EBBC 2012 - Live Beer Blogging

I'm live-blogging from the European Beer Bloggers Conferrence - 10 beers in 50 minutes. IT'S GRIPPED, IT'S SORTED, LET'S LIVE BLOG!

Slaters Top Totty - I just mis-typed that as "Top Titty", which given the bunny girl label is pretty appropriate. Clean lemony nose, fresh clean and tart palate, nice and fresh, good. Not sure about the label - they defend it on the basis of it being ribald British humour in the seaside tradition. Sophie Atherton is unsurprisingly outraged, and drives the point home forcefully. But is the beer being overlooked in the furore? That would be a shame, because it's great - clean, zesty, fresh and delightful.

Camden USA Hells - unfiltered lager, lots of American C-hops. Slightly funky nose, might be the cattiness of the hops rather than any faults. Really nice bridge between old- and new-world traditions, clearly a quality, well-made lager with another layer of zesty, spritzy, great. "Brewed to suit the London palate" according to their PR guy - an unashamed pitch at the mid-market, but very good in spite of that - or perhaps because?

Adnams Ghost Ship - absolute classic English ale in the modern style - just what you'd want on a hot summer afternoon, or indeed on a busy speed-blogging event. Pale toffee colour, clean, biscuity with lots of fruity hop character. Very nice, and doesn't stamp its feet for attention. 

Innis & Gunn Scottish Pale Ale - limited release only available in Sweden. Big oaky vanilla nose, with plenty of hops added to try and balance the sweetness out a bit. Oddly for a relatively light beer, it really crashes onto the palate, sweet initially, turning zesty and floral. Tastes of new oak and citrussy hops. Bit of a car crash, but also sort of enjoyable.

Leeds Brewery Hellfire - very pale beer, zesty nose, very fresh, lovely sort of lemon sherbet and lime on the finish. Really nice fresh beer, although not convinced by the claims that "it's designed to be drunk from the bottle". Sam Moss from the brewery says that it's because the beer is meant to be drunk cold, from the bottle - the body gets big as the beer warms up. Nice idea, and seems to be well executed.

Otley Oxymoron Black IPA - Nick Otley says that this was their unashamed stab at having a go at the American craft beer style - "we wanted a piece of it" in his words. Big fruitiness on the nose, combined with smooth chocolate. Big flavours, great hop character and balance, but maybe a bit drying in the finish? Perhaps not helped by lack of condition (they apologised profusely about that)

Brains Dark - announced as Brains Dark Mild, which I guess is true to style.Dark brown, full chocolate aroma, vinous fruitiness. Finish is again vinous, fruity and complex. An essay in complexity and drinkability. Apparently, it's a great match for a Clark's pie, which is "some sort of meat pie" - apparently, nobody has ever had the courage to ask exactly what is in them.

Marble Emelisse Collaboration Earl Grey IPA - shot for a low bitterness in the expectation that there would be some tannic bitterness from the tea. Nose of citrus fruits and bergamot, unusual but enticing. Massive tangerine character on the palate, with more bergamot in the finish. Brilliant, enticing, and the first time I've ever used the phrase "dry teabagging" in conversation with a brewer. Excellent.

Roosters Baby-Faced Assassin - the classic guerilla IPA made for cask - how does it fare? Really well, given that they are following a big bruising bergamot IPA. Clean fruitiness, big mango hit, slightly toasty pale malt, unfolding endlessly on the palate. Tom used the phrase "went balls-out with the recipe", which I guess thematically nicely links back to the dry teabagging of the previous post.

Great Heck Stormin' Norman - "an easy drinking 6.5% session ale" according to the brewer Denzil. A little bit of roast barley in the mix brings out a toasty edge against which the hops brush up nicely. Big and hoppy, sweet tropical fruit brushing up against gently nutty malt. Lovely.

Shouting "LAGER, LAGER, LAGER" - or - Hydroponic Hops

The weather turns warm and sunny. The sap rises. I want something different, something clean and fresh, something other than big chunky beers. Magically, a selection of beers from Camden Brewery, and a mini-cask of Sharp's Spring Cask Pilsner arrive at my desk, as though the beery gods have sensed a change in my mood, and can tell that I need placating a bit sharpish, matey.

The beers from Camden are good. The Hells Lager (apparently a stab at combining the helles and pils styles) works well, being a well-made lagery sort of a lager - clean, crisp and moreish. This is the beer you get if you go into a bar and ask for "a beer" - well-executed, transparently flawless, drinkable, bittersweet. The unfiltered version ups the ante a bit further, and the Unfiltered USA Hells slams down a hand of four aces and scoops the pot into its lap - zesty, slightly yeasty, but carrying that unmistakable hoppity-skippity of an unfiltered lager. It's just more alive, somehow.

Sharp's Spring Cask Pilsner is an essay in elegance. Brewers talk about having nowhere to hide when you brew a lager, but lagers such as Camden's have a distinct robustness when compared to this lager-ale hybrid. The Crafterati will hate it, even though it's a distant relative of Monsieur Rock. It's the opposite of an edgy, boundary-pushing beer, so ethereal as to be pummelled into submission by a full-bodied, unfiltered lager like Camden's. It's there, it's gone. Honey, herbs, lemons, fresh air and dewy grass. Can I have another please?

The Spring Cask Pilsner was such a gentle waft of spring breeze across the palate that that it got me thinking. Last night, I drank a Kernel Brewery Double Citra, so full of mangoes and passion fruit that its 9%+ abv slipped by unnoticed. It was the concentrated fruity essence of a hop that has been bred to be the concentrated fruity essence of hops. Have my doors of lupulin perception been pushed permanently ajar by the repeated ingestion of Double Citra, Double IPA, Imperial Black Ale? And more importantly, if they are, should I even care, or should I just yield to it and accept that the past is a different country, and things are going to be different from now on?