Oops It Happened Again: Tory Ministers and warm beer
Presenting his Budget on 15th March Jeremy Hunt reported some measures to help pubs in difficult economic times. The measures of course fell short of what is needed but at least something was offered.
Hunt announced that while British beer is warm duty on it will be frozen (until August)
One wonders if there exists a Civil Service style guide that suggests Ministers refer to cask ale as ‘warm’
It is important to recall that the defining perspective on the matter from John Major:
“Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs”.
This was from a speech made in 1993 although possibly not written by Major himself.
In case you can’t recall Major was a Tory Prime Minister responsible for privatising the railways. He was depicted by the cartoonist Steve Bell has someone who wore his underpants outside of his trousers and enjoyed eating green peas.
Major’s words were designed of course to appeal to an idyllic English tradition.
The beer in question, invariably cask, was meant to be at 12C, that is tepid. More or less the same temperature as a well stewed cup of tea.
Major is still to be seen at cricket grounds but has not as far as I know updated his thoughts on the temperature of beer.
There is an industry standard for the serving of cask beer which is monitored by Cask Marque
https://cask-marque.co.uk/beer-temperature/
They look for a serving range of 10-14C. I suspect most might find even 12C a little warm nowadays. The temperature of cask beer relates partly to what is optimum to it being served in a good condition (no easy matter) but it’s also partly culturally and socially determined.
Craft beer (an almost undefinable term) might well be served from the cask but if it’s from a keg or a keykeg (the latter being akin to cask) it would usually be rather lower than 12C, sometimes a good deal lower as it will invariably be chilled. The point being that the beer can always warm up once served.
However drinkers that appreciate both cask and keg craft will now be used to the lower temperatures of the latter and may expect cask likewise to be a bit cooler.
There are of course exceptions and stouts and imperial stouts would or should generally be served a little warmer. Mass produced lager tends to be sold very cold, partly because it either has little or no taste to start with or because the actual taste is not great. That doesn’t apply to the many and varied not so mass produced lagers now sold.
As for Jeremy Hunt and help for pubs: do better.
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