Kmflett's Blog

From John Major to Ed Miliband: the politics of warm beer

Ed Miliband has opined that pubs could save on energy bills by serving beer warmer and turning off fridges overnight. Understandably this has not gone down well in the pub trade which has been implementing ways to cut bills for quite a while.

It does however return us to the question which occasionally arises about how warm or otherwise should be

It is important to recall that the defining perspective on the matter comes 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 and my research suggests possibly not written by Major.

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. Historically that is about right give or take a degree but there has I think been a drift to cooler beer commensurate with the rise of technology that can make this happen.

Certainly the expectation is that lager will be served much cooler than 12C (and Miliband is a lager drinker) but serving very cold Guinness is not traditional. Stouts and Porters generally were not served chilled and even now would (or should) be likely a bit warmer than bitter.

So perhaps the way forward for Ed Miliband’s warmer beer strategy is for pubs to serve more imperial stout.