Kmflett's Blog

CAMRA conference weekend. Drinking a beer I first had in the 1970s

It was the Campaign for Real Ale AGM and Conference this weekend in St Albans. Like many social movements there are issues and membership is falling. Not by much however and the current level is about the same as in 2018.

Anyway I attended virtually and will comment once I’ve configured my thoughts.

To mark the occasion I’m drinking a 440ml can of Theakston’s Old Peculier. It might be argued that its continued existence owes something to the campaigning work of CAMRA down the years. I joined in 1975 and remain a member.

I first drank it in the Middle House in Marske when I was a student at the then Teesside Poly from 1975. Its Adrian Tierney Jones beer of the week in the Daily Star and he too harks back to those times. Its 5.6% strength is nothing out of the ordinary now but 50 years ago it was one of the strongest beers around.

As a Vice President of the Student Union at Teesside (yes I was agitating for socialism even then as a student organiser of NOISS) we  organised Freshers Week coach trips to Masham to make sure that new students became acquainted with Old Peculier.

Theakstons were eaten up by then Scottish and Newcastle (now part of Heineken- I think) but managed to escape and regain their independence. That is just as well since I doubt OP would have survived a lengthy spell of the Corporates particularly at 5.6%.

The beer is more regularly available on cask now (not least in Spoons) than it was 50 years ago but its also in cans and bottles in supermarkets. Despite all that, while taste memory is questionable (one of the lesser byways of historical research) it seems to me more or less the same beer I drank in my early twenties as I’m drinking now in  my late sixties.

That makes it not just Peculier but distinctly unusual and as above don’t forget the impact the presence of CAMRA has had on that.