Deep breath, I like beer mats

I’m going to be brave and stand up and say my name and after taking a deep breath I am going to say that I like beer mats. Yes that’s right, I like beer mats. I started collecting them as a teenager, though I got rid of my first hoard after splitting up with a girlfriend, but then started again and now have enough to fill about four shoeboxes. I have some of them displayed on my book shelves, while others are in plastic sleeves somewhere in a folder and the rest remain in the boxes. 

What do I like about them? 

There’s an element of time and travel about them — some represent a visit to a pub (or brewery) in a specific town or country, a memory jogger, a souvenir, a time capsule. I can see an old school Adnams one with the fisherman (and pipe), which was used for Old Ale —this takes me back to my first visit to Southwold on a cold night towards the end of the year in 1989 (that was a good night). The one for Coreff returns me to our son’s first holiday when he was about four months old (oddly enough there’s a photo from that time on the web somewhere — I’ve got a glass of Leffe and a baby is looking at it worriedly). Then there are the mats of beers from breweries that I used to like but are no longer here: as I write I can see ones for Morrells, Devenish, Tolly Cobbold and Brakspear’s on the wall. There are also mat or should that be coasters for American, Polish, Italian, German and Belgian breweries.

However the reason why I have been thinking of beer mats is this little beauty above for Harvey’s in Lewes. I picked it up at the Rake on Wednesday night and I just love it. Its immediate, striking, has a cartoonish quality but is warm as well. There’s an element of self-humour there as well, as Viva Lewes is not a phrase I would usually attribute to Harvey’s, who are one of my favourite breweries. It’s a mat to celebrate their old ale and presumably the imagery refers to Lewes’ bonfire night next month. I love it and it’s like a prediction of a journey yet to be done — I haven’t been to Harvey’s but this is something I will get around to rectifying sooner rather than later. Oh and Pete Brown tells me that the artist who did this glorious beer mat also did the cover for Shakespeare’s Local. 

And of course we all know that beer mat collectors call themselves tegestologists’ — I think I’ll pass on that .

Beer culture

Beer culture? What is beer culture? Some might argue that it’s about the liquid in the glass and the approach that the brewer has taken and how the drinker conjoins with it. It’s perhaps about what the brewer has done within the cloisters of the workplace, the ideas that have created the beer; it’s the experiences, the memories, the everyday life, the homework and the rote learning all distilled into the brew; some brewers might be like inspired songwriters or clever wordsmiths such as Paul Heaton and others like session musicians who turn up day after day and play the same sequence of notes (not necessarily a bad thing as some of the best musicians in the world are sessioneers).

As for the drinker, is beer culture about how they approach the beer in their glass, how they have a relationship with it, how they treat the world when they think about it or drink it or place a plate of ribs in front of it or sit in an armchair closeted from the world, the glass to hand. Others might throw in the environment in which the beer is drank, the ambience of the place where the beer is enjoyed (or maybe isn’t enjoyed), the glare of the light that moonwalks across the stage of whatever drinking space in which the drinker happens to enjoy their beer.

Is it also about the words that are exchanged about the beer like tokens of affection? Or maybe, on the other hand, the words about the beer, whether in the hand or in someone else’s, are like missiles thrown at the police during an inner city riot. Beer’s like that, it encourages words to be tossed about, chucked up in the air, stamped on the floor, taken through the gutter and hung out to dry. Words soothed and smoothed like soft fur, fed on ripe corn, fattened up for slaughter and then they’re gone.

For others beer culture is the route beer takes to get from the people who make it, through the hands of the people who encourage people to try it, en route touching the hands of people who pay for the space in which the beer is made and the face that it shows to the world, before finally the beer laps into the glasses of the people who will pay for it — a journey perhaps with brightly coloured scraps and flags left at various stations along this passage calling out to people that this beer will make them more than they are.

And of course there’s the fury and the fire of the campaign, the broad bland outstretch palm smile of the evangelist and the educator, the sorter out of the wheat from the chaff, the ones that aim to bring order to the world of beer culture in the same way perhaps an art teacher would have loved to teach Picasso how to paint. There’s the time lord in search of what was lost and is found again, an arrow of time flying backwards and forwards. And finally there is the culture of beer culture, the historiography, the methodology, a place where beer culture is dissected like a frog in a school laboratory. 

So what is beer culture? 

Roll out the barrel for Alastair Simms (not the actor)

Amid the tales of glasses, pubs closing and whatever else gets you down about the beer we love, here’s a positive beer story I’ve written for tomorrow’s DT about the master cooper of Wadworth’s. I’ve also done articles on inn signs and hops for them, and it has a regular pub review every week (as far as I can work out the only one of the broadsheets to do so), so beer has a voice here.

Game On

If you’re down the boozer with Aunt Sally then you’re in Oxfordshire, while on the other hand Ringing the Bull will see you up in the north. Skittles is simple isn’t it? Somerset farmers on the booze enjoying a night off filling in DEFRA’s devilishly fiendish forms. Hold on a minute, there’s also the Long Alley version, which is played with a hardwood 'cheese' in the East Midlands, while Hood Skittles, also involving a 'cheese', is found in Northampton (rather than Nottingham). I could go on but it’s better to have a look at Played At the Pub, a gorgeous and encyclopedic compendium of all the games that people play (and have played) down the pub. It rightly won its author Arthur Taylor a Gold in the National Journalism awards at the beerwriters’ beano earlier in the month (he’s won several over the years and his guide to beer in Northern France was essential, along with The Beers of France, when I researched Bières des Garde a few years ago). Taylor has been writing about pub games for three decades and he was very helpful to me when I was researching an article for the Field a few years ago — the book is just wonderful in a way that I could never have thought, full of some fantastic pics and as someone who occasionally enjoys the occasional game of skittles (it is always odd when I play it as the more I drink the better I think I am, which is totally untrue) I find it an invaluable addition to my ever growing library of books of beer, brewing, pubs and all aspects of the culture that beer sustains. It’s published by English Heritage and costs £14.99 — one for the Christmas tree if it’s not too late.