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.JPG) When The Cock & Hen brewpub in Fulham opened in Spring, you heard it here first. This was the announcement, and here was my review. I was a big fan. Sadly, I've got bad news this time.
It was announced this morning that the Capital Pub Company are selling the freehold to Young's. It must have been an offer too good to refuse. The Cock & Hen was doing well, and Capital have had a bumper year. Fulham will lose a very special pub. Brewer Tony Lennon just called me to confirm the news, but offered some words of comfort. First off, he'll still be brewing Weasel and Bonobo down at The Florence in Herne Hill, which isn't changing hands. Second, the five barrel brew plant from The Cock & Hen will be held in storage until they find a new London venue to install it in. The pub will trade for another few weeks before Young's take over. If you haven't already, make sure you pay it a visit before then. It's at 360 North End Road, SW6 ( map).
Industry news just isn't my bag. Others do it better. That's why I haven't given much attention to the impending takeover of Scottish & Newcastle by Carlsberg and Heineken, which was announced last Friday. However, a piece of commentary by American beer writer Jay Brooks, posted on his blog earlier in the week, caught my eye:
"British pub-goers, publicans and pub operators, and even CAMRA’s real ale aficionados will all be dishearteningly unmoved by today’s news. I can’t help but think that’s a mistake. So much of our early microbreweries owe such a great debt to the heritage and history of English ales that it seems a shame to let this dismal milestone pass so cavalierly." I disagree, for the simple reason that S&N is a company that ditched its heritage long ago. The company that is about to be devoured and dismembered by Dutchmen and Danes is itself the result of largely destructive mergers. These days, Scottish & Newcastle brews in neither Scotland nor Newcastle. That's why wags have dubbed it "Ampersand Brewery", the logogram being the only part of the name that still applies.
Trite, eh? As I said, I don't do industry commentary. That's your lot.
 Pump clips that speak to dark-clad adolescent boys, a website to please Enrique Iglesias fans. The Hart Brewery in Little Eccleston, near Preston, is aiming for an odd demographic indeed.
I spotted the beer on the left at The Pembury Tavern recently. I didn't try it, but took a snap of the pump clip and resolved to find out more about the brewery. I've written recently about my dislike for the way real ale is marketed. I don't think I've seen a more extreme example than this. After listening to the Latino warbler on the website's front page (somebody wants you), check out this gallery of shame. I'm reminded of the scene in Peep Show when Jeremy, hunting for porn, finds Mark's stash of role playing magazines and wonders if his flatmate really does masturbate over scantily-clad elves.
Who does this stuff appeal to? I'd hazard a guess that women - not to mention men who've ever had sex with one - will be instantly turned off.
Grand Union is no more. During its lifetime, the Middlesex brewery won well-deserved awards for its wonderful Honey Porter and Bitter and supplied a number of London pubs. I've enjoyed their beers many times at The Crosse Keys near Monument. It's a crying shame to see such a competent brewery disappear. At the time of writing, their website is still online.
 I read on Stan Hieronymus' Appellation Beer that the National Beer Wholesalers Association is running a poll in connection with the US Presidential Election. They're asking people to choose which of the candidates they'd rather sit down and have a beer with. Just a bit of fun, or an example of a dangerous current of anti-intellectualism coursing through the veins of the American body politic?
Stan commented: ". . . I will not cast my vote for president (in the primary or general election) based upon which candidate I would rather have beer with . . . Apparently George Bush was that guy in 2000. Don’t people know he doesn’t drink?"
 After a year-long refurb, The Princess Louise in Holborn has reopened. The whole place has been given a much-needed deep clean, and several partitions have been added. The pub now consists of a number of private drinking areas, with a larger bar with a real fire to the rear. The etched glass and ceramics have never looked better. The listed gents' loo remains the same, but no longer reeks.
Good effort, Sam Smith's. Can we have some more good beer, too?
Information:
The Princess Louise is at 208-209 High Holborn, WC1V 7BW (map). It's part of Yorkshire brewer Samuel Smith's London pub estate. Only one cask ale is available - Old Brewery Bitter.
It's just been announced that Scottish & Newcastle's board has agreed to the final takeover bid presented by Carlsberg and Heineken. BBC News Online has the story.
Competition approval from the European Commission is still required, which may result in some shuffling about of assets, and of course the shareholders still need to accept the bid. As such the deal won't be completed for several months, at which point Britain's biggest brewer will be no more.
The British Beer and Pub Association reckon we're losing 67 pubs a month. That raw statistic was splashed across the national press earlier in the week. Predictably, the smoking ban is seen as a cause, along with the proliferation of cheap supermarket booze. Apparently folks who used to frequent the pub are deserting their locals in droves, instead choosing to squirrel away at home with cans of lager and packs of B&H.
 Meanwhile, all around me I see quality pubs thriving. The excesses of 1990s soullessness are being rolled back. Even pubcos like Mitchells & Butlers have converted branded drinking barns into characterful free houses, offering good food, real ale and exotic imported beers. The landlord at one of my local haunts is convinced his pub has benefited from the smoking ban. What's really going on?
If a pub relies on binge drinkers - those who are attracted by 20 cans of Stella for £8 - and people who want to smoke themselves to an early grave, chances are it's pretty unsalubrious. The people make the pub, after all. Should we mourn the loss of such places?
Something the statistics don't cover is how many of those 67 pubs re-open as licensed premises after the current owners give up on them. I'd expect most do. I'd be the first to admit my own neighbourhood isn't the most representative, but I can only think of one Clerkenwell pub that's closed down for good in the last five years. The Royal Mail, built into the Joseph Trotter Close estate by Exmouth Market, hasn't seen any life for some years now. Take a look at it in the photo, and tell me you're surprised.
Roger Protz has just launched a beer blog. It's hosted over at beer-pages.com.
If you've ever used the Good Beer Guide, you'll know Protz has edited CAMRA's bible for three decades. If you read What's Brewing?, Beers of the World or the trade press, you'll have seen his regular columns. He contributes to the Guardian, bringing beer writing to a broader audience. If you were active in left-wing politics in the 60s and 70s, it's likely you rubbed shoulders with Roger in a very different context.
When I started this website just over a year ago, it was the only active British beer blog. Since then I've been joined by at least a dozen others, including both professional beer writers and keen amateurs. To read those, and a host of other beer blogs from around the world, check out the links down on the left hand side of the page.
 I'm still not sure this is a good idea. Approaching an unmanned counter in a supermarket in search of a pint seemed a wrong-headed enterprise from the beginning.
The Bramley at Whole Foods (63–97 Kensington High Street, W8 5SE, website) tries to be a pub. There's a pub sign, hanging above a bar with hand pumps and keg fonts and fridges. Before long, a nice lady emerged from nowhere to take our order.
 For us, the illusion that this was a proper British pub fell at the first hurdle: both cask ales from Purity Brewing poured cloudy, and the pump clips were promptly reversed. Instead we settled for draught Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, a wonderful sharpener but a touch strong (5.6% abv) for the crack of noon. The ploughman's lunches we ordered to accompany it hit the spot, and were good value at under £6 (although camembert is an odd choice of cheese).
If you're drinking at The Bramley, every time you turn around and survey your surroundings, you're presented with teams of pasta chefs, a sushi bar and rows of identical tables. Combine that with wall-to-wall smugness from the West Londoners who've gone ga-ga for their new organic supermarket, and it's an unsettling experience indeed. Who would have thought that Whole Foods would be a concept imported from Texas? Apparently Europeans need people from America's deep south to teach us how to eat. It's a funny old world.
 Two summers ago, cider was all the rage. The carpet-bomb marketing campaign for Magner's over ice bore fruit in 2006.
The bottled Irish fizz might be an irredeemably poor product, but there were reports that proper, "real" ciders from England were enjoying renewed interest too. A poor summer and general lack of enthusiasm saw the global brand come unstuck in 2007, but the profile of fermented apples was raised along the way.
The owners of The Green Man in Fitzrovia (36 Riding House Street, W1W 7ES, map) clearly don't think the cider revolution is over quite yet. They're renovated a quiet, formerly drab pub to produce an uncluttered and light interior, without destroying original features. I like it.
There are four real ciders and a perry on draught, all from Weston's of Herefordshire (website). Click on the image to the right to read the list. I'd like to see smaller producers get a look in, but it would be churlish to complain -I can't think of another cider bar in town. On the beer front, there's Black Sheep Bitter and Fullers London Pride on the handpumps. More interesting is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from California as a regular keg beer.
The folks behind The Green Man aren't exactly ahead of the curve, but they're still offering something unique in Central London. I'm surprised no-one beat them to it.
Brew Dog are best known for their strong IPAs and imperial stouts. Now, it seems they swing both ways. They've just launched Edge, described as a cross between s Scottish 60/- and an English mild ale. What's special about it? It's a veritable bantamweight, at just 2.7% abv.
Casks have already been tapped at The Blackfriars in Glasgow (36 Bell Street, G1 1LG, map). Another interesting development from a brewery that loves to keep us guessing.
 Cute. A pub cobbled together from two containers, shipped across the world to London from New Zealand's South Island. It's been there for months, I grant you, but Sunday was the first time I'd visited the Speight's Ale House (map, website). It's been dumped on top of Temple tube, overlooking the Thames.
Inside, images of a deluded Kevin Keegan flashed across a silenced flat screen TV. Two Kiwi girls tucked into beer and cheap pies. A despondent Aussie barman, stumbling through his last shift, served us cold, fizzy pints of Speight's Old Dark. Very sweet and syrupy, it claims to be a brown ale but I suspect it's bottom fermented. Not bad, not good.
If you want to sample the Speight's range on tap (Gold Medal Ale, Pilsener, Old Dark, Distinction Ale), hurry: apparently they'll be dismantling the bar in March. What will London's antipodeans do? Well, there's a Walkabout downstairs, and it serves Speight's. They can complain about Britain and drone on about sports in there instead.
Former British Guild of Beer Writers member Roy Bailey is selling off his collection of over 200 books and other publications on beer, pubs and breweries. Some are over 30 years old. The collection is online here.
After Carlsberg and Heineken raised their offer price to £8 per share, the board of Scottish & Newcastle agreed yesterday to enter into takeover talks. BBC News Online has the full story, if you're interested. It is Britain's biggest brewer, after all.
 Do you salivate at the sight of all those casks on stillage, or do you yearn for a simpler choice? Do you enjoy circulating around the lofty hall, or do you secretly long for the comfort of the pub? Do you love to be surrounded by beer nuts, or does the sight of their brewery t-shirts, leather flagons and rampant obesity make you want to run out, grab a mineral water and hit the gym?
As someone who certainly isn't a "ticker", I'm never on a mission to try as many beers as I can. I'd prefer more attention to be given to the music and the surroundings, and less to the length of the beer list. So are CAMRA festivals really aimed at people like me? I want to enjoy them, I really do, but I'm often left feeling unfulfilled.
An exception was the Great British Beer Festival. It enjoys a far better age and gender mix thanks to its high profile, and there's a real atmosphere of fun for a change. At too many others, all you see are the same old faces, slouching from bar to bar in silence, knocking back as many half pints as they can, engaged in a pained march toward chronic liver failure and the end of their depressing lives.
The photograph above was taken by reader Rob Barrow at the 2007 GBBF. It was his winning entry for December's Visions of Beer contest. You can see Rob's picture with all the others in the gallery.
 Press releases rarely set my world on fire. However, something caught my eye in one released on behalf of Springhead, a Notts micro headed by one of the world's few female brewmasters.
"Springhead focuses on a much smaller selection of products compared with many microbreweries in the UK. By limiting the number of ales produced, the team has been able to focus on the the quality of its core products rather than spending time constantly developing new recipes" That isn't marketing speak - it's common sense, and sets a fine example. Whether or not it played a part in its near death experience last year, I maintain that the Archers strategy of churning out scores of novelty beers every year is folly. We all know that people stick with names they know. In the case of the multinational brands, that knowledge comes through exposure to mass-media marketing and ubiquity. It's an uphill struggle for the smaller players we love. Microbrewers producing quality beer need to be realistic and build up consumer confidence in their catchment area. Concentrating on a small and select line-up of quality recipes, refined over time, is the best way to do that. Information:
Springhead are promoting their flagship golden ale, Roaring Meg, as a beer choice for Valentine's Day. It's an enjoyable and refreshing quaffer with a honeyed edge and a 5.5% abv punch. Sadly, it's no longer bottle conditioned, undergoing a cold filtering process before it leaves the brewery. It's stocked by a number of national supermarket chains.
Septics aren't known for being funny, but The Onion is an honourable exception. I was introduced to the online satirical journal by a colleague from Maryland a few years ago. We were teaching American kids whose rich and famous parents had shipped them off to England for the summer.
While browsing through their archives, I found this article about craft beer: Teens Get Drunk On Award-Winning Microbrew.
It's got nothing to do with beer, but my all time favourite has to be this one. Go on, forward it to the homophobe in your life.
 Timothy Taylor Landlord. Lovely stuff, and still rockin' after all these years.
Chris "Podge" Pollard is writing a pub guide to London in the style of his 2006 work, Around Bruges in 80 Beers. Once again, there'll be 80 entries, each profiling a different pub and a beer you can try there.
Podge has asked me to consult the readers of Stonch's Beer Blog on where to find the finest pint of Landlord in London. The pub will be included in the book as the best place to try this iconic pale ale. Two provisos: it shouldn't be The Bricklayer's Arms in Putney (that's going to be featured in connection with a different Timothy Taylor beer), and Landlord needs to be a regular draught beer, and not an occasional guest.
All suggestions gratefully received.That episode of Doctor Who with the weeping angels and the really fit bird has just started on BBC 3. Back of the net. That'll distract me from my groaning guts for the next 45 minutes.
How very zeitgeist of me. The virus sweeping Britain caught up with me late, but by Sunday morning there was no doubt - I'd succumbed. Frankly, even the thought of a fermented alcoholic beverage strikes fear into my sorry heart, so I have nothing for you today.
Perhaps you'd like to read this gloriously ill-informed article about microbreweries that appeared in yesterday's Observer?
PS. If anyone reading is knowledgeable about such things: can I just stick my Converse in the washing machine? I went for a walk on Hampstead Heath the other day and they got really muddy - the canvas was soaked through. I'd ask my mum, but she isn't answering the phone.
Just announced, the four finalists for CAMRA's National Pub of the Year award:
• The Turks Head, St Helens, Merseyside • The Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty, Heronsgate, Hertfordshire • The Old Spot, Dursley, Gloucestershire • The Blue Peter Hotel, Kirkholm, Dumfries, Galloway The award will be made on February 15th. The four were chosen from a longer list of 16 regional winners. The Bricklayer's Arms in Putney (review here) was London's hopeful. I've only been to one of the finalists, The Land of Liberty. You can read my review here. It's very much a "traditional" venue, in keeping with the preoccupations of the average CAMRA member. I expect the same is true of the other three. It would be nice to see different and more contemporary interpretations of the public house get some recognition.
It looks like Czech brewer Budvar will remain state-owned until 2010, when the next general elections will be held. Evan Rail has the story on his Beer Culture blog, which is hosted by the Prague Daily Monitor. The fear, of course, is that American giant Anheuser-Busch, who already distribute Budvar beers in the USA, will be at the front of the queue if a privatisation goes ahead.
The White Horse in Parson's Green will be hosting an event to celebrate Burns Night. From Friday 25th January and throughout that weekend, there'll be a range of Scottish cask beers on offer, including Harviestoun Schiehallion, a cask lager and a favourite of mine. Among the specials will be a number of beers we sampled during my mate's stag weekend in Edinburgh last year.
The pub is at 1-3 Parson's Green, SW6 4UL (Tel: 020 7736 2115, website).
 The advert depicted in this post is probably familiar. It's appeared in each of the Times, Guardian and Independent, and is on the cover of this month's What's Brewing? Moreover, it can be seen on souvenir t-shirts, stretched across the paunches of embittered social misfits at any given beer festival.
Wychwood's ads for Hobgoblin, their signature dark ale, are adored by much of the existing real ale fraternity, but I'd contend that they alienate everyone else. Another variant featured the legend "Afraid of the dark, lagerboy?" Wank, wank, wank. Someone even took them to the ASA, although (quite rightly) the complaint was rejected.
What kind of message does this ad send out, with its geeky, sub-Tolkien imagery and lame attempt at humour and provocation? I think it tells people that real ale is the preserve of twats, and that if you drink it you're probably one too.
Information:
I don't like the ads, but the beer's pretty decent. In cask form, it's widely available on the free trade. If you live in my neck of the woods, Hobgoblin is the house ale at a pub of the same name on 73 White Lion St, near Angel tube (N1 9PF, map). Until very recently the place was a DJ bar called Jay Cubed. It still has a clubby feel to it, with late opening hours.
The very first thing I wrote on this website was a credo (of sorts). It's still there, at the very bottom of the page. If you aren't familiar with it, scroll down and have a look, but do come back afterwards. In order to preserve the first flourish of my virtual pen, I have resisted adding to the list. However, further annoyances have sprung to mind over the last twelve months.
Never trust people who can't name their favourite locals without hesitation, deviation or repetition. Never trust people who have holidayed in Dubai. Never trust people who think they can write meaningful beer tasting notes when they're half cut. Never trust people who wear a garment called a "fleece" when not on a camping expedition. Never trust British people who refer to whisky as "Scotch". Never trust people who use the expression "political correctness" other than ironically. Never trust people who are inordinately proud to be called a "beer geek", or a geek of any kind. Never trust people who think that feigning ignorance of and disdain for all popular culture makes them intelligent. Never trust people who haven't worked behind a bar or in a restaurant at any time in their lives. Never trust blokes who have can read The Daily Mail without feeling dirty and used. Never trust people who think that to be good, a pub has to be stuck in the 1970s. Never, ever, trust people who don't have a soft spot for Girls Aloud.
If you're wondering why I've suddenly opted for this splenetic venting, as opposed to the usual cheery-beery stuff, it's because I've been unwell and unable to enjoy my daily pub fixes. Those of you who think it's fun to do all your drinking from bottles at home probably won't understand why that's so bad, but then I don't understand you either. So we're quits. Bah, bah, and thrice bah.
Carlsberg and Heineken haven't given up on their ambitious joint bid for Scottish & Newcastle. The UK Takeover Panel has given them until 21 January to make an offer to shareholders or walk away. So S&N, Britain's biggest brewer, has refused to endorse the consortium's proposal, which is currently an offer of 750p per share. Reuters reported on Monday that the Danes and the Dutch are considering raising this to 770p. With the market in it's current poor state, I'd expect shareholders would be keen to cash in their chips. There may be pressure on the directors to co-operate, avoiding a hostile or aborted bid.
You can read previous posts about this story here and here.
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Stonch lives in London, where he runs a pub..JPG)
When The Cock & Hen brewpub in Fulham opened in Spring, you heard it here first. This was the announcement, and here was my review. I was a big fan. Sadly, I've got bad news this time. 
