DIGITAL CAMRA
The On-line version of the Cornwall CAMRA Branch Newsletter ONE & ALE 

News Headlines

BIGGEST EVER FALMOUTH FESTIVAL DRUNK DRY

Since the arrival of the University campus at Tremough, near Penryn, numbers attending the Cornwall CAMRA beer festival in October have rapidly incresed, and this year was no exception.  In fact, numbers through the door were around 4000 by closing time on the Saturday night after 2 days of hectic real ale and cider consumption during which some 14,000 pints of beer and over 4,000 pints of cider and perry were absorbed by the happy festivalgoers.  Add in the bottled ales, country wines and ginger beer, and we think around 20,000 pints of liquid were consumed.  To put it another way, if it were petrol you could have filled the tanks of 200 cars.  In fact, the very last pints of real ale were sold by 22.10 that evening, then it was time to crack open the bottled beers, most of which were Cornish.  Within half an hour, these had all gone as well.

Beers were provided from breweries all over the UK, and as well as around 50 Cornish-made brews there were ales of all types - bitters, strong ales, porters, stouts, milds and novelty brews from  all over England, Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man.  Nor was craft cider forgotten, 'real cider' being of particular interest to CAMRA because its existence could be threatened in the same way as real ale by the big mass-production corporations.  Some 40 different varieties were on offer, as well a few real perries which are the pear-based equivalent of cider.  As a bonus, there were also a number of English country wines on offer, sold by the glass.  Available space in the Pavilion grounds being at a premium, the organisers again hired in a large marquee, which housed the cider bar, pub games, and the membership and products stand.

The marathon 'blind tasting' of all 170 beers by the stalwarts of a tasting panel put together by Brian Bazeley of the Ring O'Bells, St. Columb Major, came up with some interesting results in which the category winners were spread all over the country, although the Cornish brews stood up well, themselves taking a few prizes against stiff competition.  The results are listed below.  In parallel with this, a special tasting panel was formed to judge the best 'Speciality Beer' in CAMRA's south-west region; the winner of this now goes forward to the national competition which aims to unearth the Champion Beer of Britain, at the Great British Beer Festival, Earls Court, next August.

SKINNER DOES IT AGAIN!

Cornish Pub News

Pub closures which are apparently happening at a frightening rate of somewhere between 2 and 5 a day (depending on whom you believe) seem mostly to have passed Cornwall by - until recently.  We are beginning to get reports of pubs being boarded up or even being converted into something else, usually private residences.  The Camborne area has already suffered in this respect: the Basset Arms in Pool seems to have gone for ever, becoming a collection of flats, while closer in to the town the Pendarves is closed and although still looking like a pub, its future is uncertain.  We reported a while back that the White Hart in Ludgvan had been closed by owners Punch Taverns; fortunately it reopened after a period during which internal refurbishment and general cleaning up took place, and it is understood that it carries on much as before with the beers still racked up behind the bar, albeit with a new licensee in charge.

The numbers of pubs on the market remains high in the county, still in the 40 or 50 range.  Not so long ago you might have expected to see perhaps half that number advertised in Cornwall, but this rapid rise has even affected some old-established CAMRA favourites including some that have been in the Good Beer Guide for years.  Whether this is coincidental or whether the recent smoking ban is worrying some landlords to the point of retirement is not clear, although quite a few of the pubs for sale have smoking licensees or seem dependent on a high number of regulars who partake of the weed while having a pint, so there would on the face of it seem to be some link between the change in law and number of sales.  The number of pubs is too great to go into detail for each of them; the main selling agents are Miller Commercial and Scott Burridge Chick if you want to see the full listings.

The Lizard Brewery has relocated on the Lizard peninsula, to an unusual site at Pednavounder near Coverack called the Old Nuclear Bunker!  It is described by brewer Mark Nattrass as having reinforced concrete walls one metre thick, which make this building an ideal storage site for real ale. “There’s no need to think about cold storage as it’s like a cave, keeping the same cool temperature all year round,” he said. “We will separate an area for the brewery and I’m looking forward to the move.”  The former control and monitoring centre in case of nuclear attack has been empty for the past fifty years, but has a bunker in the basement into which staff would have sealed themselves until radiation had subsided enough for them to emerge into a devastated world.  Naturally the building is not easy to find, but if you turn off the road to St Keverne at Zoar, then just keep going.