beer

[glaconman]

Swede, SP;

This is your neck-of-the-woods I believe. Any experience of this celebrated boozer?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/articl...87,00.html

[Seafront Plodder]

Yes I've been there many times. Not since it stopped selling Harveys though, and the last I'd heard the brewery had reneged on the idea due to local unrest.... Obviously not.

I think Sweder mentioned this pub in his diary a while back, but I can't be arsed to look.

Indeed The Loped One wants my invaluable advice about the Two Oceans race he has coming up and has invited me over to Lewes tonight for a few. guess we might just wander along to The Lewes Arms for a looksee.

[Sweder]

I joined the boycott as soon as it was launched.
The Lewes Arms is a great little boozer with some quaint features, such as:

1. A debating chamber in the front bar; just pull up a chair, get your rollies out and join in whatever discussions were happening. No telly, nor jukebox, nor anything except chat really.

2. A ban on the use of mobile phones long before it became trendy to ban the use of mobile phones. Offenders were invited to buy a round of drinks for the patrons.

3. Home of the roll-up; at least fifty percent of the regular occupants rolled their own.

4. Beard central: the Lewes Arms was home to a number of folk groups using the upstairs facilities; also some amateur dramatic societies who, in keeping with the local back-turning, have found new homes.

5. Home to Toads, a traditional Sussex past-time involving the lobbing of heavy gold coins onto a shaped stool and several traditional/ wonderful/ bizarre Sussex events, such as Poodle racing, cribbage competitions, pea-rolling . . .

It's a shame that corporate greed should seek to place a nasty great jackboot into the midst of all this tradition; but equally uplifting that the good people of Lewes appear to be standing firm against it.

This evening we'll be ploughing considerable funds into the Pelham Arms (Badger Brewery) and the Royal Oak (Harveys). I won't be going into the Lewes Arms.

Cheers!

[El Gordo]

I read about this when the kerfuffle began, but presumed it would have blown over by now. Evidently not. A great shame. You wonder what 'Greede King' hope to gain from standing firm on their decision. As the article says, they used to have a sterling reputation among consumers of proper beer. No longer, by the sound of it.

I fear it won't help the thirsty people of Lewes, but I hereby announce my personal boycott of GK IPA. This isn't a totally empty threat, as it's the beer I tend to drink in one particular pub here where I live. No more.

There is almost certainly more to this than meets the eye. If it were a small brewery with a handful of pubs, the threat of a boycott would have been enough to make the brewery see sense. The fact that they're holding out, apparently happy to see half a dozen customers per evening instead of a hundred, and an empty space where once was a thriving community pub, suggests that there are bigger corporate considerations. It fits in with a strategy -- presumably the same strategy that destroyed Hardy & Hanson's, and more tellingly, the same strategy that has turned them into a £1bn FTSE 250 company.

Awfully depressing, but GK beautifully reflects Oscar Wilde's celebrated definition of a cynic: someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

The thing that surprised me was to read that you still haven't banned smoking in your pubs. Geez people, get it together! Pubs here are packed again now that the smokers have been kicked out. It's the best thing that ever happened to pubs I reckon. Of course now we've all become super sensitive to smokers, and they've become the lepers of the 21st century. I'll literally, for example, cross the street to avoid a smoker. And if I get caught in a conversation with one, I'll graphically tell them how smoking killed my mother, and what the last two years of her so-called life were like.

As for the Lewes Arms, I remember Sweder writing about it - it sounded quaint. But being a smokers pub, I wouldn't go there anyhow. And why did the owner sell out to GK anyway?


Mid Life Crisis Bigot.

[El Gordo]

The thing that surprised me was to read that you still haven't banned smoking in your pubs. Geez people, get it together! Pubs here are packed again now that the smokers have been kicked out. It's the best thing that ever happened to pubs I reckon. Of course now we've all become super sensitive to smokers, and they've become the lepers of the 21st century. I'll literally, for example, cross the street to avoid a smoker. And if I get caught in a conversation with one, I'll graphically tell them how smoking killed my mother, and what the last two years of her so-called life were like.

As for the Lewes Arms, I remember Sweder writing about it - it sounded quaint. But being a smokers pub, I wouldn't go there anyhow. And why did the owner sell out to GK anyway?


Mid Life Crisis Bigot.

The decision to ban smoking in pubs was taken some time ago and comes into force on June 1st, I think. It's been a real pleasure visiting pubs in Ireland in the last couple of years, since they went smoke-free.

I don't know the history of the pub but a) there was legislation about 20 years ago (?) to force breweries to sell off a lot of their 'tied houses', and b) to force pubs to sell guest beers (i.e. from another brewery). I suspect both these laws may have some bearing in the pub's history. But more important is that (as mentioned in the article) GK used to be a widely respected friend of the real beer enthusiast, and if it did go from private ownership to GK-owned, would probably have been seen as a good choice at the time.

[Sweder]

Not only but also, Harvey's, the locally brewed tipple at the centre of the row, won Best Ale awards in 2005 and 2006. Happily there are still around 20 pubs in the town that continue to purvey the amber nectar; you can also purchase copious quantities direct from the brewery shop for home consumption, something I do regularly throughout the summer - or if that fails to show up, the middle two weeks of July.

The smoking ban is most welcome. During my time in Macroom I had the best time nipping out into the pissing rain to try and roll my own. Certain people prefer not to acknowledge their foul habit, so I'll just say the highlight was when one of my companions gave up after 10 minutes pathetic fumbling, accepting the help of a softly chuckling local.

As a reformed offender I'm particularly zealous in my condemnation of puffers. I've been completely 'clean' for well over a year (I only dabbled, but as someone once said, just as you can't be a 'little bit pregnant' you can't 'have the occasional rollie' either). My good friend Captain Tom is going through cold turkey just now. He's a lifer well into his forties, and I take my hat off to him for a courageous effort.