Good News & The Roscoe Head, Liverpool

Great news regarding The Roscoe Head, 24 Roscoe Street, Liverpool L1 2SX (website), one of only 5 pubs that have been in every edition of CAMRA's Good Beer Guide, since the first edition in 1974! Formerly the pub was owned by Punch Taverns, until it was sold to New River Retail in 2015, but it has now been bought by the licensee, Carol Ross, after being run by her family for over 30 years (Carol took over the licence in 1997 from her mother), consequently, now it is a genuine free house (Campaign for Pubs), nice one! 👍

My best wishes go to Carol, and I shall definitely pop in next time I'm up there, cheers!

Covid-19 Incidence, Hospitality & Beer!

Before I get too serious, a nice bit of good news... Pubs, bars and breweries are again showing their common sense and, despite early noises from the Government, are delivering ales, ciders and perries, and providing Click & Collect services, thanks to a U-turn from the Government allowing these activities. Yet again, because of the COVID-19 Crisis and travel restrictions, I am limited in my 2020 ale experiences, mostly to Hastings and its environs, where The Jolly Fisherman (from my other blog) is providing similar services to the first lockdown, nice one!

Recently, with my other blog, I vented my frustration with our incompetent and corrupt Government and their handling of this crisis, and the then looming second lockdown, particularly regarding most publicans taking care to follow the guidelines, if not to be respectful of their customers, to ensure they were not closed down by the Police and/or licencing authorities. Indeed, any publicans who weren't following guidelines well deserved to be closed down, as happened to a few for periods in Hastings. Again, further to my other blog, it has been 8 months now for the Government to sort out their Test & Trace programme, wasting £billions in the process by giving contracts to their inexperienced friends in industry, instead of supporting experienced public health authorities, and which would have been a much lower cost too!  

So, I shall leave you to look at the graph above, with figures not much more than 24 hours old, there's up to date for you! I shall just add a few dates to help you consider whether pubs reopening from July the 4th were significant in the rising levels of COVID-19, and whether they really deserved to be closed down at 22.00 hours on the 4th of November, and noting that the majority of COVID-19 cases are now teenagers and young adults up to 24 years old, indeed, by the 12th October, 60% of new cases were university students. 

First, yes, pubs were reopened from the 4th of July; Second, schools were reopened from the 1st of September; Third, the university academic year began on the 21st of September...

Save Pubs, Cut Beer Duty!

I've written before about the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and Long Live The Local campaigns to protect pubs and a previous petition to cut beer duty, now there is an updated petition from Long Live The Local; go to their website for further information.

Campaigns and petitions that I too support, and have signed, and even more necessary in these COVID-19 Crisis times; cheers folks, and stay safe!

International Stout Day II - Beer!

Well, the pubs weren't open yesterday, obviously, but I thought I'd better buy myself a stout/porter as I suggested yesterday (earlier blog talks about this), so I visited Marks & Spencer, for food too of course, and came home with their 5.5% London Porter, brewed for them in Greenwich by Meantime Brewing (website). OK, it's not called a stout, but as my older blog argues, whether a beer is called a stout or porter more often depends on the brewer's own interpretation...

So I sampled this 5.5% 'porter' which I considered as more of a 'stout' - but! It has elements of both when considering how I describe the styles, deep dark reddish brown colour and pale brown head, not as much body as you'd expect for the strength, and with hints of chocolate and coffee in the aroma. Taste-wise I got more chocolate than coffee with a hint of roasted malt/barley, a bit sweet to begin with and a dark fruity and dry aftertaste... Not bad at all, cheers!

International Stout Day and Covid-19 Lockdown!

Yes, today is, coincidentally, both International Stout Day (website) and the first day of Lockdown Mark 2 in England (BBC), not great! I have written about Stouts and Porters before, if you want a bit of history and details (blog), but I'd forgotten about today until I looked in my diary, so I shall have to go out shortly and buy something dark to drink for later, together with essential foodstuffs obviously, as the pubs aren't open sadly...

As expected, the numpties in charge kept offering different opinions about what was happening about alcohol sales, first saying that pubs and bars, and restaurants for that matter, couldn't deliver or sell alcohol as a takeaway. Well, surprise surprise, numerous Government spokespeople got that wrong, see the above regulations.

Anyway, 'lockdown' lasts until the 2nd of December, allegedly, but don't hold your breath, so enjoy the days until then as well as you can, enjoy International Stout Day, and be safe, cheers!

November: Save our Pubs, News and Views

I received my November copy of CAMRA's What's Brewing a few days ago and, unsurprisingly, the main theme was their campaign to "save our pubs from extinction" (website), also inside was the regular Roger Protz article which this month emphasized that we should "kill the virus not our locals." Obviously it isn't just CAMRA trying to save our local and community pubs, but the pub trade and brewing industry have their own campaigns (Campaign for Pubs), and, of course, we the customer do not want to return to a 'normal' life that has lost local pubs, which provide a social hub for many, a community service that the Government cannot provide, help prevent loneliness and depression, and help to ensure a good mental health for many, not to mention great real ales. I don't know about your locals, but the 6 pubs I have visited since the first lockdown all ensured sufficient mitigating factors were in place to ensure Covid Safety for their customers. But now a second month-long lockdown comes into force in England on Guy Fawkes Day, the 5th of November 2020, a lockdown that is very likely to go into 2021... Now is the time to save our pubs from extinction!

Oh yes, and this is the usual time of year to sample 'green hopped' ales, that is, ales brewed using hops picked that morning (though I doubt many stick to that 'purity') but basically, the hops used for the brew are freshly picked, not dried/preserved, which always provides a variation of tastes, and they are usually pretty excellent, as brewers are very careful with these seasonal beers. Anyway, I was going to walk up to the Tower (blog) last week as Louisa promised me she had 2 firkins of the always excellent Dark Star Green Hopped IPA (6.5%) in her cellar the previous week, so I was going to visit last week to savour this delicious ale... Sadly, the weather was atrocious and I didn't make it up the hill. But then, my more local 'local' the Dolphin (blog) had the same ale delivered last Thursday, and was going to have it available this week, but now the lockdown has stopped that happening, I'm not a happy bunny at all 😒 

Any more news? Well, Marston's has merged with Carlsberg, and any merger is a cause for concern, but we shall have to wait and see how that pans out...

Beer sales have plummeted, apparently, since March and lockdown, which is hardly surprising, and pubs, breweries and jobs are at risk even more now.

Whatever, look after yourselves during these bleak times, and be safe!