NEWS FROM E16
In February’s edition you reported on the reopening of the Henley Arms in North Woolwich (E16 2JB) and that it was selling Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. I regret to inform you that, owing to poor sales, it has stopped selling real ale. According to the East London & City branch website there are now only four real ale outlets in E16. The nearest to the Henley Arms is the Windjammer (Fuller’s), close to Pontoon Dock DLR station.
Colin Price
AVAILABILITY OF CASK BEER
I respond to your editorial in the August/September 2022 edition. In my view, most cask beer available is ubiquitous ale dictated by pub owning businesses (POBs) pedalling the pernicious, anti-competitive restrictive practice ‘beer tie’ or inflicting other corporate purchasing restrictions on pubs. In consequence consumer choice of cask ale is severely limited by POBs and indeed the pubs where I can get my favourite cask ales are sadly very few and far between! Even when I manage to track down my favourite ales, invariably they have not been kept well, especially if it is a pub that I am not familiar with. My personal bete noires are:
- failure to clear the beer lines in the morning so that the first customers are not served ale that has been lying in the beer lines all night;
- failure to regularly clean the beer lines;
- lack of care and attention in serving ale at the beginning of a new barrel and/towards the end of a barrel;
- serving stale beer from a barrel that has been around for too long;
- serving beer too warm;
- serving beer in a hot glass that has just come out of the glass-washer;
- discovery of installation of beer lines that are contaminating the ale with a plastic taste (thankfully some pubs that I know have subsequently replaced such beer lines).
Experience of any one of the above failures would tend to deter a drinker away from cask ale and towards the less demanding/more consistent keg ale! This is a very sad picture which I fear is getting worse, perhaps often due to lack of management training?
Tony Bell