Beer quality: Keeping cool

Continuing with the beer quality theme, Adam Withrington looks at temperature.

A lot has been written about beer quality on these pages over the last year or two. It is the most fundamentally important issue facing the beer industry at the moment. If the quality disappears then so will the customer.

Most of the editorial has focused on premium products, particularly on cask beer, which as a perishable product requires a huge amount of attention, and premium lagers, through glassware and quality of serve.

However, there has been a glaring omission. Standard lagers may be dismissed by CAMRA members and highbrow punters alike but they most certainly dominate the beer sector.

Three of the top 10 spots in The Publican Brands Report published last March were taken by mainstream lagers - Carling, Carlsberg and Foster's.

Despite this success there is criticism that the quality of serve of standard lagers isn't what it might be. While you might think this complaint had been put out by a member of the lager-hating minority, you'd be wrong.

In actual fact the "offender" is John Holberry, on-trade sales director at Coors Brewers, the company whose main brand is, of course, Carling. Despite Carling's fantastic sales figures (see below) he is unhappy with the way standard lager is treated by many in the trade. He believes that licensees across the country are failing customers with the quality of pint they serve across the bar every night.

"When you talk about standard lager, for me the most important thing is to look at the basic things - cleanliness, temperature and time," says John (pictured)​. "Are licensees selling a product within its specifications and are they doing it using a clean glass? Every bit of research we have done to ask this question says the answer is no."

Over an 18-month period a team from Cask Marque tested 500 London outlets and over half of them failed to meet the basic criteria on cleanliness and temperature, outlined below. The area that really bothered John was temperature. So as a result he went out, armed with his thermometer, and decided to test these findings for himself.

He visited nearly 30 cities to test the temperatures of pints of Carling and other lagers and none of the pubs served their mainstream lagers under 6ºC, which is the maximum recommended serving temperature for Carling.

"Extra colds have made this better," says John. "But even these are not working precisely as they should. They should be between 2ºC and 4ºC and all I found was they were guaranteeing between 4ºC and 6ºC. The chiller cabinets were even worse. There were none under 10ºC.

"Quality is everything in the on-trade. Over the last 20 to 30 years the gap between the good quality on-trade and poor quality off-trade has narrowed and possibly even switched over. The fact is that the basics need quality to be attacked first and getting the temperature right is one of the most important things."

However, not all major brewers share John's sentiments on temperature. A spokesman for Scottish & Newcastle (S&N), which brews Foster's, said: "We have done a lot of work on this and we believe we deliver standard lager at the proper specifications. Foster's Super Chilled was not introduced as a means to deliver normal, standard temperature."

S&N has invested a huge amount in point-of-serve kit, including O Ring cooling system within the font as well as the in-line chillers under the bar which have made super-cold beers possible.

John is not pointing the finger, he is simply passionate about retailers getting their standard lager offer right. He believes that if they do, it can make a bigger impact on their sales than any premium lager.

"Last year mainstream on-trade market grew by three per cent while premium was pretty flat.

"Quite simply people do not want to get drunk on five per cent ABVs anymore. The introduction of variation into the sector through Extra Colds has had a major impact. But this will not last if basic quality issues are not addressed."

Brand performance at Coors in 2004​

The difference between standard and premium.

Carling​

• Gained 2.7 per cent market share
• Gained three more distribution points
• By far and away the most distributed mainstream lager - 30 per cent larger than nearest rival
• Volumes grew by seven per cent
• Coors admits that this performance is really on the back of the introduction of Carling Extra Cold.

Grolsch​

• Had a much more difficult year
• Part of this is because it had been the only
  premium lager in the old Bass estate, but this year Mitchells & Butlers introduced Stella Artois across the estate as competition
• Excluding the M&B data Grolsch is the best performing premium lager, but including it, volumes fell by five per cent.

Temperature test​

To test out John Holberry's concerns, The Publican went out into three licensed premises to measure the temperature of the two main standard lagers on the bar and see if they were served correctly.

The recommended serving temperature of Carling is between 4ºC and 6ºC, Foster's between 6ºC and 8ºC, Castlemaine XXXX between 5ºC and 7ºC and Carlsberg between 6ºC and 8ºC.

• Lloyds No.1, Croydon​
  Foster's: 6ºC
  Carling: 6ºC

The Spreadeagle, Croydon​
Carling: 7ºC
Carlsberg: 6.5ºC

Yates's, Croydon​
Foster's: 8ºC
Castlemaine XXXX: 6ºC

Conclusion: While sticking a thermometer into a pint glass may not be the most scientific means of measuring the temperature of the lager at point-of-serve, these results are interesting. The temperatures are all at the top end of the recommended range. The results show that temperature is a factor that needs to be closely monitored by licensees and their staff.