New brewery and visitor centre for Belvoir - Nottingham CAMRA

Post Box
Cold beer
Sir,
As the local Cask Marque Assessor I just have to reply to the comments about Cask Marque made
by the Irritable Cellarman in Issue 83 of the Nottingham Drinker. He complains that pubs that have
achieved the Cask Marque accreditation dispense their beers at too low a temperature. Well, it is
true that a pub serving beers below 10 o C can achieve Cask Marque status, but they are very much
the exception, rather than the rule.
Cask Marque score four parameters during their inspections; temperature, appearance, aroma and
flavour. Each parameter can be scored 5, 3, 2 or 0. Each and every beer must score a minimum of 16
/ 20 for the account to pass. Two passes are required to gain accreditation. Within the temperature
parameter a beer dispensed at 9.5 o C would score only 2 points. It must, therefore, score 5 points
for each of the remaining parameters to achieve a 'pass' rating. This means that not only must it
smell and taste perfectly acceptable, but it must not show any signs of chill haze, something that
cask beers are increasingly likely to do at temperatures below 10 o C.
I would agree with Irritable Cellarman that beers should not be 'warm', nor should they
be 'room temperature' - which is usually about 20 o C - but they should, indeed, be
served, as he asks for, at a 'good cellar temperature' - which is normally
recommended to be 11 to 13 o C. A temperature of 10 to 14 o C scores the maximum
5 points on our inspections. If it is 14 to 15.5 o C it scores 3 points; above 15.5 o C - nil
point!
If Irritable Cellarman chooses to frequent pubs that do not have Cask Marque
accreditation, preferring them to those which are accredited, then he will run the risk of
getting beers served at wildly varying temperatures, from very cold to very warm. In 2006
we carried out an exercise whereby we checked the temperature of beers served at pubs
adjacent to Cask Marque accredited pubs. I have just checked back on my score sheets and
Plough Monday
Sir,
They were celebrating Plough Monday in some of the pubs near us
in the vale of Belvoir on 7th January. Do you have any idea what
this is about? Geoff Wallace, Hose.
Sub- editor Steve Westby replies:
References to Plough Monday date back to the late 15th century, it
is the traditional start of the English agricultural year, marking the
resumption of work after the Christmas period and falls on the
first Monday after Twelfth Day (Epiphany), 6 January. In some
areas, a plough was hauled from house to house in a procession,
with the ploughmen, with blackened faces and wearing white
shirts, knocking on doors and asking for money, food and drink.
They were often accompanied by musicians, an old woman or a
boy dressed as an old woman, called the "Bessy", and a man in the
role of the "fool".. In medieval times it was common for ploughs to
be blessed by the church the day before on Plough Sunday.Plough
Monday plays were popular in parts of Lincolnshire,
Nottinghamshire and the East Midlands, they were similar to that
of Christmas Mummers Plays in that they were performed by
young men and included some of the same story elements, such as
the death and resurrection of one of the characters. Does anyone
have any further information on this historic custom?
find that the lowest temperature I recorded was 14.0 o C and the highest was 23.9 o C. One of my colleagues in Margate even found one at 30 o C. I'm surprised
that he wasn't offered milk & sugar with it!
Beer served too cold does loose its flavour, but beer served too warm tends to enhance all the wrong flavours - harsh bitterness, yeastiness, excessive fruitiness,
sulphury aromas and so on. If I was faced with having to accept a beer at 9 o C or one at 17 o C I know which I would take. A cold beer will warm up; a cold beer
won't cool down - particularly on a hot summer's day. There's nothing better than a pint of a cool (not cold) cask beer whilst watching cricket on the village
green. Roll on summer!
Peter Tulloch, Cask Marque
The Irritable Cellarman replies:
In theory Cask Marque should be an excellent scheme and I would fully support it if it were not for this issue of allowing beer to be served too cold in some, I
certainly did not suggest all, of their accredited pubs. When I first worked as a Cellarman the CAMRA Guide to Cellarmanship was my bible and this
recommended that the cellar should be maintained at a constant temperature of 56 o F to 58 o F (13.3 o C to 14.4 o C). I duly set my cellar thermostat to 56 o F and I
believe my cask beer was always spot on – I certainly sold enough of it!
By the use of the Fahrenheit scale you can tell that this was a while ago and the CAMRA book was indeed dated 1981 although that does not make it any less
relevant for that. CAMRA issued a more substantial guide in 1997 and this recommends that the cellar temperature should be 13 o C to 14 o C and the latest
edition, dated 2005, recommends 13 o C. Under the Cask Marque criteria pubs are going to make sure that they receive maximum score on temperature, as
with modern cellars this should not be difficult, and your rules say that 10 to 14 o C scores the maximum 5 points.
Now I believe that 11 o C is far too cold a temperature to serve real ale (as for 10 o C let’s not even go there!) yet this is quite acceptable to Cask Marque. Whereas
to serve beer at 14.1 o C it scores just 3 points (the missing two points can be crucial in retaining accreditation) even though this is within the narrow temperature
range originally recommended by CAMRA and is at a level at which the beer would be more than palatable.
As a result, I suspect that many Cask Marque pubs could well be nudging the thermostat down to avoid any chance of reaching the 14 o C barrier, meaning
many pubs are setting their levels nearer 11 o C than the more desirable 13 o C. This would perhaps explain my belief that overly cold beer is more often
encountered in Cask Marque pubs than elsewhere. The solution is simple – alter the rules so that 5 points are awarded for 12.2 o C to 14.4 o C (54 o F to 58 o F in
proper money).
By the way it is true, because I don’t like cold beer, that given a straight choice, in an area I am unfamiliar with, I do tend to opt for pubs that do not have Cask
Marque accreditation, preferring them to those that are accredited, but only in the case of pubs with no accreditation that are in the Good Beer Guide or have
been recommended to me. Yes I don't doubt there are some pubs out there that are serving warm beer, I haven't come across many at all, but I am sure they
would not survive for long.
Extract from a letter
to Castle Rock Brewery
I wish you all the best and hope that you continue
to compete with the giant ego that is Greene King
within the Nottinghamshire area and possibly
beyond. Amusingly, in my current job I was
required to contact Greene King accounts about a
public house that was previously H&H, when I
advised I was calling about a public house in
Nottingham the young woman in the accounts
office immediately replied "Oh, that will definitely
be one of ours then". I felt the need to educate
her!
(Name and address withheld due to my job!)
That certainly says it all! Ed
Hopping mad in Notts
Sir,
I've been reading my December issue of What's Brewing, which contains an article about hops in the 'Beer'
section. There was an interesting line in it: “... some brewers paid a premium for North Clay hops grown in
Nottinghamshire, which were reckoned to be best for strong keeping beers.” I've never heard of this variety of
hop, and I didn't realise that Notts was ever an important hop-growing region. Do you have any information?
Chris Curtis, Tianjin, People's Republic of China.
We mentioned in "Brewery Visit" in the last edition that Magpie is to brew a beer using hops grown in a
Nottingham garden. However hops are certainly no longer grown in the county on a commercial basis. But a
quick piece of research on the Internet reveals that a century ago hops were indeed grown in the area. We are
grateful to the Nottinghamshire History web site www.nottshistory.org.uk for the following information: At
the commencement of the nineteenth century hops were grown on the land between Retford and Tuxford
and sold at annual Hop Fairs at these places. They were also grown around Southwell. The planta¬tions were
situated chiefly in valleys and wet situations. These hops were known in the trade as "North Clay Hops" and
were considered much stronger than Kentish hops. At that time an area of no less than 11,000 acres was
devoted to this cultivation. In 1880 it had dwindled to 29 acres. Now they are not grown at all.
30 www.nottinghamcamra.org February/ March 08