By Phil Mellows
Tonight, a new kind of pub opens to the public in the Nottingham suburb of Beeston. Local brewer Lincoln Green has transformed the White Lion into a double venue.
On one side of the building is a traditional pub with wood-panelled walls and a line of hand pumps signalling that it’s serious about its cask ale.
On the other side it’s a bright and airy modern bar-restaurant called Blackshale, serving an imaginative menu matched with a variety of craft beer on the taps.
Between them there’s an interconnecting door with nothing to indicate where it leads, from either direction. The question is, will any customers go through it?
Probably I don’t count, but I was led through what staff are calling “the secret door” at a preview event last week.
It’s a fascinating concept, two years in the planning, though one that Lincoln Green’s landlord, Heineken UK’s Star Pubs & Bars, took some persuading to invest in.
Lincoln Green is best known for shifting high volumes of cask ale through pubs such as the Robin Hood and Little John across the city, but it’s been experimenting with craft beers under the sub-brand Blackshale (the type of coal once mined beneath the spot where the brewery now stands), in order to target a younger market.
The Beeston venue is an extension of the idea in bricks. It’s expected to draw in two very different demographics – who may never meet over a beer.
It reminded me of a visit I made to Lewes, in Sussex, a few weeks ago for Beak Brewery’s These Hills Festival which gathered some of the country’s most highly regarded craft brewers in a field just outside town.
On my way I met a mate at the Lewes Arms, one of my favourite pubs. Along with others, he was coming out of the ‘morning’ session of Camra’s South Downs Beer & Cider Festival in the Cornmarket across the road.
As he remarked, everyone there was of “a certain age”. I knew that the people I’d meet at These Hills would be completely different, and I was right. If you drew a Venn diagram of both sets of attendees there would be no overlap at all.
Of course, I can’t be certain there wasn’t someone among a few hundred people who didn’t go to both, but I was pretty sure I was the oldest in that field. And there were a lot more women there, too.
I had a great time tasting some excellent beers in good company, but a part of me felt slightly sad that beer, which should be bringing us together, can divide young and old like this.
Harvey’s, the local traditional brewer had a bar at These Hills. It didn’t seem too busy but at least it was there. And I was cheered when another friend, a cask drinker even older than me, said he’d been converted to craft after discovering the Attic Brewery tap room in Birmingham. I can see no reason, either, why young people shouldn’t engage with the ‘craft’ of cask – which certainly needs their support.
So hopefully there is a secret door between the beer generations that will one day open for all.
British Beer Breaks gets an honorary call-out here: https://markjones.substack.com/p/steps-in-time-walking-and-writing