Drink Talking: Steven Prescott
Strangeways employs local people to brew local beer and it is essential to keep it so says Steven Prescott, regional director for CAMRA, Greater Manchester.
"Interbrew to close Boddingtons' Strangeways Brewery." "Not again," I thought.
My first major trauma concerning a family brewer was Mitchell's of Lancaster.
I was among a group of friends who would often travel to Lancaster to sample Mitchell's beers, especially the ESB served in the Carpenters Arms.
On one visit to purchase a firkin of ESB, we travelled by train with a wheelbarrow. That trip's only problem lay in persuading the railway guard that a wheelbarrow and a firkin are, in fact, hand luggage and not goods!
Unfortunately, Mitchell's decided to follow the trend of the time - to stop brewing and become a pub company.
Lancaster is now bereft of breweries and the majority of pubs stock national brands. Needless to say, Lancaster does not have the same pulling power any more, and has lost some character and the uniqueness that local produce has to offer.
What has this got to do with the Boddingtons brewery? You can buy a pint of Boddingtons virtually anywhere in the world; it is not a local beer any more. It is owned by a megacorp which appears to be happy wandering around the continents buying up breweries mainly for their brand names. Perhaps one day Interbrew may look further afield. So will Klingon or Romulan Ale remain safe?
The Strangeways brewery employs local people and has a local following for the beer. It has witnessed Manchester growing from a Lancastrian industrial town to a world-class city.
One train of thought is that as we still have our brewery providing the people of Manchester with a local beer and are kind-hearted, we do not mind sharing it with the world. So long as the brewery stands and brews Boddingtons in Manchester, at Strangeways, then it's still a local's beer.
The brewers of Britain, be they family, independent, regional or micro-breweries, are the owners and custodians of Britain's best crown jewels outside of the Tower of London. I believe they have a duty to protect the local British pint served in the local British pub.
Once a brewery is lost everyone along the line is affected.
The loyal workforce is either made redundant or moved across the country and a pub company takes over with the inevitable cost increases to the landlord. Last to suffer is the ever-ignored consumer.
Is it too much to ask for a locally-brewed pint in your local?
