Falling out of Like with Wetherspoons?

The Wetherspoons 'Beer Festival' which is currently running has a lot going for it.

There's a reasonable mix of beers from all over the country (including the usual 'International' offerings which are all actually what the Yanks call 'domestic' but we'll gloss over that) and a fair range of styles from which to choose.

Having sourced both Vienna- and Märzen-style lagers on cask would seem particularly daring for Spoons, and indeed both are worth seeking out (more on why that may be less easy than it sounds in a bit!)

Crystal report

If you're a Croydon-based fan of Wetherspoons, you might be feeling a bit sorry for yourself lately.

Coming soon... fuck all

In February this year, the town-centre Milan Bar closed its doors for the last time, and the following month saw the loss - despite a petition to save it reaching over 1,000 signatories in less than a week - of the Skylark, a few hundred yards to the South. 

Having lost the Ship of Fools a few years ago, there is now just one Spoons in an area that once had four. Even with my mixed feelings generally about Spoons, I think that's a right shame.

Anyway, I tried to visit these pubs a few times before they bit the Wetherdust, which gave me the opportunity to check out eateries in the area. 

One of which is the 'traditional Persian' menu at Crystal.

Wetherspoons: A life just beginning?

JD Wetherspoon is turning 40.

In pub industry years, where change now tends to happen at breakneck pace, that makes it something of an elder statesman. In 'real' time, the chain is only a couple of years younger than I am, and consequently Spoons has been around for my entire life; a constant presence since I started drinking, albeit one that has changed substantially over time. Not necessarily for the better.

Marked by their latest beerfest featuring 40 beers - most of them new and/or exclusive - this birthday is a milestone occasion for a staple of the British High Street that is as controversial as it is popular.

Having visited over 600 of their pubs (exactly 612 at the last count), I consider myself one of the chains biggest fans, but also one of its more vocal critics. There is a lot that Tim Martin has done right, and few would argue that, on balance, Wetherspoons haven't been an overall force for good. but there are a number of worrying issues and a hell of a lot of ways in which things could improve.

Where were you when the Colonel died?

February the 19th, 2018 will forever go down in history as 'the day KFC ran out of chicken'.

Years from now, folks will idly ask 'do you remember that day when KFC ran out of chicken?' and their friend Martha will reply 'Yes, Gerald, it was February the 19th, 2018'. And then they'll reminisce about how the Double Down really wasn't all that, and argue about exactly which 11 herbs and spices made up the Colonel's original recipe.

The Kennedy assassination it may not be, but it's the kind of story that almost defies belief. Chicken isn't just their core product, it's pretty much their only product - and that's why more than half their 900-odd outlets are closed today. How can such a large chain - presumably with robust operations and logistics processes in place - allow something like to ever come close to happening?

Lost Breweries: F is for Freeminer

One of the plus points of writing this series is that for every letter of the alphabet I get to indulge in a big bath of beery nostalgia.

I had to think fairly deeply to come up with my 'F', not because breweries whose names begin with the letter have proven immune from closure by quirk of fate, but because the obvious names that sprang to mind haven't really played a significant role in my drinking career, at least when I started thinking about it.

For example, when I was a small child, Fremlin's bitter seemed to be held in extremely high regard by my parents and everyone else who drank beer. It might well have been the first brewery name I ever learned. Possibly even the first beer I ever tasted.

But Fremlin's had been owned by Whitbread since the 1960s, the original Maidstone brewery site had closed in the early 70s and the Faversham brewery that had made the beer the adults raved about also went in 1990. So by the time I started drinking, Fremlin's had become a niche, hard-to-find brand from a ghost brewery that in all honesty never meant anything to me, even if it was beloved of the previous generation.

Then there is Flowers of Cheltenham, another bolted horse from the erstwhile Whitbread stable. In the mid-90s Flowers Original was the staple cask beer in my student union bar, but I hardly ever drank it because it was fucking awful. Warm, soupy goop that largely ensured everyone drank Stella or Guinness instead.

Even in good condition it was an entirely unspectacular beer. That brewery closed in 1998, probably wasn't missed by too many people, and while Flowers beers are still contract-brewed for Whitbread's successor AB-Inbev, it's not really something you'd actively seek out; Again, a brewery that ultimately means very little to me.

And that's why I've gone with Freeminer, whose beers I did at least drink and occasionally even enjoy!

Lost Breweries: A is for Ash Vine

I've been regularly drinking beer for about 25 years now, which probably makes me just about qualified to reminisce about breweries that have slipped from our horizons.

It's easy to forget that this even happens, given that we've been reaping a seemingly endless harvest of new breweries for many years now. But some, indeed many, breweries go beer-belly-up for various reasons, so this is the first in a series of posts where I look back wistfully - or in this case, not - at a few of them. Starting with West Country micro Ash Vine.

And if you're sitting there thinking 'Ash Vine... Hmm.. were their beers as boring as I remember?' then you're pretty much on the same wavelength as me! And if the name draws a blank, it's probably further proof of the singularly unmemorable nature of their beers. Their many, many all-very-similar beers...

Wither Spoons?

So, another round of Spoons Bingo comes to an end, and scoopers all over the land, me included, will have successfully ticked off another 50 beers. (Or, at least, as many of the 50 as they needed - there were some very 'everyday' ales on the list this time around.)

There has been another thought on my mind: Was this the last Wetherfest? Or at least the last as we know it?

50/50 (not a rating!)

Things are changing in JDW land. New openings have slowed to a trickle, while they have been quite aggressively selling off pubs over the past six months, including several where I've spent many happy hours.

For the first time, the overall size of the estate is contracting rather than expanding, and at an alarming pace.

Customers are reacting negatively to this, particularly in areas that are losing their last or only Spoons. Then there has been the huge backlash over their plans to stop serving Sunday Roasts.

(The 'roasts' were truly awful, so I'm not bothered, but a lot of people seemed to enjoy spending their Sabbaths eating slimy pre-sliced meat and microwaved bags of vegetables.)

There are whispers - nothing concrete, mind, but certainly speculation and rumours - that the company is making a few adjustments ahead of a substantial change to its operations. Does this mean a sell-off? Is Tim Martin preparing to step down as Chairman? Are we going to see the estate broken up into smaller chunks, some of which won't be Spoons as we know them?

And what would any of this mean for the beer policy?

I hope Spoons continue. I hope the biannual Wetherfests carry on. And I hope they can get back to acquiring new premises and expanding once more.

But nothing lasts forever, and I'm getting a vibe that the end may be nigh.

Half-measure for measure

So, I've just completed the latest Spoons Bingo, which is great timing as Le Gothique's always excellent Halloween beer festival starts tomorrow, and then on Thursday morning we're flying off to the Far East for a week.

(Yeah I know. We've only just come back from Krakow. And Cumbria the weekend before. And Tallinn/Helsinki the week before that. Amazing that I had enough time in the Green and Pleasant land to get all 50 beers really, isn't it?)

Now, for more years than I can remember,  one of the Wetherfest's selling points is that beers are available in smaller measures and you can sample three third-pint measures of different beers for the price of a pint.

Obviously this doesn't apply to me because I drink pints, but most tickers do not, and it's become an all-too familiar sight at the bar - the bedraggled scooper, hunched over his beerly triptych, squintingly scribbling notes into his crumpled festival programme.

Last week I started to find this phenomenon just a little bit irritating, after waiting ages at the bar while countless trios of thirds were served, so I ordered three of the beers I needed all at once, sidled up to Mr. Threethirds and lined up my pints, just as he had his thirds.

He looked at me. I beamed back disconcertingly until he started shuffling on his feet.

I looked down at my pints, glanced over at his thirds and then looked him in the eye again, still smiling.

To be honest, I'm not even entirely sure what point I was trying to make, but I felt better for it, and that's the important thing. I guess I could've gone on to glance at our respective crotches, but that would've just been weird.

Expensive 'Spoons, expensive countries and a very expensive poo

One of the most insane weekends of my life involved a stag night in Tallinn, eight years ago.

We set off at stupid'o'clock on a Friday morning, on a minibus from Ipswich, started drinking in the Stansted Wetherspoons, and got to the Estonian capital shortly after midday local time, if I recall correctly.

There then followed a marathon afternoon and evening of spiced beer and shots of pepper vodka, followed by weird, tasty, offally food. I suspect I drank more than anybody else. At least eight pints plus half a dozen shots, I'd imagine.

Who else would find something to moan about in 99p pints?

It's Spoons Bingo time again, and if you're quick, get down to the Wibbas Down Inn in Wimbledon, where you can pick up Wetherspoons festival ales for a mere 99p a pint!

Such a bargain is nothing to be sniffed at, of course, but the reason behind it is going to fuel a bit of a BV rant-a-thon, so feel free to tune out now.

Still there? Good.

The more-or-less random guide to beer and music pairing

While the rest of you were lazily completing the London Marathon yesterday, I was crossing a far more important finishing line, with a pint of Conwy Surfin' IPA.

Yep, it's the end of another round of Spoons Bingo, and having ticked off the 50 beers on the Wetherlist I can go back to mostly drinking in normal pubs. Yay!

...and that's 50 out of 50!

It has to be said that I wasn't hugely impressed with the ales this time around and there were one or two really strange flavours in the mix. Mauldon's 'Lemon Adder' tasted like cold lemon tea, while I detected more than a hint of instant gravy granules in Nethergate 'Hell Hound'!

And even more bizzarely, Bateman's 'Springtime Oatmeal Biscuit' reminded me of tempura prawns. No, really.

Or maybe there was just something up with my tastebuds that night?

Anyway, while sitting in the Crosse Keys in the City the other evening, working my way through many of these strange beers and listening to 'sum choonz', I suddenly came up with a brilliant idea.

Or, at least, a brilliant-after-eight-pints-of-strangely-flavoured-biannual-festival-ales idea.

Beer and music pairing.

I mean, how fucking cool is that?

Can canned beer ever be any good?

Before we were old enough to get served in pubs, my friends and I used to buy cans of beer from the corner shop. We thought it was all very grown up - particularly because we eschewed the usual Fosters and Stella in favour of tinned John Smiths, McEwans Export, and my favourite at the time, Royal Oak.

There was even a 'draught' bitter from Guinness with one of those plastic 'widgets' in the can, which were all the rage in the early 90s. It was probably discontinued years ago, but back in the day it was massive, and even had its own bizarre TV ad, where some guy travelled to an unspecified hot country and chose to keep his supply of Guinness bitter in a river!

Remember this?

I thought it was a nice beer at the time, but I ate Big Macs and Dairy Milk back then as well. Didn't know any better (which was ironic as I thought I knew it all).

Once the pubs started letting us in and we got to drink real beer on a regular basis, it soon dawned on me that the metallic fizz we'd been supping was inherently inferior, and that was that, really. For the best part of 20 years, I've only ever drunk canned beers very, very occasionally, and then usually only out of politeness.

That changed a couple of days ago.

Easter Egg Hunt

The early part of Easter Saturday was a fucking nightmare. (The evening wasn't, because we went to see Steeleye Span and they rocked, but the daytime was a bit of a shitter and no mistake.)

We must've been into 20 shops in various parts of South London, looking for Easter Eggs to give to various family members. Spent about three hours solid, so we did.

There's nothing for you here!

Nothing. Absolutely fuck-all available anywhere. (Except for Cadbury Creme Eggs and bags of mini eggs). From the tiniest local shops to the big Sainsburys and Safeways (I refuse to call them Morrisons for the same reason that I refuse to call a Marathon bar anything other than a Marathon bar!) there was not a single proper egg available to purchase.

The shelves were bare, apart from the occasional solitary badly broken egg in Tesco with the cracked chocolate exposed to the elements that staff had inexplicably failed to remove, perhaps deliberately leaving it there to taunt people like me.

The twats in the shops said things like. 'Ooh, you should've come earlier', which as well as being singularly unhelpful is also indicative of the widespread acquiescence of a flawed culture.

Spoonsfest hit for six!

I was expecting to spend this evening travelling around London pubs, often walking in and then coming straight out again in a state of increasing exasperation.

Instead I've been able to stay in and relax while listening to coverage of Coventry's victory over Crawley Town, and I'll probably tune in to the US Election Coverage in a minute (prediction: as I've been saying for many months now, an uneventful Obama win with the GOP only gaining one or two states they didn't win in 2008).

The reason I've been able to take things easy is mainly thanks to Tim Martin and his pubs not being frustrating for once.

I criticised Mr. Wetherspoon the other day for the quality of his burgers - quite rightly, because they are substandard shite - but probably the best thing about our glorious nation's favourite pub chain is the bi-annual 'beer festivals'.

For a couple of weeks every Spring and Autumn, beer tickers of the UK play 'Spoons Bingo' and try to get through the 50 different beers available, some of which are always very elusive, and some of which appear all the time, all over the place. Believe me, you grow to despise some of these beers...

But this year, something very special happened, for last night, I scooped the last six beers I required in a single evening!

Second chance saloons

I like to think of myself as a fair and reasonable man, and not the sort of person to deny folks a second chance. Sometimes even a third chance.

Hell, sometimes I'm so soft I give fourth, fifth and sixth chances to shit that I ought to have emotionally written off years ago.

I'm probably the only person who still harbours hope that Sir Jimmy might actually be innocent and it's all been a terrible mistake.

And I might even go and see the new Bond film, even though the last one, Quantity of Suckedcocks, or whatever it was called, was a tragic waste of celluloid and there hasn't been a proper James Bond since Roger Moore.

'Go on Ben, give it another go', my persistent inner voice will say, 'everyone deserves a second chance, right?'

And so, in that spirit of generosity I decided to try eating a Wetherspoons burger the other day.

I hadn't had one for ages because they're so fucking awful and I'm terribly fussy about my burgers, but it had been over two years since I described them (in the very first BV post, in fact) as 'tasteless, gristly and lipid-lumped', so maybe things had improved.

BV London Pub of the Year - part four

There has been plenty of interest in my search to find the best pub in London, so I shall push the fuck on with the latest installment.

This trio of contenders are all in the heart of the capital, and we kick off with a real belter that took me by surprise. And I'm not easily surprised - except when I am, obviously.

Could there even be an unexpected victor lurking on the mean streets of the West End?

BV London Pub of the Year - part two

Visiting lots of pubs and drinking pint after pint of beer can be gruelling work.

Why, oh why did I ever come up with the idea of the Ben Viveur London Pub of the Year? I must have been mad. Or just very, very thirsty.

Oh well, mustn't grumble. Here's the first batch of contenders (apart from the Craft Beer Company, which started this whole silly business, obviously)...

Thirsty Work

Banging on about it makes me sound like a grumpy old man, but the truth is that ever since I was a small child, I've generally disliked crowds.

As I've mentioned in the past, give me somewhere half-empty with plenty of space to move about any time, over heaving masses of sweaty bodies any day.

Honestly, I could be watching Cov City winning the Champions League Final amongst a crowd of 95,000, and still not really get this idea of 'atmosphere' that others seem to relish. Unlikely as this prospect is, I reckon I'd still be getting all annoyed at the restrictions on my personal space when I should be celebrating...

Anyway, I'll stop ranting.