Do you want to know what’s in your beer and wine?

wavechange, I agree although I’m not too bothered about calories, pretty obvious there are a lot of calories in alcoholic drinks. Anyone looking to keep their weight in check really needs to limit consumption accordingly, and generic figures will do fine for that. I am much more keen on knowing about the additives in both drink and food. These are there to preserve the product and in some cases to enhance the taste of what might otherwise be nothing special. I’ve never been too keen on “additives” there seems to me to be a question mark on long term accumulative effects of these additives. I Germany for example I believe there are “purity laws” on beer which means ingredients other than those required to actually make beer are not allowed. That’s the kind of legislation I’d like to see here. Yes the product might not keep so long and yes the manufacture has to be more carefully controlled to maintain consistent quality but you’d always know exactly what you’re getting and that it’s real and pure.

Chris – I did not mention calories but since they are there along with ingredients and nutritional information on most foods, they should be there on alcoholic drinks, bread and many other we buy.

I am not aware of anything potentially dubious additives used in beer manufacture, but without information about the ingredients, we cannot be sure. I am suspicious of the brewing industry, which has already inflicted unpleasant pasteurised and carbonated keg beers on us, supported by expensive advertising campaigns. It does last longer, in the same way that UHT milk does.

Try the Good Beer Guide (about the price of a pint in central London) or Cask Marque (free) apps, either of which should help find pubs that serve beer without cleaning fluid.

Thanks for the tip, wavechange. If a pint tastes of cleaning fluid, I sometimes return it and ask them to run more beer out until the taste returns to normal.

That’s all it takes. A member of staff should taste the beer after changing a barrel.

Pubs should not refuse to do this. The beer should be drawn off into a pail and transferred to an empty cask in the cellar for return to the brewery where it will be credited and any duty paid can be reclaimed. I should be surprised if there are any problems of this nature in a Cask Marque pub.

Perhaps there are fewer calories in the cleaning fluid.

This system is long gone, John, so the only time that beer goes back to the brewery is if a cask is faulty. I believe that a certain amount of wastage is allowed per cask. In my local, beer drawn off after cleaning the lines goes down the sink.

Thanks for that update Wavechange. Obviously, I should get out more. Since we usually have a meal when going to a pub we order the drinks from the waiter and I don’t get to see what goes on behind the bar very often nowadays. I suppose that getting half-way through a pint of bitter and asking for a half of mild to top it up has also fallen by the wayside. Ward’s of Sheffield [no relation] used to brew a beautifully sulphurous mild ale that would recondition any lack-lustre beer.

It must be one of those quirks of the liquor laws, like it’s illegal to supply 11 fl oz when a half-pint is requested.

Not being an imbiberr of Co-Op wine I am not in a position to say whether they still list any ingredients. The next time I pass a park bench I shall look for some evidence or ask one of its occupants.

Sorry John – I’m not up to date. Here are the regulations: gov.uk/government/publications/excise-notice-226-beer-duty/excise-notice-226-beer-duty–2

Apologies for taking us off-topic.

Oops – That should have been with the discussion about beer, not wine. It’s well known that you should not mix your drinks. 🙂

From an environmental point of view, brewing in the UK is better than importing beer – a heavy, low value product that is mostly water. It may be necessary to import ingredients, but there is no reason why beer should taste different according to where it is brewed. It’s common in brewing to remove salts and add others to local water, which helps produce consistency. It would be wrong to market beer as foreign if it is produced in the UK, but I am not aware that this is being done.

Despite much of our beer being produced by large companies, there are plenty of smaller breweries offering reliable products and the explosion in number of microbreweries has been a real success for UK businesses.

And so-called micro pubs.

We have a good one in town, and the majority of what they sell on draught is local, though there was one from Cromarty last week.