The Beer's Best Mate, The Beer Snacks.
- Matt Morris
- Jun 27, 2017
- 4 min read
During my recent trip around Congleton I was thinking about the usually under valued pub snack; those overly salty, delicious things that keep your beer hunger at bay and make you drink more ale. Things are changing what are considered a beer snack with the boom of the micro pub and hipster places to newer, yet still tasty alternatives from those beloved traditional pub snacks.
I will start off back in the past - your typical crisps, nuts, pork scratchings. Those are the founder fathers of it all and still mainstays of this market, the landlords secret agent all available to make us the consumer swill more beer down our throats. It was a much simpler time with ready salted, salt and vinegar and cheese & onion, salted or dry roasted nuts and then scrumptious pig fat and skin (save the hairs mind). Now there is still nothing wrong with these selections - we all love those guys, they are the mainstay of the household and I will openly admit that I often tuck into a bag of Black Country scratchings after my 6th or 7th pint, there really is nothing better especially when you get to the end of the bag where the dust collects, same for the dry roasted nuts. A less regular traditional pub snack is the Cheese board, where the landlord of the pub would on a certain day bring in an array of cheeses tending to consists of a fruity cheese, old faithful strong cheddar, a stinky yet delicious blue cheese and then a red cheese whether it be double Gloucester or Red Leicester. Like the pub snack thoroughbreds, the selection of cheeses is changing with a spicy chilli based cheese usually on there and quickly being devoured, I have even known a herb roulade making it's way on there. It was never likely with British people in the past 30 years or so becoming more daring and experimental with their food choices that the same traditional favourites would be stuck with, this trend of new flavours and even different snacky foods are now in our beloved pubs.
Let's start with the transformation of the great crisps and nuts, with the boom of traditional cooked crisps like Kettle, Pipers, Real Cooked and many other brands the crisp flavours are now as varied as ever before and some are not even made with potatoes by using an array of different vegetables. Nuts too have also evolved with coated nuts and umpteen different flavours you see everywhere now, but unlike crisps I still think the two traditional flavours are the most popular by some distance to the point if this was a scientific test this would construe as an anomaly. An increasing regular presence in the micropubs and bottle shops is Salami, now this is a great idea - they are tasty, salty, compact so take up less room and last a long time for sale, pork in pubs is a winner in anyone's book. Another item entering it's way in mainly 'upper class' of bar is olives, whether on their own or fermented in chilli's or garlic they have many traits to that of salami, as they are salty, have a long shelf life and another bonus is that they are suitable for vegetarians and vegan's who fancy a change from crisp stuff. I am a big fan of both of the newer boys so long may they continue and hopefully thrive so I can keep chomping on those delicious salty fiends.
What holds for the future of the pub snack game? Well one snack of the 'Holy Trinity' I have not mentioned since the opening section are pork scratchings, they tend to be still the same whether Black Country style or puffy. Yes I hear the "what about chilli one's?" however I am thinking of them in forms such as Salt & Vinegar, Mustard, Cheese and Onion etc which do exist, but are still pretty new to any market so you can bet that in the next few years that the boom of flavoured pork scratchings will be regularly in your local bar in the not so distant future. Another new-ish item to the World is savoury flavoured popcorn, I have actually tried a bag of Salt and Vinegar flavour one's which came with a box of beers, they were actually really tasty and they tick every box that crisps do without so many calories. In a Country with an obesity crisis and the traditional pub snacks being high in fat, this seems a smart move for both us the customers and pubs to delve into these instead of the old faithful.
Whatever happens to pub snacks in the future, they will always be there until the world comes to an end and with the vast array of other cuisine's growing in popularity in the U.K. such as Japanese, Vietnamese, Malay amongst many others, what else will we see that I have not mentioned? It is an exciting thought and one I look forward to seeing and eating.
We love you pub snacks.
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