Morning Advertiser: That’s men-tertainment

Enticing blokes into the pub shouldn’t be too hard, should it? Serve decent beer and they will surely come. But it’s not quite that simple in a climate of declining beer consumption and under-pressure consumer spending.

In tough trading conditions, a pub needs to offer more than the promise of a good pint to encourage men to part with their hard-earned cash.

“Guys go to pubs to be entertained and for a great night out, not just a good drink. They could get that at home,” says Martin Green, managing director of pub gaming company Redtooth. “We’ve been developing products that help pull punters in, even on quieter nights.”

To read more click here.


The beer mat show

 

The beermat. A banal part of every pub’s scenery, or a creative piece of art? Well, usually the former (along with salty pork scratchings and hanging baskets) but for one month only, in London’s Bun House, beer mats are being celebrated.

As many pubs close throughout the UK, it not only means that we are losing a central and vital part of the community but also the traditional objects associated with them. One such thing being the beermat, something to take home at the end of the night as a reminder of that amazing pub you stumbled across, or a handy substitute for paper when desperately trying to give someone your number.

At his latest exhibition, Cedar Lewisohn is inviting the punters to put their drink down on the artwork, and admire. Artists such as Ben Eine, Sarah Baker, Gavin Turk and Bob and Roberta Smith are showcasing their work. The exhibition has been commissioned to highlight the issue of pub closures throughout the UK, as well as a decline in their industries. It will be running from 29th July to 29 August at The Bun House, 96 Peckham high street.

So pop down, check it out and afterwards quench your thirst with a perfect pint in your local.

Here are our Use Your Local beer mats that were released in 2010 to encourage everyone to score their local.


My evolution as a beer drinker

Dan Vaux-Nobes, of Essex Eating fame, recounts his transformation from a Stella-swigging teen to a lover of local beers…

My earliest real memory of alcohol is the smell. I remember being propelled down a 1970’s East London high street by my mum one sunny morning, past the huge gothic Victorian pile of a pub on the corner and suddenly being enveloped in the most incredible warm, comforting hoppy aroma emanating from within. I was intrigued, and every time our route passed the same spot, the smell absolutely fascinated me.

Many years passed before I settled into drinking as recreational pastime proper. Admittedly, as with most teenagers, there was a very brief, ill-judged flirtation with Thunderbird/Strong cider/20-20, but it didn’t take me long to realise beer or lager was my drink du jour, namely Stella Artois.

Imagine if you will, the oft reproduced sketch of the evolution of ape to man. Hairy crouched monkey over time gradually developing through Homo Erectus *snigger* and finally into modern man.  I like to imagine my drinking represented like this. My swaggering teenage pub posturing, sporting an earring, reeking of Kouros and swigging from bottles of Stella is represented by an ape just beginning to rise from the crouch and taking his first tentative steps.

I thought I was sophisticated, sipping my Belgian brew. I now realise I was anything but. Although I had got one thing right, something, which helped to push me a few steps up the beer evolutionary scale. I’d read an article once informing me how inferior beer in cans was to its bottled brethren, which apparently was more likely to have been imported and therefore more often than not, tasted better. I took this advice to heart and never really got into swigging flat, metallic tasting booze from cans like my mates. No, I was a connoisseur…. of sorts.

The next stage in my evolution took almost twenty years, I slowly worked my way through hard to source, trendy imported bottled lagers, Italian, Japanese, American…I considered myself the international playboy of lager drinkers. Albeit still pretty damn hairy and crouched and yet to discover fire, but I was getting there.

Then, last year I moved to Bristol and absolutely everything changed, a complete evolutionary jump.

Bristol and the South West in general has lovely beer and ale, and it’s everywhere. No one was more surprised than me at how quickly I ditched my favourite trendy imported lagers, and started drinking pints of Bath Ales Gem, Bristol Beer Factory Sunrise, Otter or Sharp’s Doom Bar. All of it absolutely cracking, all locally produced and absolutely a million miles away from the mass-produced Belgian crap I’d drunk way back at the beginning. I’m not quite ready to join the bearded ranks of the rabid real ale drinker just yet, but I’m getting there.

If you asked me now how I’m portrayed in the drinking evolution scale, I’d say I’m almost a Homo Sapien, still a bit hairy arsed and stooped, but with a bit more refinement, I reckon my evolutionary beer journey is almost complete.

 

The New Breed of Pub

Mark Charlwood aka Chunk, writer of beer and brewing blog ‘Beer. Birra. Bier‘, describes the emergence of a new breed of pub…

There are those with the football shirts hanging up and the big screens and the lager fonts, those in the country with a thatched roof and a real fire, those with a guest house above and a great roast dinner. Pubs come in different shapes and sizes, from countryside to city centre, evolving from Anglo-Saxon inn to Greenwich Village gastro, an evolution that continues with every pull of the pump handle and every pint of pale ale, an evolution that makes its next stride forward in the form of pubs like Craft Beer Co.

Craft Beer Co, nestled snugly between Farringdon and Chancery Lane, London’s newest beer destination. A pub that can boast 37 (yes 37!) draft beers and a bottle selection that’ll make you do a happy dance. Yeah, it’s cool and contemporary inside with a flash mirrored ceiling and great bar snacks, but whatever, it’s all about the beer. A whopping great beer selection that’s been hand picked to showcase beer at it’s very best – irrespective of style, country of origin, method of dispense or cost.

The one-off casks from the best breweries in Britain, the West Coast IPA’s from California and the sour beers of Belgium; beer is cool again, and there’s a thirst for more than just ordinary bitter. People want to drink good beer, and this new wave of pubs is happy to serve it to them. Craft follows in the footsteps of its sister pub Cask Pub & Kitchen, beyond that London also has The Rake in Borough, a Draft House at Tower Bridge, Clapham and Battersea, The Euston Tap and a Brewdog Bar on the horizon at Camden. All pubs with something in common, a huge variety of fantastic world beer and a desire to get people drinking it. As far as quality and selection are concerned, it’s a great time to be a beer drinker and a pub goer!

So is this a short-lived trend that’ll go away as quickly as it arrived, or is this the next big step in the development or our treasured pub? Will these pubs replace the ones we currently drink in, or will they survive alongside them? Time will tell, I’ll be at the Craft whilst we wait to find out …