When is a pint not a pint? Phil Dixon reckons the Campaign for Real Ale is in danger of losing its head over its full-measure campaign
A downside of popular pubs is that it is often impossible not to hear the conversations of those crammed in next to you while you are dining. Indeed, there are occasions that encourage the diner to relish the thought of using a steak knife to amputate the fingers of the couple a yard away, addicted to continuously texting their (obviously equally sad) acquaintances.
While in my locality eavesdropping is a common occurrence, the local Black Country twang and the use of the word "Yam" to start every third sentence - it's not for nothing this neck of the woods is known as "Land of the Yam Yams" - renders any eavesdropper oblivious to the actual content of the discussion.
The Wednesday night after the English smoking ban started, however, was an exception - the two gentlemen next to my beloved and I were having a clear, concise discourse on the subject of English ale.
There is a certain irony in an inability to comprehend neighbours, mixed with a capacity to grasp every noun and adjective that, in this case, a Californian and a Texan can utter.
After exchanging the usual pleasantries regarding Iraq, George W and his IQ, Al Gore, Hilary Clinton et al, we eventually turned to beer, as in cask ale. "What's your favourite?" the Texan enquired.
"Locally it's Batham's premier award-winning bitter. The good news is that one of their pubs (the Swan, in Chaddesley) is down the road. Would you like to indulge?" I offered.
"You bet," they responded.
Four days into the ban, I wondered how it would have affected this wet-led establishment. The lounge (on a jazz night) was like a rush-hour Central Line tube - so the bar it had to be. Experienced licensees Ron and Nadine Fucho have certainly got the place buzzing, and the ale was in tip-top condition.
Our American cousins were suitably impressed with the midweek standing-room-only ambience. It was then that I saw a copy of the Campaign for Real Ale's (Camra) What's Brewing, trotting out the perennial accusation that licensees short-change the public by serving a head on the beer within the pint measurement, as per the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) code of practice.
Has anyone at Camra any awareness of how angry cask-ale retailers in all parts of the licensed trade feel when they are accused of deceiving their regular clientele?
I surveyed the sea of contented faces in the pub. I sipped my superb £1.95 pint of bitter, accompanied by a slight sense of outrage that it could be implied that Ron and Nadine were part of a conspiracy to con customers.
A kidnap fantasy (not that one) emerged, of abducting Camra's national committee and whisking them off on a European tour; sampling the two-fingered head of an Amstel in a Dutch "brown" bar, nipping down the Rhine to Düsseldorf and visiting Zum Uerige for the best (according to locals) "altbier" in the city, served as two-thirds liquid, one-third froth.
We could undertake, in my humble opinion, "probably the most enjoyable sampling in the world" comparing a UK 568ml pint of Carlsberg (including 37p duty) for about £2.75p with one at Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens - after paying your £8.00 admission fee, you can enjoy a 500ml pint in a plastic glass for just under a fiver (including 13.4p duty at 2006 prices).
Incidentally, I am no expert on logistics or Danish overheads - but how can Carlsberg transfer the product by truck and sea and pay nearly three times more duty, only to find that their finest beer is being sold in the UK for half the price than it is in a pub only 800 metres away from the brewery where it is produced? Answers on a postcard, please...
Mary Poppins fantasies
I digress, but the point is a simple one: to accuse the UK's licensees of a rip-off is a bit like claiming that Mary Poppins moonlights in a Manchester massage parlour.
Camra appears to still be in denial over Wetherspoon's disaster in actually trying to implement its policy. Does anyone really believe that the UK Government, in the current climate, is going to pass a law to force today's youthful generation to drink more Stella in a pint than they do at present?
I do, though, have some sympathy for the fact that the 5% head on beer is now often the minimum, not as, per-code, a maximum. Indeed, sadly in some pub chains, a 7% to 10% head is frequently the norm.
My advice to Camra is to join with the industry in ensuring that the code is genuinely implemented, and enabling all those who care about cask ale to work together to promote it to its maximum opportunity.
On the subject of the current Government, it is amazing to see how many of them admitted to smoking cannabis, especially when students in the '70s and '80s.
As a fellow '70s student, I know it was something you had to do - otherwise the Incredible String Band just didn't sound that incredible.
What price social responsibility?
I think the industry is missing an opportunity. When politicians get up on their pedestals about alcohol and children in pubs, why don't we ask Cabinet members the age at which they first tried to get served? I also take exception to the use of the term "serving children".
Seventeen-year-olds in work or in the army do not consider themselves children. My concern is that is if we allow the assumption that 17-year-olds are children to go unchallenged, it will lend more credence to the notion of raising the legal age to 21.
Where the industry does shoot itself in both feet is in the price of soft drinks. Along with the Sinclair C5, Barbie doll, frisbee, Betamax video, and Austin Allegro, the invention of post-mix cola was, in my view, not the 20th century's finest hour.
It produces (unless you are tied to silly prices) a fantastic, high-grossing profit margin. It should do, because in the vast majority of cases pubs charge more for a pint of instant mash (post-mix) cola than for a pint of ale or lager. Like the effect on the syrup base, such practices only dilute the argument that this is a socially-responsible sector.
phildixoncmbii@aol.com