Author: Andy Cullen

It was way back in 1984 when  I wrote my first ever article for Beer Matters. The first of many I was to write over the next few years. It was an article bewailing the fact that various breweries were using low interest loans to free houses in return for their product, narrowing the choice of beers available and creating a backdoor monopoly. This was back in the days of the tied estate, now fast becoming a twentieth century relic. The tied estate has largely been replaced by the pub-owning chain, who are at liberty to buy and supply beer from any brewer these days. Progress. Though at the time I and several others in CAMRA questioned whether this was entirely a good thing, coupled with the move by the owners of the tied estates to change from the old-style rents, to leasehold agreements, meant that many pub landlords were forced to leave the trade. Plus it sometimes meant that some old, favourite pubs suffered less than sympathetic renovations that, along with a fetish for giving pubs gimmicky and silly names, meant that the changes weren’t always welcomed. Ah well, progress always comes at a price. And it was progress. The changes within the brewing industry did lead to far greater choice for you, the drinker. When I started to write for Beer Matters, Sheffield had four breweries. Four. Down from over 40 individual breweries that had served Sheffield at the beginning of the twentieth century. Whitbread, Stones, Hope & Anchor and Wards, now all gone. All that remains are the names of the beers, brewed by other brewers. Progress? I don’t think so. Neither did anyone else in CAMRA. Breweries swallowed up by bigger breweries, which in turn were swallowed up by even bigger breweries in a feeding frenzy of eat or be eaten. Big is beautiful, biggest is best. That was the prevailing  dogma, and sod the drinker. And the they got away with it. Why? Drinker apathy. “I have always drunk Tennant’s” was something I heard a lot from older drinkers. Well no you didn’t, Tennant’s brewery was swallowed up by Whitbread many years before. So long in fact that I bet you never drank Tennant’s, just a beer brewed by Whitbread using a name they acquired when they bought the brewery. I recently heard a similar sentiment expressed, “I have always drunk Stones.” Well not any more you can’t. Stones has gone, all that’s left is the name. Likewise, Wards, now brewed by Robinson’s with different yeast, different hops, and different water. The yeast is especially important as they used both foculating and semi-flocculating yeast; part of what made Wards distinctive, love it or hate it. A marmite beer but distinctive, unique, and now sadly vanished for good. Though truth to tell, Wards had long ceased to be Wards, as changes in brewing and how long it was conditioned in the brewery, from two weeks to a week to three days, meant that it lost its distinctive nose and taste. The members of CAMRA, weren’t apathetic drinkers. We campaigned to halt the slide towards bland, mass-produced keg beer, we campaigned for choice, for real ale. Through Beer Matters and all the other local newsletters, across the country. Getting our message into the hands of drinkers by taking copies of Beer Matters into pubs right across sheffield and district. And it worked. Over 40 breweries at the start of the twentieth century. By the late twentieth century only four. Now, at the start of the twenty-first, 24 breweries, and counting. Real progress. The tie, originally a good thing, allowing breweries an outlet for their beers, became over time a noose, strangling choice. Not just in terms of beers but in every aspect of sales, from wines and spirits to soft drinks and crisps. I wrote about the absurdity of, pint for pint, soft drinks being far more expensive. Soft drinks. Hard prices indeed. The big breweries used their tied pubs as milch cows, squeezing every once of profit from them. CAMRA actively campaigned both locally and nationally against the tie, finally forcing the government to act, limiting the tie to 500 pubs and introducing a policy allowing publicans to buy two beers from outside the tie. A small start but a start. Opening up the market to the microbrewery, and increasing choice. The brewers tried to get round the break up of the tie by setting up their own pub chains; remember the Scream and the All Bar One chains, amongst others? Identikit pubs selling identical beers. But the genie was out of the bottle, and we saw the arrival of the Wetherspoon chain of pubs, a genuine chain of freehouses. Finally more choice for drinkers. And that choice has grown, but what limits choice now, is geography. Lots of choice in and around city centers but, in the suburbs and outskirts, we have seen the loss of so many local pubs. Local pubs, so much a part of national heritage, are vanishing at an alarming rate and, if we lose them, an important part of our national identity will vanish with them. Use them or lose them. I mentioned drinker apathy earlier but it was more than that, it was also loyalty to your local. The local was the hub of the community; it was where you met your friends, your family. No family celebration was complete without a trip to someone’s local. Mums, dads, aunts, uncles, cousins; weddings, christenings, funerals, birthdays; all celebrated down your local. So when the beer range changed, due to yet another takeover, you complained for a while but got used to it. The big brewers dominance was so great that they could offer the same choice offered by the infamous Hobson: it’s this or nothing. I’m reminded of the two chaps drinking in a pub, one says to the other “beer’s rubbish in here since the new brewery took over, I don’t know about you but i will be glad when I have had enough.” A sour joke with more than a grain of truth. Well CAMRA wasn’t willing to accept Hobson’s choice and we began campaigning for a real and greater choice of quality beer. The reason CAMRA’s campaign was so very successful is entirely down to grassroots activism, local branches producing a local newsletter that informed the drinker about what was going on in and around their pubs. The first thing anyone looked at when they got the latest issue of Beer Matters (and I, as editor, was keenly interested in knowing) was not (as I hoped) my usual rant about some topical issue, but pub news; and then who had won this months pub; and finally future events, which part of Sheffield and district we were visiting. This raised awareness of the pubs that were out there. The pub at the bottom of your road that you had never visited, but had always wondered about. Above all, where to go for a drink. So much more important than my ranting. But my rants did raise awareness… and get me in bother. Legal action was threatened on several occasions. Thankfully threats to sue came to nothing. It was an eventful and fun few years as editor. But Beer Matters was never a solo effort. I was entirely dependent on my contributors, the dedicated branch members who sourced the pub news, organised walkabouts, and wrote articles. And the general public who would write in on a variety of subjects. Big thanks to them all. Without them there would not have been a Beer Matters . Some months, filling eight A5 pages took some doing. Other months, just too much to include in our meager eight pages. Special thanks must go to the late Mike Hensman and his partner Liz. Both former chairs of Sheffield CAMRA who guided my first fumbling steps as editor, patiently correcting my poor spelling and appalling grammar. They also made material contributions with a number of excellent articles and helped in redesigning Beer Matters masthead. Also thanks to Jenny Lightowler and Dave Staves, who took over typing duties and helped improve the look of Beer Matters. so much so that it won CAMRA’s award for most improved local newsletter. Result. Thank you also to everyone who turned up every month to staple Beer Matters as it came as 4 A4 sheets that needed stapling and folding. Special thanks are due to the late Jack  Ware and his lovely wife Carol, they never missed a stapling night and more importantly distributed copies to pubs in their area. Thank you everyone who, over the years, has helped distribute Beer Matters to the pubs around Sheffield. After all, if it’s not available in pubs, it cannot be read. Finally a special thank you goes to my friend John Beardshaw. He has been with Sheffield CAMRA from its earliest days, helping organise its first and all subsequent beer festivals. He has also been from the start, and continues to be, a contributor to Beer Matters. All the way from back in the days when it was called the Parish Pump, and was two sheets of A4, photocopied and stapled together, to the present. From such humble beginnings, great things have grown. In truth, the current format of Beer Matters is a great improvement on my own humble efforts. It is now a highly polished and professional looking magazine and not just a simple newsletter. Talking of humble beginnings, the big four breweries that dominated the brewing scene in Sheffield have gone, fallen over like ancient trees in a forest, leaving space and light for the saplings to grow. And they are growing. From four to 24 breweries. Marvelous. And joy of joys, an exciting new range of beer styles. Plus the rebirth of old (and I thought long since vanished and forgotten) types of beer. In particular, oatmeal stout and milk stout. I thought milk stout had vanished in the 60s with the demise of John Smiths bottled Milk Maid Stout. Ideal for nursing mothers, invalids, and of youngsters, “but don’t tell your mum and dad” as my fun uncle told me. Now a proper cask version is available. Oh joy. We really have come a long way from days when lager was the new, hip drink, and bitter was what your dad drank. Now lager is the dad drink and cask beer is the choice of a new more discerning generation of drinkers. 500 issues of Beer Matters. here’s to the next 500, cheers. Adrian Staton Former Editor

I first joined CAMRA at Sheffield beer festival when it was held at Hallam Student Union’s Nelson Mandella Building, which has since been demolished. I was actually recruited to join a national committee before I attended any local branch event – it was a new initiative to better recruit and involve younger members in the 18-30 age group. That would have been about 20 years ago. Like any volunteer organisations, you need new younger people coming in and getting involved in order to keep things going in the future as the old timers step down from active roles – and also to keep fresh ideas coming an ensure we are in touch with the modern scene. The thing with younger volunteers though is naturally many drift off as a result of living live – they start to get careers and families taking up time! The additional challenge for CAMRA back then was getting younger drinkers interested in real ale in the first place – it was viewed as an old man’s drink, lager was the cool choice, although some did buy into the marketing for smoothflow keg bitters that were the new thing. When I first started drinking, Sheffield could still be divided up into quarters of bitter loyalty based on where the breweries had pubs – there were Tetleys, Stones and Wards areas, plus Whitbread still had a lot of pubs where you could get the likes of Trophy Bitter or Boddingtons on cask. Mansfield also had a notable estate of pubs in the city. Some of the classic regional/family brewers beers did appear too – so the likes of Timothy Taylors, Theakston and Black Sheep for example. I can remember standing up at a CAMRA national AGM & Conference in Blackpool when policy on alcohol advertising was being debated and someone suggested big brewers should be banned from advertising but micros should be exempt. I disagreed – the likes of Tetleys was well marketed nationally and was considered a gateway into real ale for younger, inexperienced beer drinkers who may try that and then become a little more adventurous. Not long after I joined CAMRA we saw Wards and Stones breweries close, leaving Kelham Island Brewery as the biggest in the city. Abbeydale was smaller and quite young back then and that was about it in Sheffield although there were one or two other small local breweries around Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster. Another point to note back then was all pubs had to shut at 11pm (10:30pm on Sundays), if you wanted to drink later you had to go to a nightclub. Generally anywhere that was fun and lively around town on a Friday or Saturday night didn’t have decent beer and the fall back safe, widely available option for the discerning drinker was a bottle of Becks German lager. Kind of the role Brewdog Punk IPA plays these days! A few key landmarks in the years that followed that changed the beer scene for me

• introduction of progressive beer duty so small breweries pay less tax, giving them a chance against the big boys with big budgets. This resulted in a massive wave of new microbreweries opening. I admit some were better than others, some have stayed in business and some haven’t! We now probably have the most varied choice of beers we’ve ever had on the bars! On the negative side the market is crowded and not helped by restrictive beer supply ties operated by some big pub companies.
• The launch and successful sales and promotion of Abbeydale Moonshine. When first introduced this was something of a revelation – a pale ale with New Zealand hops offering a citrus character.
• Licencing reform – pubs and bars can apply for a licence to open for whatever hours suit their business, subject to local authority approval. It hasn’t led to 24 hour drinking and fighting that the media predicted, nor have we gained a European pavement cafe culture some hoped for either (probably the weather) – but you can now get a decent beer and relax in a proper pub after 11pm and there is no longer pressure on takeaways and transport when all the pubs kick out together at 11pm and the clubs kick out on mass at 2am
• The craft beer revolution – OK, it is an American term and a lot of the language is marketing hype and fashion. There is also no definitive explanation of what exactly ‘craft’ means in terms of beer. However at the end of the day it has meant beer is speaking a language that appeals to a wider audience, it has people interested in different beer styles, discussing beer and enjoying it. It means there are lots of breweries producing good quality beer across a massive spectrum of styles and more pubs and bars are stocking it – across cask, keg, can and bottle.

Now going back to my earlier comments about younger drinkers, there has been a huge cultural change and generally it is the younger drinker that is embracing trying new things. OK the old fashioned brown, malty bitter still doesn’t necessarily appeal – I remember a despairing conversation with a manager at the Varsity bar on West Street who had clearly had a memo from head office to try and be better at selling the ale but complained they were a student orientated bar and young people don’t drink real ale… looking down at his three handpumps, all filled with national brands of boring brown bitter I suggested he attended the student union beer festival where they sell out of over 50 different ales over 2 days to see how they did it… The thing now with the craft beer revolution, those younger drinkers we struggled to attract to real ale are now drinking and experimenting with all sorts of different beers and enjoying it. OK, not all those beers are on cask or real ale and they don’t really care, but the important thing is they are choosing beers on the basis of taste and enjoyment and have the choice on the bar to do so, and that is why CAMRA was formed back in the 1970s – to keep quality, tasty beer options available on the bar. (It just happened real ale in a cask was THE quality option back then). So the challenge for CAMRA now – well we still need to encourage people to join up and more importantly get involved, volunteer and enjoy – and in the current “craft” scene we need to ensure our image is relevant. Meanwhile from a campaigning perspective, the priorities have changed. Whilst we can take a step back from pushing for real ale to be available on the bars and to some extent from pushing some of the consumer issues – there are big campaigning issues keeping community pubs alive, keeping the cost of beer reasonable and keeping the anti alcohol lobby at bay – amongst other things. Still plenty of campaigning, promoting and enjoying of beer to be done for many years yet! If you aren’t already a CAMRA member do consider joining. If you are a member we’d love to see you get more involved, be that coming along to socials or pub award presentions, helping deliver magazines, updating pub entries on whatpub.com or ultimately joining the committee and helping make things happen. Sheffield’s beer scene is currently fantastic, vibrant and full of great people, great pubs, great beer and some fantastic initiatives -and we’d love to continue to be part of it! Andy Cullen

My earliest beery memories of Sheffield are sad ones. I recall going past Whitbread’s enormous Exchange Brewery which the group upgraded at a cost of £12 million then closed a couple of years later, such was the profligacy of the beer giants at the time. There were two Bass breweries in the city and I visited one on the outskirts with views of the moors. It had open Yorkshire Square fermenters and – if memory serves me – was producing Worthington White Shield, the legendary Burton IPA that had become a beer on wheels when Bass got tired of brewing it in its native town. Bass owned Stones, a fine beer that rivalled Boddingtons in its pallor and equally refreshing character. It was brewed elsewhere in the Bass group when the brewery closed but is never seen these days. Closer to the centre, Wards was a Sheffield icon, producing soft, malt-driven, creamy but refreshing beers for legions of thirsty steel workers. I visited shortly before it closed, a victim of the shocking asset stripping that destroyed the Vaux group. And then came Dave Wickett, who started the beer revival in the city, first with the Fat Cat and then Kelham Island Brewery. I got to know Dave well as we shared a love of both beer and football – I think we spent more time discussing the mixed fortunes of Sheffield United and West Ham United than we did brewing! Dave told me a wonderful story of how he bought the Fat Cat, refurbished it and was ready to open but he didn’t have any beer. He phoned Wards, who were still brewing, and none other than the head brewer came round and asked to see the cellar. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he told Dave. “I’ll put a cellar tank in with pressure points on the bar and away you go.” “I don’t want that,” Dave said. “I want casks and handpumps.” “Nobody wants to drinks that anymore,” the man from Wards said and stormed off in a huff. In desperation Dave phoned Timothy Taylor in Keighley and asked if he could buy an 18-gallon cask of Landlord and was told Sheffield was outside the brewery’s delivery area. So Dave drove to Keighley, put the cask in the boot of his car and took it back to the pub. Two days later he phoned Taylors who said they expected he’d been unable to sell the beer. “No,” Dave told them. “It went in two days and I want two more casks.” “In that case, we’ll deliver,” Taylors said and with just three cask of ale Dave Wickett helped the brewery turn Landlord into a national brand. From small acorns…today there are 20 breweries in the city. The choice is amazing, with superb beers in some equally superb pubs. And what better way to greet visitors to Sheffield than to offer them a pint or two in the Tap at the station. Behind the downbeat address of Platform 1B stands an architectural gem serving fine pints. Beer Matters has been recording the ups and downs of Sheffield beer and pubs for 500 editions. It’s a remarkable achievement and underscores all that is best about CAMRA – volunteers devoting many hours of their time to support good beer and good pubs on their local patch. Many congratulations – and here’s to the next 500! Roger Protz