I have been thinking again. In fact I have been reflecting on my early career in the brewing industry. I have also been thinking about cask beer and how much I used to drink and how much I drink now. I’ve also been thinking about the long hot summer of 1976 and how people were switching to lager. But I stayed with that lovely cool refreshing beer – cask bitter. My friends did too.

I started drinking properly in 1973. My first pints were in a Whitbread pub. I tried Trophy, Tankard, lager, lager top and shandy. After experimenting with all those I discovered, along with my friends, Boddingtons and Robinsons. Cask bitter, I have loved you ever since and nothing, not even the finest Pilsner nor the toastiest stout, can capture me for long. I will always return to you.

In 1974 I joined the brewing industry – or to be precise, my Mother made me get a job. Lucky for me she chose well. I joined Wilsons Brewery in Newton Heath, Manchester as a junior laboratory technician. My boss was called Tom Forsyth and his second in charge was Dave Keeling. It took me ages to work out why my signature on reports carried so much clout.

There was a great bunch of people in the laboratory and going to work was fun, plus I had little responsibility. Some of those still work in the industry today including Dave Facer, with his own brewery, and Margaret King, who has built a formidable reputation at Robinsons. I often think of those carefree days with long lunches, drinking three pints and then going out in the evening for a few more. Maybe the wages were not so great, but life most certainly was.

My joining the brewing industry coincided with the rise of CAMRA. Man, the excitement of travelling around the country, CAMRA pub guide in hand, trying different regional takes on cask bitter. I still remember my first taste of Greene King Abbot on a visit to Cambridge. Even the discovery of Oldham Ales was an adventure. For those who think the world stops at Watford, Oldham is a very long 30 minute bus ride from where I lived in Manchester. The excitement was very similar to that of the youth of today discovering the world of craft beer. Similar, but not quite as good. LOL! (See – I know what it means. I can keep up with the modern world – sometimes I will drink an IPA).

As an aside, the local bus company was called Selnec and travelling to places like Oldham and Ashton-under-Lyne on a bus often meant seeing a number of bikers who had been banned from riding their bikes for various reasons. Still carrying their helmets in their hands, they would sit in silence watching the traffic with forlorn looks. They were on their way to the biker pubs to have a few drinks with their mates and hoping to get a ride back on someone’s bike. Everybody called them Selnec Angels. I went to one of their pubs once – I have never seen so many people walking with a limp in my life. Still, the beer was good. The moral of this story is that bikes and drink don’t mix.

I spent that summer of ’76 working at Wilsons watching the keg lines working flat out to keep up with the demand for Carlsberg. It got so unbearably hot that the Union negotiated a 10 minute break every hour so the workforce could have a pint to refresh them.  Luckily Carlsberg was only 3.1% ABV. Throughout that summer, I stuck with my cool refreshing pint of Boddingtons.

In ’77 I decided to go to Heriot-Watt to study Brewing and Distilling. Lucky for me I had the qualifications and this, coupled with my then youthful need for knowledge, made me leave the comfort of my job and become a student again. Something I had hated when I went to Audenshaw Grammar School – where I was in good company as Mick Hucknall didn’t much like it either!

Being a student in Edinburgh is an experience I wish everybody could have. What a great city, what great pubs. I thought all Scotsman would be mad drinkers on whisky and 80 bob. No, disappointingly they were on vodka and lager. I was the mad drinker on whisky and 80 bob.

I was an extremely lucky student. I qualified for a full grant (young people reading this will probably need to Google it) because I had worked for three years and was termed a mature student. Mature is a description I would not use about me even today. I also qualified for the dole when I wasn’t studying (we only did three10-week terms), plus earning related pay for the first four weeks of my, ahem, unemployment. Wilsons were also very good to me, employing me every summer as holiday cover, earning my old rate (which, by the way, was tax free). Belated thanks to Frank Scallon who organised this for me.

I was taught by Sir Geoff Palmer, a person who still inspires me today. He taught me that you could be serious about beer and learning but even then it could be fun. A philosophy I still follow and encourage people around me to do so too.

After three glorious years in Edinburgh, I managed to get a job at Fuller’s. I joined in January 1981 and the rest, as they say, is history. Upon joining Fuller’s, I asked Head Brewer Reg Drury (another person who has been a huge influence on me) why he picked me rather than any of the other students. He said I had worked in the brewing industry and knew what I had let myself in for.  But that is another story, perhaps one I might tell some other time. Well if I get any encouragement to do so.

Now just returning up to date. It is a baking hot day outside. I will be going to the pub for a nice cool glass of cask beer. Well I do know a pub that has good throughput for its cask beer. You know what just thinking about it is making me thirsty. The big difference between 76 and today is that cask beer does not have the throughput and, particularly in this hot weather, there are just too many substandard beers being served. What is the future for cask beer? Thorny, I think, if we don’t solved the quality issue. Perhaps I should write about that?