taxes).
⁵ Such as this reported today in The Times and other media publishers
^{6, 7, 8 and 9} Seen them all done.
¹⁰ That’s my opinion, based on my growing up and drinking experience in Banbury, Lincoln, Nottingham, Leeds & more (and isn’t restricted to young people)
¹¹ That’s a fact that doesn’t require a footnote and I’ll retract it statement if anyone can argue it’s not true.
¹² Which I thoroughly intend to pay him after pay day!
¹³ I refer here to Melissa Cole here who I trust!
¹⁴ Read any newspapers websites over the last three months and the same article and stats are reported verbatim with little or no questioning. And I will blog on my digital marketing blog about this worrying trend in the next few days at http://digitalmediamonkey.co.uk

Tags: advertising, alcohol, alcoholism, beer stats, beer tax, binge drinking, culture, government, legislation

World’s Bitterest Beer?

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Are you a huge hop head? Do you crave Humulus Lupulus in your sleep? Maybe you even struggle to wake up after a few “double IPAs” and a night asleep on a hop pillow?!

Well one Oxfordshire brewer has taken on the challenge to create the world’s bitterest beer, and his strategy: yeah you guessed it, he’s thrown a silly amount of hops into his brew.

Pete Fowler of the Pitstop Brewery near Wantage rose to the occasion after a friend reckoned he couldn’t match the bitterness of US craft beers, and in Mr Fowler’s words ‘that was like red rag to a bull’. The beer (or barley wine) has over £100s worth of hops plus additional hop additives for one 9 barrel keg of the beer compared to a usual £5 worth.

Bearing in mind the brewer himself hasn’t tried it yet and is expecting it to be in the region of 500 IBUs* (a theoretical number which scares the pants of my tastebuds) it raises interesting questions on innovation (or should I say ‘innovation’).

Is this an ‘extreme beer’? Or is it simply a boisterous take on the traditional British bitter, tongue in cheek and one finger up to the extremists? Or just a bit of fun?!

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: bitter, bitterness, BrewDog, IBUs, pitstop brewery

The end of a decade…?

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Both Fletch and myself are big fans of the American TV show The West Wing, highbrow TV covering a range of international issues and actually really funny in a QI rather than Little Britain kind of way. During an episode leading up to the end of 1999 two of the show’s characters, Sam Seabourne and Toby Zeigler, can be heard arguing about the turn of the new millennium. Sam argues with the more senior Toby that, rather than being the turn of the new millennium, the 1st of January 2000 was actually the start of the last year of the old millennium, with the new millennium beginning in 2001. This is due to the fact that there is actually no year zero in the Gregorian Calendar. Real Ale Reviews (or at least this part of it) is therefore looking forward to this ‘last opportunity’ to make a mark on what is becoming dubbed the noughties.

The last week has been something of a fresh start for me Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Apple iPhone, Beer and Cheese, Beer Ritz, Leeds Corn Exchange, Meadowhall, New Year, Piazza Cheese and Ham Shop, Sam Smith's Imperial Stout, The Noughties, The West Wing, Timmermans

Festive frolics

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This Christmas was destined to be a beery one. A long year has come to an end with lots of new things happening: my girlfriend Sarah moved up to Leeds and into our new home, I started this blog and had my first few months as a season ticket holder at Elland Road.

I stayed with my parents in Oxfordshire for most of the time, whilst stopping in at Sarah’s folks in Nottingham on the way down and back up, all of which involved careful transportation of a couple of boxes of beers up and down the M1. I couldn’t see any of the lanes on the motorway on the journey home thanks to the mini-blizzard that hit the UK on Christmas Eve Eve and woke up to a white blanket covering the view out my bedroom window the next morning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: christmas beers

Christmas Beer Gift Packs

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Christmas Beer Gift Packs

Christmas is not much more than 24 hours away and you haven’t finished all your shopping. There’s always at least one thing that’s slipped your mind, one extra gift to buy, a mad dash to the shops or the supermarket to ensure you’ve bought enough for that special person.

And for the beer lovers in your life? What better than a fancy gift pack of a beer they haven’t tried with a fancy glass. Or even if they have tried it, it’s the thought that counts, eh?!

We’ve compiled a selection of some of the Christmas Beer Gift Packs we’ve come across on our travels – some we’ve bought, some we’ve snapped on shop shelves and some have been pointed in our direction by breweries or PR companies.

If you need a last minute beery gift some will be easier to find than others. Hopefully there’s a bit of something for a variety of different beer drinkers!

Merry Christmas!

WARNING: these gift suggestions are not (I repeat not!) suitable for your beer widow!!! Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: beer gift packs, black sheep, broughton, carlow, christmas, Cobra, curry, gifts, hogsback, Hook Norton, Hooky, house of fraser, innis & gunne, john lewis, la trappe, m&s, MileStone, presents, purity, sainsburys, wiliams brothers

The Misfortunates

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The Misfortunates

I’ve been meaning to write something about this since I saw one of the best films I’ve seen for ages at the 23rd Leeds International Film Festival earlier this year.

The Misfortunates follows the trials and tribulations of a highly dysfunctional Belgian family, the Strobbes. Gunther lives with his father, three uncles and grandmother and looks set for a ne’er-do-well adulthood just as his male heroes, all veritable Frank Gallagher types. Through copious amounts of alcohol (including a World Cup drinking game involving only Trappist ales), girlfriends, arguments, tears and more beers, the film is a retrospective look back from Gunther on his childhood and a peak into how he ended up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: belgian, belgium, film, the misfortunates

Beer Bloggers Awards

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Beer Blogger Awards

Right straight to the chase. I don’t feel I’ve had enough beers in some of the categories in Mark & Andy’s Beer Bloggers Awards. So this very much is what I think is the best few in each category from my experience over the last 12 months.

So…

Best UK Draught Beer:

One of Midnight Bell by Leeds Brewery – a consistent dark mild that does what it says on the tin – or Saltaire’s Hazelnut Coffee Porter.

Best UK Bottled Beer:

M&S Cornish IPA, Birds & Bees, Bath Ales Golden Hare and Chaos Theory have all been excellent this year, but some of favourites include BrewDog RipTide, Dark Star Sunburst and Crown Brewery’s Smokin’ Oktoberfest but the beer that I associate with the year and blew my socks off was most definitely Thornbridge’s Halcyon.

Best Overseas Draught Beer:

Leeds is blessed with many pubs and bars serving great bottled foreign beers but is less strong on foreign draught beer (other than the standard lagers). But the Pigs Ear festival in London came to the rescue with the fantastic De Molen Amarillo - a revelation. Sierra Nevada Harvest and Racer 5 by Russian River close behind and both amazing.

Thornbridge Halcyon

Best Overseas Bottled Beer:

A bit more difficult, as I’ve had loads of overseas bottles this year. My favourite so far may well be one of Little Creatures (Australia) or St Lupulin Pale Ale by Odell Brewing Co, but if I had to pick just one then Flying Dog’s Gonzo Stout was bloomin’ excellent both times I tried it.

Best Overall Beer:

Flying Dog’s Raging Bitch waltzed in and out of my life quicker than any other beer this year, but it was tremendous and outrageous in every way. Watch Zak Avery’s late night tasting for more adjectives on this brilliant beer (at the bottom of this post).

Best UK Brewery:

Dark Star are fast becoming a favourite whilst BrewDog continue to push innovation (or whatever you prefer to call it) and for me the most consistent beers I’ve had have come from Bath Ales and Leeds Brewery. But for the rawness and taste of their (or his) beers, Crown Brewery (aka Stuart Ross) takes my vote, producing some of the most exciting beers of the year.

Best Overseas Brewery:

I haven’t had enough Mikkeller to name check them here, although they seem to push boundaries in a similar way to BrewDog. Goose Island and Sierra Nevada have both released good seasonal ales and every week I’m finding Belgian ales that I can’t believe I’ve not tried before. But the brewery who I say wow to most constantly is De Molen.

Best Bottle Label/Pump Clip:

BrewDog’s Atlantic IPA and Zephyr wins hands down thanks to the talents of illustrator Johanna Basford.

Pub/Bar of the Year:

It’s been a quiet pub year with most of my drinking done at home or in the fancy bars of Leeds, but for service, friendliness and setting, The Top Brink Inn at Mankinholes is more than deserved of a mention, an oasis after a long day on the Pennine Way.

So many places in Leeds deserve a mention (Mr Foley’s, North Bar, PIN, The Adelphi, Cross Keys and more) plus The Market Porter in London.

Beer Festival of the Year:

Having only been to a handfulthis year (Norwich, KWV and Saltaire) I’m limited in selection, but because it was part of a brilliant weekend in great company and provided one of the best beers of the year, the Pigs Ear in London takes my accolade.

Supermarket of the Year:

This is between Sainsbury’s, Co-op, M&S and Booths. I enjoyed the Sainsbury’s competition and M&S’s new range, and Coop is often overlooked despite a good range of ‘own brand’ beers. But it has to be Booths for depth of range and supporting local brewers.

Independent Retailer of the Year:

Not just cos it’s in Leeds, but because all the staff are great, the range is interesting and inclusive, and the prices remain reasonable, it is of course, Beer Ritz.

Online Retailer of the Year:

I’ve only ordered beer online once this year, from BeerMerchants (I’ve been to Beers of Europe physical store when I bought from there) so it will have to be them. Their safety conscious packaging and strong twitter presence would probably win them this anyway!

Best Beer Book:

Of course it’s Hops & Glory. Pete Brown rightly deserves his ‘Bill Bryson’ of beer writing moniker.

Best Beer Blog:

Wow, there’s so many I read on daily basis. But for me, I love Knut Albert’s writing and his interesting anecdotes. Mentions to Zak Avery for his video tastings which are of the highest quality, Dave Bailey for educating me on so many points of view I wouldn’t have considered and Martin Cornell’s Zythophile which I could spend hours poring over.

And I can’ help myself but mention the quality that doesn’t end there with great words this year by Ally, Pete, Reluctant, Boak & Bailey, The Beer Nut, Laura, Matt and Rob, Jeff, Leigh and lots of other people I’ll unfortunately need to leave off.

Of course Mark & Andy’s blog are both great too

Best Beer Twitterer:

The twitter community welcomed @realalereviews with open arms and without the many friends we’ve made via micro-blogging we wouldn’t be here still blogging and writing and sharing our beer drinking. But if I had to pick someone who’s 140 character musings keep me always entertained, I’d pick Woolpack Dave’s tweets from his far away corner of Cumbria (and Woolpack Ann’s replies!) or John Duffy’s tweets from across the Irish Sea.

Best Online Interactive Brewery:

As an online marketer this one has me asking all sorts of questions, (especially to do with the nomenclature of digital communication) like what makes a ‘best online interactive brewery’. If it means ‘making noise’ online then BrewDog make a big argument, but if it’s who’s sold the most beer by communicating via internet channels, then I don’t have that stats to answer? If it’s friendliest brewery online then Purity Ale have a good shout and most advanced technically, Flying Dog or Brooklyn Brewery over in the US should probably win.

So to cut a long story short I can’t really pick!

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year:

Smoked venison with goats’ cheese, fig and apple juice terrine and
Duchesse de Bourgogne at the British Guild of Beer Writers dinner. Sublime (and I don’t even like goats cheese!). Full menu from Adrian Tierney-Jones.

Open Category:

To copy Mark Dredge verbatim : Best Beer-Related Thing about 2009 is…All the new friends I’ve made and all the great new people I’ve met through beer. Oh and setting up a beer blog of course!

Next Year I’d Most Like To..:

If I win the lottery, join Mark in the USA and get to my Brooklyn Brewery tour that I missed in 2007. As well as keep writing for the people that like reading!

Recycled Beer Cans

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Recycled Beer Cans at Christmas

Stella Artois might claim to have the greenest ad campaign around at the moment showing offer their eco-friendly compostable packaging made from recycled paper, but window shopping around Lincoln Market on Sunday we spotted a stall making the most of the environmental effect of the beer industry by recycling alumnium beer cans into home decorations and toys.

My favourites were the Schweppes Hot Air Balloon and the Tiger beer fighter jet. Our friends at Real Lager Reviews will be happy too see lots of Heineken cans put to good use!

Tags: beer industry, cans, eco beer, heineken, lincoln christmas, market, recycling, schweppes, stella

The case of the colour changing Hooky Gold

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Andy over at Beerreviews.co.uk just posted the first review of the test #beerswap parcel that we exchanged a little while back. In it I packed four fine Oxfordshire (ish) ales including the fantastic Hooky Gold from Hook Norton Brewery.

I didn’t think anything of the Hooky Gold at the time, even admiring it’s shiny green label.

Until last night, when Alan popped over and we were chatting about the blog. We looked over at the original Hooky bottles that used to make up this our blog header, and noticed something odd – there was no Hooky Gold.

But of course there is! Hooky Gold was always in a red label with gold writing. Now the label is green!

When did this occur? How did we not notice?! We don’t mind Hooky, we like the green label, but when and why was it changed?!?!

Does anybody know?

Tags: Beer Reviews, Beer Swap, Hook Norton, Hook Norton Brewery, Hooky, hooky gold