BrewDog – Trolls or clueless about Sheffield?

From their coming soon page about them taking on the former Starbucks on Division Street:

The people of Sheffield have long been screaming out for a BrewDog bar and we have answered the call. We are excited to be joining a thriving community of awesome, eclectic craft beer bars in the steel city, who are all standing up to the mass marketed industrial beers that dominate the rest of the city.

This has got to be either trolling on a massive scale in order to drive eyeballs to that page, like the Daily Mail but fro brewers, in which case I apologise for helping them. Or it is an indication that they know little about the beer scene in Sheffield. Last time the Sheffield and District branch of Camra did a beer survey (this year’s will be on the 13th of July) in a sample of 138 pubs they found Sheffield had 309 Distinct Beers from 140 breweries at an average price per pint of £2.70 hardly a haven for mass “mass marketed industrial beers”. Even if you could only get beers that meet the LocAle criteria Sheffield would still be a mighty fine place to drink beer. But as it is, add in the rest of the real ales and all the keg and bottled beer from all over the world and some hugely knowledgeable publicans and bar staff and this is about the best place I’ve ever been for drinking beer.

In any case this is another blast of blustery bullshit in the phoney war between cask and keg. Just drink the good stuff, ignore the bad stuff and stop trying too hard to win a battle that doesn’t need to exist, you just look silly trying.

EDIT: Having thought a bit more about this, with a turnover over £10 million, a marketing budget north of £200k and $1,000,000 of supermarket sales they are the mass market brewery opening another pub in their chain in Sheffield. We'll welcome them in, but they are definitely not saving us from anything.

Dogs in pubs.

Let me put forward a small confession, I don't really like dogs, they are to me smelly and vicious not so little buggers that shouldn't be kept in towns and cities. Feel free to carry on having them on your farm or for your shoot or hunt, but in the middle of urban sprawl don't expose them to me.
See the problem is unlike other things I don't like, it can be difficult to avoid dogs, people take them places with them to socialise.
I'm not asking for a ban on dogs in pubs, just dog and no dog areas so I can sit and have a beer without fear of being savaged to death by a wolf descendent.
Not to keen on them tied up outside shops either.

34th annual Steel City Beer Festival 2nd - 4th October, Cemetery Park.

The 2008 Steel City Beer Festival, our 34th annual event, comes to you in a marquee in Cemetery Park, with around 100 different beers, Ciders & Perries to try.

The festival site is Cemetery Park on Montague Steet, just off Cemetery Road in Sharrow. It's just a few minutes walk from Ecclesall Road, up the hill behind the Pomona pub. Please see the Festival Website for more information, including details of bus services and mapping.

Opening hours and costs
Day	Times	Normal entry price	CAMRA members price	Entertainment
Thursday 2nd October	17:00 - 23:00	£2	Free	Poke + Special guest TBA
Friday 3rd October	12:00 - 16:55	£2	Free	Quiet Session
	17:00 - 23:00	£3	£2	Treebeard
Saturday 4th October	12:00 - 23:00	£3	Free	Afternoon: Rico's charity pub quiz/Morris Dancers/Meet the LocALE brewers Evening: The Kahunas
STUDENT SPECIAL THURSDAY NIGHT: free entry on production of a valid student ID.
A glass to drink from - £2 sale or return

You will need to buy a souvenir festival glass when you arrive, this is the glass you will drink from for the duration of your visit. In line with the parks trust policy the festival glasses are made from toughened plastic rather than glass. Please note due to this policy we cannot allow guests to bring their own glass.
When you leave the festival you can keep the glass as a souvenir or alternatively return it to the glass stand for a refund.
It is CAMRA policy to offer oversized lined glasses where possible to guarantee full measure - however we have not been able to find a supplier that makes oversized plastic glasses, so our glasses will be pint glasses with a half pint line. If you are drinking halves you therefore have an oversize glass, if you are drinking pints please ask for a top up if you think your head is excessive.

Quality hot and cold snacks will be available from the Outside catering service provided by the Original Farmers Market Shop of Bakewell.

Binge drinking

Apparently the government's reform of the licensing laws is a scandal. I don't really see either the improvements the government are touting or the oppositions claimed decline. I really don't recognise the label "24-hour drinking" either, less than one percent of all pubs in England and Wales have a 24 hour licence and I can't name on of them.

Basically the issue isn't that the pubs are open longer, but that so many members of society want to get pissed. Perhaps people should concentrate on the why a bit more not the how.

Rebutting the rebuttal

The British Retail Consortium has a section on their website called "Retail Myths" which is supposed to set the record strait. This is the content from the page in that section called "Price cutting by supermarkets is a major cause of binge drinking."

• Supermarkets sell alcohol as part of a wider grocery offer, alcohol sales make up less than 10% of turnover in a typical store.
• Supermarkets are not the typical store for those consuming alcohol immediately. Only around 1% of all transactions are of only alcohol and alcohol sales are not aimed at immediate consumption, for example drinks are not generally chilled.
• Promotions are not encouraging excessive consumption, simply offering value for customers alongside the other groceries they buy. Promotional activity tends to be on larger volume purchases which are typically consumed with friends and family at parties and barbecues or over an extended period of time.
• Supermarkets have been at the forefront of the drive to tackle under age sales. They have introduced a number of new policies including the challenge 21 principle, where all customers who appear under 21 are challenged and have to provide ID to purchase alcohol. This has resulted in a significant improvement in their performance, well ahead of pubs.
• Supermarkets have strict policies on self scan tills and home deliveries to ensure alcohol is only sold to legitimate customers.
• Supermarkets have fully supported labelling information for consumers through units of alcohol labelling and promotion of the Drink Aware educational website.

1. Firstly, percentage of turnover isn't a very good defence against accusations of over discounting to get sales, since if you increase the discount then until volume catches up percentage of turnover will go down. Secondly, and this is just supposition based on a back of the envelope measurement of a couple of my local supermarkets, 10% of turnover isn't bad for a department that takes up about 5% of the floor space in a store.
2. What does 'immediately' have to do with the price of fish? On street drinking is a different problem from binge drinking and a lot of supermarkets, especially the "convenience" sub brands, do have chill cabinets these days.
3. I would like to see the research that shows that when Joe Bloggs buys a 24 can box of [insert name of premium lager brand of choice here] instead of an 18 can box because it is cheaper he going to a BBQ rather than just putting it in the fridge and quaffing it. I would very much like to see the way the survey was designed to ensure that people wern't just giving that sort of answer to look less like a binge drinker.
4. Again under age sales is a different problem to binge drinking. Also most of the policies they have put in place are about mindlessly asking everyone if they are over 21 to see if they have to produce ID rather than training staff on how to spot under age drinkers.
5. Woop-de-do self scan tills are no worse than staffed tills at letting people buy booze. Still not sure how this is relevant to the accusation that binge drinkers are buying the slabs of cans that are in supermarket discount offers.
6. Finally something that could be considered relevant to the problem...

because a far better page would be one arguing that while supermarkets are a source of supply to the binge drinker the problem itself is so rooted into our society that it would take price rises of truly epic proportions, if that was the only factor, to stop it. Whereas there is a possibility of using education, information and labelling as part of a programme to persuade the marginal cases to not spend every evening necking bad brewed under licence copies of foreign beers. Of course we won't make any true progress until we start looking at the reasons why people are self medicating in this way...

Wether or not spoon

The story being run about a branch of JD Wetherspoon in Wallasey limiting parents' drinks has me in two minds. Not about the whys and wherefores of pubs and pub chains setting their own rules about children being allowed in (especially now you don't need to apply for a separate children's certificate to go with your licence). I think that they should be allowed to make whatever rule they want to (as long as it is explained properly, without fibbing or hiding behind laws that are irrelevant).
No my doubt is about what JD Wetherspoon think their chain is about, when I first started using them, they were no children allowed, no TVs etc, just about the beer and food. Then a while back they switched to getting children's certificates and fitting TVs showing Sky Sports news and big matches. Now they are trying to dissuade parents with children staying. What will be next: timing people having a quite pint with the paper to ensure they don't use up a table for too long? Having restaurant like "at least one main course per person" rules?
They are already sliding down the quality list as far as beer is concerned and commit the cardinal sin of putting pump clips up for beers they don't have on, maybe this mucking about will put another nail in their popularity.