Please note: the status of this info is best described as rumour.
Here in South Cumbria Robinson own the old Hartleys of Ulverston pub estate. Recently Robinsons have put freeholds of number of the pubs on the market.
So far, so good, Robbies/Hartleys pubs are dull, as a rule.
Unfortunately, Robinsons are attempting to put a clause in the sale which says "cannot be used as a pub in future".
Apart from the dubious legality of this alleged practice it is pretty damn nasty and spiteful.
Sadly, this is standard practice when brewers / pubcos get rid of pubs.
I agree though - it's scandalous that this goes on.
A private landlord can so often succeed wher pubcos and brewers have failed .A case in question is the Grove in Huddersfield - bought from Enterprise less than 2 years ago as a dead and totally unviable pub, and now one of the towns most successful pubs, winning loads of awards , in the GBG, and going from strength to strength.
Let us know what you find out. I can remember pubs being sold with covenants of that sort, back in the days before private house prices got so high that there was no danger of a delicensed pub finding its way back into the trade.
It's the time of year. Yesterday I was at Pigs Ear. Today I don't feel fit for even virtual ire.
Wallowing among the stouts and porters, my biggest surprise of the day was "Youngs" Winter Warmer, which tasted exactly as it used to in the mid-70s. I remember getting totally blasted on that in 1976, give or take a year. We thought the woody taste was due to the state of the wooden pins it used to come in, but it seems we must've been wrong.
I didn't try that but oscillated yesterday between the lighter/golden brews and the stouts/porters until the oscillations got too pronounced and we went home. One I can recall that was very good - American IPA, Red Squirrel.
Good as it was, the Pig's Ear - more this year than previously - seems to have fallen into the trap of thinking that, because it's Autumn/ Winter, the beers need to be of the rich chestnut/ dark/ winter warmer varieties.
Yes, there were exceptions - Crouch Vale Brewers Gold for example.
But where on earth did this concept of thinking that, because it's dark outside, you need more roasted barley in your brews? I'm sure there must be many people who really don't change their preference for beer depending on the season.
Going to a winter beer festival is like going to a greetings card shop in December to buy a birthday card. As many people have birthdays in that month as in any other, and yet the choice of cards for such people is severely limited by the preponderance of Christmas cards.
End of rant (sound of distant cheers). My hope for 2008 is that organisers of beer festivals remember the followers of ALL beer styles, whatever the season.
I know people who haven't changed their preferences for decades. You'd think it'd be a waste of their time going to festivals, but some of them do.
I'm not sure you're right. Card shops have permanent displays of yukky tacky birthday cards, and changing displays of horrible invented-occasion cards. If there's a quiet season they don't add more birthday cards, they invent another occasion.
I agree to some extent - I much prefer weaker session bitters, and was told that much of them had gone by yesterday. However, I soon found at least six to try, all pretty good. My wife though is a cider fan, and the choice this year was rather poor.
But it's a great place for meeting people. You're not Morris are you?
It's difficult to buy beers if they're not being brewed! For example, you'd find it very difficult to buy a winter ale in August, unless this particular beer had been stored since the winter (and yes I do know one Champion Beer of Britain winner that did just that). I also helped out one festival organiser once, who told me he had ordered a beer from a brewery I had been to the week before. At this visit I asked if this particular beer, being one of my favourites, was being brewed at the moment, and was told they had no plans to brew it again. So I informed said FO, who asked the beer agency where they planned to get this beer from, and they said "the brewery". Ho hum. Now if I hadn't had that conversation with said FO, the beer may well have turned up, and it may well have been another beer brewed by the same brewery or even a different brewery, but labelled as the beer ordered.
Not that I'm accusing anyone of anything... but I did spend 6 years helping to run a beer agency...
Anyway, before I started rambling, I was going to say that beer follows fashion just as any other retail business does, and it may be the fashion at the moment to just brew dark beers and not brew light hoppy beers. In which case, your rant was pointless.
Indeed, e.g. Wye Valley DG Stout is only now available on draught. I think that they did brew it year round for a while but have now gone to the "dark ales in Winter" thinking - if this is true why does Guiness not shut down for the summer??
Oh Lord, would that were so. We come across every year just around Easter and by then all the nice, heavy, dark ales are gone and all we find are the thin, almost-hoppy, blonde beers (sorta like bottom-fermented lagers, if there were such a thing).
I fondly remember those Yorkshire ales that were BOTH malty and hoppy.
Sorry to be the pedant on the block, but you got your top and bottom the wrong way round. Lagers are bottom fermenting and ales are top. Which is a good mnemonic IMHO.
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