Stewart Brewing "First World Problems"

First World Problems. They surround us. I'm a blogger, I'm a writer, I'm a beer wholesaler, I'm a beer retailer, I'm not supposed to do this because, boo hoo, I've got too much invested to write anything impartial. Poor me, poor me, pour me another.

The press release comes on a scratty bit of paper, and tells the now familiar story of the victory in a home brew competition being put into production. It's basically the X-Factor of beer - figure out what people like, then sell it back to them. It mentions 80 IBUs. It mentions the 6 hop varieties, without naming one of them. It's not a great bit of PR. That's a first world problem right there.

The label is pretty cool, all cross-hatched graphic novel font and Lichtenstein half-tone comic strip frames. It makes me immediately suspicious. But the beer - oh God, the beer.

I've no idea what the exemplar for Belgian IPA is, or where the style originates, but this immediately reminds me of Flying Dog Raging Bitch. It's not all about the flavour, although that's a big part of it. There's a character to this beer that's almost a texture, an interplay between a spiciness, a minerality, and a faint suggestion of sunshine and crushed aspirin that I associate with a surfeit of Amarillo hops. There's a flat, wet stone quality to the beer, ending like a licked pebble on the beach, but in a good way, a slightly savoury, celery-salt snap in the finish, like a really fresh pilsner.

And the aroma is nuanced to be a tightrope walk between an IPA and a Belgian triple. What strain of yeast has wrought these remarkable effects? A kind of hyper-refined IPA that plays on bitterness, cleanness, a bruised fruitiness.

I've run out of Belgian IPA. Another First World Problem, if you please.

Resisting The Wine-ification Of Beer

That's a litre of homebrew, fresh as a daisy, glistening with condensation. PHWOAR!

You want to moan about beer getting too fancy? Oh look, Rome's on fire - grab a violin and join the party.

Weekend Beers Round-Up

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.

Now Drinking: Rooster's Baby-Faced Assassin

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.....

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.

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"