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CAMRA’s Champion Winter Beer of Britain
AMRA’s National Winter Ales Festival was held 17 to 19
CFebruary at the Roundhouse in Derby. The highlight of
the event was the judging for CAMRA’s Champion Winter
Beer of Britain. The winner this year was Chocolate Marble
stout (5.5% ABV) from Manchester’s Marble Brewery.
The final judging panel, the culmination of over a year of
activity by local tasting panels and blind tastings in regional
heats, was chaired by London’s own Christine Cryne who
said, “The Chocolate Marble had a lovely chocolaty aroma,
with flavour of marmalade, mocha and raisins. The chocolate
notes perfectly underlaid the mocha character and made a
second drink a must”.
The Silver award went to old favourite Elland’s 1872 Porter
(6.5% ABV) while Plain Ales Inncognito Stout (4.8% ABV)
took the Bronze award. You can find a full list of the
category winners on the CAMRA website. Alas, there were
no London beers featured. The category winners will all go
forward to the main Champion Beer of Britain competition
to be held at the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia in
August.
This was the event’s third and last year at Derby. The 2017
festival will be held in the historic 16th Century Blackfriars
Hall in Norwich and will stay there in 2018 and 2019. This is
the same venue as is used for the Norwich Beer and Cider
festival. Gillian Hough, who has organised the Derby event
for all three years there, said, “The National Winter Ales
Festival has been an honour for Derby to host and we wish
Norwich well with the unique roller coaster which comes with
organising a National Festival.” Well done to Gillian and her
team for a successful stint. This year’s event offered more
than 470 beers so it has set quite a standard for Norwich to
follow.
The dates for the NWAF 2017 are 21 to 24 February.
Tony Hedger
Fair prices for half pints
n a new campaign about an old problem, CAMRA is asking
Ilicensees to charge fairly for half pints. This is not a
question of the odd penny. A recent survey by CAMRA
branches uncovered 59 cases where the difference was
totally disproportionate. In the most extreme case, where
a pint cost £4.25 – bad enough in itself – a half cost £2.95
or 70% of the exact split. Over half of those identified were
overcharging by between 6p and 20p.
CAMRA’s Chief Campaigns Officer, Jonathan Mail said,
“This feedback from our branches shows how confusing it
can be for drinkers. If you buy a half pint in a pub you might
be expecting to pay a price broadly in line with the
proportional cost of a pint, but in fact you might end up
paying 50p more per half pint than you expect. The lack of
clear information and pricing for consumers adds to this
confusion and we’d urge licensees to be clear and
transparent about their pricing to help consumer make an
informed decision. CAMRA recognises that there may be a
need for pubs to round up to the nearest five pence.
However, the wide difference in premium added suggests
that some pubs are unfairly penalizing customers trying to
drink responsibly by choosing half-pint measures and in
some cases obscuring this mark up by not clearly displaying
prices.”
CAMRA’s initiative was, as you might expect, not well
received in some quarters of the ‘hospitality’ industry,
‘ludicrous’ being one of the nicer comments. There is a case
for a difference. As licensees told the Morning Advertiser,
‘a smaller measure doesn’t suddenly halve the costs’ and
‘whilst the liquid in the glass costs the same, the overheads
do not. They cost the same as serving a pint or a spirit.
Wages, licence fees and even simple things like the toilet
use and cleaning costs are per head, not per quantity of
drink consumed.’ Charging half the price of a pint for a half
has always been custom and practice in British pubs but
times change and given the financial pressures on the trade,
perhaps we should not get too excited about any
reasonable difference.
To my mind, the key point here is transparency. Some
60% of the pubs in the survey did not display a price list.
This used to be a clear legal requirement and while there is
a view that consumer legislation can be interpreted as
requiring it, the current licensing laws do not. The point that
Jonathan Mail is so right to focus upon is that the customer
should know what he or she is going to be charged before
he or she places their order. It is perfectly possible to put
the price of a beer on a handpump; Wetherspoon’s do it so
why can’t others? Alternatively a chalk board is not that
complicated an item of technology. Very few of us would
simply refuse to pay for a beer that has already been poured
but having to pay what we think is over the odds is not a
good experience and is unlikely to encourage a return to
the pub in question. Hospitality or hostility? The ball is in
the trade’s court on this one.
Tony Hedger
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