Neil Morrissey’s Risky Business blogger: Melissa Cole – week 3

Melissa Cole, beer writer and author of popular beer blog Girl’s guide to beer: Taking the beard out of beer, gives us the lowdown on Neil Morrissey’s latest madcap beer brewing show…

Big supermarket deals, first brews and shiny barbecues were all on the agenda for Neil Morrissey and Richard Fox in the last episode of Risky Business last night. And the securing of a major distribution deal with Tesco must still have the boys hugging themselves as their money troubles seem solved.

But, as great as all that is, there was one aspect of the show that I really admired last night – but many of you may well have blinked and missed it so I’d like to highlight it for a couple of reasons…

The first reason is that there has been quite widespread criticism across the trade and in web forums of Morrissey’s comment in the first episode branding licensees who have gone out of business as ‘dumb’ – and I would imagine that, now he’s gone through the process of opening his own pub, seeing what a money pit it can be and also seeing how contrary customers can be about change, that he’s probably re-thought that by now.

But, ill-conceived comments aside, there’s absolutely no doubting the passionate commitment both these guys have to their ale; and the bit that really caught my eye was when Morrissey shoved a pint under a woman’s nose at the bar and said ‘smell that, it’s lychees and pears’ – with a big soppy grin on his face.

You see, having chatted with the pair of them, I know they are genuinely passionate about getting all walks of life, and most especially women, into beer – not just for profit either – and, frankly, we really, really, really need champions like this right now. I’ve had a peek into the future of beer marketing recently and it’s ugly…

I’m extremely worried that, instead of embarking on the kind of intelligent sampling campaigns the boys did with one of their initial brews to encourage more people to drink quality ales, major brewers are going to throw a whole load of advertising behind ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ beer brands, more akin to alcopops than the all-natural product with great provenance that we’ve seen being created on the show.

Good beer is an all-natural artisan product that takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to produce – so next time you’re in the pub, rather than reaching for the usual, why not ask for a taster from the handpull – after all, it’s free, so you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Catch up on all episodes of Risky Business

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