August is a bad time for cask ale

This month's newsletter has notes on dodgy beer, a death in the family, and the importance of alt text.

It’s hot. Nobody is about, so nobody is buying it. And, anyway, aren’t those lager taps tempting?

In London and Essex earlier this month we struggled to find really good pints, even in really good pubs where we’ve previously had success.

We visited a pub or two on most days of our trip and kept finding beers that were too warm, stale-tasting, or just generally unexciting.

The Royal Oak is still our go-to London pub but only Sussex Best really seemed to have any zing – perhaps because it’s the best-seller and was shifting despite the season. Even so, it was far from the best pint we’d ever had.

At Cask in Pimlico, where the pints are challengingly priced to boot, we gave up after a few attempts and switched to wheat beer.

The Pembury Tavern did us right at the start of the week, as did Fuller’s Mad Bishop & Bear at Paddington station on the way home. Pints of Dark Star Hophead and Burning Sky Plateau were perfect. But that felt remarkable.

In Bristol, things aren’t much better. We’ve spoken to a couple of bar managers who both said, outright, that August is a dead loss. The city empties as students go home and the well-to-do decamp to Devon, Cornwall and the South of France.

And pubs without beer gardens aren’t even on the agenda for those who stay in the city. (Except us, because we’re weird.)

Still, The Ostrich, which does have a beer garden, seems to be doing very well. Too well, in fact, with a queue for drinks that runs three times the length of the bar, and a 20-minute wait to get served.

The Butcombe Original there does taste pretty good, and is nice and cool. It’s just a shame it comes in plastic glasses. Another downside to summer drinking.

We were almost embarrassed after taking Lisa Grimm to The Swan With Two Necks a couple of weeks ago. The cask ale there has been pretty spot on for months, including Bass, but wasn’t at its best on that most recent visit. It simply seemed to have wilted.

How do you convince people that cask ale is a summer drink? The simple answer, if there is one, is probably to make it pale, make it as cool as you can, and present it as beautifully as possible.

Goodbye, Alan

Ray’s dad died last weekend at the age of 75. There’s a more general obituary here but we wanted to mention him here, too, because he’s been an important background character in how both of us go about appreciating beer and pubs.

He started drinking in pubs when he was 12 – pints of Starkey, Knight & Ford mild in a pub on the Somerset Levels.

He met Ray’s mum, Eileen, in a pub and the pub was where they spent most of their courtship, their early married life, and their social life for years afterwards.

In the early 1980s, they ran a pub in Exeter, where Alan revelled in being a landlord. It also taught them some hard lessons about business and the wily ways of big breweries, which pub companies have inherited.

As a fan of blues music, and a blues musician, Alan also spent a lot of time in pubs watching bands, or playing in them. The Old Duke in Bristol and The Cross Rifles in Bridgwater were two of his favourite venues.

When Ray finally started drinking in his early twenties, it helped him bond with Alan. Famously (in our family, anyway) Alan took Ray to the Railwayman’s Club in Bridgwater and told him off for taking too long to drink a pint:

“For Christ’s sake, son… Chug chug chug, chat chat chat, chug chug chug, chat chat chat, chug chug chug, done!”

Being completely unpretentious, he was often both a corrective for us, and an inspiration.

He liked what he liked, and what he liked was often surprising. We’d patronisingly take him to an ‘old man pub’ with brown bitter, thinking it would appeal, and he’d sit with his coat on, on edge, and suggest we leave after one round.

Then he’d decide he absolutely loved a particular craft beer taproom and a particular hazy pale ale. Why? Because he did. Yes, but why? Because it tastes nice. Another round?

Sometimes, he would just take charge and march us in some strange direction, and into some strange pub, towards which he just felt a strong attraction. They were often great.

You know the theory that alcohol helps us break down barriers and connect with other people? It was after a too-long session at The Star Inn at Crowlas that Alan finally broke through a barrier common among working class men and, slurring slightly, shouted to Ray across the A30: “I love you, son!” Which of course sent an even more pissed Ray into floods of tears.

And there was euchre, the four-player card game over which he and Jess bonded. We played that, the four of us, in pubs from Penzance to Bruges, Ray and Alan forming one team, Jess and Eileen the other. It might sound silly but that we no longer have a four for euchre is one thing that makes his passing feel especially acute.

Knowing that Alan’s health was failing for a long time, Ray had been very consciously spending time with him, including as many trips to the pub as possible. It’s a great blessing that their last session together was a great one.

Alt text and accessibility

You might have noticed that we’ve become a bit obsessive about adding alt text, or image descriptions, to pictures we post on the blog and on social media.

We do this because, without it, anyone who uses a screen reader will be excluded and/or irritated. That’s typically, but not only, blind people, or people with low vision.

The emotional blackmail way to express this is: if you don’t use alt text, you’re telling disabled people you don’t care about them, or want them to engage with your content.

Now, we don’t always get it right. Our old posts often have no alt text, or minimal alt text, or alt text which isn’t very helpful. We didn’t know what we were doing back then and, like many people, thought the point of alt text was to label images for search engines. Even now, we sometimes forget. But we do try.

Good alt text should help people who can’t see the image understand why you think it’s interesting, useful, or beautiful:

• “A glowing pint of golden ale with a thick head of creamy foam.”

• “The beer menu in a pub listing 20 different beers in a range of styles, including Berliner Weisse and Export Stout.”

• “A Victorian pub on a street corner. It has hanging baskets with flowers and gorgeous green ceramic tiles.”

One good tip is to think about how you’d describe it to a mate over the phone if they couldn’t see it.

There’s more advice on the UK Government website and via the RNIB.

For our part, on social media, we won’t repost you if you don’t use alt text. In case that makes any difference.

On the blog

Well, there wasn’t anything, was there? Between burn out after writing that 10,000 word piece, a week’s holiday, and Ray’s dad being ill, we just haven’t felt the urge. Maybe in September.

There were the usual weekly round-ups, however, and some Patreon-only content.

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And that’s it — that’s your lot, until next month.

Cheers!

Jess & Ray