This article titled “Wetherspoon pubs: soulless drinking pits, or a mainstay of the high street?” was written by Max Brearley, for theguardian.com on Friday 4th April 2014 15.47 UTC
Wetherspoon has just announced it is to open its first pub in the Lake District, after some opposition. The chain tends to attact protest when it plans to open new branches and celebration when it fails. Does any other name in British pubs divide opinion as much? I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the pub behemoth. Charges levelled against the ‘Spoons tend to go: they are soulless, big, cheap city-centre drinking pits, dominated by televisions and many lone, drunk men ready to tell you where this country went wrong. It’s an easy shot to say that they’re the McDonalds of the pub world. But would that be to underplay their place in our national pub landscape? True, they often feel like a last resort in an unfamiliar place. But I’ve been to quite a few over the years, and I reckon they’re getting more than just the pricing right.
We hear the noise about the revolution in British beer, from the Camra movement to the rise of craft beer, but still, swaths of pubs are serving mass-market dross and seldom change the offering. This isn’t something that can be levelled at Wetherspoon. They are a freehouse without which many smaller brewers wouldn’t get time at the bar. And there’s a picture beyond the city centre Wetherspoons.
The Wallace Hartley in Colne, for instance, is representative of small town Wetherspoons. Hartley was the Titanic bandleader born in this small Lancashire town. He was also teetotal; a rarity now in a place where a pint of cask ale will cost you about £1.80. The pub is buzzing on a Thursday afternoon, a mix of local councillors tending to civic business over a coffee, groups of pensioners, the unmistakeable lone beer ticker stood by the chalkboard, notebook in hand, pondering the nine cask ales. Pubs are cheap up and down Market Street, but not all as busy as this. Good service and cheap food play their part, but I’d hazard a guess that, in a large part, it’s down to the choice of beer on offer.
The board has the likes of Greene King, but also smaller Northern brewers like Elland Brewery, Moorhouse’s and, yes, Titanic. Names known to craft-beer geeks but unexpected here are also on the way. Yeastie Boys from New Zealand, Norway’s Nøgne Ø and Young Henrys from Sydney are all part of the ongoing Wetherspoon international beer festival, which runs until 13 April. Ten foreign brewers are featured, along with a roster of 40 British brewers. This alone would draw me through the doors of one of their more than 900 establishments.
The craft beer market is now big business, with everyone vying for their piece. In early March, Wetherspoon exclusively rolled out three canned beers direct from Sixpoint brewery in Brooklyn. A cask version, a collaboration, brewed at Adnams in Suffolk, has also been featured. It serves as an introduction for drinkers to a taste of what American brewers have become known for and a gateway for some staunch cask drinkers. It’s still novel to staff and customer alike: my Bengali Tiger IPA (6.4% abv) draws a raised eyebrow as I point it out in the fridge to bar staff, with an intrigued punter fixating on the £2.80 price tag. I think it’s cheap while he’s of another opinion. There’s a sharp intake of breath and I fear a heart attack when I tell him that in London you can pay £4 a half. His response? Not printable.
I’ll always favour the independent and individual freehouse but Wetherspoon isn’t a mere last resort. When it comes to beer, it’s a dependable mainstay of the high street.
• This piece was amended on 4 April 2014. The original version incorrectly stated that all the Sixpoint beers sold in Wetherspoons were brewed in collaboration with Adnams in Suffolk.
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