Anniversary Beers
Knaresborough Mummers have
not had a great success with Anniversary beers whether by accident or by not
knowing the right way to go about things!
I do have to say that the
ideas came from me in the first place, being a long time member of CAMRA and
dedicated to the perfect pint in the ideal pub!
At the risk of sounding as if I “can’t run a pxxs-up” in a brewery, I
will relate the two stories.
10th Anniversary
In 1984 I got permission from
the team to spend some money on a bottled beer commemorating our 10 years in
active service, Theakston’s of Masham being the target to provide the beer “Old
Peculier” in the guise of “Bold Slasher”.
We would get a limited number of bottles, individually numbered for
every member of the team through the years and dispose of the rest as prizes or
gifts. The big problem and the thing
that bumped up the cost was the all important label. At the time there wasn’t any home desk-top
publishing and we were referred to the only firm that provided beer bottle labels
to Theakston’s brewery. This was not a
problem but we got the labels at the cost of an “arm and a leg” and
The bottles were presented to
as many members as possible on the 10th Anniversary celebrations at
Staveley Village Hall on Saturday 22nd December, 1984. For some time after that, bottles kept
appearing as prizes in raffles at the Folk Club, Ceilidhs or wherever we could
get rid of them!! I believe some may
still exist in someone’s cellar in Knaresborough – now what about Ebay?*!
30th Anniversary
As the team as a whole was
not particularly enthusiastic about my idea, I decided to go it alone with this
one, as I was the only long term member of the team. My objective this time was to have a draft
beer and I persuaded the excellent Roosters of Knaresborough to provide one of
their bitters, branded as King Slasher (following on from Bold Slasher) to
whichever pubs on our Blue Stots tours would take the beer. The pump clips worked out about 70p a go (my
daughter doing the artwork on the computer!) so there was very little expense. I had reckoned without the strength of the
“tie” something that changes in legislation were supposed to have sorted out to
give more freedom to smaller brewers.
Instead it seems the PubCos, as they are known, have just as much
stranglehold on pubs as when they were brewery owned. The end result was that only about 3 pubs
that already stocked Roosters showed any interest and, come the night of the
tour, 2 of them couldn’t be bothered!!
So thanks must go Roosters
and the Tap and Spile in Harrogate for entering into the spirit of it – the
photo shows King Slasher meeting (and supping) King Slasher – an important
photo as it is one of the last outings of THAT jacket!! (see Ramblings of a Blue Stotter) Thursday 16th
December, 2004.
