Are You Tasting the Pith?

The Name's Double. Ampleforth Double.

2012-01-26T20:45:00.005Z

As I emerge blinking from another round of the game I like to call "Dishing It Out About Beer" (go and join in the fun at the Fletch-curated Real Ale Reviews), I'm reminded of an event that happened 24 hours ago that throws the all the arguments about "craft beer", keg vs cask, the relevance of CAMRA in the 21st century et al into a cocked hat.

When you look at these beers, there's little to inspire confidence. Sure, they are pre-production samples, but there's nothing about them that makes you think "ooh, helloooo". You might raise one eyebrow at the monastic connections to Ampleforth Abbey, raise the other eybrow at the 7%abv. But then perhaps you'll lower the first eyebrow noting that sugar is listed as an ingredient, and then lower the second raised eyebrow when you note that the beer isn't brewed on site, but is actually contract brewed by Dutchman in exile Wim van der Spek at his Little Valley brewery near Hebden Bridge. All of this eyebrow waggling, resembling windscreen wipers on a rainy drive, might have given you the appearance of Roger Moore doing a mid-period James Bond. If, like me, your experiences with Little Valley beers have been a bit mixed - on cask, delicious and sometimes ethereal, in bottle, mmm, not so much - you might even have lowered an eyebrow by now.

Anyway, that frightfully clever, look-at-me-and-my-fancy-words preamble is a roundabout way of saying that last night I opened these beers, and they completely cut through the craft-cask-keg-CAMRA debate about where we go from here, because these are simply very well-made beers, and great examples of what they should be. Perhaps my expectations were lowered from all the eyebrow waggling, and I have to say that the initial banana and acetone notes that wafted out of the glass were a little unnerving, but given a couple of minutes to breathe, this blossomed spectacularly into a really solid, slightly sweet, slightly boozy Belgian-style double/dubbel.

I know, I know, it's really unlikely, but there you have it. I spoke to the guys at the abbey today and they have a colossal first bottling run booked in. I won't say exactly how much, but my initial "yeah, I could sell a bit of this, but I wonder how much?" finger-in-the-air estimate of how much to buy was about a half of one percent of the total production run. They're clearly slightly mad - the only English abbey beer, brewed under licence by a Dutchman 50 miles away - but like all mad things, there's an element of greatness to it.

More pertinently for me, it underlined that actually the key thing that makes a beer great is, very simply, that it must be well-made. No doubt some smart-arse will pop up and say "but that's the definition of craft". Well, bullshit. There are well-made beers, and then there are the rest. If you can brew a beer and get it into a glass free from any production flaws, and tasting broadly how it should taste (let's not use this as an argument about styles), then you'll have made me, and a legion of drinkers, very happy. It seems like a modest set of desires, doesn't it? Brew a beer free of flaws, ensure it carbonates properly, and tastes (for want of a better word) nice.

Anyway, I drank the first bottle of badly-labelled, contract-brewed Ampleforth Abbey Double, and when I got to the end, I thought "was it really that good?" and drank another one to make sure. And you know what? It really was that good.

We All Love Beer And We All Love Beer

2012-01-23T19:29:00.006Z

This is going to be a great year for beer in Leeds. As Sweary Matt points out on his blog, it's North Bar's 15th birthday this year (it's nearly old enough to drink!), the Leeds beer scene is going from strength to strength, and we're hosting the European Beer Bloggers Conference. If you live in Leeds, it would be really easy to look forward to a great year of beer, to put your feet up at home with selection of fine beers purchased from a local independent retailer, or prop up the bar of one of Leeds' fine drinking establishments, and just congratulate yourself. But you know what, let's not do that just yet.

We're beer bloggers, and we blog about beer because we love it in all its myriad glory. We have our own ranking system run by Wikio/ebuzzing, we're a happy community of like-minded souls, and we're a splendid group of people. But something that's been levelled at the beer blogging community is that it's a bit insular - it talks to the converted rather than recruiting new drinkers to the cause. So given that the conference in May is going to be great - we'll take that as read - why don't we try and broaden the scope of the attendee list a bit?

I've been chatting to Leigh at The Good Stuff, and over the next few months, Leigh has agreed to host/organise/curate a series of beer and food tastings at Beer-Ritz in Headingley, Leeds (disclosure - that's my business). The idea behind this is specifically to try and recruit some of the excellent West Yorkshire foodie bloggers to the conference, and also generally to promote beer and/or beer and food together. Leigh is kicking off on Monday 6th February with an evening of baking and beer. I'm sure that Leigh will follow up at some point with more detail, but the poster (designed and executed by Ghost Drinker) tells you all you need to know - come along between 6 and 9pm, and have some baked sweet treats and a mouthful of beer to wash them down. Please do come along, and if you can bring one of our foodie blogging brethren or sistren, so much the better.

Raw Sensation / Unmediated Pleasure

2012-01-10T21:29:00.004Z

Look, bear with me, there will be a point to this.

I studied psychology as an undergraduate degree. Along with a lot of contentious nonsense, a few interesting things stuck with me. One was the phenomenon of being at a party, or in a busy pub, and hearing someone say your name against a chorus of 50 people talking. The implication here is that your brain is unconsciously monitoring everything in the room, and then when something interesting happens - like someone saying your name - your brain shimmers into the room like Jeeves and politely draws your attention to it.

Another thing made an impression on me was seeing a couple of my tutors argue about 'raw sensation'. That's the idea of the moment that brain senses something is going on, but hasn't yet made sense of it. The example that was given was if you touch your finger on something and can't tell if it's really hot or really cold. Your reflexes just go "NO!" before your brain can figure out exactly why it's going "NO!".

All of this was brought back to me recently when I was watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations", where he hangs out with jefe of El Bulli, Ferran Adria. Part of the programme is Bourdain, Adria and couple of others eating their way through the El Bulli tasting menu - a few dozen courses, each just a mouthful or two.

One of the most striking things was the joy that Adria clearly got from eating the food he'd designed. He obviously didn't get to sit down and eat his way through his own menu every day, and to see him have a succession of "HA! WTF?!" moments was beautiful to behold. There's a fairly rudimentary description of this sensation here in paragraph seven, where I have my mind blown in a way that I never have before, and I also touch on it here.

Maybe what made me think about this was Boak and Bailey's flagging of my reaction to a beer. Or maybe it was the pint of Tetley's I had tonight that had a weirdly evocative hint of orange blossom the reminded me of spring in Seville. Or was it the pint of Wadworth's Henry's IPA I had at Christmas that had a faintly stale backnote to it that reminded me of my parents drinks cabinet at Christmas, but when I was ten years old.

Well, I promised a point at the start, so I guess I'd better make one. How much of drinking beer is an intellectual exercise, using the front brain to analyse what's going on, and how much of it is an almost pre-cognitive reaction to what you're drinking? Can we give finely graded 100 point ratings to beers, where we pull it to bits, or is a simple binary yes-no system good enough? And returning to the image in my mind of Ferran Adria rolling his eyes and grinning at his own food, isn't it important to have a visceral reaction to what we drink, as well as a cerebral one?

Sucking Up A Social Class: Some Further Observations

2011-12-20T08:01:00.003Z

As Boak and Bailey point out on their blog, there is a lot of debate at present around "craft" beer and snobbery. I was going to post on their blog about why this is, but then realised that it probably warranted a post all of its own.

There are a couple of things going on here. One is the conflation of money and class, a peculiarly American concept. Could it be that the "craft" beer movement, as well as drawing beery inspiration from the USA, has also imported a load of social values along with it? There are a lot of naysayers who object purely on principle to paying £10 for a bottle (or a pint) of beer. I'm not exactly sure why that is - it would be easy to say that it's jealousy, but I think there's something more fundamental going on. I think it's the idea that there is something posh, snobby, pretentious - call it what you want - about spending your money on fancy, rare or expensive beer. Just as I'd defend anyone's right to spend their money on anything that they want (as long as it isn't criminal, in the legally defined sense), I'd also defend anyone's right to express their discomfort about it. But that's just what I think - I'd love to hear your views on that idea.

Tied into this is the idea that people who buy fancy, rare or expensive beer are doing so because they somehow think they are better than people who don't. For this to be true, there would have to be a substantial amount of blog content denigrating the sort of beers that "only" cost below £3 a pint. But I can't find anything, anywhere that says anything like that, BrewDog's publicity machine aside, of course.

Ah, the B-word. Has BrewDog stance on "industrial" beer become so well disseminated that now people are conflating their views with that of the "craft" beer movement as a whole? Or are they closer than "craft" beer lovers would like to think? Or is it really simply about money and snobbery?

WE ARE LEEDS!

2011-12-15T22:12:00.008Z

This pic was taken in Rome early 2010. It's at the beer dinner hosted jointly by Birra Del Borgo and Dogfish Head, which sort of doubled as the launch for the Italian-only book "Eur-Hop!" - it's a beer-lover's guide to Europe. As well as the brewers Leonardo Di Vincenzo, Teo Musso and Sam Calagione, the chap on the left, holding a copy of said book, is Lorenzo Dabove (aka Kuaska), Italy's most celebrated beer writer.

At the launch, Kuaska talked to me about the "Holy Trinity" of beer cities in the North of England (that's how they are described in the book) - Sheffield, Manchester and Huddersfield. I also note that the author for the portion on northern England is some guy called Dave Szwejkowski, who has apparently "viagiatto attraverso i cinque continente in cerca delle birra perfetto" - which makes Dave Unpronounceable's international scooping exploits sound impossibly glamorous.

I also remember feeling slightly crushed that Leeds wasn't part of that group, but hey, that's life. And what a difference a couple of years makes.

This is a time of year when it's natural to look backwards and assess, but let's be the perverts we want to be and look forward and speculate. I think 2012 is going to be a good year for Leeds. Not only is the European Beer Blogger Conference coming to Leeds in May, but it's also North Bar's 15th anniversary, which must surely be the cue for all sorts of unusually fabulous events. Throw into that mix the ~~rumours~~ fact of the long-awaited opening of a BrewDog bar in Leeds, and it looks as though next year is going to see Leeds adding another point to the that Holy Trinity, making it into, errr, no idea - an Unholy Rhombus?

Included below is a little piece I did this morning on BBC Radio Leeds about the EBBC 2012. The keen observer will note that I'm getting my years confused a bit, but live radio is quite intense. I'm just pleased I got through it without freezing, corpsing or profanity.

It's good to see the mainstream media showing an interest in the event so far ahead - I hope that we can all keep some sort of momentum up, and put Leeds and great beer on the map for May next year.

Golden Pints 2011

2011-12-10T14:21:00.004Z

Everyone loves a list, don't they? A "Best of..." list is a great way of condensing information, although of of course there is a lot of detail and nuance lost in this approach, and anyone not appearing on it might feel slighted.

Oh well, here's my contribution:

Best UK Draught (Cask or Keg) Beer Magic Rock High Wire
Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer Buxton Brewery Axe Edge
Best Overseas Draught Beer Odell IPA
Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer Anchor Porter - a hugely underrated beer, in my opinion
Best Overall Beer Magic Rock High Wire
Best Pumpclip or Label Magic Rock
Best UK Brewery The Kernel - defining 'craft' without ever thinking too hard about it
Best Overseas Brewery Mikkeller (yes, I know he hasn't got a brewery, but you know what I mean)
Pub/Bar of the Year I don't get out much, but The Euston Tap is a repeated draw when I'm in London
Beer Festival of the Year I've not been to many, but GBBF is an obvious call
Supermarket of the Year Haven't shopped widely enough to have an opinion
Independent Retailer of the Year modesty forbids - has it only been 9 months....?
Online Retailer of the Year modesty forbids
Best Beer Book or Magazine not read enough to choose
Best Beer Blog or Website Adrian Tierney-Jones at Called to the Bar
Best Beer Twitterer Simon H Johnson
Best Online Brewery presence Magic Rock
Food and Beer Pairing of the Year couldn't choose, sorry.
In 2012 I’d Most Like To… get back out to the USA, and judge at the World Beer Cup
Open Category: You Choose Best commodity/craft crossover beer - Worthington White Shield. I can't think of a single other beer that has got such a great lineage, tastes amazing, and yet you can still pick up for a couple of quid in most UK supermarkets. Garrett Oliver's maxim that "you can buy some of the best beers in the world for the price of a double latte at Starbucks" has never been more true.

Hi, My Name's Zak, And I'm A Hypocrite

2011-12-07T20:55:00.007Z

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been 1,716 weeks since my last confession, and in that time I've been guilty of the sins of lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, acedia, lust, envy, vanity and pride"

"You said lust twice, my child"

"I'm sorry father, I like lust"

I like to think that I'm as even handed with "ordinary" beer as I am "craft" beer. A nervous glance back through my recent posts (did I only post once in October? That's sloth and acedia for you) suggests that although I do post about rare and hard-to-find stuff, I also post about easy-to-find stuff too.

Coupled to that, a recent theme in my posts has been to support independent retailers - no particular reason, other than it's what I do for a living, and I think that independent retailers have a very clearly defined role in the beer market. Having said that, I'd be interested to hear what you think that role is.

However, I have to admit to having strayed from the path recently. I live a 3 minute walk from a Morrisons supermarket, and the other evening, having just driven home from a warehouse with around £100k of great beer in it, I discovered that I didn't have any beer that was appropriate to my mood. I didn't want any homebrew, any Fuller's Gales Prize Old Ale, any Stone Old Guardian, any Birra Del Borgo KeTo Reporter, any Hair Of The Dog Adam, any Hardknott Granite (Batch 1), any Williams Bros Fraoch 20, any Thomas Hardy Ale. What I wanted was a couple of bottles of BrewDog Punk IPA. And Mozzers sells it.

I confess, I went to a supermarket and bought some "craft" beer. I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I'm delighted that it's available to me (and other shoppers) so readily. On the other hand, I'm saddened that it's available to me (and other shoppers) so readily.

What do you think? Is the chase part of the fun? How hard should you have to look for "craft" beer? Is it any less "craft" for being in a supermarket?

The Revolution Will Not Be Economised

2011-11-29T19:51:00.005Z

It's the annual awards dinner of the British Guild of Beer Writers this week, which for me is increasingly becoming an anchor point in the year, perhaps more so in beery terms than Christmas, birthday or New Year. The picture above was taken in the Euston Tap almost a year ago, the day after I won the Molson Coors-sponsored National Journalism category. I was having a beer, staring off into space, and wasn't aware of the photo being taken. That picture has also recently appeared in the online and print editions of The Economist. Leaving aside the tiresome cliché of beer making you fat (the caption to the picture prompted fellow blogger Nick Mitchell to point out that "1.4m influential businessmen, professionals, economists and thought leaders now think you're fat.") and the questionable fact that fancy beer has any snob value at all outside of a very small circle of people, it's a pretty decent summary of the situation.

That things are changing in the beer world isn't in doubt. What is surprising is the potential for growth that the niche end of the market is providing - indeed, it's where ALL the growth is at the moment. In a year that's seen me invest roughly two thirds of the value of my home in a warehouse full of beer, my senses have become acutely tuned to business side of what's happening at the bar (or more commonly, at the off licence), as well as what simply tastes good. I'm happy to report that it's not just a lot of noisome bloggers creating an illusion of a scene, it is actually going on in real life too. Of course, you knew that, because you're part of it, but the view from the other side of the fence, the bit that needs to pay the bills in order to feed the interest, is happy to confirm it: Call it what you want - craft beer, really good beer, beer - it's not just a bubble, or a phenomenon, or the flavour of the month. Sure it's niche, sure it's small, but at a time when the media is focusing on the bad (neatly summed up here), there's a part of the economy that is in growth, and that needs to be celebrated. Perhaps with a beer.

Image from The Euston Tap's website

Guest Blog: My Local

2011-11-18T12:50:00.001Z

I've done a guest blog for that nice Velky Al chap over at Fuggled. Why not mosey over and have a look at it?

Reject My Hand, And The Damage Is Done*

2011-11-14T21:38:00.007Z

OK, so the link between the title and the subject is a bit tenuous, but it's one that elicits a real knee-jerk reaction in me every time. It's about the gap between the beer producer and the beer drinker, and specifically who fills that gap. At a point where the volumes consumed in the on-trade and off-trade are roughly equal, with trends suggesting that the off-trade will eclipse the on-trade in the next few years, who is connecting producers and consumers?

You'd be forgiven for believing that the supermarkets are king when it comes to beer. Certainly, nobody tries to compete with them when it comes to commodity beer. They have a stranglehold on that market, although interestingly, very few people talk about the time when Tesco delisted Carling due to a price rise, and then caved in and relisted it after a month of people saying "what do you mean you don't stock Carling?" (see here, for example). Whatever you may think about Molson-Coors, it takes some guts to tell a notoriously tough-dealing supermarket that you're not going to play ball with its pricing policy.

But I digress.

Who is connecting brewers and drinkers these days? The big book of BBPA stats that plopped onto my doormat the other day suggests half of it is the on-trade, and half off-trade (50.9% vs 49.1%, if you want to be picky). Now let's assume that 80% of the beers in the off trade are volume brands, that leaves 20% of the volume that might be said to be premium bottled beer. The more alert amongst you will already have noticed that this is only around 10% of the market, but crucially, this is where the growth and the value is at present.

But aside from that, why would you expect supermarkets to get this sort of thing right anyway? Surely if you're looking at a 10% market share (and if you're talking about 'craft' beer, my hunch is that you're looking at less than a 1% market share), this is the realm of the specialist, and when you talk about bottled beer, you're talking about specialist off licences. So when I see articles like this well-intentioned piece on the Guardian's "Word of Mouth" blog, which in turn references Mark's piece about Tesco's epic beer fail, it makes me want to slam my fingers in a drawer, because at no point does anyone say "of course, you'd be better off seeking out a local independent off-licence, which will have a better range and better-informed, more passionate staff". And while I rarely draw comparisons between beer and wine (which I think is like comparing meat and cheese - THEY ARE DIFFERENT THINGS!), I will say that it's almost taken for granted that you will get more interesting wine at an independent wine merchant than you ever will at a supermarket.

So why is everyone acting so surprised that it's any different for beer? Sure, I have a vested interest. I declare it over there, on the right - a shop, a mail-order service, and a wholesaling business. It's what I do, and I'm currently doing it to the detriment of what I vainly refer to as "my career as a writer", because it's something that I believe passionately in. The simple fact is, there's an amazing network of great beer off-licences in the UK that simply don't get the respect they deserve. From relative newcomers like Eddy at The Beer Boutique in Putney and Anthony at Alexander Wines in Coventry, to stalwarts like Muree at The Offie in Leicester and Krishan at Stirchley Wines in Birmingham, Drink of Fulham, Trafalgar Wines in Brighton - the list could go on (and maybe it should - shall we start a list?). Sure I supply those guys with some of their beer, but that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because unless those businesses get the support they need, they won't be around for ever.

So don't be surprised that the supermarkets don't get it right. By and large, they don't sell the best of anything - that is still the domain of the specialist. The interesting stuff happens in that tiny 1% of the market - that's the bit we're all interested in. Support the specialists. Use them or lose them, folks. To return to the title of the post: "Reach for my hand, and the race is won. Reject my hand, and the damage is done"

*with apologies to Morrissey

Pissed Up On Booze

2011-11-02T19:37:00.000Z

I went out last week. That might not sound comment-worthy, but I don't get out nearly as much as you might think. A double-handful of us went to the local Aagrah for curry and birthday celebrations. It was pretty decent, although I'm no expert - for all I know, it may be the Nando's of the Indian subcontinent, although I actually don't mind Nando's either.

The pre-dinner drink was a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, not at Aagrah, but across the road at a more hip bar. Did I want a glass? Actually no, I'll skip it - what the hell, I know what it tastes like, and it'll stay colder longer in the bottle. We go to Aagrah, and the person doing the ordering at the bar makes the "sorry, I dont think their beer selection is up to much" face - it's a face I see quite often. I find myself saying "Whatever - Cobra I guess".

The Cobra comes in big bottles, with a pint glass. We sit down, start drinking, chatting and catching up. The beer is totally incidental, but also paradoxically integral to what we're doing. Lager and curry, a cliché, but then we're not trying to prove anything. The table has gravitated to guys at one end, women at the other, but the only real difference is that the women are swearing less, and are drinking Cobra from wine glasses. It's not about the beer.

I end up eating Lahore machli - spiced fried fish - and fashioning myself a kebab for the main course - basically a double portion of seekh kebab, two chappatis and a bowl of special raita. I'm sat in a nice restaurant, with a tablecloth and a cloth napkin, eating kebabs and drinking lager. And it's totally brilliant.

Is it really necessary to live the craft beer cliché every time you fancy a beer? There are some things that I try not to compromise on, like free-range meat, for example, although ironically, I'm sure that the meat I ate that night was as industrially produced as the beer. But then the myth of free-range, organic food for everyone is just that - a myth, a pipedream, an ideal. As we see American breweries pulling out of not just the UK market, but even inter-state distribution deals, you have to ask yourself if the 'craft' beer market, although in rapid expansion at present, is actually going to become harder to access by virtue of its success.

But back to the point. I had a load of ordinary lager, a couple of kebabs, and the company of friends for a few hours, and it was the most fun night out I'd had in ages. Would it have been a better night if we'd had better beer to talk about?

Higher Strength Beer Duty - My View

2011-10-15T22:18:00.004+01:00

Here are my thoughts about the introduction of Higher Strength Beer Duty, as published this week in Off Licence News

You can read the rationale behind the tax here

------------------------------------------

The strong beer tax seems to have happened without any real reaction from the mainstream media. It's true that it was reported fairly widely at the time it was announced, but only really as a governmental policy rather than as anything that might actually affect the way that beer is perceived. It's seen as tax on binge drinking, which if you stop and analyse it for even a second, is clearly bollocks (excuse my Anglo-Saxon, but there's no other word for it). As someone who has finally learned the error of drinking more than a couple of bottles of Duvel at a sitting, it's quite clear that the stronger the beer, the less able you are to 'binge' on it. Indeed, there is an argument to made that the stronger the beer, the harder it is to drink in quantity, not just because of the higher %abv, but also that it renders you incapable with alarming swiftness. Beers like that are no use at all for a long evening in the pub.

Around 15% of the beers that we sell will be affected by the tax. At the top end (in strength terms), the strongest Belgians have seen an increase of 50p to 75p. That's a pretty drastic rise, and it remains to be seen how sales will suffer. Will people switch to lower strength beers, as is the government's wish, or will they just complain and pay up. I can remember lots of people saying that they would stop smoking when cigarettes reached a fiver a packet. They didn't.

The tax is a fudge, a farce, a fiasco. It's a cowardly, nonsensical tax that sets out to address a problem that barely exists, and will fail to make a difference, other than to those who sell stronger beer for a living. And by stronger beer, I don't specifically mean the sort of higher-strength industrial beer that the tax sets out to address, but imported beers from Europe and North America. Perhaps ironically, the British brewing industry will be largely unaffected, and the sort of beers that people actually do go out and drink all day won't be affected.

You could also make a spirited argument that rather than a blanket tax on all strong beer, the government may have been better off deciding what beers it wants to tax, and figuring out a way to accurately do that. If doesn't require too much imagination to realise that if you want to penalise the producers of strong, industrially produced beer, then what you need to do is pass legislation decreeing that if your output of a certain beer in this strength bracket exceeds X hectolitres, then an additional duty of Y is payable on it. Not hard, is it?

Regardless of all this, I'm not sure that strong beer is necessarily the cheapest way of getting drunk. The late Michael Jackson (no, not that one) famously described beer as an inefficient means of getting drunk, and he's right. It seems odd that beer is in a minority as an alcoholic drink that is taxed per degree of alcohol. Almost everything else has a flat rate, or at best, a dual-rate banding of 'ordinary' and 'stronger' versions. Strong beer is already taxed more purely by virtue of being stronger – taxing it more isn't going to make any difference to how people consume it, and will almost certainly encourage a switch to something a bit more efficient. That's an uneasy truth, and one that is too hard to address, and so we must all pay with a broad-brush solution.

Weekend Beers Round-Up

2011-09-25T20:59:00.004+01:00

It seems a tad prosaic after the epic response that the previous post elicited, but I thought I'd quickly round a few of the beers opened this weekend - the majority are samples, and so I guess I should do my duty and at least pass comment.

The Dogfish Head/Birra Del Borgo My Antonia that I'm drinking as I write is still great - not as great as BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge (which seems to have been getting a bit of a mention on Twitter this week), but still a corker.

Last night was a couple of dark beers - Zatec Dark, which is a great black lager, soft, smooth and creamy - and Brain's Original Stout, which is a great mediumweight stout with a lot of lovely leafy hop character in the finish.

Adnam's Ghost Ship and Salopian Oracle are two beer cut from a similar cloth, both having the sort of pungent hop character that first caused me to use the phrase "hop-forward, and in the modern style" - pungently hoppy, zippy, and palate-awakening the both.

Natural Selection Finch is descibed on the label as a "robust red ale". Other people have written kindly about this beer, which makes it all the stranger that I found it to be an undrinkable crystal malt bomb. I like crystal malt, but this was just OTT.

A brief detour into a homebrew, which is going to be my entry for the Nicholson's / Thornbridge homebrew competition, confirmed that I'm going to walk away with the first prize - if you'd like to try it and be in awe, it's the beer that I'll be bringing along to the inaugural Leeds Homebrew meet-up - and then things got serious with a Thornbridge Bracia, a stunning beer, both metaphorically and physically. I needed a long lie down after that one, for sure.

This is the full and frank account of a weekend's drinking, recorded this day, the 25th of September, in the two thousand and eleventh year of our lord. Amen.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?*

2011-09-13T20:19:00.008+01:00

Just as we are at a high point for beer in the UK, so are we at a high point for beer appreciation. Like anything that elicits passion and opinion, the beer world is riven with various factions. CAMRA are unquestionably the old guard, and as of today, there are two new kids on the block - Craft Beer UK, and CAMRGB, the Campaign for Really Good Beer.

CAMRGB (website here) were first out of the blocks by my reckoning, and I like their cheery, naive (or is it faux-naive?) approach. It also helps that their logo is reminiscent of the Cuban flag, but that's sort of by-the-by. They clearly state their aims on their homepage, and it's difficult to disagree with any of them. In fact, that's the problem - it's so commendably all-inclusive that it's hard to know who will say "hell yeah, I like beer and fun, this is something that I can really get behind!". Or more pertinently, who could disagree with those sentiments? It's so warm-heartedly bouncy and eager that to dislike it would be to dislike a puppy. "Sodding puppy, with it's floppy ears and big paws, and wide-eyed innocence... aww, go on then, come here and have a cuddle". There's a saying that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything - I wonder, how does the epithet end if it starts "If you stand for everything...."?

At the other end of the scale, we have Craft Beer UK (website here), who set out their stall very clearly. The c-word is ever-present - not that one, you dirty-minded beast, but the more nebulous term, craft. In their "About" section, Craft Beer UK attempt to set out their stall, arguing that "the term 'craft beer' has been used in the UK to refer to artisanal brewers who focus on quality over quantity and brew good beer", a definition that is somehow simultaneously so broad and so narrow as to be meaningless. Is there an innate nobility in brewing less beer? Are Sierra Nevada somehow less craft for being the world's largest consumer of whole cone hops? You can work out the answer to that, I'm sure. Even more worrying is the fact that Craft Beer UK will admit breweries to their roster on application, but with an element of peer review (see this tweet and their stated membership policy). This slightly undermines their claim that craft beer is something more than "beers that I like" (see Phil's post on craft beer, and my comment of the FUBU brand for more analysis of this).

Just as neither of these organisations needs any endorsement from me, neither should they take my opinions too much to heart. It's great to see people getting behind beer, and unquestionably the drinking public of the UK might benefit from a heightened awareness of their drinking options. But I do worry that neither of these organisations is bringing enough to the table. My experience is that many people still have a bit of trouble with the notion of what exactly constitutes real ale, so trying to bring a nebulous term like "good beer" or "craft beer" into the public arena may ultimately do more harm than good. That's not to say we shouldn't try, but as the title of the post asks: *Who Will Watch the Watchers?

Do You Want To Be Paid To Drink Beer?

2011-09-04T08:36:00.003+01:00

A friend of mine is doing some market research in Leeds, West Yorkshire, this week. If you're a bloke, 45 years old or over, and want to be paid £25 to drink 3 pints of bitter on consecutive nights (I'm not making this up, honest!), then why not drop her an email? Her name's Lisa, and you can reach her on lhpringle(at)hotmail.co.uk, or call her on zero seven seven one eight, two five two three nine seven.

Please spread the word to any 45+, Leodesian ale-drinking men you may know.

Now Drinking: Rooster's Baby-Faced Assassin

2011-09-02T21:22:00.007+01:00

I'm not really sure that I can add anything to the video through the medium of the written word, to be honest. It's all there for you to watch - a bit of blather, a bit of drinking, the 'Pliny cackle' as I smell it.

I was given this at a party that Rooster's hosted a couple of weeks ago. They invited a load of people along, got some great beers in, and spoiled everyone rotten. The best beer I tried that day was Deschutes' The Dissident, a beer so rare and fabulous that not only did Sean Franklin spend four hours drinking a bottle one evening, but he liked it so much that he insisted on having some air-freighted over for all his guests to enjoy. The Dissident is a beer so complex that it makes Deschutes' The Abyss seem a bit flabby and one-dimensional in comparison. I can say that for sure, because Sean also had some of that flown in for the party. Here's what I said about The Dissident in "500 Beers":

"More of a lambic-brown ale hybrid, this has fruity and sour nose, and a smooth, complex cherry-accented tartness to the palate. I'm not sure there are enough superlatives to describe the complexity of this, so I'll just moan with pleasure. Mmmmm."

You can see why I was Beer Writer of the Year 2008, can't you?

Yes, it says "Baby-Faced Ass" above the video. Hilarious.

Dear Diary.... (part 2)

2011-08-28T08:25:00.002+01:00

Dear Diary,

My head is really awhirl at the moment - I forgot to mention the very thing that prompted me to open you yesterday!

Tomorrow morning (on Monday), just after 8am, on BBC Radio Leeds, I've been asked to do come in and do an interview about the closure of Leeds' Tetleys brewery, and what that means for the beer scene in the city. I'm very much looking forward to it.

It reminds me that a little while ago, I wrote a piece for Leigh at The Good Stuff. He was doing a guest post for another blog and asked for a quick soundbite about the closure. Me being me, I couldn't stop writing, and unfortunately the soundbite ended up as a short essay. I suppose here is as good a place as any to reproduce it. Until next time, dear diary....

-----------------------------------------------------

There will be an older generation of drinkers who mourn the closure of the Tetley brewery as though it were the death of a close relative. And there will be a younger generation of drinkers who wonder what all the fuss is about.

The older generation are wrong to mourn its closing - it's true that the presence of Tetley's in Leeds is an important cultural artefact, but once Tetley's became Carlsberg-Tetley's, its days were numbered. And the younger generation are wrong to ignore its closure - the maxim that you need to know your past before you can know your future rings true here.

While the mantle of beer production in Leeds now passes to Leeds Brewery, Tetley's the brand still exists. How you feel about the relocation of production isn't about how the beer tastes, or how an international business has treated its assets. It's about a personal story, about how you relate to current affairs and weave them into your personal history.

So my plea is neither to bury Tetley's nor to praise it. The old guard have spent years complaining about how the beer isn't what it was - that's the nature of nostalgia. And the new brooms will most likely have tried it once and dismissed it as old-fashioned - that's the nature of youth. What I urge both parties to do is see the cultural significance of this event, and use it as a spur to their drinking habits - local, global, traditional, innovative, it's about integrity. Drink what you like, and like what you drink, but do it for the right reasons - not solely for the sake of tradition, nor solely for the sake of fashion, but do it because it has a deeper meaning.

Beer is about storytelling, sociability, and an exchange of ideas. It's a centuries old tradition that will endure beyond a particular brand, and it's a story that needs retelling every day to be kept alive. Whether that's over a pint of local ale in a local pub, or at home over a bottle of beer that has a ruinous number of air miles attached to it, I'm not sure it matters. However you perform it, enjoy the ritual and keep the faith.

Dear Diary.....

2011-08-27T17:38:00.006+01:00

Dear Diary, what a couple of weeks it's been.

Karen (my business partner) has been away on holiday for the last two weeks, and the experience of piloting the business on my own has been both exhilarating and exhausting in equal measures. Add to this a lot of top-secret behind-the-scenes stuff, some of which will in all probability never be public knowledge, and it's been quite a trip. A lot of the secret stuff has been keeping me awake at night, and has involved a fair amount of tossing and a little turning, but it's all good, believe me.

As if I didn't have enough on my plate, I've also started another blog. Leeds Homebrew is an attempt to get the homebrewers in and around my fair city to share recipes, meet up once a quarter, and give honest and supportive evaluation of each other's efforts. I have to admit to being a little disappointed about the initial take up in contributions or feedback, but I guess we'll set up the first two meets and see what happens.

Looking forward, I can see that I have a busy few weeks ahead of me. It seems that I'm scheduled to hold a tasting event at the music venue The Deaf Institute in Manchester this Tuesday. I think it's a combined public-staff session, but I'm sure if people want more information, they can contact the venue directly.

I also need to find time this week to get my entry together for the annual British Guild of Beer Writers awards dinner. I've had a pretty good year, despite being worked to the bone for the last 6 months, and I do hope I get recognised for both my exceptional talent and understated modesty.

The 15th will see me at North Bar in Leeds, drinking the beer that I brewed with Denzil from Great Heck Brewery, Heckstra-Ordinary Best Bitter. I may even say a few words about it, and about how it's an attempt to make an ordinary brown bitter for the 21st century. I haven't tried it myself, and so I may be setting myself up for a fall, but hey, that's the nature of being a wide-eyed loner at the frontiers of craft beer (whatever that may eventually turn out to mean).

Later in the month, I'm heading to London for a day to judge the Sainsbury's beer competition, and hopefully meet wine bloke Olly Smith. Olly won a competiton a few years ago organised by Hardy's called "Wine Idol". I was going to enter it myself, but sadly never got it together - how different my life may be today if I had! But Olly seems like a good chap, and I look forward to meeting in him in all his bequiffed and ruddy-cheeked glory.

I've also just received a cheeky email from the folk who are doing the PR for SIBA, asking me to plug their Great Northern Beer Festival on my blog. They're clearly a bit new at this, as it's customary to offer something in return for a favour - usually a couple of tickets, or something - but I'm sure that they'll get the idea eventually.

Until next time, dear diary.....

Homebrewing.

2011-08-21T20:37:00.004+01:00

When Pete Brown, Mark Dredge and I went up to BrewDog to brew our eponymous beer, I spent a good chunk of the drive from Aberdeen to Fraserburgh talking to James Watt about how I wanted to start a homebrew school in Leeds. Basically, have a very small plant (say 25 litre) that people who were interested in brewing, but didn't know where to start, could come and brew under supervision, leave the beer to ferment, and then bottle it themselves. I have to admit that my constant blathering was mainly help to keep my mind off how hideously hungover/drunk I felt, but sadly the idea never got off the ground.

I started homebrewing as a way of understanding the process and pitfalls that go to make up the finished product. It was sort of an academic interest, just without any academic rigour - hence me tipping away 35 litres of infected homebrew this evening (note to self: obsess more about sanitation). It also helps that, if everything goes right, you end up with a few cases of beer at the end of the process. By virtue of it being (a) really fresh and (b) the fruit of your own labour, you usually get something pretty enjoyable out of it too.

I've been given quite a bit of homebrew lately, and there are two questions that these precious bottles raise for me. Firstly, should they be judged at all, or just silently drunk (or poured away)? And secondly, if they are to be judged and evaluated, should they be judged against commercial beers, or should we cut some slack?

Going back to a point that I made in my previous post, I'm quite happy to give polite, honest feedback to anybody, as I'm sure plenty of brewers will know by now. So I was wondering if there was any mileage in starting a group blog, based in Leeds, for homebrewers to post recipes on, and then meet quarterly to try the beers that they are brewing?

In fact, to take it a step further, I've created a blog around which to base the idea - Leeds Homebrew (we can change the name later) - and I've posted my first ever homebrew recipe on there. The format of that post is what I hope will be a standard format for recipes posted - if you want to add liquor treatment, or any other details, then please do. But recipe first, comments second.

If you'd like to get involved, and think that you can meet once a quarter, and bring some homebrew along, then why not get involved? The only stipulation is that the beer brought along has to be made at home. Commercial brewers are welcome, but you can't bring beer that you've made on your big shiny kit at work. If you want to contribute, email me and I'll add you as an author on the blog - zak(at)thebeerboy.co.uk.

But to get back to the original point - are these homebrews for drinking or review?

(Bottles pictured (L-R) - @GhostDrinker - "Red Room", Dean @MrFoleys - "Suspicious Minds", @cheeeseboiger - "Construkt", Craig (I thought it was @craighall, but it isn't, sorry - please get in touch!) - "Resonance Cascade", @thebarleyswine (missing in action) - "Saison Brett" & "Transcontinental Shit Mix", @iamlonewolf - "Arctic Stout"

To The Crafterati: An Apology

2011-08-13T22:28:00.004+01:00

There's been a lot of debate lately (notably on Beer Birra Bier and Tandleman's blogs respectively) around how best to go about reporting bad beer experiences. This is a topic close to my heart, as I've been accused on more than one occasion of being one of the 'cheery beery' crowd - reporting how great everything is, and never passing comment on anything bad.

Like many commentators, I think it's a tough call. I prefer to focus on the good experiences, but that's not to say that I never give bad feedback. The majority of my reporting back is direct to the brewers. Plenty of times over the last few years, I've had need to tell people that their work isn't up to snuff, and I'm not talking about taking a pint back - most often, it's been multiple cases, or a whole run of one beer, and once, nearly a full pallet of bottles.

Most of the time, there's no need to 'go public' with these things. Sometimes beer does make it into the supply chain before a fault is spotted, but in relatively small quantities. I've seen beers pass into circulation, and people pass comment on them. Most of the time, these beers are withdrawn or sent back. It's irritating when this happens, but is mostly handled correctly by brewers.

But that's not the main thrust of this post. The main idea here is to pick up on some things I said about The Crafterati a little while ago. I'm happy to hold up my hands and say that I was wrong about a few things in that post, or at least gave the wrong impression about what I thought. And here's why.

When I see people criticising 'boring brown beer', it irritates me. It irritates me because these 'boring brown beers' are part of our brewing heritage, and these are the beers that inspired a generation of American craft brewers. They were inspired by imports to the US in the 80s, or by visiting the UK, and then they brewed beer with local ingredients. And when Ken Grossman chose local Cascade hops with which to make Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, he defined a beer style, and to a lesser degree, the entire American craft brewing movement. And we all know how influential that movement is in the UK today.

I love some boring brown bitters. Hook Norton Old Hooky, Batemans XXXB, Wadworths 6X - classics all. They taste great, and are living icons of a classic ale brewing tradition. I like boring brown bitter so much that when Denzil at Great Heck Brewing invited me for a brew day (that's him mashing in - yes, that's quite a full mash tun), I wanted to do an ordinary brown bitter with knobs on. Sure, it's a single-hop beer, dry-hopped with a shedload of Apollo, but at it's heart, there's crystal and amber malt. Yummy, nutty, and ordinary with knobs on. It's like a great meat and potato pie - done well, it's indisputably fabulous. Denzil and I will be launching it at North Bar in the next couple of weeks - do come along and let us know what you think.

But hold on. Those beers that I love are have been around forever - that's part of their appeal to me. What is inexcusable - and here's where I'm making kissy-kissy to the crafterati - is that there is still a lot of crappy brown beer being made. If you're going to make a beer that takes a classic as its model - say Bateman's XXXB for the sake of argument - you'd better damn well improve on it. Every week, I receive samples of beer that are both dull and badly made. And that isn't good enough. And so this is the bit where I set out my stall and say sorry to The Crafterati - you're right, there's no excuse for that sort of rubbish.

Of course, that knife cuts both ways. To use a recent example, on International IPA Day, at Mr Foleys, I bought a couple of beers that I left after a few sips - there's no excuse for making unbalanced, clumsy hop-and-malt bombs either. So along with a new tranche of traditional brewers making inexcusably boring and faulty beer, we have a new wave of radical brewers occasionally trying too hard.

Change is good, but change for the sake of it - substituting the new crappy for the old crappy - strikes me as a bit pointless.

Magic Rock Brewing: The Bottles

2011-08-05T20:21:00.006+01:00

Last night's IPA day event at Mr Foleys in Leeds was a lot of fun. Beer, people, blather, and the chance for a few people to be utterly fabulous in their own way (yes, I was one of the fabulous, just for one night). But of course, it wasn't about the people, even people as fabulous as me. It was about the beer.

There's a bit of a paradox to good beer, in that if it's really good, it doesn't hang around for long. I'm not sure which was the first IPA to sell out - maybe it was the Rooster's Underdog? - but Magic Rock Human Cannonball, their double IPA, sold out early on too. But, as Leigh at The Good Stuff says, more on this later.

Magic Rock Rapture (4.6%abv) is a red ale, which I have a sneaking suspicion is becoming a style that more 'craft' brewers are seeing as a 'must-have' in their range. Rapture has a really nutty aroma, alongside a faintly spicy hop character. On the palate, more nutty malt leads the way - biscuity amber malt seems to be prominent, which is fine by me. Overall, the beer is quite malt driven, which I actually quite liked - a respite from the 'more hops with everything' approach that is so prevalent at the moment. [EDIT - as Neil from eating isn't cheating points out, this beer is hoppier than I make it sound here. A bottle tried today was much hoppier than I remember, so perhaps I had a duff bottle?]

Having said that, High Wire (5.5%abv) is hoptastic, and will be immediately familiar to anyone who has tried any of brewer Stuart Ross's beers before. Pale malt lays a blank canvas against which citrus and hop character is deployed, to dazzling effect. Mango, lime, jasmine, this pushes all my buttons, and at that strength, happily qualifies for my 'ruinously drinkable' tag.

If you were at Foleys on Tuesday, you'll have heard me say a little bit about the cross-pollination of ideas between British and American brewing cultures. Cannonball (7.4%abv - surely not the first beer to be brewed to strength with an eye on the incoming strong beer tax later this year?) straddles those two cultures like a colossus, keeping a weather eye on rumbustious malty English ales, and hop-led American beasts. It's big and chunky, and shows its strength with a little warmth, but I actually quite enjoy that slightly raucous quality.

And that would be the end of the bottle reviews, but for the kindness of the guys at Magic Rock, who hand-bottled me a sample of their IIPA Human Cannonball, pictured left arriving on a pallet of their beers. Hey, you might have to buy a pallet of beers to get it, but that's what being fabulous means. Human Cannonball (9.2%abv) picks up where Cannonball leaves off, more raucous and rumbustious, the sort of beer that kicks open your mouth, bum rushes your palate, and grafittis HAVE IT!! in fluorescent paint on your olfactory bulb. It's not big, it's not clever, and that's the point. There's room for grace and elegance, and there's room for stoopid fun, just as there's room for both Brian Eno and MC Hellshit & DJ Carhouse in my music collection.

And so when people started saying "noooo!" at the bar around 10pm, it was because the biggest, stoopidest beer of the evening had run out before they'd got a chance to try it. I was working up to it myself, and didn't get to try it on the night, stopping at Thornbridge Geminus (8.5%abv), a kick-ass concoction of hops, malt, rye and muscovado sugar. Happily, I'd tried it a few days earlier, and damn, anyone saying "noooo!" doesn't know the half of it.

Magic Rock. Hell yeah.

Is Saison the New Citra?

2011-07-25T19:22:00.004+01:00

Lucky bastard Rob from Hopzine.com is in Rome, from where he posts this little video snippet. It's a great little snippet in lots of ways - on one hand, he's largeing it on holiday, and so he's already having a laugh at our expense. It's also great because he's responding with a video to something that he's read a few moments ago on Twitter - this conversation about saisons. We'll gloss over the fact that Baladin Nora isn't actually a saison - it's a spiced ale - the point is that Rob saw an opportunity and grabbed it with two hands, even though one was holding a brimming TeKu glass.

It's cool, it's now, and maybe this is the future of social media - people responding by video to things that they've seen a few moments earlier. This could be the birth of something big - rather than arguing in text, we could now do it with video, saving us the trouble of meeting up and getting drunk together. The misanthrope in me thinks that maybe this is the way forward - I recently had a request from Simon at Real Ale Guide for a 4-way Skype beer review. It didn't happen, but maybe a bit of video panel-drinking might be fun? I must give it a try - maybe it will be like going to the pub, or maybe it will be like sitting at home feeling slightly creeped out - only experience will tell.

Anyway, for me, the interesting question in that Twitter conversation is from Chris (@NorthernWrites on Twitter) - "Is saison the new citra?". It's a good question, coloured by Chris' unabashed dislike of what he sees as bandwagon-straddling me-too citra-infused pale golden ales. The short answer to this is, of course, no. But the long answer provides some insight into where the beer world may be headed in the next few years.

As International IPA Day draws close, what we are going to see is on August 4th is, I believe, a celebration of a style of beer that could do for beer what Australian wine did for wine in the late 80s and early 90s. IPA is a style that is easy to understand, easy to enjoy, and has the potential to draw more drinkers into the category. A citra-heavy IPA may not be the most sophisticated beer in the world, but damn, it's easy to enjoy, and I'm not sure how that can be a bad thing.

Contrast that open, easy-drinking appeal with the tart, tightly-wound, sometimes musty and dusty complexity of a saison, and it's clear that saisons are forever going to be marginalised. Saison is the riesling of the wine world - loved by those in the know and in the trade, but largely ignored by everyone else. Good riesling smells of diesel, wet stones and lime blossom. Good saison smells of hops sacks, old wooden spice racks and cellars.

Saison, like riesling, will always be a minority taste, but the future tastes of citra-laced IPA.

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BEERSWAP! Southern Tier Gemini

2011-07-22T20:37:00.003+01:00

Good beer is something that needs to be savoured. There is something about the pace of modern life generally (or maybe it's my life in particular) that is somehow not conducive to really stopping and enjoying a beer. Either there are pressures of life intruding into a special beer moment, or, and perhaps this is a crueller irony, there is so much great beer available that you feel hurried to drink what you have in front of you so you can move on to the next rarity.

And modern life can play cruel tricks in other ways. It's true that technology can bring us closer together, allow us to network more effectively, but equally, when technology Goes Bad (capital G, capital B), it throws everything into total disarray. So it is with this video.

There's nothing wrong with the video, but the thing is, when I shoot one of these, I use the transfer, compression and upload time to write down some thoughts that the beer evokes. But for some reason, this little snippet got stuck on my camera, and wouldn't download from the camera. So rather than note down a few Wilde-esque witticisms about the beer, I spent a couple of hours swearing and fiddling with setting on the camera and the computer.

Consequently, the fine-grained stuff about the beer is all in the video, and these words are mere padding.

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Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project

2011-07-12T23:23:00.004+01:00

There's a little riff I like to use when I host beer tasting about the relationship between British and American beer: "We have Cameron and Clegg, they have Barack Obama. We have Blackpool, they have Las Vegas. We have centuries of tightly woven and documented cultural history, they have Disneyland"

It's a cheap shot, but it serves to illustrate the point that the American brewing tradition has taken its European origins, run with them, and made a style all of its own. Double IPA, imperial pilsner, session beers at 6%abv - you get the idea. If it sounds as though I'm mocking, I'm not - I love the idea of taking something and tweaking it to turn it into an exaggerated version of itself. As a kid, I used to tweak CB radios to give more gain and power, and motorbikes to produce the same effect. I think that my homebrewing is an extension of this - producing slightly exaggerated versions of beers that I like.

It's always a little perplexing when an American brewery slavishly recreates a European beer style. The recent arrival of The Bruery's beers in the UK demonstrated that homage isn't enough - although Saison de Lente, Mischief et al are tasty beers, they are too close to the originals to justify the long journey from California - we can get that stuff fresher from Belgium. Equally, those brass-rubbed copies lack the brio, the chutzpah, the joie-de-vivre of the classic American pioneering spirit.

Happily, the two Pretty Things beers that we've just imported don't suffer from that lack of imagination. Jack d'Or (a 6.4%abv sweetly hoppy saison) and Field Mouse's Farewell (a 7%abv nutty, spicy biere de garde) are classic Euro beer styles filtered through the American craft brewer's imagination. That's not to say that they are just dry-hopped to hell, but there's just some something silkier, cleaner and more complex about them. That sounds like an oxymoron - cleaner and more complex - but for me, that's what American craft beer is all about - taking something and producing a slightly more beguiling, polished, shinier version of something. Hell, that's what America has done culturally for years - not for nothing has it got the reputation as being a country that went from barbarism to decadence without any intervening civilisation.

Check out Pretty Thing's website.

[DISCLAIMER - having imported them, I obviously have a financial interest in these beers doing well. But I also have a vested interest in retaining a bit of credibility as a writer. I think the two are in harmony here, but but I just thought I'd mention it. Should you wish to decide for yourself, buy the beers here, now, or at Beer-Ritz in Headingley, Leeds, from Thursday]

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My Goodness, My Guinness!

2011-07-12T23:05:00.002+01:00

You might be interested to know that as well as having written a piece about Guinness for The Independent last year, I've also just done a guest spot on Diageo's Guinness website. Feel free to compare and contrast them.

What I will say is that while draught Guinness may be the icon that everyone is familiar with, the Foreign Extra Stout is such a kick-ass beer that if you haven't already tried it, you really should.

Beer Is For Everyone, Right?

2011-06-22T18:44:00.003+01:00

Some of you may know who Chad is. Whatever you may think of video beer reviewers (and I speak as one who has been both praised and villified for my activities), Chad is perhaps one of the best known. I personally think it's a pretty harmless activity - you drink a beer and say whatever comes into your head. If it's about the beer, bonus. Nobody's trying to be the new Michael Jackson, it's just a bit of fun.

What has really put my nose out of joint lately are the comments left on my Youtube channel here. The commenter seems to imply that Chad isn't a worthy recipient of a bottle of The Kernel Suke Quto Coffee IPA that I sent.

This post isn't really about Chad, it's about the idea that you have to reach a level of 'beerdom' in order to be allowed to drink certain types of beers. Sure, there are some beers that benefit from a little explanation, most sour beers and rauchbiers being the primary examples. But surely beer is a democratic, egalitarian drink that can be shared by everyone? Or do you disagree?

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Cask, Keg and Cross-Training

2011-06-13T19:42:00.004+01:00

I've got to be honest with you, this desk job is taking it's toll. Instead of lugging cases of beer up and down stairs endlessly, I'm sat down most of the day, on the phone, buying beer, selling beer, and making beer-related plans. And frankly, I've put on a bit of weight. Not a lot, but enough to make me think 'hmm, if you want those hideous shirts still to fit you at GBBF, then you'd better do something about it, chunky'. While it may be bad PR for beer to say that it makes you fat, it makes you fat. Anything worth consuming will make you fat if you consume enough of it. I'm not going to go on a bloody detox, but I am going to exercise regularly and try to drink a bit less.

Twenty minutes on the cross-trainer at full resistance is enough to make me breathless, sweaty and leave a pleasant blank hole in my mind where all the stresses and strains of the day were just a few minutes ago. But of course, nature abbhors a vacuum, and thoughts tend to float in. This evening's thought was:

"If cask and keg are better suited to different styles of beer, do any brewers vary the recipe of their beer to suit the mode of dispense?"

I'm aware of brewers making their beers stronger for bottle, but what of cask vs keg? Or are cask and keg seen as interchangeable?

Answers in the box below, please and thank you.

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NOW DRINKING: Captain Lawrence Imperial IPA

2011-06-06T22:08:00.003+01:00

Me and the Mrs used to be fans of tattoos. We were really close to getting massive, full-sleeve ones done, and then, like a lot of people, we didn't get around to it. It wasn't that we chickened out, we just lost the momentum for getting in it done. In idle moments, I still fantasise about getting a huge tattoo done - a massive hop cone on my back, maybe, or even on my stomach so that it will gradually change shape as I age and succumb to middle-aged spread.

I only mention this because when I looked at the label to this beer - a flaming wooden firkin - my immediate thought was: "Damn, that would make an excellent tattoo". Not that I'll ever get it done, but it was a surprisingly powerful reaction.

Captain Lawrence Imperial IPA is a big beer, but surprisingly restrained. There a good, woody, piney, tropical-fruity hop character to the nose, and a faint hint of something that I struggle to grasp in the video - something pungently spicy, but earthy at the same time. On the palate, the 8%abv is hidden very well - there's a faint warmth on the gums and in the throat, and a telltale alcohol slickness to the swallow - but otherwise, this beer qualifies for the "ruinously drinkable" description. The pale malt on the palate offers a big, chewy sweetness in the mouth that is neatly counterbalanced as the bitterness kicks in after the swallow. It's a class act, and although it doesn't pack the absurd levels of dry-hop character that (for example) the new recipe Punk IPA does, this actually enhances the experience for me, giving it a smooth drinkability rather than a shrill, attention grabbing shriek.

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BEER SWAP!

2011-06-02T21:32:00.005+01:00

This is easily the most beer-geeky thing I've ever done. I'm not sure that I'm totally comfortable with it, and given how bad a beerswap buddy I was, I can't imagine that anyone will be rushing to do it again with me. I took ages to mail my parcel, and longer still to do this unboxing video. But hey, it's done now, and here's the result.

Part of the deal is that I video review these beers. I'm so rusty at talking to camera that I fear I might not do them justice, but that's not going to stop me. What I am sure about is that the reviews are going to be pretty brief, allowing me more time to sit on the leather sofa in the corner of our living room and savour them. Perhaps I'll do before-and-after videos, cutting back to me after having drunk a bomber of really strong beer, a little like those early recordings of Aldous Huxley experimenting with mescaline and LSD:

"It's been 40 minutes now since I finished that bomber of Southern Tier Gemini. I received this beer by chance, and enthusiastically drank it by choice. Those aromas of the hops - what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! And the texture of the smooth malt - how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous. Are there any chicken wings left?"

I don't know what else to say. My name's Zak, and I'm a beer geek. The revolution is dead. Long live the revolution.

Many thanks to Chad of Chad'z Beer Reviews for the beers, and the gentle bullying that finally got this whole thing to happen. If any beer geeks would like to get together in Leeds (or elsewhere) and try them, do let me know.

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Wikio Rankings Preview - May 2011

2011-06-01T20:34:00.003+01:00

I'm delighted to present the Wikio rankings again this month, if only because it means that everyone is guaranteed to pop in here for a sneaky peek. So before I reveal the rankings, let me abuse that position by saying a few words about the peculiar CAMRA-related argument that's been raging on the blogs for the last few days.

I'm amazed at everyone's reactions to that speech by Colin Valentine. I'm amazed in so many ways. Firstly, I'm amazed that Valentine felt moved to not only comment on the blogging scene, but that he felt so hostile about it. The reason I'm surprised is that overall, beer blogging is still a pretty niche activity, as is drinking 'craft' beer, and I'm amazed that he felt threatened enough to comment.

I'm not saying that I don't enjoy the 'craft' beer scene in the UK. Hey, I make my living from it, and believe me, I don't do what I do for the money, I do it because I'm fascinated by the seemingly endless variety of tastes and textures that beer offers. But do I think I'm any more important because of that, or for having written a book, or for having won a few awards? Of course not. I'm immensely proud of them, but I'd like to think that I've always had a slightly inflated of opinion of myself that was merely reinforced by these achievements.

I'm also amazed by so many bloggers' complete misunderstanding of what CAMRA is, and how it works. CAMRA is a consumer organisation, and is composed of members who guide the direction that CAMRA goes in. Even if you ignore the fact that CAMRA is de facto about promoting cask ale, everyone seems to have missed the point that CAMRA isn't a top-down organisation. Colin Valentine isn't some Dr. Evil at the head of an organisation, issuing edicts for his minions to follow, he's a mouthpiece for the organisation.

CAMRA is directed by its members, and the sort of people who turn out and vote for motions at CAMRA meetings are actually people like you and I - people who care passionately about something. Sure, the things we and they care about are worlds apart, but you know what? That's life. Not everyone will agree with everything you say. And saying 'CAMRA needs to change' is to fundamentally miss the point. CAMRA's never going to change unless its members want it to change, and if you want it to change, then join, be active, campaign, educate, but just don't expect to do that only by blogging. While electronic media may be a great force for communicating opinions, removing the publishing machine between the author and the reader, that doesn't mean that blogging is a silver bullet in educating people about beer. Preaching to the converted is easy.

Personally, I thought what Valentine said was pretty mean-spirited, and in an ideal world, he'd be censured by the membership. Curiously, the membership haven't called for him to be removed from office, perhaps because they either (a) agreed with what he said, or (b) weren't really listening that closely and don't really care. I'd warrant that it's mostly (b), with a bit of (a) derived from the way that he framed his comments and equated keg beer with craft beer. He's talking bollocks, of course, and should be taken to task about it. By who, mention no names, but follow my eyes... [*looks at the BSF bar*]

So what do you do? Publicly moan some more about how shit CAMRA are? Great work. You poked the sleeping dog and it bit you. Deal with it, but don't moan about it to me, because I'm not interested. Colin Valentine made some noisome remarks, but CAMRA didn't. If any of the broadsheets were one tenth as receptive to new beer writers as What's Brewing and Beer are, and paid as well or as promptly, I'd be delighted. And if the top 100 beer blogs had one tenth of the audience that What's Brewing and Beer has, I'd be delighted. Funny how nobody ever comments on what a great magazine Beer has has become in the last couple of years. In terms of nurturing new talent, and giving bloggers a 'real world' outlet, it's unparalleled. Which brings us neatly back to beer blogs, which is why you're all here, and how I've tricked you into visiting.

So anyway, here are the Wikio rankings for May. Remember - play nice, love each other, and drink good beer in all its many forms of dispense.

1	Pete Brown's Blog
2	Pencil & Spoon
3	Zythophile
4	Beer Reviews
5	Master Brewer at Adnams
6	Are You Tasting the Pith?
7	Tandleman's Beer Blog
8	The Good Stuff
9	Rabid About Beer
10	Ghost Drinker
11	Cornet Speculator
12	Raising the Bar
13	The Pub Curmudgeon
14	Real Brewing at the Sharp End
15	The Wine Conversation
16	Called to the bar
17	Drinking Outside The Box
18	Bordoverview Blog
19	Spittoon
20	HopZine.com

Ranking made by Wikio

NOW DRINKING: Bristol Beer Factory

2011-05-28T18:26:00.005+01:00

One of Stan's rules states that you need to try at least two servings of any beer before passing judgement on it. A modification of this rule is that you should try a few of any brewery's beers before you form an opinion about the brewery.

Had I tried only Bristol Beer Factory's No. 7 and Gold, I might have come away thinking that they are a brewery who have got a feel for craft beer, but haven't quite nailed it yet. Both beers are good, solid golden ales, characterised by a big hop bitterness in the finish. Tasty, but not quite hitting the bullseye on my target marked 'hop-forward and in the modern style'. Hey, not everything has to hit that target, but something about their branding and use of 'new media' made me think that they are aiming for the stars.

So thank goodness I didn't disgrace both myself and them by forming an opinion on those two beers alone. Having tried a few other beers in their range, I can now see that Gold and No. 7 are beers that sit deliberately in the 'solid & reliable' area of their output.

The other beers that I've tried from them so far - Milk Stout (deliciously bittersweet), Southville Hop (heady, hoppy, American-accented), Exhibition (big, old-fashioned, nutty) have helped flesh out that impression, and framed an opinion about them, and that opinion is highly favourable. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that one of their beers, their New World Tripel collaboration with Arbor Ales, is one of the most enjoyable British-brewed beers I've had the pleasure of drinking this year. It's a riot of peach and apricot fruitiness, finishing with some cakey spiciness (ginger, mace). Delicious, and ruinously drinkable at 6.8%abv, I'd emailed them to ask if they had any more before I'd finished the first bottle.

I know that's in direct contravention of Stan's third rule, but sometimes you just know when something is right.

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Now Drinking: Cigar City Jai Alai Humidor Series (Cedar) IPA

2011-05-21T21:31:00.006+01:00

I've got an irrational hatred of wood-aged beers. Well, that's not quite true - my dislike is based on having tried dozens of wood-aged beers, and finding the majority of them to be an over-concentrated, spirit-influenced, hot, boozy mess, which I don't enjoy, so it's not entirely irrational. Let's start this post again, shall we?

It's my experience that wood-aged beers are over-influenced by the wood that they've spent time in. I like the soft, silky polish that you find in the Ola Dubh series, and of course Greene King's beers that incorporate their wood-aged Old 5X are usually a symphony of complexity. But what I really dislike is a 9% imperial stout put into a whisky cask and coming out as a 14% mix of beer and whisky. Your mileage may vary, but that's my experience and opinion.

So I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I bought this from the BrewDog shop - it's one of their guest beers, and I thought, well, why not. It has a good reputation, and sometimes you simply have to spend a bit of money and see what all the hype is about. The fact that the Cigar City Brewery's website is a touch hard to operate did nothing to inspire me, but hey, I wanted to try some new beer, and so I took the plunge.

And you know what? I'm glad I did. I can't vouch as to whether this bottle is representative of what it should be, but it's a surprisingly robust, almost English-style IPA (think Meantime IPA) crossed with a typical American IPA, and aged with cedar wood. I'd guess that it's aged over cubes or staves - it's definitely not a barrel-ageing treatment. But regardless of the technique, it's the end result that counts. Alongside the brown-sugar and marmalade aroma, and the sweetish initial attack, the spiciness of the cedar wood swooping in mid-palate adds a dimension that I'm not sure could be achieved any other way. It's a pungent, resinous spiciness that sits between the malt and hops, and adds a new dimension that throws both into relief. Crucially, by doing this, it actually makes you concentrate harder on what's happening on your palate.

A really interesting beer, a really interesting treatment, and a really interesting experience, and crucially, it's one I'd like to repeat. A lesson in abandoning your preconceptions.

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Brand Building in the 21st Century

2011-05-19T22:16:00.005+01:00

Marketing has a long and chequered history. From the 1950s heyday of the Madison Avenue whizzkids (as epitomised by 'Mad Men' - as essential as 'The Wire' in terms of TV crack), where advertising was unsophisticated lying, to the 1980s and sophisticated lying, to the 21st century, where advertising at its best means being sold something without realising you're being sold something. I'm not sure it's a question of style over substance any more, it's more a question of form over function. So powerful is the Kernel brewery's no-design aesthetic that even people who have never heard of them see the bottles, pick them up and say 'ohhh, yessss'. Plain brown paper with a minimalist design aesthetic (form) communicates a legal minimum of information (function) in a way that demonstrates brand values of self-assurance, integrity and modesty - in short, everything you would want from an artisan producer of anything. It helps that the beers are kick-ass too.

BrewDog's latest video, set up to plug the launch of the uncharacteristically dour beerleaks.org website, is another example of marketing trying not to be marketing. Unusually for 21st century media communication, it very explicitly gives a message, rather than simply giving a few carefully researched cues from you draw a conclusion that appears to be your own. Whereas a meta-analysis of the Kernel's branding leads to believe in the brand via it's no-brand identity, BrewDog hit you in the face so hard that it almost backfires. Surely they can't think I need the message spelled out this obviously? While everyone currently puts the a peculiarly British boot into BrewDog for being a success story (sure, it's annoying that they can't make enough beer, but you didn't ever really believe that whole 'Beer For Punks' schtick, did you?), I'm saddened that they feel the need to big themselves up by doing others down. Their beers are great enough to speak for themselves, and to try and further their aims by picking on Fosters, Stella and Carlsberg seems a bit like the school brainiac trying to outwit the rugby team by calculating differential equations out loud. We get it, but it's just a bit annoying.

Which brings us to Wells and Youngs' campaign for Bombardier, which I will never forget hearing pronounced as 'Bombar-dee-yay' by a host at a drinks industry awards ceremony, no doubt to (as then was) Charles Wells' immense annoyance. While this may not be the most sophisticated bit of brand-building (indeed, it's only 21st century by virtue of it having been made in 2011), it pushes all the right buttons. Fading actor - check. Schoolboy innuendo - check. Common catchphrase appropriated for advertising purposes - bang on, err, I mean check. By an incredible coincidence, just as I'm writing this the ad has popped up on TV, and I have to say that it plays a lot better on telly than it does via the web. Sure, the tittersome reference to the 'Bush & Fiddle' is brain-numbingly tedious, evoking a genuine moment of 'no, did they really do that?' (and not in a good way) but the moment where the Bombardier heads the first cannonball is priceless. Sadly, they lose my attention again at the end where the Bombardier whips a bottle out of his trousers. That's (a) unappealing and (b) unlikely to be anything close to an appropriate serving temperature.

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NOW DRINKING: Truman's Runner Ale

2011-05-10T21:40:00.002+01:00

If you read this blog with anything approaching the sort of fervour that I've long hoped to inspire, it won't come as any surprise to you that I love brown beer. Ordinary brown beer. Full-on, unreconstructed brown beer. The sort of nutty, full-flavoured brown beer that inspired a generation of American brewers into making something other than wet, yellow air. Admittedly, by using the ingredients that were local to them, they failed in creating ordinary brown beer, and instead created a the sort of global lupulin arms race that finds its illogical conclusion in beer like Mikkeller's 1000 IBU - beers that so miss the point of what beer should be that it's hard to even guess where they came from.

Thankfully, Truman's Runner Ale (4%abv) is the sort of ordinary brown beer that knows where it's come from. Runner Ale is a beer that wears its colours firmly on its sleeve, and that colour is brown. But the thing is, it's easy to equate brown with boring, and Runner is anything but. It's the sort of full-bodied, bitter, nutty, dry beer that beer was built on. Not the sort of floppy-haired beer that relies on pilsner malt and precocious, evanescent new world hops with names like Ahtanum and El Dorado. No, good, solid traditional hops - Fuggles, Goldings, Styrian Goldings - and lots of chunky dark malt give Runner the sort of uncompromising taste that made British beer great.

Reading that back, that sounds like it's meant to be a ironic and take the piss out of such an unreconstructed classic style of ale, but it isn't mean to be. It's meant to evoke admiration for the unchanging nature of such a great ale. To deride this would be like deriding a sculptor for working with his hands and being covered in dust at the end of the day - sometimes you need to look beyond the facade and examine the meaning of something, rather than just judge what the appearance implies.

Truman's Runner Ale is a huge, hulking, giant of a beer, not caring for fashion or fripperies, self-assured and swaggering into the room with the sort of cocksure confidence that is born of genuinely not giving a toss about what anybody thinks, and is all the greater for it.

And the eagle on the label would make a great tattoo.

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Ant Hayes

2011-05-08T00:00:00.004+01:00

This is just an echo post for what Martyn Cornell (aka Zythophile) has posted about the death of Ant Hayes. I can't pretend to have known Ant well, but I'd met him a few times, and we'd passed ideas back and forth, as I mention in my response to Martyn's post.

Ant was a lovely guy. I'm saddened by his death, and even more saddened for his family. If you can spare a few quid, please think about donating to his family's nominated charity. You can read more about the charity here. If you can't spare a few quid, go without beer for a couple of days and donate anyway.

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Playing With The Big Boys

2011-05-06T01:02:00.004+01:00

I'm not going to pretend that this post will be any good, but it might have some interesting news.

I'm posting at an unusually late hour because I've just got in from a night out with the Dandy BrewPunks of Fraserburgh. It's been a lot of fun, and has encompassed a whole range of beers - Fernandes Barge [Something] - very tasty low abv blonde ale, and then things heated up. A bottle of BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge - very tasty, just what it should be. Flying Dog Wild Dog - complex and drinkable. Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron - complex, but foghorn-like. Great Divide Double IPA - a little tired, although tasty. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA - again, tired but tasty.

But the main purpose of their visit was to look at some locations for the next BrewDog bar. It seems that Leeds is next on their radar, with some very targetted visits from James and Martin, along with bar manager Bruce from BrewDog Aberdeen.

Nothing is signed, the shop window is still strictly for browsing, but it seems likely that BrewDog will open a bar in Leeds at some point this year.

Raise your hand if you think that's good news.

*raises hand*

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Wikio Rankings Preview - April 2011

2011-05-02T22:26:00.005+01:00

It's Wikio time again folks, and before you scroll down to see what's happened recently, let me summarise it for you: little change.

Of course, if you've floated up or down a couple of places, it will seem like a big deal, but overall, there's not much to write home about. From a personal perspective, the most worrying development is that Simon Woods is now above me in the rankings, meaning that although I have more hair on my face and head than he does on his entire body, he still gets to outrank me on Wikio. I'm saddened that Wikio's complicated algorithm doesn't seem to include some sort of hirsutism index, but still, I'll take what I can get. And so will baldy Woods, no doubt.

More significantly still, looking at the American Wikio beer blogs index, not only are there no overall meta rankings in this Transatlantic duel, but Stan Hieronymus has slipped from 5th to 6th this month. I have also slipped from 5th to 6th this month, which clearly means that, in the absence of comparative data, I'm as good a blogger as Stan Hieronymus. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I urge you to spread this as gospel truth.

Remember, popularity is no indication of ability or greatness, and vice versa. Keep drinking, keep writing, and most important of all, keep a sense of perspective.

1	Pete Brown's Blog
2	Pencil & Spoon
3	Beer Reviews
4	Master Brewer at Adnams
5	Drinking Outside The Box
6	Are You Tasting the Pith?
7	The Good Stuff
8	"It's just the beer talking" – Jeff Pickthall's Blog
9	Tandleman's Beer Blog
10	Bibendum Wine
11	The Wine Conversation
12	Ghost Drinker
13	Called to the bar
14	Raising the Bar
15	Sour Grapes
16	Zythophile
17	Spittoon
18	HopZine.com
19	Thornbridge Brewers' Blog
20	The Pub Curmudgeon

Ranking made by Wikio

Into The Drink

2011-04-26T20:28:00.002+01:00

Imagine you're standing on a beach, at the point where the sea meets the sand. Look down at your feet. Can you see the foamy seawater bubbling over your feet, tickly, exuberant and refreshing? Well, imagine that couple of feet of water washing around your toes represents beer today. Now look out to sea, all the way to the misty horizon, and side to side as far as the eye can see. That vast ocean represents the sum total of all human experience of beer. Care to come for a dip?

Let's wade out a little bit, leaving behind the present day expression of the brewers art, all the delicate, pin-bright flavours and aromas of exotic new world hops. Let's wade out knee-deep, where the water is churning up the sand into gritty murk, where things don't look so bright and cheerful. That represents what is perceived by many to have been a low point in beer, the keg revolution of the 1970s. In fact, let's say it's 1971, the year that the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) was founded. This year, their 40th anniversary, sees a general consensus that they have met their aim, and have saved real ale. Real ale is Britain's gastronomic gift to the world. Live beer, with the yeast still gently working, was nearly driven to extinction by the onward march of brewing technology. It's true that beer is more stable if you filter, pasteurise and artificially carbonate it, but it also tastes as though it's had all the life knocked out of it. Which of course, it has.

Come on, let's really swim now. Stride out of the murk, yelp as the cool water reaches your nethers, and plunge in. As you bob back to the surface, gasping, you can feel yourself supported by the ocean, transparent but indisputably there. That sensation of support represents everyone involved in the beer industry – brewers, publicans, retailers and consumers, all coming together and finding themselves bound by a common interest, a drink that sometimes becomes overlooked with the contempt of familiarity, and yet is still the first port of call for a social event.

President Obama has now put beer centre stage twice in his presidency, once exchanging beers with David Cameron, and once at the 'beer summit', where he famously sat down with his Vice President, along with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr and Police Sargent James Crowley. There had been a suggestion of racism in the actions that Sargent Crowley had taken against Prof. Gates, and they were talked about and settled over a glass of beer.

It takes something as simultaneously momentous and simple as an American president doing business over a glass of beer to remind us of what we already know. Beer isn't just a beverage, it's a symbol of equality, of companionship. If you want a real flight of fancy, look at the derivation of the word companion. From the Latin companionem, literally meaning someone you break bread with. We all understand the significance of breaking bread with someone, but that meaning seems to have become lost when applied to beer, which is a shame when you consider how many ingredients these two foodstuffs share. But are you here to take flights of fancy, or are you swimming?

The companionship offered by beer doesn't just extend to those who drink it. The brotherhood of brewers is a happy, tight-knit family. There is a maxim among brewers that their job is just to keep yeast happy, and while there is some truth in that, it also plays to the typical modesty of an artisan. The world of beer offers a whole spectrum of colours, tastes and aromas, all born of more or less the same basic process. The problems that face one brewer are faced by them all. Perhaps it's this that makes them such a generous bunch of craftsmen. When there was a disastrous hop shortage a few years ago, many larger brewers took the unusual step of releasing some hops from their reserves to allow smaller brewers to carry on production. In material terms, the value of this didn't amount to much, but symbolically, it spoke gallons about how brewers view their place in the world. They are servants to the yeast, and servants to the public, determined to deliver the daily bread, no matter what.

Strike out. Now you're really swimming, the water deep and dark beneath you, effectively bottomless. This is the heyday of British beer production, the happy period after the industrial revolution, the Victorian era where technology was proper technology, powered by fire and steam, and anything was possible. Swim away from the shore, float out into an ocean of beer. India pale ale, London porter, produced in volumes that only a few decades previously seemed impossible. There must have been a belief among the beer industry that this was their apogee, that they were producing the best beer ever, in the biggest volumes possible. London porter brewers constructed ever-larger vats to age their beer in, not big barrels, but huge, vertical vats made of wood and encircled with iron hoops, as big as a house. If that sounds fanciful, bear in mind that to celebrate the commissioning of a new vat at the Meux (sadly, it rhymes with 'pukes') brewery, the brewers threw a dinner where they seated more than 200 people inside the vat. And if that sounds too good to be true, it turns out it was. The same brewery was responsible for the great porter flood of London in 1814, where the hoops encircling one of the vats broke, sending beer cascading into nearby streets and tenements, and killing 8 people. Some high point in beer that turned out to be.

Sit up. Look around. You're almost out of sight of land. Everywhere is water. This symbolises a time when the production of beer wasn't centralised, but was in the hands of the home-makers, the alewives and brewsters (female brewers). Beer wasn't something that you bought in a pub, because pubs didn't exist. The whole concept of a place where you went to drink beer evolved over time, and as ever, the clue is in the name: public house. Beer was something that was once only made at home, and then some bright spark realised that people would pay to drink beer in their house, and the pub was born.

Lay back. Float. Float back to a time when beer wasn't a carefully crafted product, but a hit-and-miss process of fermenting gruel. The simple calories in grain are better preserved as beer than as a dried cereal that risked spoiling. That the nourishment made you feel good too was a bonus, and all the more reason to build a ritual around it.

That's enough, you've drifted too far. Now there is only a memory of where land was, so strike back for it, hard. Head down and push, leaving behind the murk and slime of primitive, faintly boozy grain porridge, the memories of sweet beers brought to life with a magic, yeast-infested stick, swim back through the steam and smoke of Victorian London, through the war years, through the paradoxically fizzy and lifeless years of keg beer's heyday. Strike back for that tiny strip of white foam, breaking on a beach of golden sand, suggesting a soft, white head atop a shimmering, golden beer. Feel hopefully with your feet, and then stand up and scurry back to a sun-baked towel. Rub down, and feel the healthy glow that exercise and cold water brings to your body.

I don't know about you, but exercise makes me thirsty.

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That was my entry for the recent Wells & Youngs writing competition, as covered by Pete Brown here (and seemingly nowhere else, rather disappointingly). I'm sure lots of other bloggers entered - how about now that I've shown you mine, you show me yours? Links below, please.

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To Cardiff!

2011-04-21T21:26:00.003+01:00

Getting ready to go and see Old Cheesy Pockets, I make sure that I have a few gifts that he will appreciate tucked away in the boot of the car. Some pale golden ales will do the job, so Buxton Moor Top, Thornbridge Wild Swan, Ilkley Mary Jane and some Odell IPA (he professes not to like American craft beer).

Of the four beers in the boot, it's not the never-ordinary, ever-dazzling Thornbridge beer that I'm excited about showing him, nor the soon-to-be-crowned-classic Ilkley Mary Jane, but the Buxton Moor Top. I can't think of a beer that is more of the moment than this one. Pale, low %abv, but absolutely stuffed full of hop character, it's at once both no-nonsense and spectacular. I first tried a bottle a little over a year ago, and was then made sure that we had the beer in stock at the Headingley shop as soon as we could. It's a beauty.

If you haven't tried it, you should. If you can't find it, weep no more - we are selling it mail order. In a move that's sure to strip this blog of every vestige of independence, integrity and credibility, I'm delighted to say, BUY IT HERE, NOW!

"Do you believe force carbonation gives a different kind of fizziness as opposed to bottle conditioning?"

2011-04-17T20:39:00.002+01:00

In the comments on my previous blog post, Dom of Thornbridge brewery asked: "Do you believe force carbonation gives a different kind of fizziness as opposed to bottle conditioning?". This is the sort of question that is so innocently placed that it must be a trap, but nevertheless, I'm going to have a stab at answering it.

I'll preface this by saying that I'm going to talk in broad-brush terms, employing generalities to which there may be exceptions. However, what I say is what I think, and it's born of experience and education, although perhaps someone more expert than may might chime in with an opinion. It's also appallingly geeky, for which I don't apologise, but I do warn you that unless you find the title of the post interesting, the next 400 words will be a tad dry.

My gut feeling is that force-carbonating and bottle-conditioning do produce different types of fizziness. There may be some overlap between them – bottle-conditioned beer can be overcarbonated, and a filtered beer that is undercarbonated is particularly lifeless, and vice-versa - but in the main, they are different.

My drinking experience tells me that bottle-conditioned beers generally have a finer, softer carbonation than force carbonated beers. That's not to say that it's always preferable – I find the supersaturation of CO2 in many Belgian beers a bit hard to deal with, but again, this is a fine, small-bubble type of carbonation, whereas I find force carbonated beers tend to have larger, rougher bubbles. This is my experience, but there's also a bit of science behind it.

When sparkling wine is made, it can gain carbonation either from being fermented in a large closed container (tank, cuve close, or Charmat method), or it may be refermented in bottle (the so-called methode Champenoise). While both of these processes make fizzy wine, the methode Champenoise is generally accepted to produce smaller, more persistent bubble than the tank method. That's the science – I don't know exactly why, but I'd guess it's something to do with ratios of gas to liquid, and overall pressures producing a certain style of saturation, but that's only a guess.

One other thing I've learnt from homebrewing: the way a beer carbonates has a definite gradient to it. When you bottle a beer with a bit of sugar and live yeast, the yeast eats the sugar and produces CO2 in the the tightly capped bottle. What I've found is that the yeast produces CO2 faster than the beer can absorb it. So after two days, the beer is a riot of barely-dissolved CO2. In fact, I'd guess that the CO2 to conditioned the beer is produced within three days of capping the bottle – the rest of the conditioning process is about the CO2 dissolving into the beer.

Of course, what is actually happening in the bottle is just one thing. How the beer arrives in the glass is another. You can always pour a non-BC beer a bit more roughly, knocking the gas out of it. This does two things (for me) – it makes it less gassy (duh), and it makes it more tasty. It's more tasty because when the beer hits the tongue, if you've knocked a lot of the gas out of it, it doesn't erupt in a riot of bubbles, more beer stays on your tongue, and the flavour is more apparent.

So yes, I do think that force carbonation gives a different sort of fizziness than bottle-conditioning, and that's why.

Geek-out over.

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NOW DRINKING: Salopian Darwin's Origin

2011-04-14T19:39:00.003+01:00

(or: A Tale of Two Beards)*

Unlike Cooking Lager, I didn't get into blogging just to get loads of free beer, although equally, I don't try to send it back when it arrives. I actually get a lot less freebies than you might imagine, and am very poor at sending feedback to breweries when they do. So I'm going to try to write up free beers as and when I drink them, which tends to be anything from a few days to a few months after I get them.

Salopian Darwin's Origin is a cracking drop of beer. It's not smothered in Nelson Sauvin or Citra, it's not brewed with a fancy yeast, it's not 'if your just having one, have THIS ONE" strong (it's 4.3%abv). But it is a classic British ale brewed with one eye looking forwards, and one eye looking back, a bit like Marty Feldman if he were a brewing historian. It's a classic pale copper colour, and the aroma is spicy and citrussy. I'll throw caution to the wind and make a stab at the hops being trad and new world - maybe a mix of EKG and Challenger. The malt bill is, I'd guess, mainly pale malt with a few percent toffeeish medium crystal, a sprinkling of biscuity amber perhaps. At least, that's the sort of formula I'd use if I were trying to make a beer like this. It's classic, yet modern, drawing on a traditional style, and yet quite contemporary in feel. Best of all, it's got Charles Darwin sporting massive white beard on the label. I'm drinking it out of my Beer Hunter Session Glass, which has a bearded, ghostly Michael Jackson printed on it.

I'm sporting a beard too, not a big, bushy one, but a neatly trimmed evil-genius style beard. But keeping it modern, I'm wearing a shirt that has a William Morris-style print on it. I'm sort of Pete Brown meets Lenin meets Mr Spock, minus the pointy ears (Spock's pointy ears, not Pete Brown's). But I digress.

It's slightly coarsely fizzy (the beer, not my beard) as it's force-carbonated and not bottle-conditioned, but you know what - just pour it a bit more carelessly and knock some of the gas out. I wouldn't go so far as to say 'hop-forward and in the modern style', but it's definitely 'classic ale with a weather eye on the trends'.

Lovely.

*or three, if you include mine

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Beer Festivals - What Are They Actually For?

2011-04-11T21:36:00.003+01:00

I had a cracking night out on Friday. Just 200 yards from my front door was the second Rothwell beer festival. I met up with a mate and we hit the bar, along with about 500 other people - not a bad feat for a hall with a capacity of about half that. The thing that made this festival so special was that we were allowed back out of the hall, into the churchyard in front of the church you see pictured. It was a warm evening, and the combination of great beers, an enthusiastic and genuinely mixed crowd, and a 'first day of summer' feeling made it quite an event. Indeed, so caught up in the revelry was everyone that they pretty much did for all of the beer on the first night - by the time I went back at 7pm on the second evening, there were only 5 beers left on.

I've gone on record as being a bit of a miserablist about beer festivals - they're generally not conducive to sitting around and chatting, they're usually held in slightly naff municipal settings, and they tend to live up to all the clichés about real ale that you expect to find. I won't rehash those here, but I will say that I was delighted by the really broad mix of people at the Rothwell beer fest - maybe it's because it's a more suburban effort, but it really did draw everything from hip young things to grizzled old soaks. I'd like to think of myself as somewhere between the two, but judging from the amount of 'hey beardy' stick I got, I fear I'm nearer the far end of the spectrum.

But as well as drinking some great beers (highlights included Five Towns Peculiar Blue, and Elland Eden), it got me thinking - what are beer festivals actually for? Are they just a big, hit-and-miss sort of a party, where you turn up and make your own fun? Are they a bit like a pub that you only visit once? Are they more about the beer than the festival, or is it all about "the craic"? I like to use the odd solitary session at beerfests purely to try as many different thirds as I can, as I find that gives a really clear idea of who's failing, who's hitting the mark, and who's trying too hard. Well, until about the 12th third, when it all becomes a bit academic, and I settle on a final pint of something a bit pokey that I'll come to regret on the bus journey home.

So then: Beer Festivals - How Do You Like Yours?

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Rooster's Brewery Sold - Rooster's Brewery Bought!

2011-04-04T13:16:00.005+01:00

Yorkshire seems to be quite the hotbed of beer news at present. Alongside my news of late, there are new breweries popping up, improving and expanding all over the shop - Ilkley, Elland, Kirstall, Summer Wine and Magic Rock to name five without even trying. Now Rooster's ownership is on the move.

I've known Ian Fozard, MD of the Market Town Taverns chain for nearly 10 years, and I think he's pretty well known in Yorkshire as being someone who is in the business for all the right reasons. And it's no secret what regard I've held Rooster's in, especially Sean, Alison and the recently flown-the-coop Sam. What came as a great surprise is that a recent colleague of mine, Tom Fozard, and his twin brother Oliver, are going to be employed as brewery manager and brewer respectively. Can I be the first to make the joke about a new pair of cocks at Rooster's?

Below is the press release - congratulations and best wishes to the new owners, and to the departing ones.

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ROOSTERS BREWERY SALE ANOUNCED

Sean and Alison Franklin today announced that they have exchanged contracts for the sale of Roosters Brewery in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire which they founded in 1994. The sale will complete at the end of 2011.

The purchaser is Ian Fozard, Managing Director of Knaresborough based Market Town Taverns. Ian is acting in a personal capacity and his sons, Oliver and Tom Fozard, will shortly join Roosters. Alison and Sean will continue to own and run the brewery until the end of the year. During 2012, Sean and Alison have agreed to remain involved on a consultancy basis.

Oliver Fozard has been a brewer for almost 11 years, firstly with Daleside Brewery, Harrogate and for the last six and a half years with Copper Dragon Brewery in Skipton. Tom Fozard has related retail experience with the Beer Ritz off-licence chain and has worked closely with beer writer Zak Avery.

Ian Fozard said “I am proud to have been approached by Sean & Alison to take over the brewery. My sons and I are looking forward to working with them during the next 8 months. We’re determined to maintain the innovation and high quality standards for which Roosters beers are highly renowned.”

Sean Franklin said “I’ve known Ian for 30+ years and I’m confident that the brewery will be in good hands. I’m looking forward to introducing Oliver and Tom to the dark arts of Rooster’s brewing process. Then I’m going fishing – for a while……”

The Greene King Paradox

2011-04-02T10:37:00.004+01:00

I had a great night a couple of weeks ago at The Job Bulman in Gosforth, helping to launch the JD Wetherspoon's Real Ale festival. It was a fun couple of hours of tasting through half a dozen of the festival beers with 20 or so guests, interspersed with a few bottles. So for example, alongside the Ballast Point Calico Amber, I brought some bottles of Ballast Point Big Eye IPA. And to taste after the Greene King Export IPA, I brought along a sample of Greene King Old 5X that the brewery gave me when I visited them a while ago.

Old 5X is the 12%abv beer that GK age in wooden vats, and blend with the 6%abv BPA to make Strong Suffolk Vintage Ale. Neither of these beers is released seperately, so having a bottle of something so unusual was quite a coup. This beer isn't a silky, polished wood-aged beer, but an old, oxidised, 'spoiled' beer that bears more resemblance to Belgian beers like Rodenbach than anything that we might think of being barrel-aged, which has come to imply spirit casks.

I introduced the GK Export IPA with my usual spiel about how much I love the regular GK IPA - I do, honestly - and how GK's beers are a paragon of traditional British ale brewing. I also touched on their purchase of various breweries, which also touches a nerve with people. Some people think GK are a horribly rapacious corporation who have bought and closed breweries for the sake of it. GK's take on it is that the breweries were for sale on the open market, and that they are a business, and that the brands and beers still exist, albeit produced centrally.

It's fair to say that things got a bit heated as I talked about GK. There was a shout from the other side of the room that I didn't quite catch, but it was something along the lines of 'this is like Nuremberg'. Everyone stopped short of booing me, but it was clear that I'd overstepped the mark in my praise of 'Greede King'.

I shared out the Old 5X, and it's fair to say that everyone was stunned by it. Its incredible sherry-like complexity and slightly acetic sharpness made for a reflective moment in the room. That's to be expected - Old 5X is a great beer, and the sooner GK can find a way to do a single-release of it, in nip bottles, the better. But after that, as I wandered round chatting to people, and they berated me to my face for my perceived GK propaganda, almost everyone ended their tirade with something along the lines of '...but actually, I had a really surprisingly good pint of their IPA in...'.

While it's easy to get fired up about new and exciting beers, it's not often that people get fired up defending tradition. Quite often, praise for British beer seems to get caught up in some jingoistic tirade against lager, which is perceived as a foreign invader, or American beer, which is still misconstrued to mean solely Bud, Miller and Coors. I thought it was quite refreshing to see such passion expressed about beer at what might be called the 'traditional' end of the market. What was also enjoyable was people publicly denouncing GK for their business practices, but at the same time discreetly admitting that they liked their flagship beer.

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge - The Launch

2011-03-28T21:19:00.005+01:00

When BrewDog's James Watt asked me, Pete Brown and Mark Dredge if we'd be interested in hosting a beer dinner at Musa in Aberdeen, and then brewing a beer the next day, the answer was an easy yes. Of course, the bigger discussion was: Who gets their name first on the label?

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge is an homage to the beers and brewing traditions that have rocked our world. Classic traditional Saaz hops married to continual hopping. The old and new brought together to try and make a statement about where beer has come from, and where it should be heading. A beer born of blood, sweat and tears. Well, that was the idea. In the end, we were so partied-out from the beer dinner the night before that no amount of lifting malt and digging out mash tuns could shift the sense that we'd had a chance for greatness, but blown it by overindulging.

But wait, what beer from yonder fridge breaks? It is the Hotpoint, and Avery Brown Dredge is the sun. The sample I have in front of me is a pre-release taster, before the dry-hopping was carried out. It's a big, malty beast of a beer, initially bready, but with a familiar slightly antiseptic snap of Saaz hops. In the mouth, the hops kick hard against the pale malt sweetness. Dry-hopping will up the aroma. What have we created? It is only a matter of time before hopfen-helles-bock becomes a globally adopted and celebrated beer style. Or is it, as the label suggests, an imperious pilsner? Come along, try some, and decide for yourself.

Kill your heroes. Make your own idols. Whatever. Just drink our beer.

7.30pm, Leeds, North Bar. Or London at The Rake and The Jolly Butchers.

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The Lowdown: Beer-Ritz / Beer Paradise

2011-03-27T22:51:00.001+01:00

OK, it's been a crazy couple of weeks, but here's what happened.

Basically, some information came to light regarding the structure of the company, and how that impacted onto UK company law. We had to stop trading immediately and resolve the situation, but for one reason and another, this was less than straightforward. The upshot was that the entire business, comprising the shop, the wholesale business Beer Paradise, and the mail order service beerritz.co.uk had to stop trading immediately and indefinitely.

It wasn't a solvency issue - the business is solvent and viable. But equally, we were advised by a fancy, serious, £400-an-hour lawyer (and it was a loooooong meeting) not to do anything on behalf of the company, so if you called me and I seemed less than helpful, I'm sorry. But read on, because there's good news.

Myself and the company operations manager rushed around trying to find a solution, and have happily succeeded. We organised a management buy-out - basically, we made an offer for the entire company (shop, wholesale and mail order), which was accepted. We are going to continue trading, honouring all existing debts and liabilites, and are going to carry on and build an even more successful business, buying and selling great beer to businesses and consumers across the UK and beyond.

At a company level, we are incredibly grateful for all the understanding and offers of support that people have given us. It's often implied that the beer business is friendly and gentlemanly, but to have it demonstrated so freely and generously is a humbling experience. At a personal level, I'd like to thank James Clay, Vertical Drinks and BrewDog for coming up with offers of employment that most people would tear off an arm to get. I'm sorry I couldn't take up your amazing offers, and I'm genuinely floored and flattered by them.

There are still some challenges that remain to be overcome, but as the Batman of Brewing Stuart Howe said recently, "true strength is forged on the anvil of adversity". I'm sure that we can continue to build a great company. Whether I can do that while continuing with a career as a writer is another matter. Frankly, I hope so, but things may go a little quiet here for a bit.

Lastly, thanks very much for all the kind words that people have written on their blogs and tweets over the last few weeks. It's been great to hear all of that enthusiasm, not only for the shop, but also for the sector as a whole. The great news is that the sector is still in growth - what has happened isn't bad for the craft/alternative/independent beer scene in the UK, it's good news. We're going to be around for years to come, and I haven't even told you the best bit: I now have a half share in a fork-lift truck. If that's not something to get excited about, I don't know what is.

Do what you love, love what you do. Message ends.

"Hop-Forward, And In The Modern Style"

2011-03-10T20:01:00.005Z

There's a phrase I hear myself using a lot lately to describe lots of British beer - "hop-forward, and in the modern style". What does that mean? It's a fairly broad-brushed way of talking about beers from breweries that have embraced the cornucopia of dazzling flavours that new world hops can offer. To get slightly more technical, I'd guess that it also means that the brewery is using hops later in the boil, in a way that draws exuberant aromas from hops, and dry-hopping extensively to boost that aroma. Of course, as a broad-brushed phrase, it's not very precise, and so the two local breweries that I visited a few weeks ago both fall under that description, albeit in different ways.

Mallinson's Brewery is in Huddersfield. They're certainly no slouch with darker beers, but they've gained a reputation for brewing pale beers that showcase new world hop varieties. A quick squint at their Ratebeer.com entry lists a whopping 96 beers, and many of the single-hop beers read like a roll call of must-have hop varieties; citra, simcoe, nelson sauvin, pacific jade. Then there's the brilliantly titled "Let There Be Hops", the prequel (presumably) to "Let There Be More Hops". The ones that don't reference hops reference any one of number of things - buses, local landmarks, hell there was even a series devoted to dodgy cars of the 70s and 80s. All of this points to two things - they like their hops, and have an endearing lack of pretension when naming their beers. They're not going to call a beer "The Eternal Hallucination of Princess Lupulina" when they can name it after a local landmark, or even a Skoda (I'm not making it up).

Mallinson's make solid, reliable beers, which make them sound a bit workmanlike - or workwomanlike, given that they are an all-female team - and actually, that's damning them with faint praise. They are a good, traditional British ale brewery who have kept a weather eye on what's going on in the rest of the brewing world, but always keeping focus on what makes British beer great - drinkability. I had a couple of pints of their golden Crescent Hop (3.8%abv) recently. I only wanted one, but when I went back to the bar for a pint of something else, and the barman mistakenly poured me the same beer again, I thought: "You know, I don't mind, that's a cracking beer anyway".

A few miles up the valley from Huddersfield, another new brewery has also been studying the use of hops with a Blumenthal-like glint in their eyes. Again, it would be unfair to characterise them as overly-focused on one ingredient, or one style. Summer Wine brewery, near Holmfirth, cast themsleves unashamedly as craft brewers (see here for some heated polemic on that subject), and make sure that everything they do is packed full of the passion that they feel for their vocation. They've taken John Lewis' strapline of 'Never Knowingly Undersold', stuffed it chock-full of excitable hops and unusual speciality grain, dry-hopped it, and made it their own: Never Knowingly Underbrewed. While Mallinson's are a brewery whose beers I will happily try when I see them, Summer Wine's beers are ones that I've actively sought out. Have a look at the original meanings of the Michelin guide's star system and draw your own conclusions from that.

Of the beers that I've tried from Summer Wine, mid-gold Diablo (6%abv) has to be the best, delivering a classic tropical and citrus kick of (I think) chinook and amarillo hops over a pale malt base. It's certainly at the more extreme end of "hop-forward, and in the modern style", but it pushes all my buttons. At the other end of the scale, their pitch-black Teleporter Ten Grain Porter (5%abv) has a smooth, oaty goodness combined with a mocha finish that makes the beer feel nourishing and revitalising, like a rub down with warm grain fresh from the mash tun. If you're lucky, you might just catch the first beer of their series of none-more-hip black IPAs - Nerotype #1 (Simcoe). It may not have been the blackest black IPA I've had, but there's no doubting its IPA credentials.

One person's 'drinkability' is another person's 'boring'. One person's 'boundary-pushing' is another person's 'weird'. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, I honestly believe that if you approach the bar with an open mind and a slight thirst, there's never been a better time to be a beer drinker.

The Crafterati

2011-03-05T21:46:00.004Z

I write for the trade publication Off Licence News. They're good enough to let me write more or less what I want, as long as it's related to retail. Although the main news pages are always up to date, the "industry comment" sections aren't. So below is the column that was published today. It's not really so much about craft beer, more how that beer is enjoyed, and how that impacts on the marketplace.

What I will say is that there is something about beer that makes people exceptionally passionate about what they believe, even in the face of reason. For what I consider to be one of the text-book examples of the chest-beating that gets aired whenever we beer geeks get aggravated, see this thread on Tom Cannavan and Roger Protz's Beer-Pages.com. And stone me if I don't find much to agree with in one of Cooking Lager's recent posts, not to mention Phil at Oh Good Ale.

I'm not "doing a Kevin" and not asking brewers to brew beer within narrow constraints. Quite the reverse, I'm celebrating diversity, and trying to underline the fact that, from the bottom to the top, the British brewing scene is as lively and diverse and stuffed full of passionate people as it ever has been. That's what the SIBA's "Proud of British Beer" video is about - sure it's a plea to the Chancellor to stop shafting the industry via punitive taxes, but it's also about the incredible diversity in beer at the moment. With very few exceptions, the brewing community is tightly-knit and celebrates that diversity. How come the consumers don't?

Anyway, here's the column in full - I hope it provokes some thought and comment.

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There's a discussion rumbling around the beer blogosphere at the moment that is related to the rise in interest in American craft beer. The nice thing about American craft beer, apart from it being as tasty as hell, is that it has both a standardised definition by the American Brewers Association, and also by shorthand use. The ABA's definition relates to volume of production and an emphasis on flavourful beer. It's basically set up to talk about tasty beer from largely small, largely independently owned breweries.

But the problem that has arisen is that a lot of vocal beer geeks (and I use that term with love, and recognition that I am one) have started using the term 'craft beer' to talk about the rise in American-influenced beer brewed in the UK. Whereas a few years ago, we had premium bottled ale, and even super-premium bottled ale, now we find that these terms aren't enough to describe the rise in small-production, American-accented beers.

The big problem comes because nobody can define what craft means in a UK context. Whereas 'real ale' has a text-book definition, pertaining to the beer's method of storage and maturation, there is a big problem when you start bandying the term 'craft' around, as it seeks to exclude a tranche of the brewers in the UK who are producing perfectly decent British beer.

The joy of British beer is that it draws on a long heritage, has been gently influenced over the centuries by improvements in brewing practices and, lets not forget, the introduction of hops in the 15th century from mainland Europe. It's quite apparent to anyone who drinks (for example) a Greene King IPA, and then a BrewDog Punk IPA, that these two beers are dancing to two very different soundtracks. In my opinion, both have a place in the repertoire of the beer drinker. Many disagree about being so eclectic, and both of these beers that draw on the IPA moniker have their vocal champions, and also their vociferous denouncers. But that doesn't mean that one has more right to be brewed, or drunk, than another.

But this is where the 'craft' argument starts to unravel. BrewDog are seen as craft brewers by what I'm going to call the crafterati, producing bold, American influenced beers with an iconoclastic streak. The crafterati see Greene King as a dinosaur brewery, making boring beer for boring people. Of course, they conveniently overlook the fact that Greene King have been wood-ageing beers since Noah was a boy, and not in a way that gives a beer the seductive, easy-to-understand polish of the bourbon barrel, but in a huge vat, blackened by time, gently sending beer sour and being blended to produce a classic old ale.

The crafterati are producing a division in the beer world, seeking to endorse some beers and denounce others, sanction some breweries and our scorn on the rest. In its most complex iteration, the crafterati will divide a brewery's output into craft and non-craft – see for example, the smaller volume output of Stuart Howe at Sharp's brewery vs. Sharp's flagship brand (and undoubtedly Molson Coors' target in the recent takeover) Doom Bar. Doom Bar, ordinary brown bitter – Monsieur Rock, high-concept craft beer.

As you can tell from my vague distancing myself from the crafterati, I'm not sure that this point of view is an entirely welcome development in beer appreciation in the UK. But from a retail perspective, it's important to understand how the marketplace is changing. What you decide to do with that understanding, however, is up to you.

Iechyd Da!

2011-03-01T20:56:00.011Z

Having trawled the interwebs extensively, I'm pretty sure that this 2009 piece that I wrote about Wales for Beers of the World magazine (RIP) isn't available anywhere. I thought I'd post this as (a) it's St David's Day today, and (b) Brain's have very kindly sent me a few SA Gold, and I haven't got time to even drink one today, let alone write anything meaningful about it. Much to my chagrin, I STILL haven't had a chance to try Brain's Dark on smoothflow, although I'm going to Cardiff at Easter and am going to do my damnedest to do so then. Any tips on where to make that particular tick will be gratefully received.

From the end of the article, I've trimmed off a (pretty exhaustive) list of breweries and their choicest beer, so I'm not trying to claim this piece as a definitive article, just a report of a mad two-day scramble from one end of the country to the other.

So, drink Welsh beer, eat Welsh lamb, and 'iechyd da' to the whole Welsh brewing community.

Tom Jones, coal mining, sheep, leeks, male voice choirs, daffodils, rugby and hard-to-pronounce place names. There, that's all of the clichés out of the way in the first sentence, so now we can move on and talk about the beer.

I didn't realise it at the time, but my overall impressions of the Welsh brewing industry were set very early on in my visit. As I was being shown around the Breconshire Brewery by brewer Justin “Buster” Grant, he pointed to a chap washing out kegs. “That's Clive – he's the company secretary” said Buster. “Industrious chap, turning his hand to anything” I thought. It was a thought that reoccurred with surprising frequency over the following couple of days.

Buster Grant barely looks old enough to have legally attended the Great British Beer Festival in 1992, but he did, and it clearly had an influence on him. A decade later, Breconshire's Golden Valley made its first appearance there. Six years further on, the pale golden beer is still one of their best sellers. It uses only British ingredients, something that Buster is passionate about, but not as passionate as the idea of using locally sourced Welsh malt and hops. “Welsh hops are still a few years away, but I hope we'll get there” he says. It certainly won't be at the expense of quality, though.

Moving quickly from the sublime to the ridiculous, Buster takes me through to the storeroom and shows me two comically huge whisky casks, each holding many firkins of Ysbrid y Ddraig (“Spirit of the Dragon”). It's all due to be casked, although after seeing my imploring expression, Buster says that “some” might get bottled. If its final packaging is a reflection of the rest of the range (90% casked, 10% bottled), there should be some Welsh cask-aged beer available in bottles soon.

If you've ever tried any beer from family-run Otley Brewery at Pontypridd, you'll have had an impression about it even before the beer was poured. Their sleek, modern branding, based on the initial letter of the family name, is a clear statement of intent. Nick Otley explains: “We were determined from day one to be different, we wanted to appeal to a different market”. It's an approach that has served them well, but all the branding in the world would be wasted on a sub-standard product. But with awards given to them on a seemingly monthly basis since their founding in 2005, form and function are clearly in happy harmony. Add to that their recent first batch of exports (to Copenhagen, on the back of their presence on the British stand at the 2008 European Beer Festival, as covered in these pages last year), and it becomes clear that the Otleys have their sights set high.

In the cramped brewhouse, brewer Charlie Otley is up against a logistical problem. He literally can't brew enough beer. Even without seeking new outlets, and having turned down several supermarket contracts (“They devalue a craft product” says Nick), they can only meet existing orders and supply their own pubs. And it was to one of their pubs, The Bunch of Grapes, that Nick excitedly directed me, to sample their newest beer, Colomb-O. Pungent with the peach and citrus aroma of Columbus hops, this barrel is dry hopped, adding a forceful elegance to the golden beer. It will be a hit, if they ever find time and space to brew it in quantity.

Space isn't a problem for the Rhymney Brewery – in fact, space-age might be a better description. In a brewery equipped with gadgets that most small breweries wouldn't even dream of (a Canadian low-volume canning machine, a Japanese malt-mill with stone rollers – they mill their own malt here), father and son team Steve and Marc Evans produce a small portfolio of beers, including the Champion Beer of Wales 2008, the nutty, fruity, smoky Rhymney Dark. Steve explains that when they founded the brewery in 2003, they wanted to “create a commercially successful brewery based on quality and consistency”. If that sounds more pragmatic than romantic, you only need look at the success of Rhymney Dark, and the fact that they handle the bottling for a few other breweries, to see that their heart is in the right place.

You can't talk about beer in Wales without mentioning Felinfoel, Wales's oldest brewery, founded in 1878. And you can't mention Felinfoel without mentioning that it was the first European brewery to put beer in cans in 1936, pipped at the post for a global first by American brewery Krueger, who did the same a couple of years earlier. Of course, this is a bit of a red herring (rather than a red dragon), and the real interest is what Felinfoel is brewing these days. Their Double Dragon ale (a flavour-packed ruddy-brown ale with a notably nutty, toasted quality) is labelled as “The National Ale of Wales”. On the basis of their iconic red dragon logo and bilingual labels, I feel ill-equipped to argue.

But one brewery who might dispute that claim is Brain's of Cardiff. The name of Brain's is tightly bound up with its home city. Not just bound up, in fact, but also painted on, screwed to and generally leaping into one's eyeline at every opportunity. As a result of over 125 years of residence, the name of Brain's is painted on railway bridges, embroidered onto rugby shirts, and found fluttering on flags all over the city. All of this would be intensely irritating if it was a global brand of lager, but the close association of the city and the brewery somehow feels right.

Its portfolio of beers reflects its evolution. Brains Dark was the brewery's most popular beer, until the 1980s. It's neither really a mild nor a stout, but a delicious dry, dark bitter. It has now been eclipsed by Brain's SA, the beer of Welsh rugby, a soft, rounded sweetish beer with a faintly toffeeish centre. The newest addition to the fold, SA Gold, is a beer that somehow has a pronounced hop character, but without much accompanying bitterness. Head brewer Bill Dobson feels it fits in well with the traditional preference for beers with a low bitterness: “The Welsh palate doesn't like overly hopped beers, they prefer easy, quaffable session beers”.

The northern and southern parts of Wales are very different. Welsh as a first language is more common in the north, perhaps as factor of being further from the capital and its fancy affectation of adopting English as a first language, or perhaps as a way of maintaining a distinct identity from the influx of English from the industrial north west.

Although it's a country of two halves, Wales isn't very big, but it does take a long time to drive from bottom to top. For the weary traveller on a beer journey, there is salvation between the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia. In Llanwrtyd Wells, the Neuadd Arms Hotel is popular with walkers, climbers and mountain bikers. It has a certain sort of endearingly lived-in character that is the antithesis of modern boutique hotel style. The food is simple and hearty, the countryside is a rugged paradise, and the Heart of Wales brewery is in a converted stable out the back. It's hard to believe that self-taught brewer Lindsay Ketteringham has only been brewing for about two and a half years, and has learned on the job, with just one trial brew as his guide. “I learned from my mistakes – a lot of beer had to go down the drain initially” he says ruefully. The mistakes were worth making, as the beers he brews now are delicious, and perilously drinkable.

Should you decide to get an early night there and break camp early for the jaunt to north Wales, you could do worse than head straight for Porthmadog. There are many reasons to head there – the Welsh Highland Heritage railway, the Italianate village of Portmeirion nearby – but if you're in a beery mood (and I'll bet you are), then tucked away on a back street near the railway station is the Purple Moose brewery. Unusually, the brewery has a kerbside presence, with a walk-in shop in front of the brewery. From this sleepy backstreet location, brewer Lawrence Washington has steadily garnered a string of awards, producing clean, crisp ales in the modern style. “I would definitely say that I've been influenced by the new-wave of Scottish craft brewing” he says.

Heading north, an easy stopping off point, with a campsite and its own station on the Welsh Highland Railway, is the Snowdonia Park Brewpub at Waunfaur. Owner and brewer Carmen Pierce has the enthusiasm and energy of a zealous convert to brewing and to real ale. In her own words, she “used to be a lager lout, but now I love it”. Initially daunted by finding herself in charge of a pub, kitchen, campsite and brewery, she met the challenge head-on and, as another self-taught brewer, has come to love what she once found intimidating. Standing proudly in the tiny brewhouse, she says of her journey from rookie to brewer: “I used to come out here and cry, but now I know we can do it, and I want everyone to know”. Delicious fresh ales at the bar (and sampled straight from the cellar) suggest that this fighting talk will end in a victory dance.

Press on to the north coast, and there are two breweries within a few minutes of each other. Jonathan Hughes, owner and brewer of the bucolic Great Orme Brewery at Conwy, is a happy refugee from the world of management consultancy. Brewing in a converted barn on his family's farm, he loves the authenticity, honesty and transparency of brewing beer, “80% of which is sold within thirty minutes of the brewery, and I'm quite keen to maintain that. Local is important”. This interest in local produce is echoed by Gwynne Thomas at Conwy Brewery, who says “North Wales has had nothing that they can call their own for ages. Now, even relatively conservative drinkers are making the switch to locally produced cask ales”.

On the face of it (and this article only lightly scratches that face), it might seem as though there are a lot of breweries in Wales, all competing for a slice of the same market. However, as with the brewing industry the world over, the only rivalry that exists is a friendly one. In fact, so friendly is the rivalry that the brewers have set up a trade body to better promote their interests. The Association of Welsh Independent Brewers exists to try and enhance awareness of the resurgence of Welsh real ale brewing.

For a country that isn't really known for its brewing tradition, other than the grip that smoothflow beer has on south Wales, there is as much quality and variety to be found here as anywhere else in the British Isles. It would be hard to pick out exactly what makes Welsh beer so good, but many of the brewers claim that the quality and abundance of fresh water running off the Brecon Beacons and Snowdonia was a big factor. I think that there is a lot of truth in this statement, albeit in a slightly oblique way.

For me, what makes Welsh beer so good is the spirit of the people who make it – they'd rather point to the quality of the water than the quality of the workmanship behind the beer. Everyone I spoke to, whether trained brewer or amateur turned professional, had a real entrepreneurial flair, and didn't let a lack of knowledge or experience stop the starting a brewery. It's truly an industry driven by passion for great beer. This dogged enthusiasm has seen a recent flourishing of the Welsh craft beer scene, to the point where high quality Welsh real ale seems set to become the new cliché – something everyone involved in it will no doubt be modestly bemused by.

Now Drinking: Bell's Hopslam 2011

2011-02-23T11:41:00.002Z

It's easy to lose all perspective on what's great about beer. For me, it's not just about seeking out wonderfully rare beers or, as on this occasion, having them brought to you on a little velvet cushion. I like the mixture of flavours, availability and situation. This weekend I'm going to watch the rugby in a pub in Rothwell, where I live. If I'm lucky, it'll be cask Johm Smiths or Tetley's - that's cool, I'm not going there just for the beer, or for the rugby really - I'm going because I've been invited to the pub with a couple of other local dads. It will be fun, mainly because there will be beer and bonhomie involved.

At the other end of the scale from Tetley's in the pub, Bell's Hopslam is a beer so incandescently rare, so furiously sought-after that Bell's can't make enough to supply their home patch, let alone export any. So I'm indebted to Agent AK who brought this with him from Michigan, along with a few others, the most startling of which was Short's Brew Anniversary Blood Orange Wheat Wine - proper mad scientist stuff, but quite delicious with it.

Beer. It's brilliant.

On Badgers, Wild Swans, Crooked Lines and Dishwater

2011-02-21T05:51:00.005Z

Uinta Detour Double IPA is part of the 'Crooked Line' series of beers which, setting aside whether they're any good or not, have some of the coolest labels ever to appear on a beer bottle (pic from Ratebeer.com). Want to know what the beer is like? This is a quick round-up of some of the beers I drank over this weekend, notable for no other reason than it was my birthday, and a year ago I did this.

Badger very kindly sent me a case of the reformulated Hopping Hare (4.4%abv), which like all Badger beers, is a perfectly decent example of what an English beer should be. Mercifully free of flavour additives, its soft, straw-like flavours were a surreally spring-like accompaniment to watching snow hammer down for six hours on my actual birthday.

Thornbridge sent me a three-pack of beer – Wild Swan, Italia and Bracia. The Italia was excellent – grab some of this limited beer while you can. An unfiltered pilsner stuffed with herbal and citrus notes, and a pleasant slightly savoury edge that beer maven Jeff Pickthall once memorably described as 'celery salt'. The Wild Swan suffered a little from being bottled – at 3.5%abv, not surprising, but having tasted it from cask, I think the exotic flavours (lime leaf and lychee) lose quite a lot of definition.

Happily, it was still much better than the piss-water that was being sold from a pump marked 'Springhead' at the Cross Keys in Leeds on Saturday night – the name of the beer escapes me (I was having a night off, but checking their website, it may be their beer 'Springhead', described on their website as “a clean-tasting, easy drinking amber coloured bitter with a dry, hoppy finish “). It was in perfectly good condition, but having had only fleeting association with ingredients usually used to make beer, tasted (according to one of my friends) “like dishwater that has been shown some twigs”. Further alarm bells ring when you note that the website informs you that “It was winner of the Best Bitter, Northern Beer Festival 1995” - that was 16 years ago guys! Come on! In that time, Sharp's brewery has grown from being a hobby in a garage to producing the fastest-growing real ale brand on the planet, and been purchased by Molson Coors! This surprising failure from what I've come to view as an otherwise reliable brewery drove us to drink Sierra Nevada Pale from keg for the rest of the night, the CO2 from which I think might blame for the hideous bout of indigestion that woke me in the night.

Sunday brought with it another bottle of Hopping Hare, still perfectly decent, and to my palate slightly drier than it was last year. I mean this in a nice way, but it's the sort of beer that doesn't jump up and down and demand your full attention – you can drink it while you do something else, like slow cook a frying pan full of onions and trim a steak while you listen to BBC6 Music. A bottle of Uinta Detour Double IPA (9.5%abv) rounded off the night nicely, and came pretty close to delivering the lysergic lupulin lightshow that I was hoping for. And it made a great counterpoint for a steak and onion sandwich, which is a noble and worthy end to any beer's life. To paraphrase Wilfred Owen: Dulce et decorum est pro steak sandwich mori.

Craft Beer: What Does It Mean?

2011-02-12T19:14:00.007Z

I'm not much of a one for off-the-peg ideas, but Phil at "Oh Good Ale" completely nails this debate to the wall. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but he nicely sums up the intricacies and pitfalls of the question.

My point of view is that trying to find a category name for the beers that we enjoy isn't as important as explaining why they taste like they do. Once people understand what malt, hops and yeast are (I'll take water as read), and how they contribute to flavour, then things might start to change. It's easy to preach to the converted, but a bit harder to talk to the merely curious.

Having spent a decade doing that (talking to the beer curious) behind the counter of what was once a fairly good off licence, but is now a really great beer shop, I can tell you that explaining people what makes a beer great isn't as much fun as drinking it. But as always, education makes a difference, education is the key.

POSTSCRIPT: I'd also point out that education cuts both ways. I've had plenty of people ask what makes American beers taste the way they do, and on finding out that it is largely American hops, they've asked which beers don't contain American hops. And that's just fine too.

.

The Session #48: Cask, Keg, Can, Bottle: Does dispense matter?

2011-02-04T06:47:00.003Z

Pork is such a sweet meat. They have a saying in France; "Tout est bon dans le cochon" - everything on a pig is good.

The quality of the meat that comes out at the end is solely down to how the pig is treated. The ultimate expression of cured pork - jamon iberico - comes from the pata negra ("black foot") pigs that run free around the hills of Jabugo in Spain, the centre of jamon production. You can only make the best ham with legs from the pata negra pigs, who are allowed to gorge themselves on acorns that fall naturally from the trees where they spend their lives. These are huge, bristly wild pigs. I've seen them up close, and they are terrifying beasts.

There's something of an irony in this ham's final destination. Despite being acknowledged (well, by omnivores at least) as one of the peaks of gastronomy, most of this ham will end up being hung from the ceiling in a warm, sometimes smoky, bar, and then being taken down, sliced wafer thin, and served on an ordinary white china saucer, to someone who eats it standing up at a bar, with a glass of ordinary beer - Cruzcampo or Estrella Damm, or maybe a glass of fino sherry. It's the ultimate in democratic gastronomy - a gourmet snack for just a few euros. It's impossible not to be impressed by the quality of the meat, and what the curing process has done to it.

You can raise pigs cheaply too. You can rear them in a pen, feed them industrial pelletised garbage, and raise them to be fat and flabby lumps of protein. The meat that comes out at the end of this process is just that - fat, flabby protein, mainly flavourless. As meat, it's filling, but not satisfying, and it doesn't matter how you cook it - barbecue, sous-vide, whatever - it never tastes great. Sure, you can slather it with condiments and seasoning, and it will taste OK, but you're actually enjoying the condiments rather than the meat.

The point is, you can't polish a turd. You can roll it in glitter, but it will still just be a turd underneath. Equally, the way you dispense a beer can make a difference to how it is perceived, but it doesn't change the beer itself. Sure, the gentle zizz of carbonic bite that a kegged beer acquires from dissolved carbon dioxide can make it more lively, more refreshing, and if that appeals to the drinker, then fine. But for the majority of the time, the mode of dispense - cask, bottle, keg, can, sachet, aerosol, pipette - is the medium, not the message.

There are a few caveats. Sometimes the message dictates the medium. Big American IPAs needs to be served cold and carbonated - almost every beer of this style that I've tried on cask has been a cold glass of marmalade soup. And a tiny number of brewers in the UK use their kegged craft beers as a political tool, a way of attempting to overthrow what they perceive as the old order. They are trying to make the medium into the message. That's their prerogative, but for me, it distracts from the message rather than adding to it.

Cask beer is the UK's gift to the beer world, and when done well, it produces something unmatched in terms quality and sensual pleasure - again, it is the liquid equivalent of that little white plate of jamon, a gastronomic delight that anyone can buy for a few quid. But if you focus on the medium rather than the message, then you miss the point. The point is that the focus on cask as a mode of dispense in the UK (the medium) has distracted people from the quality of the beer (the message).

I contend that the proliferation of bland or poorly-made cask beers in the UK today is exactly what CAMRA saw in the 1970s, albeit then the beers were in keg form. People everywhere - not just CAMRA and their members - have become blinded by the medium. If a beer tastes good from a keg, it will probably taste good from a cask or a bottle. If you're drinking a poor beer from a cask (cellaring aside), it will be just as bad from a keg, can or bottle.

Referring to the caveats outlined above, sometimes the message and the medium are, of necessity, tied closely together. But here, moving into the second decade of the 21st century, when there has never been a better time to be interested in quality beer, surely we're not going to lose sight of the message, are we?

Blood, Sweat and Beers: 36 Hours with the Dandy BrewPunks of Fraserburgh

2011-01-28T13:15:00.006Z

As I struggled to pick up a knife and fork the next morning, I realised that I'd had quite an action packed 36 hours in BrewDog's company. The final straw was attempting to dig out 1400kg of wet grain from the mash tun. Well, it was 1400kg dry, who knows what it was after a mash and sparge - a couple of tonnes? No wonder spearing a button mushroom with a fork was suddenly such an ordeal.

I was in town with Pete Brown and Mark Dredge to brew a beer and host a sell-out beer dinner at Musa, BrewDog's restaurant in Aberdeen. You can have a look at the menu here. I won't wax lyrical about what a great job we did of the beer and food matching (we did), but what I will say is that the cooking there was of an exceptionally high calibre - great quality, expertly executed, with not a foot wrong the whole night. The chef there, Dave More, is a serious talent. We ate and drank into the small hours, and drank some more at BrewDog Aberdeen for good measure.

All of which would explain why team Avery Brown Dredge (as the beer will be called) was such a shambles the following morning. As we babbled our way to the brewery, it quickly became apparent that rather than arrive with a recipe and a plan, we'd arrived with a concept - a noble-hopped strong lager. It turns out that concepts are all very well, but they don't get beers brewed. Sensing that what we needed was a bit of mild bullying, Martin took us out to the hop store and with a cruel-to-be-kind mantra of 'Do what you want, it's your beer', frightened us into formulating a recipe.

1330kg of lager malt. 70kg of malted wheat. 50kg of Saaz hops. 5000 litres of water. Mashing in via an auger with a hopper on the floor, heaving sacks of malt into it, the previous night's cobwebs start to lift. Standing over the mash tun making sure the mash is smooth by pummelling it with a shovel blows away a few more. Head brewer Stewart Bowman supervising our efforts to a soundtrack of obscure German punk ensures that everything goes smoothly. A lunch of fried fish, cooked in a wok of boiling oil heated on their new nanobrew plant, and then we retire to the office for the really hard work - writing the label text.

If ever you want a demonstration of the acute short-term effects of alcoholic overindulgence, put three hungover award-winning beer writers in a room and ask them for 120 word of text to go on the back label of a beer. There must have been a point where, witnessing the dazzling creative power of (and I quote) "the very finest beer writers this side of the Atlantic and rockstars of the craft brewing movement" stumbling over words - no, not even being able to start putting words together - James and Martin must have been considering throwing the lever on the mash tun, throwing us out, and pretending the whole thing had never happened. I nearly fainted digging out the mash tun, but that was easier than coaxing words out of Brown and Dredge.

Of course, the beer isn't even half made yet. After the fermentation, there's a month of lagering and dry hopping to come. We're hoping it's going to be a special beer. It's a homage to beers that we like, brewers that have made a difference to our lives and to our writing, and traditions that need to be worshipped and then smashed to pieces.

BrewDog have come a very long way in a very short time. They've made a lot of friends, and rubbed plenty of people up the wrong way. But the great thing about spending a day in the chaos of their stuffed-to-overflowing brewery that you get a feel for their passion and their playfulness, and also the way that James and Martin can inspire those things in others. The great beer is a fantastic bonus.

RESULTS: The Meantime College Beer Club Poll.

2011-01-28T12:55:00.003Z

You voted, I listened. Of the 95 people who voted, a slim majority came down in favour of me keeping the bottle to open and blog on at a later date - as you can see, the score was 41 votes to 54. I remain, good gentlefolk, your humble servant, and so am happy to do your bidding.

On a wider level, it also elicited a bit of debate about the club itself, and elitism in general, which I think is healthy. The beers are £15 each, which is undeniably expensive, but not outrageously so - they compare favourably to BrewDog's Abstrakt series, for example.

In an email to me, Peter Haydon from Meantime points to the amount of research that goes into each of the recipes - these are bespoke recreations of historical styles, not whimsical creations (not that there's anything wrong with whimsy, of course). He also suggests joining with friend to split the cost, or even selling one of the bottles on eBay - purely as a collectable, and not for consumption of course.

I'll post soon on the concept of value vs. cost (ooh, I bet you can't wait for that one, can you?), but until then, a couple of questions. What would you pay per year to join a club like The College Beer Club? And would you purchase the bottles individually, even if this meant paying, say 10% more for them than the club members?

The Meantime College Beer Club

2011-01-20T20:57:00.011Z

OK, I'll admit that I'm skating on thin ice here. Not only is it a beer so unspeakably rare that it is numbered 74/100, but I actually don't even open it. The reason for that is that its best before date is December 25th, 2023. I know that this is going to be a stupendous beer, but maybe I can leave it in the bottle for a few years yet? I've put a poll on the blog here, so that you can decide what happens. If you want me to commit infanticide on this beer, I will. If you want me to keep it and open it in the future, I'll do that. Just cast your vote.

The Meantime College Beer Club is quite an undertaking. The beers will be, in their words, "wood aged beers, historic beer styles from previous centuries, recreations of lost recipes, plus, of course, the kinds of innovatie new brews upon which Meantime has built a world-wide reputation". I can't pretend that it's not an exclusive club - £350 for 24 bottles of beer is a fair old whack of cash - but what you'll get for that are a series of never-to-be-repeated slices of brewing history.

I'm just as curious as you to find out what the beer is like, although there is also part of me that will have no trouble at all stashing this in the cellar for a few years. It seems a shame not to pop the cork and sample what is, according to Meantime's Peter Haydon "liquid Christmas cake". But equally, bottled beers like this need at least a year or two to settle down and find their equilibrium. So I've put a poll just to the left of this post, below my profile - you get to decide what happens to this beer.

For me, it's a win-win scenario - I'm going to drink this beer at some point, whether it's next month or in 5 years. The question is, what do YOU want me to do?

FABPOW: Chicken, Chorizo and White Beans with Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale

2011-01-16T14:30:00.008Z

FABPOW stands for 'Food and Beer Pairing of the Week", as coined by Mark at Pencil & Spoon. It's a nice format, and Mark has the courage to publish his misses as well as his hits, although I've yet to be convinced enough by Rochefort 8 and spaghetti bolognese to actually try it.

I've not written much about food and beer lately, but this was such a great match that I had to. As you can tell from the previous couple of posts, a shipment of beers from Stone Brewing has landed recently, so there's quite a bit of it about (if you look for it, that is). Arrogant Bastard Ale (7.2%abv) is one of those beers that really ticks all the boxes for me - strong, full malt profile, very well hopped, but still slightly sweeter than it is bitter. In fact, here's what I said about it in "500 Beers":

"The air is filled with the bristling aroma of a million zesty, peppery hops drowning in a sea of honeyed caramel, as a wave of Demerara sugar, tropical fruit and more bitter, resinous hops crash onto your palate. What did you expect from a beer with this sort of name? Magnificently uncompromising"

Great, eh?

If I'd stopped and thought about it, I'd have figured out that it would go well with a big, hearty tomato-based stew. As it turns out, this was a happy accident. If you can't get Arrogant Bastard, you could use, err, no, I can't think of a good substitute, sorry. But anyway, this is great one-pot comfort food for dark, wet evenings.

Chicken, Chorizo & White Bean Stew (Serves 2, with leftovers)

Finely chop a medium onion, fry in olive oil for 5 minutes
Smash and chop a clove of garlic, and add to the pan and fry for 2 minutes.
Slice about 10cm of thin chorizo into 20 slices (i.e. about 5mm each). Add to the pan and fry for 5 minutes.
Add chicken - either a couple of small diced breasts, or 4 whole or boned thighs.
Add a sprig of rosemary.
Add a tin of chopped tomatoes.
Simmer until the chicken is done.
Add a tin of drained butter beans, mix and warm through.

Serve with crusty bread and butter, and a large glass of Arrogant Bastard Ale per person.

The Rooster and The Gargoyle (or: Why Freshness Matters)

2011-01-12T22:20:00.006Z

I had a night on the black IPA last night. Frankly, I should've stopped after drinking the 75cl bottle of Rooster's Oxymoronic Black IPA (6.5%abv), but for whatever reason, I threw caution to the wind and subsequently opened a bottle of Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale (8.7%abv). I felt every one of those 10 units the next day (today), which served to remind that (a) it's stupid drinking like that on a work night, and (b) I don't really get that drunk these days - it's been ages since I had a beer headache like the one I had today.

Rooster's Oxymoronic was a very limited run of Black IPA brewed by Sam Franklin as a farewell to the brewery - he's now emigrated to Canada, and is going to work for the Dead Frog Brewery. It was a delicious dark red ale, stuffed full of sweet dark malt character, mandarin hops and a hint of sarsparilla (or maybe dandelion and burdock). I couldn't believe what an easy drinking beer it was, and by virtue of its freshness, was absolutely bursting with vitality.

The bottle of Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous that followed was also a great beer, but much more full-bodied, and the hop character more muted. That's not to say it was a bad beer, but Stone, who are fanatical about the freshness of their beers, might have thought that this bottle was slightly suboptimal after its long trek to my glass.

Although these two beers sit broadly in the same style, they are formulated differently, and so comparisons are dodgy at best. But one thing that shone out was the freshness of the hop character of the beer that had been brewed recently, and had only travelled 30 miles to get to me. A similar thing was brought home to me when, last year in Rome, I tried side-by-side samples of Birra del Borgo - Dogfish Head My Antonia, one brewed in Milton, Delaware, the other in Borgorose, Italy. Needless to say, the local sample again won out that night.

There are a couple of other examples that spring to mind about how fresher beer has tasted better to me. Drinking bottles of Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen Weisse in the Uk was an oddly joyless experience after having tried the beer straight from the conditioning tank. And what ever happened to Red Brick Brewery Fresh?

Anyway, I'm aware that all of these things are a matter of taste. I've gone on record in plenty of places saying that I'm not crazy about ageing most beers, and that I enjoy most beer (and most wine, for that matter) with a little skip of youthful vigour left in it. In fact, while I mention wine, it's worth trotting out the wine world's maxim that there are no great wines, only great bottles of wine. Maybe there are also no great beers, only great glasses of beer.

Of course, all this went out of the window when I saw what the postman brought me this morning. But I'll save that for the next blog.

Elitism in Beer

2011-01-08T19:01:00.003Z

So here's a question with which to start this years blogging. Setting aside any debates about keg vs. cask, or what constitutes 'craft' beer, or whether Tim Webb has a point when he suggests that CAMRA have achived their goals and should cast their net wider, what constitutes elitism in beer?

I've been mulling this one over since our work Christmas party, covered fairly thoroughly here by m'colleague Ghost Drinker, who very dilligently recorded what we drank over the course of a few hours in The Grove Inn, Huddersfield. If you don't know The Grove, I think it's fair to say that it's a beer geek's dream. But at the same time, it's a very honest, down-to-earth pub where the profusion of well-chosen beers are very reasonably priced. It's a very good pub - it's not a bar, or a restaurant with beers, but an honest-to-goodness pub.

Now, if you haven't read Tandleman's beer blog, you should - there is a lot of well-considered opinion on there. I think it's fair to say that we've had the odd ding-dong (see here for the latest example), and he very kindly commends me to his readers here, with the caveat that the beers I write about are hard to come by.

This absolutely isn't a snipe at Tandleman in particular, who I like and respect very much, but more of an observation that there is something of a split among beer drinkers between those who want to try everything they can, at any price (see, for example, the BrewDog shop's guest beer list), and those who clearly draw the line somewhere.

But it does make me wonder: If I can go into a pub in small town in Yorkshire and buy these beers, are they in any way elitist? They may be imported, out-there, flavour of the moment and expensive (in relative terms, even at The Grove) but does that make them elitist? Or is elitism just another word for expensive?

For the record, of the four beers pictured above (photo by Ghost Drinker), they were all (for me) pretty much undrinkable, except for the Celebrator, which shone out as a stone-cold classic.

Wikio Rankings Preview - January 2011

2011-01-05T11:45:00.003Z

Disgusted at being knocked off the top spot (hey, when you're #1, there's only one way to go), Pete Brown has asked me to preview the Wikio rankings for this month. I'm kidding, of course - I just emailed him and asked if I could present them for a change. Why doesn't someone else do it next time?

Aside from a little light jostling for position (although the re-appearance of Shut Up About Barclay Perkins and a new entry from The Good Stuff are welcome sights), I guess the obvious big news is that several wine blogs have reappeared in the top 20. Personally, I think this is a good thing - any traffic that goes between wine and beer writing and allows more exposure to each has to be positive.

Only one question remains - will Sid Boggle manage a re-entry next month with a tribute to the late Gerry Rafferty?

Wikio.co.uk - January Wine and Beer Ranking

1	Brew Dog Blog (+1)
2	Pencil & Spoon (+1)
3	Pete Brown's Blog (-2)
4	Zythophile (+1)
5	Beer Reviews (+4)
6	Bibendum Wine (+16)
7	Woolpack Dave's beer and stuff blog (+6)
8	Tandleman's Beer Blog (-1)
9	Are You Tasting the Pith? (-1)
10	The Pub Curmudgeon (-4)
11	Called to the bar (+3)
12	I might have a glass of beer (+7)
13	Shut up about Barclay Perkins (+11)
14	Master Brewer at Adnams (+4)
15	The Good Stuff (+26)
16	Drinking Outside The Box (+45)
17	Sour Grapes (+11)
18	Thornbridge Brewers' Blog (-8)
19	Rabid About Beer (-7)
20	Travels With Beer (+6)

Ranking made by Wikio.co.uk

The Golden Pints & 2010 Reviewed

2010-12-31T14:17:00.003Z

Despite running one of the best beer shops in the UK, I don't really write about retailing a lot. The reason for this is that I want to be seen as a beer writer rather than beer retailer. That might make me sound insecure about the trophies on the sideboard, but that's why I rarely mention Beer-Ritz on here.

But being so close to the action brings you some fantastic insights into the beer market. I thought I might share some of these observations, based on what people have been buying at the shop. This isn't necessarily meant to be extrapolated to the beer-drinking populace as a whole, but there are some interesting trends apparent.

British beer is on the up: this year, people bought more British beer than ever before, particularly at Christmas, when they were buying presents for others. And I don't mean just from the usual suspects (BrewDog, Marble, Thornbridge - although they sell very well), but also generically as a category, from Hook Norton Old Hooky to Ilkley Mary Jane. I think that this signals a turning point for British beer, and people are finally realising that it is simultaneously a great national and also a local product.

Belgian beer is on the wane: fifteen years ago, Belgian beer (and I'm talking all across the board, from Leffe to Trappist to Palm to De Dolle) was new and relatively undiscovered. Five years ago, interested peaked, and today, it's a declining sector. There are certain niches that defy this trend, but overall, there isn't any growth left in Belgian beer in the UK.

American beer is on the verge of going stellar: Sierra Nevada have doubled the volume of imports into the UK each year for the last four years. People like American 'craft' beer because it is largely tasty and uncomplicated. I'm not talking Lost Abbey, I'm talking Odells, Flying Dog, Brooklyn et al. American craft brewing is also showing its most profound influence yet on British brewing.

My Golden Pints for 2010

Best UK Draught Beer - Roosters Nectar
Best UK Bottled Beer - Kernel Citra IPA
Best Overseas Draught Beer - Dogfish Head / Birra del Borgo My Antonia
Best Overseas Bottled Beer - Surly Furious (canned)
Best Overall Beer - Surly Furious
Best Pumpclip or Label - any of Johanna Bashford's BrewDog labels (although Kernel's no-design aesthetics are superb too)
Best UK Brewery - Kernel
Best Overseas Brewery - Sierra Nevada still do a wider range of things better than so many other breweries
Pub/Bar of the Year - The Grove, Hudderfield
Beer Festival of the Year - GBBF
Supermarket of the Year - Waitrose
Independent Retailer of the Year - modesty forbids
Online Retailer of the Year - modesty forbids
Best Beer Book or Magazine - anything by Adrian Tierney-Jones
Best Beer Blog or Website - Stuart Howe's 'Brewing Reality'
Best Beer Twitterer - @simonhjohnson
Best Brewery Online - BrewDog
Food and Beer Pairing of the Year - pigeon crostini and Worthington White Shied
In 2011 I’d Most Like To - get another book commissioned and brew more beer
Biggest Red Herring - the "keg revolution" and confusing modes of dispense with styles of beer

Into The Dark

2010-12-22T21:36:00.003Z

You might have noticed a certain chill in the air of late - -11°C has been my personal record. This unusual meteorological phenomenon is technically called "winter", and it has to be said, it has been kicking arse and taking names this year.

I have to admit to having sneaked the odd IPA of late, but I do succumb to the cliché of drinking darker beers in colder weather. It just seems to make sense. This pair of lovelies have been sent to me by their respective breweries. When better than the longest night of the year to tuck into some dark beers?

The Sambrook's Powerhouse Porter (5%abv) is described on the label as being "our modern take on this great London beer style". If by "modern" they mean "not left to go stale in a wooden vat for 18 months", then it's a great success - Powerhouse Porter is free from any trace of staleness and 'characterful' infection. I guess it's also modern in the sense that the hop character is pushed a little more to the fore than one might expect, but the dark malt lends plenty of backbone around which to build the gently leafy hops. It's nice, very drinkable, and if I had another bottle, I'd drink that too.

Sadly, it's a night of singletons, so onwards to the Windsor & Eton Conqueror (5%abv), a beer in that none-more-hip style of black IPA. Whatever you think of the oxymoronic name - black India pale ale? - it's a fun style of beer. The style seems to rest on the use of carafa malt, giving a dark malt flavour without roasted bitterness, and prodigious late-hopping with American C-hop varieties. Call it what you will - black IPA, India black ale, Cascadian dark ale - I like it, and I like this example too. It's medium-bodied, with the soft malty sweetness flick-flacking into heady hops on the palate, finishing with a hint of chicory coffee and IPA hop dazzle. Lovely.

The New William Worthington Brewery

2010-12-18T19:42:00.008Z

Worthington White Shield might be the ultimate comeback kid. It's a beer that has had a peripatetic history, but has in recent years found itself back on home turf in Burton Upon Trent. I recently went to Burton for the opening of the new William Worthington brewery that Molson Coors has installed in the National Brewery Centre.

Worthington White Shield is an IPA, of that, there can be no doubt - hey, it even says so on the bottle. In the world of beer, there is perhaps no other term that has been bandied about and applied to so many different beers that it has become almost meaningless. Depending on who you talk to, and IPA might be a pale, low %abv beer, it could be a coppery, mid-strength beer with a mouth-puckering dryness and complex earthy flavour, or it may be a high alcohol riot of sweet citrus fruit. You could argue that historically, White Shield, and other IPAs of that style, are the most 'authentic' (*alarm bells*). But of course, times change, and we, the 21st century beer drinker can cope with a bit of ambiguity. We don't drink labels, we drink beer, right?

That Molson Coors has slowly been investing in the White Shield brand (currently part of the Different World Drinks portfolio) can only be seen as A Good Thing. It's easy to view big brewing companies as nothing but industrial beer producers, but with White Shield, it seems that Molson Coors has cottoned on to the fact that they have a gold ticket - a heritage brand that is never going to sell gazillions of units, but adds an interesting thread to their story. So when, just before dinner, Mark Hunter, CEO of Molson Coors (UK) addresses the guests and says "Our roots, history and tradition help to define who we are today. We want to delight the world's beer drinkers, and make sure that we have the right beer for every occasion", it would be easy to view this as a lot of cynical marketing guff. Except for one thing.

I asked how long this £1million project had taken to complete - I mean, how long does it take to install a brewery in a museum, next to a glass case of breweriania? The answer staggered me - three years. It took three years to get this project completed - and there was more than a little corporate opposition. That's three years of people saying 'hmm, maybe' and 'hmm, I don't know' and 'ermm, I'm not sure'. Someone, or some people, drove this project to completion. By contrast, the Molson Coors take-home draught beer system was 6 months, start to finish - and that was a totally new concept.

But the result of this dogged determination is a stable of historic brands that are coming back to life. White Shield is now brewed on "the big plant", as brewing legend Steve Wellington (right) calls Molson Coors Burton brewery. So the new 20 barrel plant is going to be used to brew beers that Molson Coors want to revive - Red Shield, Worthington E, P2 Stout, and No 1 Barley Wine. In fact, for the time being P2 and the very rare No 1 will be brewed in the original musuem brewery - Molson Coors are yet to be convinced of the demand for such beers. I asked Steve if they were ready to take the leap of faith and brew bigger quantities of these beers, he said "Oh, I'll take any leap offered to me". Looking at that photo of him, it's clear that he's not short on fight, passion or enthusiasm for his vocation. Add to this the fact that Steve really wants this to happen - he's a man who has been known to 'mishear' a no as a yes - and it's only a matter of times before these rarer beers follow White Shield's return to prosperity.

The Taste of Beer

2010-12-09T10:24:00.005Z

I recently wrote a piece for the journal of the Brewery History Society. It's a special Michael Jackson memorial issue, and features some of the great and the good of beer writing (and myself, obviously). The roll call of other writers is: Pete Brown, Roger Protz, Martyn Cornell, Jeff Evans, Mark Dredge, Carolyn Smagalski, Tim Webb and John Richards. It should be out soon (I think it's the winter edition), so why don't you visit their website, have a look around, and perhaps even join.

But that wasn't what I was going to write about today - the title reminded me, as it's also the title of the piece I wrote for the journal. What I was going to write about, or more specifically ask about, is how people feel about flavour additions to their beers.

I've been mucking about with a bit of homebrewing recently, and have just made a creamy oatmeal porter. I tried to make a chocolate orange porter by adding tangerine peel to the brew kettle, but the flavour hasn't carried through. It's still a tasty beer, but it doesn't quite have the citrussy lift I was after.

Then I thought, hang on, maybe I can just dry hop this beer with a load of citrussy hops (Amarillo, maybe). Looking around a few homebrew forums, I saw that people were adding actual Terry's Chocolate Orange to get the desired effect, or even adding a shot of Cointreau at bottling. PAH! I sneered, PAH!, that's cheating. And then I realised that I was putting tangerine peel in the beer in the first place, so maybe I was cheating too.

So the question is, when does a flavour ingredient in beer become 'cheating'? Belgian witbier is customarily spiced with coriander and dried orange peel, so we all accept that. Does the point where the ingredient is added make a difference to your perception of it being acceptable? Do you like a little shot of espresso in your stout? Is hibiscus flower an interesting addition, or annoying frippery? If hops make a beer grapefruity, why not just add grapefruit juice? Barrel-ageing is becoming an accepted practice, so why not just add a shot of whisk(e)y to the beer at bottling?

Or do you not care a jot, and think as long as it tastes good, why would anyone care?

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Open It! - Lexington Brewing Co. Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale

2010-12-04T20:43:00.003Z

I promise this won't degenerate into a lot of virtual willy-waving about who has the most interestingly-stocked cellar, but I've just been down to mine and crikey, I've got a lot of old tat down there.

Sure, I have some interesting bits and pieces. There's some of the last vintage of Gales Prize Old Ale from the Horndean Brewery, a couple of aged Orval, a Marble Decadence, and so on. Arguably, any of these would be a better choice of beer for Open It! than the bottle in front of me. But in some ways, I have more curiosity about this beer than anything else in my cellar. I sort of know how the Orval will be, and that the Gales POA is going to be a disappointment - horribly flat and sour, a shadow of the great vintages that Gales produced through the 1990s.

The only thing I know about this beer is that it came from Andreas Falt at Vertical Drinks, after a trip to the USA. He handed it to me and said that he thought I might find it interesting. I even had to look up the brewery on RateBeer, although I didn't look at any tasting notes (although I couldn't help but notice the score - 65 overall, and 92 for the style). And so because I knew nothing about the beer, I kept looking at it wondering when I was going to open it, until Open It! came along.

Straight from the freezing cellar, it pours golden and pin-bright. As it warms up, a little vanilla oak and spirit lifts from the glass along with a faint hint of something bacterial - lacto? aceto? The palate is - as the admen love to say - clean and crisp, and the finish is vaguely plasticky, reminiscent of sucking air in through an old chewed Bic biro. Mercifully, the finish is fairly short.

Maybe I should go and grab that Marble Decadence?

COMPETITION TIME: The Winner Revealed.

2010-11-30T04:48:00.002Z

Thanks to everyone who entered the competition. I can honestly say that I enjoyed reading each and every entry, from the poetic, to the prosaic, to the illustrative. Honourable mentions must go Neil Walker for his oblique (and, now I go to write it, unlikely-sounding) fusion of Bob Dylan and John Betjeman, and to Chris Cutting for the cartoon (you have to admire anyone who accompanies such a submission with the explanation “I know it doesn't comply to any of the requirements - please bear in mind I've recently taken on a job with a much longer train journey of late and have time on my hands.”)

However, like Highlander, there can be only one, and that one is Jeff Alworth. Jeff's entry was posted after the deadline, and so his win is sure to upset a few people, not least Matt Lovatt who submitted his entry 4 minutes before the competition deadline. To add further insult to injury, Jeff didn't even email me to tell me about his contribution, it just popped up in a Google alert (come on, we all have Google alerts on our names don't we?). You can read it here.

What I liked about Jeff's entry was the way that it made the story of beer seem like a long ribbon, simultaneously spooling into the past but also winding in from the future. It made me feel that each time we prise the cap off a bottle of beer, we make an imprint on history. And then because I got up to tend to our squalling child in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep, my mind ran riot with that idea: the ribbon of time capped into each bottle, a story released with each hiss of carbon dioxide.

Each beer we drink may be a quasi-political act, determining which breweries will prosper, and who will perish. What styles will stand the test of time, and what sort of a Pandora's bottle are we opening when we release a double IPA onto the unsuspecting drinking public of the UK? Life may be too short to drink bad beer, but what kind of eugenics are we practising if we define our drinking habits too narrowly?

Like I said, my mind ran riot. So, it was nice to read every entry, and they all made me think, but Jeff's entry really blew my mind. Thanks everyone for entering, thanks to Greene King for the fascinating brewery visit and the bottle in the first place, and here's to more beer writing – may it continue to grow in stature, range and quality.

Beer Vs. Fashion In the Land of the Tall Dwarves*

2010-11-29T06:57:00.001Z

You'd never guess it to look at me, but I quite like fashion. I used to work for a small producer of very high-end printed textiles – in fact, that was my first job when I quit school at 16 years old. I even occasionally look at a couple of fashion blogs – Swagger 360 is my favourite.

The fashion business is a funny one. High fashion (couture) is the bit that gets everyone excited. The press lap up London Fashion Week, New York Fashion week, Dolce E Gabbana. It gets column inches, it gets the press and fashionistas worked up into a lather, but it is about as far remover from what people wear on the street as it is possible to get.

But the top end is where the icons work. There is a bit of trickle-down effect, where what happens on the catwalk influences high-street fashion. It would be unkind to call this sort of influence 'knock off' – at least it shows that someone is paying attention, and that there should be a bit of attention paid to what we wear.

However, the majority of what happens on the catwalk has little or no influence on what people actually wear. Despite the column inches given to sheepskin, metallics and wide-cuffed ankle boots, the delirium induced by a zip-up-the-back dress, and the brouhaha about marble print.

Does this ring any bells for beer-lovers?

Inspired by Phil at 'Oh Good Ale'

*the 'tall dwarf' comment came up at the Guild dinner last week. It's a faintly disparaging way of saying 'in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king'.

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Craft Beer Defined

2010-11-29T06:54:00.001Z

Craft beer is what a craft brewer makes.

It's as prosaic a description as 'real ale', isn't it?

Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

'500 Beers' Does Its Business

2010-11-26T09:29:00.003Z

I'm delighted to report that last night I hoisted the category winner's tankard in the National Journalism category at the awards dinner for the British Guild of Beer Writers. It now has a slick of dried up Adnam's Tally Ho in the bottom, as a few of us stayed up drinking beer until the hotel threw us out.

Congratulations are due to the other category winners, particularly Simon Jenkins who, after winning the regional journalism category, was also named beer writer of the year.

I'll try to write a fuller report soon, but frankly, I need a big greasy breakfast like you wouldn't believe.

Master of Malt - Drinks by the Dram

2010-11-23T21:06:00.006Z

It's not something that I blog about, but I'm quite keen on whisky. I'm not a collector, I just like to buy good whisky and drink it. There was a time when it would be usual for me to have few bottles on the go - maybe an Islay, a Highland and a blend. Sadly, it's a habit I seem to have got out of - I'm not sure why, but probably a combination of time and money (the old excuse).

So needless to say I was delighted when the splendid folks at Master of Malt got in touch to tell me about their Drinks By The Dram service. In fact, they went one further - they offered to send a trio of drams for my perusal, and very nice they are. Here are some tasting notes:

Bowmore 26yr Old Single Cask (53.4%abv): bright, tangy attack with - implausibly - notes of raspberry and lavender. Initial attack on the palate is more perfumed fruit, evolving mid-palate into smoke and sea spray. More raspberries in the finish, layered with smoke and lavender. Complex, and more confrontational than I make it sound.

Rosebank 1990 19yr Old (Douglas Laing) (50%abv): soft smokiness, marzipan, soft oak and tropical fruit. Faint perfumed/floral notes. Very appealing, right in my comfort zone. Soft, creamy, marzipanny core, with more soft oak, fruit and spiciness (pepper) emerging in the finish.

Elmer T Lee Single Barrel (45%abv): spirity, a bit hot, with vanilla oak and corn on the cob. One dimensional, and faintly turps-like, but in an enjoyably raucous way.

The Bowmore is stunningly good, incredibly classy and polished, with just enough Islay wildness to remind you of its origins, but benefiting from the slow rub of time, with layers of flavour slowly unfurling on the palate. Out of curiosity, I looked it up on MoM website, partly to check the price, and partly to look at the tasting notes - you can see both here. It's a £100 bottle of whisky. So the nice thing about buying by the dram is that you can see what a £100 bottle of whisky tastes like for only £6.45 for a 3cl sample. And as you can see, the samples come in cool little wax-dipped bottles.

Drinks By The Dram is a great idea, and for anyone with even a passing interest in whisky, a great way to expand your palate, and drink some fine whiskies into the bargain. The little 3-pack of whiskies I received would make a great gift for any whisky-lover, and in case you don't quite get what I'm saying, I'm saying that you should buy me some whisky now.

This is the solution to all your tricky dad/uncle/grandfather present-buying problems. Should you feel that picking out a selection of drams is too much of a faff, there is also a whisky gifts page (hint: the Japanese Yamazaki 18yr is an amazing whisky, at a great price) Now, if only there was some large pseudo-religious, gift-based festival on the horizon....

Competition Entries

2010-11-17T15:25:00.015Z

As promised, for people who don't have a blog to post their competition entries on, I'm going to add emailed entries here. [EDIT: Actually, I'm going to try to provide links to all the entries]

Pete Brissenden (on Twitter @petebrissenden)

Beer.

Time is a cruel mistress, warping memories, chewing it up and spitting it out, regurgitated as the good old days. But I think the purest memories are found in smell and taste. Beers provoke the best of memories, as most of my best memories involve having a beer in my hand.

There is that perfectly cool spritzy lager straight from the bottle with a lump of crusty bread, oozy, smelly cheese and fresh, herbaceous, yielding tomatoes drowning in oil, basil and black pepper in the shimmering sun on holiday in France. Crickets chirruping, the smell of hot, resiny pine trees, the prickle of the carbonation waking your palette up and slaking your thirst

There is that heavy, chewy, smoked porter for after a frosty winter walk, hands tingling, face glowing and feet thawing inside your boots. Sat by the fire, cozied up to someone you love on a Sunday afternoon.

There is that sour beer, served in a tulip shaped glass by a French speaking Belgian whose family has been making beer like this one for hundreds of years. You stand with a group of mates in awe of the building, the heritage, the guys serving you the beer. You sniff and swirl and peer at the beers; tart, dusty, a hint of lemony citrus and a slight hint of an acetic twang.

There is that beer that you love and is always in the fridge, it doesn't have to be an expensive craft beer or a high gravity Imperial Stout. Just something consistent, of good quality, that is easily available. Always there waiting for you at home expectant, like a faithful dog.

There is that beer after a long train journey to a new city to meet a bunch of strangers mainly from the internet. The beer is golden and shiny, it smacks of lychees, mangoes and peaches. Shaking hands, names to faces, smiles and banter, the making of new friends bonding over a common love.

All of these memories are mine, I hope memory hasn't twisted too severe. I'm sure the people reading this know of the occasions and the beer I'm speaking about. To them, I raise my glass. All of the shared times, the good beers and the bad ones, to the hangovers and all the greasy breakfasts shared.

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Meer For Beer - Time For Another?

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Neil Walker - Time enough for one more beer

There’s four of us and three to come,
And five to meet before we’re done,
There’s one round here that’s worth a look,
And twenty more in Walker’s book,
There’s twelve inside, it’s non too crowded,
But six or sevens senses shrouded,
There’s half that left, we’re waiting Dan,
Not sure ‘bout this one from a can,
There’s five to go and three now done,
It’s for the best dad didn’t come,
There’s more to try we’re not done yet,
And few that’s gone we still regret,
There’s time to sample all but few,
And time for something strong and new,
There’s sculpted glass and country chic,
And grimy spots with punters meek,
There’s five on tap and two to come,
That queues too long for me my son,
There’s twenty types from sixteen years,
And he that looks, and waits, and leers,
There’s far few less than when we started,
It’s seems a few have since departed,
There’s those that dazzle, thrill, excite,
And those that get you through the night,
There’s hops, and malt, and is that soot?
And the smell of horse as some have put,
There’s time enough to meet friends here,
And time enough for one more beer.

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Cooking Lager - "Competition Entry"

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Stuart Ross (on Twitter @crownbrewerstu)

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Flagon of Ale - On Time

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Chris Routledge - Beer for a Time

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Ghost Drinker - Why, why, why!

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Sean Inman - Flight of the Passing Fancy

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Tandleman - Then

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Beer Justice - Royal Wedding Beers

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Beer Sweden - Time Gentlemen Please

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Conor Gallagher-Deeks

History in a bottle? Immediately I get a feeling, a need to win the competition to be the one that gets the chance to claim the experience of drinking such a unique bottle of Greene King Coronation ale 1936. But when would be the right time to drink it? Making beer is art and therefore beer tasting is subjective to the person and to the circumstance he/she finds his/herself in. So how will I know when is the right time to taste this beer? Will I be able to do it justice, give it the necessary attention and gratitude for drinking history in a bottle.

On the other hand, it is and remains an old bottle of beer. Nothing more, nothing less. Obviously the weird and wonderful effects of time have been working on the beers chemical composition making it one of a kind. No one can repeat such a beer. Yet spending all this time on evaluating when is the perfect time to drink a beer counter productive? Hasn't beer become what it is; the drink of the people, because it gives you time? Isn't it not true of every pint? whether young or old, aged in a cask or travelled from a country a far. Every beer is a homage to history, every beer is unrepeatable, every beer has a story to tell whether you are interested or not, it gives you time to listen.

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Phil at Oh Good Ale - 'Time Travel In Four Easy Lessons'

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Ed's Beer Site - Time Is Relative

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Matt Lovatt (submitted 4 minutes before the competiton deadline)

“What you doing?”
“Trying to write a competition entry. I'm attempting to win a 76 year old bottle of beer.”
“76? Is it good?”
“....I don't really know. Everything would seem to suggest that its past its best.”
“Eh? But its valuable right?”
“Couldn't hazard a guess really. I mean, it hasn't got a label. I doubt its collectable.”
“Well, its nice to have a hobby.”

My co-workers comments were momentarily irksome, but, on reflection perfectly reasonable. More than once I have been moved to ask of myself what interests me about this bottle. Do I think that I will perceive in its gently decrepit state the still living remains of great brewing? The brewers that I have come across would be appalled to face a similar scrutiny. Their concern is to bring beer to readiness, then ship it,hoping that diligent publicans will do it justice. Time and oxygen are their enemy.
Ageing beer is a funny business. I have been enticed into purchasing beers that, when specially aged, actually seemed to become a sliver of their former selves. At the Kulminator in Antwerp I experienced an assortment of my favourite beers rendered new again by careful treatment and time. This bottle of would-be coronation ale was never intended to make the passage of years. However carefully crafted, there have been beers brought up for the floor of the Baltic sea that have stood the test of time better (incidentally, I hear tell that BrewDog are intending to replicate this effect by scuppering their trawler with 20 cases of their hand numbered 'Screw the Lusitania' aboard.)
Perhaps part of the appeal comes from from the timeliness of its presentation. Having passed beyond its prime and out into the quiet waters of obsolescence and decay, here it is rehabilitated by the self-conscious whim of beer geeks. The ultimate tick. Perhaps. Or maybe its something else. The tug of history with a curiosity like this is inexorable. There is a transgressive pleasure in the idea of drinking a beer bottled before my pre-teen father was coerced into signing the pledge ( he reneged not long after). And there perhaps is the answer: there is only one answer to a paradoxical beer such as this one. Drink it.

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Beervana - Great Moments in Beer (submitted after deadline, but you should still read it.

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Chris Cutting - Beer & Thyme (click cartoon for full size original)

COMPETITION TIME! Win a Bottle of Greene King 1937 Coronation Ale

2010-11-16T06:18:00.007Z

Earlier this year, I visited Greene King and wrote a couple of posts about it (here and here). In the second of those, I opened and tasted a bottle of Greene King Coronation ale, brewed in 1936 to celebrate the 1937 Coronation of Edward VIII, which of course never happened, as he decided he'd rather live in sin with Mrs Simpson than be monarch of these fair isles.

Greene King have very kindly given me another bottle of this beer, and in a flash of the sort of generosity and kindness for which I am known, I thought it might make an interesting competition prize.

To enter the competition, all you have to do is write something about beer and time, up to a maximum of 500 words. It can be about the oldest beer you've drunk, or the freshest. It can be a technical essay on the ravages of oxygen on cask beer, a treatise on the historical evolution of the term IPA, or it could be about a long-held yearning and search for a perticular beer. Anything, basically, as long as there is some relation to time in it. Although if you decide to write anything that uses the phrase "time at the bar, please" as the link to time, you won't win. Look, it's my competition, and those are my rules.

If you have a blog, put it on your blog and send me a link to it. If you don't have a blog, email me your entry and I'll put it on here. If you don't have email, post me a paper copy. If you can't write, then you can make a video or a recording of yourself and send it to me. Poetry and song are also worth a shot, but please note that interpretive dance will also stand a poor chance of winning.

The closing date for entries is Friday 26th November, so you've got a bit of time to think about it.

I'll package and post this bottle anywhere in the world, at my own cost. It will go surface mail, as I'm not sure what air mail will do to the very old cork. The bottle is the very one pictured at the top of the page, covered with a lovely patina of cellar dust. If you look at the second of my two Greene King posts, you'll see the racks of crates from which it was taken. It would make a lovely paperweight, and if you put a blob of wax over the cork, it would also last forever.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS: This bottle of beer is a historical curiosity and not a beverage. Neither I nor Greene King can be held liable for any consequences arising from the postal transit, possession or consumption of the beer. You must be of legal drinking age in your country to enter this competition. Entering this competition implies an acceptance of these terms.

Monsieur Rock

2010-11-09T21:12:00.003Z

Yeah, I'm losing my edge.

There was a time when I'd have put on a clean shirt, sorted the lighting out, and cooked something to go with the beer (in this case, some robust seafood might to it - monkfish with lemon and caper butter, for example). As much as I respect Stuart Howe's endeavours, the added involvement of Jean-Marie Rock (brewer of Orval) should have at least made me wear a shirt with a collar, rather than a BrewDog T-shirt. But this was a hastily taken video, and with good reason.

You see, Leeanne only drinks a couple of nights a week. She doesn't like to drink on a work night, so getting this beer on a Wednesday happily coincided with an evening before a day off. The beer was delivered to the shop, and cheeky snifters were shared with Will and Tom - they both liked it, to varying degrees. I thought it was extraordinary - a 5%abv beer that drank like a session beer, and with a depth of sweetly herbal complexity that made it ruinously drinkable.

And I use the word ruinous with good reason - I couldn't stop drinking this damn beer. We killed the minikeg it came in - happily, I think it was a partly-filled minikeg, so maybe we only had a few pints each.

The incredible thing is, this beer was so compellingly drinkable without being overstated. Its soft, lemony character (hello Saaz) and light body meant that its aroma whetted the appetite, its flavour skipped lightly across the palate, and then after briefly lingering, disappeared in a faint puff of lemon, honey, ginger and fennel. And it did so in a manner that made you think 'hang on, did that really happen?'. And so you have another drink, and another. And then your glass is empty. And then the minikeg is empty.

I don't think that Monsieur Rock will be released for a couple of months yet, so that gives you plenty of time to pester the brewery and find out where it will be distributed. You really want to try this - it's classic British ale, filtered through the minds of a couple of great brewers, and making a virtue of such old-fashioned values as elegance and understatedness.

Just show some respect, and wear a shirt and cufflinks when you drink it.

Kelly Ryan, Begone!

2010-11-08T12:36:00.005Z

Hairy-handed and Hobbit-like, Antipodean refugee Kelly Ryan has struggled to fit into the UK brewing scene. After years of ham-fisted attempts at brewing something drinkable, he finally hit paydirt by somehow falling into a recently-vacated job. He was lucky to somehow gain the confidence of brewer Stefano Cossi - perhaps it was his fancy double degree in Microbiology and Food Science and Technology from the University of Otago. Clearly Thornbridge Brewery are not in the habit of checking references - there is in fact no such place as Otago.

After two long years of woeful incompetence, Thornbridge were forced to invest heavily in automated technology in an attempt to prevent Kelly from ruining any more beer. To this day, it is a mystery how Kelly's mere presence in a brewery can have such a detrimental effect on the beer that is being brewed, but it does. A programme of international mentorship, under the guise of a series of collaborative brews, all failed to stop the rot. Sadly, all the costly investment in brewing technology, not to mention endless hand-waxing and lessons in walking upright, have come to nought. In a last-ditch attempt to save what reputation he has, Kelly is returning to New Zealand.

This momentous event has seen a great outpouring of emotion in the blogosphere. No more shall we have to suffer exotically-monikered beers stuffed awkardly with crude hop character. No more absurd diatribes on forcing carbon dioxide into beer. And finally, no more tedious innovation and pursuit of some mythical, elysian notion of brewing. Frankly, it's been exhausting, and I think I speak for every beer-lover in the UK when I say that we're glad it's over.

Kelly Ryan, begone. You are dead to us already.

(For a more detailed exploration of the sort of contempt in which I hold Kelly's abilities, see Halcyon, Larkspur, and Jaipur & Bottle Conditioning)

Properly Proustian - A Brooklyn Flashback

2010-11-04T22:03:00.001Z

The usefulness of the experiential descriptor "Proustian" rests on the reader knowing that it refers to Marcel Proust's retelling of an experience of smelling and eating tea-soaked madeleine cakes, and the memories that this evoked. It tends to be viewed as a bit pretentious, largely, I think, because it sounds (and indeed is) French, something that the entire non-French world dislikes intensely.

I had an unexpectedly Proustian moment the other evening with a bottle of Brooklyn East India Pale Ale. I was absent-mindedly putting the beer to my lips, and vaguely thinking about having visited the brewery in 2007. Garrett himself showed me round, and coincidentally, EIPA was in one of the kettles that day. As I breathed in, pre-sip, the big burst of floral and toffee aroma snapped me instantly back a couple of decades, to my first ever trip to New York. It was probably 1989, a time when New York was still the sleazy and dangerous city of filmic lore. I was visiting an American guy I had met while he was travelling in the UK. The precise scene evoked by this inhalation of aroma was a party at his apartment on Hoyt Street in Brooklyn. I'd been drinking black and tan for the duration of my visit, and like most Brits abroad, complained loudly about how crappy the beer was. In an attempt to shut me up someone handed me a bottle of the brand new Brooklyn Lager. I wearily, sneerily took the bottle, had a gulp, and was dumbfounded.

It was like the first time I ever tasted whisky. Laphroaig was my malt of choice back then, and what I liked about it was that the flavours were so different, so unfamiliar (and remember, I was only 19) that rather than being dispensed from a bottle, they may as well have been beamed directly onto my cerebral cortex from an alien craft orbiting the planet. That bottle of Brooklyn Lager was the most unexpectedly pungently floral beer I'd ever tried. The way the hops and the slightly toffeeish malt lingered was a revelation. I still moaned about the beer for the rest of my stay - hey, I was an English teenager back then - but I also had a new secret infatuation.

It clearly made a great impression. The beer that evoked those memories wasn't even the same beer, but maybe there was something about the house style, and the concentation of aromas as I breathed in that set off that little memory circuit in my brain. The whole reverie probably lasted for less than a second, before my conscious brain barged in shouting "WHOAH, DUDE! YOU'RE HAVING A PROPERLY PROUSTIAN MOMENT!". Stupid brain.

I've always been sceptical of this sort of thing, largely taking beer-related Proustian experiences with a pinch of salt - sure, I remember drinking this beer on holiday, but that's it. But this was so vivid that, like the bottle of Brooklyn Lager over two decades ago, it almost took my breath away. This wasn't reminiscing over a beer, it was more like a sensory hiccup, a deja vu projected 20 years in the wrong direction. Has anyone else ever had this, or am I special? [NOTE: these are not mutually exclusive]

CANCELLED: World Tour (Birmingham Leg)

2010-10-29T15:36:00.002+01:00

I'm really sorry to have to cancel my tasting at the Birmingham Beer Fest. The common cold has got the better of me.

Banks's motto, 'fide et fortitudine' means 'by fidelity and fortitude'. With truth and strength on my side, I hope to reschedule this for later in the year, or early next.

Gout & About: A Slow Walk Through the Northern Quarter

2010-10-27T12:16:00.007+01:00

Pictured: (L-R): James Campbell (Marble), Kelly Ryan (Thornbridge), Colin Stronge (Marble), Dave Bailey (Hardknott)

Gout is a particularly painful condition, consisting of a build-up of uric acid crystals (or urates) in the joints. Gout can affect any joint, but classically it appears in the second joint of the big toe. I have classical gout. It was painful last week, but this week, it's eased up a bit, and I'm almost normal. Going for a walk through Manchester's Northern Quarter last weekend wasn't a great idea, but throw in a brewery visit and a great pub, and I'm powerless to resist, gout or not.

Marble Brewery have been brewing for over a decade, and brewing damn good beers at that. Until recently, all their beers were certified organic and vegan, happily defying my assertion that organic beers are always compromised on flavour. Marble's beers have flavour packed into them - in fact, they clearly have too much flavour, because as soon as their beer is poured, the excess flavour leaps out of the glass, filling noses, rooms, cities with happy hoppiness. The organic certification has been allowed to slide for a few beers, mainly due to hop scarcity and pricing. The brewery has moved from its (by all accounts) homespun location at the back of the pub to a smartly whitewashed railway arch just down the road. The beers are still great, and their pub, The Marble Arch, is a jewel.

If one thing characterises Marble's beers, it's the extraordinary hop characters they coax into their pale beers. Manchester Bitter (4.2%abv), Summer (4.5%), Lagonda IPA (5%) and Dobber (5.9%) are stuffed beyond belief with exotic hop flavour and aroma. Dobber is the apogee of how much hop character you can stuff into a pale beer - lime, mango, grapefruit, mandarin, lychee. If Dobber wasn't so good, it would seem ridiculous to shower it with so many descriptors, but it's totally justified. My experience is that this beer is slightly more intense in bottle than in cask form, but your mileage (and ideology) may vary. Marble make other beers too - their Ginger is roundly praised, Chocolate is a rich delight, and get comfy, because there's a great tale attached to their latest release (sadly now all gone) Vuur & Vlam.

Vuur & Vlam is a beer originally brewed by the Dutch Brouwerij De Molen. It's a hearty American-style IPA, all resinous hops overlaying toffeeish malts. For this year's Borefts beer festival, festival organiser (and brewer at De Molen) Menno Olivier made the recipe for Vuur & Vlam available to all the invited breweries, and the challenge was to brew the best version they could. Marble's version came second. You might think that there's no shame in coming second to a brewery like De Molen, but in fact, De Molen's version came third. Talk about beating someone at their own game....

The visit was part the latest Twissup organised by Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg. The brewery and pub were the highlight of the Manchester leg. Being of sound mind but unsound body, I sat out the Huddersfield leg, where The Grove will have undoubtedly been the other highlight. You can read other reports on the full event here: BeerReviews.co.uk Pencil&Spoon Tandleman IMHAGOB Oh Good Ale

The Michelin Guide uses its star ranking system to rate restaurants. These stars originally had a specific meaning. One star indicated "a very good restaurant in its category, worth a stop." Two-stars meant "excellent cooking, worth a detour," and three stars reserved for "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey". Without even trying the food (which looked great), I'd pitch the Marble Arch somewhere between a two- and three-star rating: Great beer straight out of the brewery, an incredible tiled interior, and food that made me hungry when it went by on a plate. I'll be making a special journey back there soon.

World Tour (Birmingham Leg)

2010-10-25T21:38:00.004+01:00

I'm delighted that the lovely people of Marston's have had the good taste to invite me down to the Birmingham CAMRA Beer Festival to say a few words about some of their venerable beers.

I'm going to be holding a tasting of Banks's Mild, Bitter, and Marston's Pedigree on the Banks's stage, for each of the Saturday sessions. Not only that, but in a fit of creativity, we are also going to attempt to Tweet it live from the stage, and there will also be video and photos of the event uploaded as it happens. That's the plan, anyway - I'm worried that it has the makings of an Orbital gig, with a couple of people huddled behind a bank of technology, but with more facial hair and beer, and less hands-in-the-air action.

I'm also going to lug a few copies of "500 Beers" with me for a 'guerilla book signing' (™ Pete Brown), so if you'd like a freshly defaced copy, do stop by the Banks's stage to catch me in full flow at 3pm and 6pm. After a slightly nervous flick through the index, I'm relieved to see that I have included Marston's Pedigree, and describe it as "an unreconstructed English classic". The whole tasting will be themed around one of my great loves - ordinary brown beer - and I might even have a stab at a beer cocktail, or as they used to be called, a mild and bitter.

Come along, it'll be fun.

TRANSPARENCY STATEMENT: I am being paid to host these tastings. If you think that means I'll say anything I wouldn't ordinarily say, or will prevent me from saying what's on my mind, then you've clearly never met me. So come along and meet me.

AskMen UK: The Influencer Top 10 Beer Blogs

2010-10-19T11:44:00.002+01:00

We all love lists. They're a great starting point for long rambling arguments and "I can't believe X isn't on it" type rants. That's why it's nice to see AskMen UK publishing a list of who they have found to be the 10 most influential beer bloggers. It's even nicer that I'm included, even if I did only make page 3 and, and wasn't credited with being the BGBW Writer of the Year 2008.

I think it's a fairly representative list on all the various takes that beer blogging has to offer. I'm particularly pleased to see Shut Up About Barclay Perkins and Tandleman included, demonstrating that neither age nor eccentricity* are barriers to fame and (lack of) fortune in the blogosphere. I'm surprised and a bit saddened that Zythophile and Brewing Reality are missing, but there we are, that's lists for you.

Should you wish to mention any odd omissions or inclusions, why not do it below?

*this is that dangerous beast, written internet irony. For the avoidance of doubt, it's meant to be funny by way of gentle joshing.

Now Drinking: Roosters Honey and Citra (Exp #28)

2010-10-12T19:54:00.004+01:00

God bless Roosters. They are such an iconic English brewery, and yet it sometimes seems to me that they are only known to relatively small section of the beer-drinking public. They have forever ploughed a lonely furrow through a field full of pale malt and new world hops. And when I say forever, I obviously don't mean forever, what I mean is a long time for a brewery that make such a singular style of beer - soft, pale and golden, with a pronounced hop character. They even make a brief appearance in Michael Jackson's Pocket Beer Book, 1997: "In Harrogate, the Rooster micro is noted for hoppy ales, sometimes varietal".

Roosters don't really bottle a lot of beer, so being a person who doesn't get to the pub as often as he'd like, I don't drink as much of their beer as I'd like to. Conversely, my pub drinking is disproportionately swayed in favour of Roosters. A quick pint in Leeds' Mr. Foleys the other night had to be Roosters. In fact, now I think of it, almost every trip to the pub that I've had this year has featured Roosters. There aren't many, but at least I'm consistent.

Happily, Roosters bottle a few bits and pieces - mostly experimental and private-brew beers. The latest beers to fall into my lap are this honey and Citra hop beer. Predictably pale and golden, the honey makes it's phenolic, softly floral presence known on the nose immediately. The hops are there, but they battle for space a bit with the honey. The honey and hop play a weird trick, in that they seem to push a lot of pale malt character into the aroma. It takes a while for the palate to calibrate to what is going on, but when it does, the characteristic slightly savoury (green-pepper?) and citrus note of Citra is there, sitting in with the dry, phenolic snap of fully-fermented honey. That faintly savoury character carries into the finish too.

Roosters are incapable of making bad beer, and I love the creative spirit that they've been showing lately. Their trademark style is all about the hop, and Citra is the hop of the moment. I just can't help but wonder what this beer would be like without the honey.

Goddisgoode: Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Wild

2010-10-06T21:54:00.006+01:00

Yeast is really the hidden ingredient in beer. I think it's safe to say that it is the part of the holy quadrilogy that is least talked about. OK, people might bandy about some talk of brett, erroneously conflating brett with sour beers (sure, it's a part of most sour beers, but the sourness is usually derived from lactobacillus - see here for what happens when the lacto runs wild). But you have hopheads, mild afficionados, and people who enjoy a Burton snatch, but I've never heard people express a preference for beer that has been fermented with a certain strain of yeast. Largely yeast is thought to be top-fermenting, bottom-fermenting, or wild.

The importance of yeast was brought home to me this evening when I had a bottle of Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Wild (8.85%abv). I've had a couple of Lagunitas beers recently. My good friend G brought a couple back from his trip to the USA, and I had a bottle of Little Sumpin' in the cellar, waiting for the right moment, which was now.

The bottle of Lagunitas Hop Stoopid I had a couple of days ago was good, but this bottle of Little Sumpin' Wild was great. Like an amped-up version of Little Sumpin', Hop Stoopid was big, chunky, malty and hoppy, with all of these things turned up to full volume. The malt was toffee, the hops were spice and marmalade, and to be honest, it was all a bit tiring. The Little Sumpin' Wild is just as full, just as punchy, but has some elegance to it. On the label it claims to be fermented with the Westmalle yeast strain. Having drunk Westmalle many times, I can't see any similarity, but what I will say is that this beer has gained character by having things taken out. The malt sweetness is present, but it is greatly reduced. The hop character has been released from playing a to-and-fro with a toffeeish malt character, and is left free to rampage across the palate in the same way as the hops do in Flying Dog's Raging Bitch (terrible name, great beer) and Green Flash's Le Freak.

There's a clean precision to this beer that you don't often find. It reminds me of two things; one is when I was lucky enough to visit the Italian wine estate Allegrini, and I tried their top wine 'La Poja'. I could only describe it as 'incredibly detailed'. It felt like someone was writing on my tongue, spelling out the word 'classy' across my tastebuds. The other comparison is that it's like a record that has been really well-produced; the work of the producer should be unobtrusive, and yet immediately apparent to anyone who looks for it. Quite often, the best producers turn things down in the mix, giving them their own space in the equalised mix, rather than turning things up and adding extra effects. Little Sumpin' Wild is like that; the yeast has worked to create more space on the palate, more space to allow your brain to identify the separate taste sensations.

But like a great piece of music, you don't need to analyse it. It's just a great beer.

Now Drinking: Birra del Borgo Castagnale

2010-10-03T21:17:00.003+01:00

There's not much to add to this video, to be honest. Unusually for me, I sort of stay on message, cover all the points, and say what I set out to say. Maybe the only other thing to add from a tasting point of view is that the beer has a nice classic English hop character that comes through in late the finish. I was too busy wagging my tongue to pick it up while making the video.

Founder of Birra del Borgo Leonardo Di Vincenzo popped into the shop last week, along with Brooks Carretta, who is currently brewing at Birra del Borgo, but will shortly be heading off to oversee the brewing operations at the New York outpost of the Eataly group. It was a bit of a surprise to see them, to say the least. Obviously, they hadn't just got on a train to come and see me - they were in Leeds visiting Vertical Drinks, the UK importer of Birra del Borgo, Le Baladin and Gradisca beers.

I always get a bit overawed meeting brewers whose beers I like. I feel compelled to pump them for technical information about their beers, which is a crappy conversational technique because (a) the information is interesting to me, but perhaps useless outside of the context of my brain, and (b) I'm sure they'd rather talk about something other than work.

In the course of a conversation lubricated by Marble Tawny and BrewDog-Mikkeller Devine Rebel Mortlach Reserve, we chatted about the recent collaborative brew between Leonardo, Teo Musso and Sam Calagione (a shade too much wild thyme, apparently), techniques for making easy drinking session ales (if you're going for something low %abv and delicate, you can think about missing out the first hop addition all together) and late hopping techniques (I asked if they added hops after 'flame out' - 'sure, to the whirlpool. About a ton' was Brooks' laconic reply).

Anyway, Brooks and Leonardo were in the UK to do a brew of Castagnale (4.2%abv) at Everards. It will feature as part of the JD Wetherspoon's winter ale festival (website here), which has an interesting line-up of beers - plenty of trad, and a decent smattering of one-offs. And it will be coming to pub near you (if you live in the UK).

Craft Will Eat Itself

2010-09-28T13:10:00.004+01:00

I think we're at a really exciting time in beer appreciation.

The Cask Report shows cask ale holding steady in a difficult market. That's good news, although as has been mentioned elsewhere on the blogs, it's hardly call for celebration. It's not bad news, but neither is it good news. It's just news.

At this point, I'd love to write something like "cask ale is one of the UK's greatest gastronomic triumphs", but the problem is, that's only right some of the time. Cask is a form of dispense, it's not a style of beer, so to say that cask ale is holding its own in the market is talking about the success of a mode of dispense. Sure, with a great beer inside, a cask of ale is about as good as beer can get. But there is a lot of plain old boring cask ale about too. And no, I'm not one those people who has drunk too many American IPAs and suffered lupulin threshold shift. I still love ordinary brown beer - and there are good and bad ones of those too.

So how about talking about microbreweries? Again, this really just talks about volumes of production, without any reference to style or quality of the beer. There are good and bad micros just as there are good and bad macros. Sure, you can say you'd rather give your money to a small independent brewery than a large multinational, but again that's not really talking about the beer - it's about business ethics.

And what of craft beer? In the foreword to the latest Beer Advocate magazine, the Alstrom brothers started to describe their uneasiness about the word 'craft' as a designation of something good - essentially the same argument as above about microbreweries, but micros in the UK have a clear delineation along production volume vs. taxation lines.

Many people trumpet the rise in cask's market share as the victory of real ale over lager. Again, this is a bit lopsided, as lager is only a shorthand for industrial beer in this country. But of course, lager isn't really a description of a style, it's a description of a production process. If I was being cynical, I'd say that the victory of a mode of dispense over a brewing process is a low point in the history of beer appreciation in this country.

And bubbling away underneath all of this is the fact that volumes of beer overall are decreasing in the on-trade, and steadily rising in the off-trade. I think that volumes are presently about equal, but the streams are about to cross (sorry, poor analogy to use when talking about beer consumption). And in the off-trade, premium bottled ale growth continues to outstrip every other beer sector. Well, apart from the volumes of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale imported into the UK, which have doubled every year for the last three years, and seem set to continue in that vein. Who will write The Bottle Report, I wonder [*twirls moustache, waggles eyebrows suggestively*]

Sierra Nevada are really the holy grail of good beer. In SN Pale Ale, they found that holy grail, a crossover classic with both geek and mass-market appeal. They went from brewing it in converted dairy tanks to brewing it in an industrial production facility, without ever once compromising on quality or flavour.

So, to summarise: Nobody wants to drink bad beer. A cask of beer can only, at best, be as good as what the brewer puts in at the brewery, and can often be sub-optimal. It's easy to confuse dispense and process with what you are drinking. Craft and micro are no longer synonyms for quality, if indeed they ever were. Small volume production beers can be bad, and large volume production beers can be good. It's complicated, isn't it, this beer appreciation lark?

As I said at the start, I think we're at a really exciting time in beer appreciation. But there is still a lot of work to do.

Now Drinking: BrewDog Chaos Theory

2010-09-24T22:25:00.004+01:00

I've just completed my revision for my talk at the Hay Ale and Literature Festival. Not that I'm much of a one for cramming, but I did think it was at least worth looking up a few hop varieties and brewery locations of the beers I will be talking about. Hey, none of us are born with knowledge - did you think I absorbed it by osmosis from the beer?

I was one of those annoying university students who paid attention in lectures, and so revision was just that - looking over my notes and saying 'ah yes, I know that already'. Whether I manage to retain the same composure in front of a group of real ale fans tomorrow as I rhapsodise about Vienna lager, black lager, extra IPA, trappist ale and weizen doppelbock is another thing. Oh well,they can but boo and throw beer over me - that hasn't happened since a particularly disastrous gig at Salisbury Arts Centre in about 1991.

I should really be in bed by now, but I just received an exciting beer-related invite that, should it actually happen, should be a few days of extreme fun. Sorry to be annoying and go "ooh, I can't tell you what it is yet", but ooh, I can't tell you what it is yet. And like anyone who is reading this blog, I decided to celebrate exciting news with a glass of beer.

BrewDog's Chaos Theory (7.1%abv) is back by popular demand. It was inexplicably delisted about 18 months ago, for who knows what reason. My guess is that Nelson Sauvin became too fashionable to piss away on an everyday beer, not that there is anything dreary or mundane about Chaos Theory. It's their single hop Nelson Sauvin IPA, and it's a great glass of beer. I really like beers that suggest things without actually forming a committee and going on a march with a banner that says "LOOK AT ME! I'M STUFFED FULL OF INGREDIENTS!" and despite it's strength, Chaos Theory manages to do that. It's just beery enough to appeal to regular beer drinkers, but has enough subtle hop-derived fruitiness to be appealing.

Grab some while you can.

The Circle Squared at York Beer Festival

2010-09-20T22:14:00.006+01:00

There was a pleasing symmetry to a drinking experience this week at the York beer festival. No, it wasn't the surprise appearance of Saints & Sinners / Steel City Hopsession #2 at the festival (complete with shabby chic pumpclip), but I was surprised to find a cask of Birra del Borgo / Dogfish Head My Antonia. It was exciting because this has been one of my favourite beers of the year. From sampling it in 75cl bottle format, to drinking it on draught in Rome, to finally finding it on cask in Yorkshire, I'm starting to get the sensation that this beer just can't get enough of me. I half expect to turn on the tap to make a cup of tea and find it pouring out. That would be nice.

The first picture shows a couple of casks at the brewery in Borgorose. As I was being shown around, I asked who they were for, and the reply was a bit noncomittal - it was just to go to England. I can tell now why brewer Leonardo Di Vincenzo was so economical with the truth - clearly this had been casked exclusively for my enjoyment at York beerfest, and he didn't want to spoil the surprise. How thoughtful!

Seriously though, this is something of a coup, and down to Jamie Hawksworth and his sterling work in creating a series of iconic beer business in Yorkshire (Pivo, The Sheffield Tap, plus a wide and varied importing and wholesale operation). And while we're at it, thanks to Vertical Drinks for their importing of this great beer in a rare format. But still, it's something of a credit to Jamie that he came along and judged at the festival, toting a bottle of what I think might have been a pre-release of BrewDog's AB:03, a stunning, mellow red berry ale. BrewDog James had come to see me a couple of days previously and left me with a bottle, which I selfishly didn't bring to the beer festival to share with my fellow judges. Clearly to rectify this, I will have to travel with a bottle of beer about my person at all times - Jamie's generosity proved the maxim that beer is better shared.

But back to the point - casked My Antonia. It was a beautifully hazy golden beer, with an aroma of peaches and apricots. The Saaz snap that made the keg version so brilliant was there, albeit subsumed into a more rounded, fruity character. It was alarming easy drinking for 7.7%abv. I had a half, and then tried to slowly wean myself onto weaker beers, via Hardknott Infra Red (oddly chewy in cask), Crown Red Barron (again, weirdly full bodied - maybe red IPA is a blind spot for me), Marble Dobber (brilliant, but surprisingly bitter) and Five Towns Niamh's Nemesis (beer of the festival, but by my reckoning, not even close to the best beer I drank that day).

So, York beer festival - delivering beyond expectations, and providing closure to my peak beer drinking experiences. And I didn't even have to leave Yorkshire.

When A Man Is Tired Of London, He's Ready For Yorkshire

2010-09-15T21:54:00.003+01:00

I had a totally bonkers hour in Borough Market yesterday.

I popped into Brew Wharf for a quick refresher after a long afternoon's wine tasting (90 wines in about 4 hours - a new personal best). On the bar was Hopsession #2 (6.1%abv), brewed in collaboration with Steel City Brewing. Never one to shirk a challenge, I ordered a pint, and struggled through it. It's one of the hoppiest, bitterest beers I've had in a long time, deliberately unbalanced (we'll return to this later), and really close to being drinkable. I should have ordered a half.

After that, I needed a beer. Popping into The Rake, I found Dark Star Triple (8.5%abv). My notes read: "What madness is this? A limited brew that attempts to put all the mealy, hoppy goodness of a Belgian triple into a cask ale. Against the odds, it succeeds, with malty, yeasty sweetness leading, backed up by a brilliant herbal bitterness". My enjoyment of the beer was enhanced by an impromptu fitness session from regulars and staff - one-handed press-ups and door-frame fingertip pull-ups. Of all the things I expected to find at The Rake, the staff and customers all doing press-ups was fairly low on the list.

As I was finishing a second beer (Marble Chocolate, 5.5%abv, very nice too), who should arrive but none other than Gazza Prescott himself, of Steel City Brewing. We've never met before, so after quick intros, I told him I'd just had a Hopsession. He asked me what I thought, and I told him 'unbalanced'. Frankly, he couldn't have been happier. He hit the nail on the head by saying that it needed more aroma hop, and I suggested that they might have moved some of the hop additions from early to late. He gave me the sort of look usually reserved for the feeble-minded, and made it clear that there would be no funny business - the beer simply needed more hops, and later in the boil.

So, a crash course in mid-Atlantic pale ale design, and some low-key floor acrobatics in one of the best beer bars in London. You don't get that in Leeds on a Tuesday night (thank goodness).

I Am A Craft Beer Drinker

2010-09-13T14:30:00.005+01:00

I love the Americans, and I say that totally without irony.

I love their earnest sense of straightforwardness. I love the way they are mostly without guile. I love the way they have so little holiday that they organise their fun so as to make best use of what little time they have. I love the way they know that they might only have time for a couple of beers, so they'd better be damn tasty, and medium-strong to boot.

I'm sure you've seen this video by now. I like it, but I'd love to see it remade with British craft beer drinkers. The dentistry wouldn't be as good, for a start. And I think quite a lot of us would struggle to stare into a camera and deliver the same sentiments with that sort of sincerity, that lack of irony, that wholesome earnestness.

Nightcap

2010-09-11T22:10:00.000+01:00

At the GBBF this year, I bumped into Dave 'Hardknott' Bailey about 20 minutes after the festival opened. I was trying to ease myself into an afternoon's drinking with a few session ales, but Dave had waded into the bigger American IPAs already. 'I've got a bit of a thing for stronger beers' he said, somewhat ruefully.

I know what he means.

Higher %abv beers pack a certain punch that weaker beers don't, and I'm not just talking about the alcohol. Whichever way they go - sweet malt sugars left unmetabolised by exhausted yeast or fully attenuated spicy dry beers - there's a depth of flavour there that a creatively mashed, well-hopped lower %abv never attains. There's a sweet spot for me around 6 or 7%abv where beers start to get really satisfying. Satisfying in the sense that they do actually feel nourishing. Maybe it's just that I'm dog-tired at the moment, and my body appreciates the extra carbohydrates of a slightly sweeter beer. Or maybe it just likes the gentle flush of alcohol.

Either way, there's no getting away from the fact that JW Lees Harvest Ale is both sweet and strong. In fact, it's such a sweet beer that it almost doubles as a dessert - figs and toffees, bananas and brandy all feature. And it's such a strong beer (11.5%abv) that it only really makes sense as a beer that closes a meal, or precedes bed.

The latter, in this case.

Tags: JW Lees, harvest ale, strong beer, hardknott

International Beer-Geekery

2010-09-07T12:38:00.005+01:00

I had a very nice evening out last night. I went for a beer with Rick Kempen of Bier & Co, who was in town for the night. He very kindly brought me the bottles shown in the photo, and I paid him back with bottle of Fuller's Gale's Prize Old Ale 2007. As we swapped bottles in the pub, his colleague Gaius Voûte commented that we looked like a pair of beer geeks. We were pleased, but I don't think he meant it as a compliment.

There's something nice about making a gift of beer from home, whether that's me taking some proper Yorkshire beer down to the family in Wiltshire, or swapping beers in person with a foreign visitor. It reminds of the time in the late 80s that I used to visit friends in New York - I'd always take some English beer with me as a gift, although the 4 pint carry-out keg of Tanglefoot didn't travel too well. They let me take it on as hand luggage. No, honestly, they did - it was acceptable in the 80s.

Taking it a stage further, there's always the trading forums on Ratebeer and Beer Advocate if you really need to swap something to get something (you need to be logged in to view them). I've never done that, and would be interested to hear if anyone has any stories of success or failure either way - not for any journalistic (bloggeristic?) reason, but I'm just curious. Plus a Facebook buddy who lives near to Russian River has suggested we trade bottles (hi Will, if you're reading this). Obviously the cost of postage doesn't make financial sense, but I like the idea that beer geeks on different continents will happily send each other rarities at their own respective expense.

It could be like the Cameron-Obama beer summit, only with good beer.

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Now Drinking: Crown Brewery Brooklyn Heights

2010-09-03T17:20:00.002+01:00

Damn. Forgot to ask them to take the sparkler off.

For me, one of the most exciting trends in British brewing in the last few years has been the resurgence of the hop, or more specifically, cask ales with big American C-hop character. I've said it before, but the transatlantic conversation between American and European brewing culture has never been more excitable or exciting. Despite not getting to the pub as often as I'd like, I still think cask ale rules.

Brooklyn Heights wears its affiliations proudly on its pump clip. It's an unashamedly ballsy interpretation of an American Pale Ale. Most American Pale Ales (and IPAs) are designed to be drunk cold and force-carbonated - nothing wrong with that, but when you serve them on cask, that lack of dissolved CO2 makes the whole thing slightly sweet and sticky.

Happily, Stuart Ross of Crown Brewery (for it is he) knows what he's doing when it comes to cask ale. So rather than making a beer better suited to a quick bit of chill and zizz, he knows how to meld the hop-forward character of an APA with just the right fullness of malt body. The end result is a classic English ale that is both traditional and modern. It's trad because there's just enough earthy bitterness to it to please your old man, but at the same time, it's modern in it's marmalade-pith fruity character. There's just enough sweetness to it to balance the big, spicy bitterness in the finish.

Another classic from Crown Brewery. Great work, Stuart. And great work North Bar.

Two From The Back Of The Shelf

2010-09-02T19:58:00.007+01:00

One of the nice things about having a cellar - a proper damp, cool underground room in the bottom of the house - is that it keeps beer close to serving temperature most of the time. It's like a big cool room, about 10°C, and so I can just wander down and find something ready to drink most of the time. And the nice thing about working in the trade, and being sent beer, is that there's usually quite a bit of beer down there. Inevitably, beer tends to stack up on the shelves in good times, and in lean times the shelves get emptied. So it is tonight, when having exposed the bottles at the back, I find a couple of forgotten bottles: Badger Cricket (aka Lemony Cricket, 4.4%abv) and Fallen Angel Hopped Up Cider (4.8%abv).

I've had Badger Cricket on cask while visiting the family down South. It's an ordinary brown beer (and I mean that in a good way) with pretensions to being a spring/summer ale by virtue of having lemongrass added to it. I have to say that on cask it suffers a bit from a surfeit of lemongrass, like the other lemongrass beer I've recently tried, Hopback Taiphoon. Happily, this beer appears to have suffered a bit in the bottling process - all of the perfumed nonsense is thankfully knocked out of the beer by rough handling on the bottling line, and what emerges from the bottle is a brown beer with a faint hint of lemon balm in the background. It's really good actually, and makes me wish I had another bottle. Sadly, my signature move of reviewing the last bottle in a free case deprives me of that option.

I have to say that I had zero hopes for Hopped Up Cyder, "A strong cider brewed from pure apple juice but with the addition of malt and a large dose of Sussex hops to give a unique fresh flavour not found anywhere else". As if that doesn't sound bad enough, the labels on their beers are the most unreconstructedly offensive crap I've seen in a long time. It really goes beyond laddish, postmodern or even post-ironic. They're just crap. Offensive crap.

So it pains me to say that Hopped Up Cyder actually isn't bad. I'd suggest attempting to create something that is halfway between a beer and a cider is doomed to failure. The tart dryness of the cider is suggestive of beer that has gone bad. The earthy bitterness in the aftertaste hints at an overly tannic finish. But neither of these dominate, and the end result is clearly a cider with a bit of of a wild yeasty bite to the finish, although the hop note in the finish does send one for something of a loop.

Budweiser Budvar: The People's Brewery

2010-08-27T15:12:00.008+01:00

Having the cream of British bloggerati twittering and blogging from the Czech republic has jogged my memory that in March this year, I went to České Budějovice as a guest of Budvar. There were lots of things that I was looking forward to about the trip, not least tasting the beers fresh from the conditioning tank in the brewery cellars. But what took me by surprise was the passion of the man who has become synonymous with Budvar: Josef Tolar.

Here is a man who has worked at Budvar for 43 years, 24 of those as the brewmaster. During the Velvet revolution in 18989, it was he who was instrumental in ensuring that the brewery remained in state hands, rather than be sold into private ownership. He has seen the brewery blossom under his stewardship, and has now handed his brewer's thermometer over to protegé Adam Broz. In theory, he should be retired by now, but he happily turned out to show us round the brewery. How many times must he have done this? And yet even if this was the 1000th tour he had taken, there was still a sense that he wanted to patiently show us everything, every nuance of the production that made Budvar be Budvar.

The huge sacks of whole-leaf Saaz hops. The exposed run-off trough where the wort was sampled. The ongoing trademark dispute with A-BInBev about the name Budweiser. All of these are integral to the character of the beer, and the spirit of the brewery. Having each of these calmly and thoroughly explained by an icon of brewing was a humbling experience. For the record, the run-off trough helps give the beer a slightly darker colour. I was tempted to ask about hot-side aeration, but (uncharacteristically for me) decided to keep my mouth shut.

For me, the real surprise in the conditioning cellars was the Budvar Dark. To balance the smoky coffee and chocolate notes in the darker beer, it is necessary to use a lot more Saaz hops. This gives a surprisingly American feel to the beer - never mind 'Cascadian dark ale' (gah, how I hate that phrase!), this was a Saazian dark lager. The floral, lemony notes over the top of the chocolate and coffee are an eye-opener, and a character that is sadly greatly reduced in the flash pasteurisation process. But you can still detect it in the bottled beer, and it's worth paying that extra bit of attention to do so.

Budvar Dark wasn't the creation of Josef Tolar, but of another of his protegés, Ales Dvorak. ('Ales' seems like a quite a name for a lager brewer, but it's pronounced 'Alesh'). There was famously something of a heated discussion between Tolar and Dvorak about whether a black lager was a good idea for the brewery. Dvorak won, and the brand is now well-established.

It was a toss-up for Tolar whether to appoint Broz or Dvorak as his successor. In the end, it seems that he opted for the safe pair of hands. Adam Broz has a similarly calm demeanour to his patron, whereas it transpires that Ales (or 'Mad Ales' as he is affectionately known) likes nothing more than driving tanks as an army reservist. And if you look closely at the picture on the left, you can see that he's also the sort of guy who likes to takes his own cutlery (or hunting knife) to a restaurant.

What I love most about Budvar is the unchanging nature of the brewery, the timelessness of the beer, and the unswerving commitment that is shown by the people who make the beer. Some might say that taking two and a half hours over a brewery tour that usually only takes one hour was a bit much. For me, it was an unforgettable pleasure, and a great privilege.

Now Drinking: Thornbridge Larkspur

2010-08-25T12:43:00.007+01:00

I must be bloody mad.

The M62 motorway has a certain notoriety. It is a hideously busy stretch of trans-Pennine tarmac that carries the dubious honour of being the highest motorway in the UK. It is also featured in The KLF's "It's Grim Up North" - "Morecambe, Macclesfield, Lytham St. Annes, Clitheroe, Cleethorpes, the M62 - its grim up north", a list of everything that might be thought to be soul-sucking and lifeless in the north of England, set over a pounding industrial acid techno beat.

Had I planned my visit a bit better, I would have used public transport and taken a long afternoon over this visit to The Grove Inn in Huddersfield. The pub itself is nothing short of sensational, a beer geek's dream, featuring permanent hand pumps from the cream of the new wave of British brewing - Thornbridge, Marble, BrewDog, Dark Star, - alongside a smattering of classics - Timothy Taylor, Burton Bridge, Fullers. In fact, this pub demands a long and leisurely session. Why have I spent a torturous rush-hour driving here for a single pint?

I'll tell you why. I got severely twitchy that a certain beer would run out before I got to try it - there were only 35 casks made this year, and eight of them passed through the possession of Ian, landlord of The Grove. He very generously passed five of these on to Eddie at Gadds brewery - I can only assume he hadn't tried the beer before he agreed to that. The beer is Thornbridge Larkspur (5.2%abv), a pale gold single-hop beer based around the hop variety Citra.

I use the term beer loosely. I know that this is beer, because it came out of a brewery, and is made of water, pale malt, hops and yeast. But no beer has ever tasted like this. The first sniff and mouthful, and I'm transported back to my first ever visit to Leeds, in the early 1990s, and buying fresh samosas and Rubicon mango juice drink at Maumoniat's Asian supermarket on Brudenell Grove. That first ever taste of mango juice, perfumed and almost indecently musky, was a shock to the senses, but a discovery of a pleasure that has stayed with me. In fact, for a while, I cursed the empty years that I lived without Rubicon mango juice, and devoted my life to drinking as much of it as I could.

That's the beauty of great beer - it transports you to another place, or another time, while rooting you to the spot, forcing you to pay attention to what is happening on your palate. Thornbridge Larkspur is a riot of mango juice, passion fruit, musk, a hint of vanilla custard, tangerine, peach, a nameless floral perfume, and a snap of biscuity pale malt husk in the steadily building bitterness of the finish. It's there and then it's gone, intense, but fleeting, demanding you take another sip, when the whole hokey-cokey of exotica starts over again. And again. And again, until the glass is empty.

That's not a beer, that's a love potion.

Thornbridge: Bottle-Conditioning for the 21st Century

2010-08-23T13:59:00.003+01:00

There's no question that Thornbridge are one of the most exciting breweries in the UK today. While they stop short of actually using hummingbird's tears as an ingredient, they push the envelope both with what they can get out of conventional ingredients, and what they can do with more unconventional ones. They rarely miss the mark.

Thornbridge recently moved over to putting live beer in half-litre bottles. On bottles of Jaipur, it uses the phrase "bottle-conditioned", although this has caused a bit of confusion among consumers - if it's bottle-conditioned, why isn't there any sediment? Being an inquisitive sort, I called Kelly Ryan at Thornbridge. The short answer is that there isn't any visible sediment because they don't re-prime the bottles. The long answer is a bit, well, longer.

When Thornbridge moved over to their new brewery, they had a new level of control available to them. The closed cylindro-conical fermenters meant that they could allow the beer to carbonate naturally under the pressure of its own fermentation. The same fermenters allowed them to take dead yeast out of contact with their still-fermenting beer. Centrifuges meant that they could control how much yeast was left in the finished beer, removing the need for filtration. The conclusion to the long answer is that they don't reprime their bottles because they don't need to. Not only is there enough natural carbonation in the beer, there is also enough yeast left in suspension to keep things ticking over nicely when they bottle it. The fermentation continues slowly, maintaining carbonation and scavenging oxygen.

For my part, I've often thought that bottle-fermentation can actually substantially reduce the character of a beer - it's as though that vigorous secondary fermentation actually scavenges some of the flavour compounds from the beer. Or maybe if the brewery filters the beer before repriming (a very common practice), a lot of the character of the beer is removed, and never gets put back in the second time around.

So what do we make of all this? Is this live beer? Bottle- or brewery-conditioned? Does it even matter to the ordinary drinker? My take on it is that if 21st century brewing and hygiene technology allow this to happen, and the beer tastes better for it, then great.

Either way, what I find really impressive is that Thornbridge have decided to ditch 40,000 Jaipur back labels that say "bottle-conditioned” and replace them with ones that say “May contain sediment”. Not only do they care passionately about the beer, they also care passionately about getting the right message on the label. The devil, as ever, is in the details.

Have You Got What It Takes?

2010-08-20T07:32:00.004+01:00

Have you got the words to be Beer Writer of the Year 2010 and win £1,000?

The British Guild of Beer Writers is giving beer communicators the chance to enter their work in six different categories, with one of the category winners to be named as the Beer Writer of the Year and receive the coveted Michael Jackson Gold Tankard Award.

Michael Jackson (27 March 1942 – 30 August 2007) who was also known as The Beer Hunter, dedicated more than 30 years to discovering, recording and then sharing the world’s finest beers in his many books, articles and TV programmes. He was the first Chairman of the British Guild of Beer Writers.

The competition is open to writers, broadcasters, photographers, poets, illustrators, designers, webmasters and bloggers whose work has broadened the public’s knowledge of beer and pubs. Nominations and entries are being sought for six categories:

Molson Coors’ Award for Best Writing in National Publications - prizes £1,000 & £500

For the very best writing or broadcasting aimed at a general audience, published in the national (and international) press, consumer magazines, books, national television and radio.

Adnams Award for Best Writing in Regional Publications – prizes £1,000 & £500

For the very best writing or broadcasting aimed at a specific local or regional audience, published in local and regional newspapers, magazines, radio, television and CAMRA newsletters.

Wells & Young’s Awards for Best Writing for the Beer and Pub Trade – prizes £1,000 & £500

For the very best writing or broadcasting aimed at the brewing and pub industry, published in trade and company newspapers, newsletters, magazines, reports and websites.

Brains SA Gold Award for Best Online Communication – prizes £1,000 & £500

For the very best use of blogs, websites and social media, whether that be writing or use of other tools such as video or social networking.

Budweiser Budvar John White Travel Bursary – prize £1,000 plus trip to Czech Republic

For the very best travel-themed beer writing (or beer-themed travel writing) or broadcasting. Entries can be from national, local or regional media, books, trade publications or online.

Bishop’s Finger Award for Beer and Food Writing – prize £1,000

For the very best writing or broadcasting on the subject of matching beer with food (an area formerly dominated by wine). Entries can be from national, local or regional media, books, trade publications or online.

How to enter

To enter the British Guild of Beer Writers Annual Awards send four copies (photocopies or printouts from PDFs accepted) of each entry, published or broadcast in the last 12 months up to 30 September 2010 – stating where it has been published. Authors of books need to send four copies of the book.

Website and bloggers entries – please send web address and URLs of the pages you want the judges to read.

Entrants can enter as many categories as they want, but they are limited to a maximum of six entries within each category. Remember, quality is more important than quantity so send one good entry in a category rather than six mediocre ones.

The entry should be accompanied by a letter stating which category or categories are being entered.

Entries should be sent by 8 October to – Beer Writers Competition, c/o Seal Communications Limited, Commercial Street, Birmingham, B1 1RH.

Entrants are asked to nominate which category they would like their work to be entered into but the judges reserve the right to consider work for other categories.

Editors, publishers and other third parties can nominate entrants to the competition.

Entrants do not have to be members of the British Guild of Beer Writers – they just have to communicate about beer or beer culture, new products or the ingredients and brewing of beer.

There is no limitation on the number of categories that an individual may enter.

Entries can only be returned if accompanied with a self-addressed, stamped envelope or packaging.

Guidelines for entrants can be found at http://www.beerwriters.co.uk/news.php?awards=1&showarticle=23

To book a place at the awards dinner – ticket price is £70 per person or £56 for BGBW individual members. For more information booking at the dinner contact Angie Armitage, at angie@cask-marque.co.uk or on 01206 752212.

For more information on the British Guild of Beer Writers Awards contact Tim Hampson Tel: 07768 614283 – Email: tim@infopub.co.uk. Blog: http://beerandpubs.wordpress.com

The British Guild of Beer Writers

Man: The Provider

2010-08-18T22:41:00.001+01:00

It's great working as a beer retailer. I always say that it's the best job in the world, apart from the hours and the money.

But one of the main benefits is reaping the fruits of my labours. Over the last three or four years, I've made a real effort to source the best of the best for our customers, and they have appreciated it. In fact, it's led to me discovering a new, unknown brewery, which I hope to be delivering to the good people of Leeds in the next month or so. The beer that really turned my head was a 3.5%abv blonde session beer that had so much flavour packed into it that when I gave to a friend and told them the strength, they said "F*ck off!". But the main thing I thought was: "Leeanne would love this".

My partner Leeanne is one of those rare females who loves beer. OK, I know that they're not really that rare, but as long as I've known her, real ale has been high on her 'to do' list. Early on, the phrase "ooh, they have Bass, a pint of Bass please" made me realise that I'd unearthed a rare treasure, and since then, I've done all I can to keep her interested. One of those things I have to do is Wednesday night beers.

Wednesday night is special, because Leeanne has Thursdays off. Wednesday night is like a private Friday night sneaked into the middle of the week. It's not really a proper Friday night, but because she doesn't drink on school nights, we have a few beers together. Tonight it's been a BrewDog Trashy Blonde and a couple of Odell's St Lupulin.

Lately, Leeanne has developed a preference for a certain style of beer. Pale, well-hopped beers are what she likes, although she will drink Brooklyn Lager and Sierra Nevada without complaint - nay, she will drink them with gusto. If the alcohol goes beyond a certain point, or the colour goes beyond a certain point, they get rejected. There's a very clear interplay of colour, intensity and %abv that she detects quickly and decisively.

This was demonstrated tonight by having a glass of Odell's St Lupulin (6.5%abv) and Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA (6%abv). I offered her the choice of either, and after tasting them both, she wrinkled up her nose at the DFH 60 (sorry Sam). I told her: "It's not as strong as you think - the St Lupulin actually has more alcohol in it". "Then why would I want that? I'll take this one thanks", and retired to her end of the couch with the St Lupulin.

So that's my responsibility as a beer provider. I need to make sure that there is an appropriate beer at any point that it is required. If I was catering for a less discerning palate, it might be a tiresome chore. But having someone who is interested in the variety of flavours, colours and intensities keeps me on my toes, and close to the top of my game.