Ale watch

I watched the ale being poured from behind the new bar at the foot of my beloved ESL4 with a beam of glee and pride and satisfaction.

Whitey was right about there being a new broom sweeping around.

My days of protest may well be over.

 

On the back of the legends suite wall (so opposite the first aid room) is a new betting stall. This is unfinished and looks dull. Next to it is a small pukka pie stand which looks extremely cluttered and cramped.

In the old betting area are two new serving hatches. A refreshment counter to the left and a bar to the right. This area looks quite good and is to a decent standard with the walls around and the floor painted white. Really brightens it up. Weirdly though only the bar has a queuing system like the one at the pointy end side of the stand. The refreshments stand is a free for all. But weird to have two different systems depending on what item you buy.

The rest of the stand looks no different at all. No paint anywhere no timeline or owt.

 

There was a Coors pump to provide a change from Carling.

I actually got attracted upon entry by the Pukka Pie stand advertising that they'd sort your drinks out at half time. I hadn't seen the esl4 bar at this time. So at half time the wonderfully comical Pukka Pie chap eventually sorted the beers out at his stall, only then for me to turn round and see this new bar where the betting area used to be.

It looks good. Not sure where to get a bet on now.....

 

Good grief man....one brand of multi national tasteless p**s replaces another....for a second I thought we'd got some quality on there !!

 

You shall remain a sadbrewer.

Though there may be other reasons for Coors on tap, and for them not stocking Lee's Harvest and Bonce Blower Cask Special down in the bowels of the East Stand.

Second half riots may be one such reason.

 

In this day and age there is no excuse for just selling pissy lager. Even if we're tied to one distributor, all the multinationals own one or two craft brands. I can't see how it would be that difficult to stock something like Goose Island in bottles. It's not my favourite, but it's way ahead of the undrinkable crap that's on sale at the moment.

 

This is BFC. There will be an excuse.

 

That was one of the more disappointing deals for me, a lengthy tie in to install lines with an insipid fizzy gas producer, or carling et al. The biggest problem I felt was an exclusivity blocking at form of variety or independent having a small stall or supply.

Think it was quite lengthy too, maybe 2-3 more years to run, I sometimes felt our former commercial guy and latterly CEO was more about a deal being done rather than a good deal or one that fit with the spirit of the club. Some fantastic brewers about who would bend over backwards to install a line for 12 months and probably do it free. Happens a lot down here. Spoke with one the investors of Southwark brewery a few months back and he said they commonly will install a line free to get a regular supply.

 

I'll not be back until the Amber Nectar AKA Tennent's Lager is available.

 

Just looked on Molson Coors European brands and 95% are lagers of some derivative. Grim reading. They've put some money into Franciscan Well (meh) and only none lager based drink is worthingtons.

Not sure what the market is like up there now, but its very rare not to see a pub with at least 3 craft beers on, and some have much more. If anyone floats by Kingston (upon Thames) at any point, a great place called the albion that has about 30 on cask and keg. Good food too.

 

Weren't the club doing acorn blonde in the east stand early last season? What's happened since?

 

Sheffield is insanely good for ales. But even if we're not talking about local ales, Brewdog is so ubiquitous these days that they must use the same distributor as a lot of the majors. All but the crappiest bars in any major city seem to have a supply of Dead Pony Club in cans. An absolutely beautiful beer, and at 3.8% hardly likely to be the cause of any riots, especially bearing in mind how slow the service is at our catering outlets!

 

Exclusive deal signed with Molson Coors, cant recall if a 3 or 4 year tie in.

 

They were all switched off! Not 1 Tv was on in East Lower.

 

Whilst I would always pick cask ales, I have to say after a visit to the Brewdog place on Division St...the quality of the ale was excellent...the only snag was the price,nothing on at less than £4 a pint.

 

To be fair to the club there will be a much higher margin on draft for them, so they aren't likely going to want to stock loads of bottles as an alternative. Maybe one or two.

And they would have to be careful about putting a proper ale in too - most need handpulling so would take longer to serve, and the market for it would be quite restricted.

Whilst describing common lagers as gassy piss might be relatively accurate, it is still a more popular choice than 'proper beer' - I used to run a bar in donny years back, left eleven years ago. Even then lagers outsold bitters ales and stout something like eight pints to one, before accounting for bottles - and even then there were a few lagers bottled and only really Newcastle Brown as a non-lager bottled beer.

To be fair it could be argued we had a different audience but I bet the numbers haven't improved back to ale and bitter all that much since, and I also doubt the demographic is much different between Barnsley and Doncaster.

That said I'm pretty sure molson coors supply Sharps beers so I'm sure they could supply doom bar or summat similar if there was a market for it - but again on draft it would take longer (and half a brain cell) to pour, and I'm not sure it'd be great or even available in a plastic bottle.

 

I think the excuse is that they have limited demand for obscure beers and or lagers