Is the difference between a bar and a pub becoming irrelevant?

Last month, the Great British Pub Awards named Purecraft Bar in Birmingham the Best Beer Pub/Bar in the UK.

I was delighted. As one of the judges of this category, it was my solemn duty to visit the place and test their commitment to serving great beer. It was a tough job, but I got through it.

Purecraft has been open for 18 months. At first glance, it doesn’t seem an obvious choice for a great beer pub. It’s in a huge site in the heart of Birmingham, and definitely feels more like a bar than a pub. It’s all high ceilings, bare floors and minimal decoration, if you were to look in briefly and then move on without engaging anyone, you might think it was cold and unwelcoming. But you’d be wrong.

Keg & Cask

Purecraft benefited from the wording of the category clearly stating it was the best ‘pub or bar’. Also, for the first time this year, the category was judged on the quality of all beer, not just cask ale, reflecting the growth of craft keg beers. Purecraft sells a lot of keg.

But to think in this binary way — pub or bar, cask or keg — is becoming less and less useful in a rapidly changing beer and pub world. It completely misses the point of why Purecraft is set up the way it is.

The bar is designed to appeal to women as much as men. It’s bright, light and airy, and during my visit — which took place over a Friday lunchtime — women came in to drink and eat both individually and in groups.

It’s also centred around a genuine obsession with matching beer and food. Given that more and more drinking occasions involve food, and given the increasing literature available on how to pair the two (beer writer Stephen Beaumont’s new Beer and Food Companion should be on every publican’s Christmas wish-list), it’s frankly bewildering that more pubs are not pushing this link.

At Purecraft, all members of staff are talked through the menu each day, and are invited to sample the beers that have been recommended to go with each dish.

There’s a ‘head of beer’ who looks after the range, the cellars and how the beers are communicated. There are regular Sunday night beer tastings, and a range of imaginatively constructed beer flights to encourage people to explore. The management recognises tone is as important as content, and strives to present beer without being patronising or snobbish about it.

Staff

The beer induction, topped up by monthly training sessions, results in great staff retention.

The more I was impressed by Purecraft, the harder I pushed them. One poor barman had to endure me asking increasingly mean questions: What would you serve me if I asked for a pint of Carling? What would you say if I said, I’ve heard about craft beer, can I try one of those please? Each question had a quick answer and a sample of beer that I might like.

Like other strong contenders in this category, many of the strengths of Purecraft came from a new, retailed-based approach to selling beer.

These skills are not necessarily learned from the traditional pub world, but from principles of training and presentation that are common across successful new branded food and drink concepts. When you’re in a bar like this, you can imagine it being replicated in other cities — the very opposite of what makes a great pub.

Taste

So I’d be feeling a bit uncomfortable if Purecraft had won based on what I’ve just described — impressive though it all is. The category might say ‘pub or bar’, but surely a traditional pub should be the champion of good beer?

Well, none of the above is the main reason Purecraft won. The clincher — for me at least — was that on the day of my visit, the condition of the cask ale was the best I’ve tasted anywhere all year.

Pubs change. They always have and they always will. But some standards remain. Cask ale is a relationship between the publican, the brewer and the ale itself.

Great publicans have to know and understand the beer and how it develops in their cellars. Purecraft may have a lot of new ideas, and I hope to see many
of them becoming commonplace across pubs, but it’s their dedication and understanding of the core, timeless basics of great cask ale that made them winners.