The Camberwell Shark Blog
The Camberwell Shark returns
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water...
What does 2020 hold for the Camberwell Shark? Further indifferent form in Division 4 of the Hackney & Leyton League probably (at least you can’t get relegated from Division 4). But off the pitch our form is looking a little rosier and after a winter break, we are keen to build on November’s successful takeover weekend at the Copper Tap.
We are pleased to say that we will be returning to the Copper Tap, this time for a three day takeover, from Friday 27 March to Sunday 29 March. We will keep you posted with further details of the Copper Tap March weekend and future plans—we are exploring other takeover opportunities alongside thinking about the ever elusive permanent premises. But for now, to whet the appetite for March, this post and our next one will look back at the highlights of our previous Copper Tap takeover.
Takeover talk
We’ve mentioned previously how the opportunity to do the Copper Tap takeover came about. Alongside the excitement of the chance to run a pub for the weekend, we had three (related) concerns: would we order the right amount of beer for the two days, would we serve it in good condition and would anyone turn up to drink it?
Fantasy beer lineups
Dave and I had a fun evening the Copper Tap in October drawing up an order list of the local breweries and beers we would like to stock and the number of casks/kegs we would order. We estimated how many people would be in the pub across each hour of the weekend and using a rule of thumb of each person drinking three pints on average, we came up with the following pretty optimistic order.
Fortunately Dave and Stockers reviewed this sober and we settled on a more realistic lineup of seven casks and six kegs.
[For those who aren’t aware of the distinction between the two: cask ale, or real ale, is beer that undergoes secondary fermentation in the pub cellar which carbonates it naturally, it is generally poured through traditional handpumps on the bar and should be served at a temperature around 11 or 12 degrees; keg beer is served at a colder temperature, around 5 to 8 degrees, and is often carbonated artifically. A cask holds around 70 pints and a keg around 50 pints.]
The lineup was later supplemented by a cask from new microbrewery Common Rioters, who had got in touch on Twitter to say they were keen to get involved. They were due to brew a dark mild a few weeks before the takeover and we were only too happy to launch it.
Hello beer
With the quality of cask beer highly dependent on how it is looked after in the pub cellar, we wanted to be in charge of it from when it arrived at the Copper Tap. Dave, Dodds and I made our excuses at work and the Wednesday morning ten days before the takeover, we were at the pub to greet our first arrivals.
We somehow survived sans Stockers. It was also an opportunity to put up our first posters, designed by Pip who had done a wonderful job with them. They certainly looked good above the urinals.
Conditioning the beer
The beer was to have a rest in the cellar before we began the conditioning process. While we were comfortable on the theory, thanks to Dodds’s surprisingly thorough note-taking at our biblious training course at Fuller’s, we were nervous about putting it into practice for the first time. And with the Copper Tap focused on keg normally, there was little expertise to draw upon.
Walking to Peckham Rye afterwards, I realised we’d only seen two ale extractors in the pub cellar (we’d be serving the beer with the cask upright rather than on its side, which requires an ale extractor to be hammered into the top of the cask). We had eight casks which would require eight separate extractors to allow all the beer to condition properly before the weekend. Cue a frantic Google search for a supplier who could deliver quickly. They arrived the next day (I subsequently lost one of the caps the day before we tapped the final cask - back to the supplier and £20 next day delivery for a £1.79 piece of plastic …)
Our rough plan was to vent the beer for two days (once hammered in, the ale extractors have a vent which can be opened to allow air into the cask) to allow the beer to complete its secondary fermentation. The vent would then be closed and the beer left to settle for a further two days before connecting to the taps to serve. With casks arriving on different days, Dodds, living the closest to the pub, found himself going down to the cellar to open or close vents as required. A fine excuse to go to the pub every day.
Takeover eve
While not advertised, we thought it would be a good idea to put our cask beer on for the Friday night and allow ourselves a bit of a dry run (and make sure we could all pull a decent pint).
After a big clean of the ale extractors (the rods which are connected to the pumps and inserted into the casks through the extractor when the beer is ready to be dispensed), some of which had likely not been cleaned in a long time, and a full line clean, we were ready to try our first pint.
It was left to Dodds to do the honours. Canopy’s Sunray Pale the first pint to be served by the Camberwell Shark. I was nervous. The prospects for the weekend hinged on how this tasted…
I needn’t have worried. It was glorious. We’d said we’d be more than happy with a ‘good’ pint. This wasn’t just good, it was cancel any plans and have another pint good. Lewis, our first customer, agreed.
We persuaded the regulars at the bar who normally drink Guinness to try Brockley’s Porter. It went down well with Ian, who seemed to be in charge. It boded well for the weekend ahead.
NEXT TIME
The takeover proper begins. With the beer in great condition, would anyone turn up to drink it?