Power To The People

‘We all know that people are the same wherever we go
There is good and bad in everyone
We learn to live, we learn to give
Each other what we need to survive together alive’*

Ebony and Ivory

Admit it you were singing along to this Paul McCartney/Stevie Wonder classic weren’t you? When you think a little deeper you are probably wondering what this has to do with brewing. How does a pop song about living together influence how we make Palmers finest ales?

The key to all that we are about is a small inconspicuous word in the first line – People.

We are all different, all have different attributes, all have different ambitions, all have different qualities. People is a plural of Person, in fact the plural should be more correctly ‘Persons’, but because we have this unifying social interaction with those around us we become a group of people.

Power to the People!

‘Power to the People’ was Woolfie’s chant as he emerged from Tooting Tube Station in the 1970s sitcom Citizen Smith. In this day and age, it really is true that people are getting more power and if you are running a brewery, then you need to empower the right people to do the right jobs in order to be successful.

The Chairman, Directors, Brewer, Telesales, Yardman, Draymen and all people in between need to think alike and work together. We are not just Persons, we are People ‘a group with particular unifying traits, qualities, properties, or characteristics’ and the unifying factor is our passion for brewing the finest ales and running great pubs.

More importantly it’s the people that drink in our pubs that matter – you the customers that have chosen to drink Palmers’ beer rather than another product. You are the people that Woolfie was referring to, the power to vote with your feet, the power of choice.

Nice pubs...

When in a Palmers pub you will be served by more people, the tenants and their teams. Another important group of people that is passionate about Palmers, that has the ‘unifying traits and qualities’ that make your Palmers experience special.

Our traditional brewery with its long family history is important. We continue to be ambitious with a strong sense of responsibility. We are proud of being in Dorset and are involved in our local community through participation and charitable work. We’re sometimes misunderstood, but Palmers is full of people like you, passionate about what we do. Power to the People!

Nice people....

Cheers
HB

*EBONY & IVORY LYRICS copyright Paul McCartney/Stevie Wonder and respective labels.
Citizen Smith photograph from BBC.CO.UK

Yellow Fizzy Stuff …….

As a brewer I can always appreciate different styles of beer. Obviously I have a passion for cask ale, but do not exclusively drink just beers brewed in the style I know so well. Sometimes after a good night out skittling and supping a few pints of Copper, I simply don’t feel like another night on the beer – so being a brewer I generally switch to Guinness (rather than Lager). It needs to be a warm balmy night for me to drink a pint of the yellow fizzy stuff (and I don’t mean Cider – as I am not a fan of fermented apples either!)

A passion for cask ale

Sometimes one simply cannot get a decent pint of ale. The reasons being mainly geographical depending on the County or Country you’re drinking in. Gone are the days of picking your drink by pub. With CAMRA and Cask Marque championing cask ale, hopefully quality is now consistent and good.

Nowadays, one also sometimes reflects on the price of a beer. I would never not have my drink of choice because the alternative is cheaper, but when travelling I am interested in the massive variation in price at the pump. Historically West Country folk drank cider due to its availability, refreshing taste and, if one is honest, it was a cheap alternative to more expensive ale and lager.

Drink up yee Cider...

Drinking an alternative is all well and good if there is one. Having recently returned from Down Under, my education on the yellow fizzy stuff is now complete. The household names of Fosters and Castlemaine XXXX are simply not in the bars, and the market is a diverse mix of Victoria Bitter, Tooheys New, Carlton Draught, Hahn Premium, to name but a few! Unfortunately they all pretty much fall into the ‘yellow fizzy stuff’ camp and lack what a cask ale brewer calls ‘flavour’!

Not so common Down Under

Don’t get me wrong, its ‘horses for courses’ and after a few hundred K’s in my camper van I enjoyed a bottle of Aussie Lager, but was still bemused in bars that whichever brand was my poison of choice, I couldn’t tell the difference? I soon got the hang of ordering a ‘Schooner’ rather than a ‘glass’ (a paltry 200ml) and this is where I started to notice the price.

Let’s be generous and say a pint of ale in Blighty is on average £2.90 and a pint and lager maybe as much as £4.00 in some trendy bars? In Australia, a schooner was around $AU6 and in today’s money that’s £3.75 for only 425ml, which is like paying £5 a pint.

If you wanted to be a bit trendy and drink Imported Heineken from the bottle, you could do so for $AU6.50 – while stocks last! (As you see I drank VB – I knew it was VB as it said it on the bottle?)

Heineken is imported and trendy

Believe me I am not talking about ‘trendy wine bars’ (as there are very few in Aussie) but Backpacker Bars and the local Hotel/Tab/Pokie parlour. It’s not just cold, fizzy and golden, it’s damn near the price of liquid gold to drink Down Under.

But all is not lost…. There is the occasional oasis in the desert. In the trendiest corner of Sydney, a suburb called The Rocks, sits the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel. Not only does the happy smiling landlord serve his beers in pint glasses, he is also educated in the art of blending a decent slug of Hops with fine traditional malted barley in his 5 brl brew plant.

Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel, Sydney

I admit it’s not the cheapest bar in Sydney (again £5 a pint) but at least one could tell the beers apart and relish in some real flavour. Judging by the 5pm crowd of suited and booted gentlemen it’s not just there for us globe travelling Poms – the Aussies have some taste too!

Cheers!
HB

Its all about the service…

When you are next propped at the bar in your local Palmers pub, pint in hand, chatting with mates and putting the world to rights, have a brief thought about how that pint actually got into your hand.

A nice pint

 I often get asked what I do all day as a brewer. Obviously there is brewing the beer, but the vast majority of my working day revolves around customer service. Once the beer is in the cask, the next stage is getting that into the outlet, and ultimately into your glass. Nothing more complex than that. Just good old fashioned logistics and service. A simple system of receiving an order, loading a lorry, driving to the pub, delivering the beer, and pouring a pint… so why does it take up so much of my time?

We have 5 delivery vehicles (you may have noticed they are all now dark blue with our lovely new logos) and 5 working days per week to deliver beer (and about 1000 other product lines; wines, spirits, lagers, ciders, soft drinks etc) to the pubs. Palmers have 55 of our own but also sell to around 400 other accounts on a weekly basis.

Do the maths, that’s 18.2 pubs a day per vehicle. Each and every one of those customers is important to us.



Palmers Lorry

Let us look at distance. We deliver as far as London, north to the M4 and down to Plymouth in the West. Can you start to imagine how difficult it is to drive to those 18 pubs per day in the summer traffic.

Despite our best efforts some things will always be out of our control, and if my team in distribution had a penny for every phone call that inquired where their delivery was, they would all be rich and have no need to work. The vast majority of our customers understand the issues, but we can never please all of the people all of the time!

Another nice pint

As your order your second pint, whilst contemplating how a big lorry actually gets down that lane, your licensee may change the barrel. How does he or she know how many to order? What happens if they run out? Will you drink a different beer? What if your beer is too warm? (or too cold) Who looks after that?

Now you can start to build a picture of a brewer’s working day. If they order too little it is us that gets the call for more. Of course we will get you some more, it’s just how will we do it? If there is a dispense issue, again it’s us they call. My brilliant Technical Services Manager on the road fixing and sorting. Looking after customers. Also the occasional cask in his van as ‘we didn’t order enough, can we have another cask of Dorset Gold?’ Of course you can.

If all else fails its the dray!

Sales Executives (posh name!) and even Directors cars can be requisitioned to ‘pop a cask of beer out’. The next issue becomes staffing – more vehicles equals more drivers. Again a brewer’s task to ensure all areas of the brewery can operate and we can still deal with all the little ‘extras’.

Don’t get me wrong – I love my job – but it can be quite testing at times. Now I must get on as writing blogs, although important in today’s world as you are all my customers, is not helping me get my Duty Return done!

Cheers!

HB