Wake up and smell the beer, says Roger Protz

Does your beer taste better now that the smoking ban has arrived? We're all keeping our fingers crossed and hoping the great stub-out will mean added custom for pubs.

But one aspect of the ban we have overlooked is not just a smoke-free atmosphere but better-tasting beer as well.

The food writer Susan Nowak and her husband, Fran, recently moved to Plymouth. Sue emailed me last week to say: "We don't drink in the pub on the quay - if the horrendous fug of ciggie smoke didn't drive you out, the karaoke would."

The Nowaks use a yacht club close by which offers, Sue says, "excellent real ales". But last week Fran thought he'd check out the pub now that it was smoke-free.

"It does three cask beers that haven't seemed in good condition in the past," Sue said. "But when Fran came back he said he'd had a brilliant pint and thought the beer tasted better."

Was it, she asked, the lack of smoke in the bar that improved the taste of the beer - and could heavy tobacco smoke actually affect real ale? Could smoke permeate a pint in any way?

This doesn't just apply to cask ale. Beer of all kinds is a sensitive soul. Unlike wine or spirits, it's comparatively low in alcohol and can be ruined by pongs in the pub.

I shall never forget dropping into a pub in rural Suffolk many years ago - the beer was in fine nick and the menu looked tempting. I noticed there were no chips or fried food on offer.

"Don't do fried anything," the landlord advised. "Oil or fat just ruins the head on beer - and my regulars want some foam on their pints."

Sue Nowak reminds me that vinegar has the same effect. "It turns beer," she says. At £2.70 in my neck of the woods, you don't want a pint of vinegar.

As for cigarette smoke, my theory is that it settles, impregnating the head on beer as successfully as it does your hair and clothes. The aroma of beer - cask ale in particular - is a delicate balance of malt, hops and fruit notes produced by yeast and fermentation.

They can be overpowered all too easily by the fug created by a few packets of King Size.

Cigarettes are complex: there's the stale, noxious stink left behind when dozens of smokers have left a pub. And there's the curiously sweet, almost perfumed aroma of fresh tobacco. If they settle on top of your pint, malt and hops will just keel over and die.

The new smoke-free era should welcome a legion of non-smokers to pubs. They can enjoy a meal and won't need to wash their hair or clothes when they get home.

But most importantly, they can appreciate the aroma and flavour of beer as never before.

There are some great beers to savour. I read with pleasure in last week's MA that Woodforde's in Norfolk is installing new equipment that will enable the brewery to almost double annual production to 28,000 barrels a year.

All over the country, craft brewers are reporting an upturn in demand. Their success is based on the fact that they use the finest malts and hops to create fascinating and sumptuous flavours in their beers.

The beer world is changing. We may be drinking less, but people are increasingly concerned with the ingredients used in beer and the origins of the ingredients that make up their pints.

Increasingly, brewers are giving information to their customers, listing the varieties of malts and hops used. Discerning drinkers are able to distinguish a beer made from pale and crystal malts from one brewed with an infusion of roasted barley. They have learned to spot a Fuggle hop from a Golding and can detect the tangy citrus notes of an imported German or American variety.

All these pleasures will be heightened by the stub-out. Beer can now blossom in a smoke-free environment. When you sniff your pint, you will get malt and hops, not a blast of Embassy or Marlboro.

The pub trade should use a simple, collective slogan: "Come on in - and now really enjoy your beer."

As for me, I shall hurry down to Plymouth for a pint with the Nowaks. Preferably without the karaoke.

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