The Market Town Tavern Yorkshire Beer Awards

Last night I was lucky enough to be invited as a guest to attend the inaugural Market Town Taverns Yorkshire Beer Awards. There is no doubt that the UK is in the grip of a beer frenzy, and outside of London it's clear that Yorkshire is the most seething hotbed of brewing activity - there are lots of them, and the quality is very high.

Market Town Taverns is a chain of 15-odd pubs that was built by Ian Fozard (now director of Rooster's Brewing Co), and more recently sold to Heron & Brearley, a many-tentacled business based on the Isle of Man, hence the presence of a lot of (latterly very good) Okells beers within the MTT estate.

As it explains on their website, the Market Town Taverns Yorkshire Beer Awards "has been born out of passion for beer and the pride we have in our Yorkshire breweries. Over 100 Yorkshire breweries were invited to submit their beers for a blind tasting by our judges which took place in early May 2013, where the finalists in each category were decided on". The awards dinner was where finalists were announced, and here they are:

Best Bitter:
Great Newsome Frothingham Best
Ilkley  Joshua Jane
Saltaire Pride
Winner: Saltaire Pride

Pale/Golden Beer:
Great Heck Citra
Abbeydale Dewception
Bradfield Farmer's Blonde
Winner: Great Heck Citra

Dark Beer:
Old Bear Black Maria
Rooster's Londinium
Black Sheep Riggwelter
Winner: Rooster's Londinium

IPA:
Rooster's Fort Smith
Saltaire Stateside IPA
Great Heck Yakima IPA
Winner: Saltaire Stateside IPA

Speciality:
Brass Castle Bad Kitty
Black Sheep Imperial Russian
Partners Tabatha
Winner: Black Sheep Russian

Craft Keg:
Wold Top Humber Light
Saltaire Gold
Great Yorkshire Blackout
Winner: Saltaire Gold

Best Newcomer: Magic Rock

Overall Champion: Saltaire Pride

Should you still be reading this and be slightly "say what?" about the whole thing, let's go through the pictures. Denzil from Great Heck Brewery (Best. Website. Ever) giving it large in one of his trademark Shite Shirts. Tom and Ol from Rooster's, looking like a buffed up version of the Blues Brothers. Stu from Magic Rock in a three piece suit, looking every inch the Victorian steampunk brewer. The ever-glamorous Marverine Cole presenting the awards. Really, what's not to like?

Congratulations to all of the finalists, and special congratulations to all the category winners, maybe especially to Saltaire Brewery, not only for the overall win, but just for their ability to place in so many categories - the upcoming expansion is clearly going to move them to the next levelThe beer scene in Yorkshire isn't just full of great beer, it's full of great people - the sort of people that attracted me to this industry in the first place. Long may they prosper, and long may Market Town Taverns celebrate and reward their prosperity.


Movie via Bibulous Me

The Golden Pints 2012

And so without further, or indeed any, ado, let's kick off with the first category, Best UK Draught Beer.

The winner of this category impressed the judge with its fusion of British pale golden ale and utterly bonkers new world hop overload. It is a beer that is so compellingly drinkable that the judge was compelled to drink several pints of it after a perfectly nice day out at the National Winter Ales Festival, falling asleep on the train home and having to get a £40 taxi from York back to Leeds. Bonus points go to the brewer of this beer for turning up at the Friends of Ham Smoked Porker / Quantum Tap Takeover and just drinking halves of it all night, ignoring everything else on offer. Yes, the Best UK Draught Beer 2012 is Magic Rock High Wire (cask version). Runner up is, well, pretty much everything else compared to High Wire to be honest.

As someone wholeheartedly committed to the death of the on-trade by running a successful bottle-wholesaling and retailing operation, the Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer is, of course, a category close to my heart. Unlike the previous category, competition here has been hard fought. Honourable mentions go to Oakham Green Devil, The Kernel Table Beer, Red Willow Ageless and, er, Magic Rock High Wire. Sadly, one beer has pummelled all of these into submission, just like Chuck Norris, an icon of uncompromising uncompromisingness held dear to the brewer of the winning beer. Yes, I'm talking #carnagenoir, James Kemp and Buxton Imperial Black India Pale Ale. Not only redefining "ruinously drinkable", but delivering a karate chop to the windpipe while it's at it.

The award of Best Overseas Draught Beer goes to a single pint of Ska Brewing Modus Hoperandi that I shared with Andy Taylor (@tabamatu) on the Leeds Open It night out. You can read a summary of that night here, but really, it's all summed up in this tweet.  Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer would have to be Southern Tier Iniquity, an imperial black ale that I bought to sell to people, and then ended up buying back from various shops at full retail value when I realised it's sheer brilliance.

I've no idea what Best Overall Beer means, but out of the beers above, I honestly couldn't choose between High Wire and Imperial Black, so over the Christmas holiday I intend to make some sort of imperial black 'n' tan out of them to see what happens.

Equally hard for me to make sense of is the Best Pumpclip or Label category. Red Willow, Moor Beer Co., and Bristol Beer Factory all look great on the bar or on the shelf, as do Marble. While it's easy to pick out a favourite beer, picking out the Best UK Brewery is a much harder task. So hard, in fact, that I'm not going to even try. The bar is set too high to split between them. And best - best at what? Making beer? No, no, I won't have it, this category is a NONSENSE! That said, the beers that I tried at Brodie's a couple of weeks ago (coupled with the odd bottle over the course of the year) were a real eye-opener - a brewery making great beers across a variety of styles, international collaborations (Mikkeller AND Three Floyds). I've not tried enough of their beers to claim them as a 2012 favourite, nor are they the best of 2012, but favourite new (to me) brewery, for sure. I'm rambling now, sorry. Argh, similarly, Best Overseas Brewery. At Borefts Beer Festival, I was blown away by Mikkeller and Jester King, so pick one, settle down, and shall we move on?

I don't get out much, so I'm not one to judge Pub/Bar of the Year. Seeing North Bar turn 15 this year was brilliant, and seeing Friends of Ham emerge blinking into the sunlight like an ickle faun was also a beautiful moment. No such qualms, however, about Beer Festival of the Year - hands down it was Indy Man Beer Con, which in my humble opinion was a world-class event. Or maybe it was Borefts Beer Festival. Hmm, I thought I had it nailed there. Oh well.

Voting for Supermarket of the Year is like voting for Best Cultural Apocalypse - whenever I buy beer there, I can feel the ghost of Hilaire Belloc tugging at my collar, whispering "From the towns all Inns have been driven: from the villages most.... Change your hearts or you will lose your Inns and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England". Supermarkets are great for picking up decent beers at knock-down prices, and while I'm always disappointed to see brewers getting locked into volume production contracts and then bleating about how there's no money it, but they have to continue at that scale otherwise they won't be able to do anything, ever, I have to congratulate Morrisons for managing to have Worthington White Shield on sale at £1.40 for ages - congratu-fucking-lations to everyone concerned for devaluing an icon of British brewing. Still tasted great though.

Both Independent Retailer of the Year and Online Retailer of the Year are a bit hard to call, not least because of my vested interests in each, so what the hell, I'll say Beer-Ritz in Headingley and BeerRitz.co.uk, just because I co-own them. And also because brilliant people who really give a shit and love beer work at the shop. That's a good enough reason, right?

As anyone who has seen me doing my "jazz-hands are the hops, clog-stomping is the malt" interpretive beer dance, writing about beer is like, er, dancing about beer. This year I've read a lot of Stan Hieronymus, so I'm nominating Brewing with Wheat as my Best Beer Book or Magazine. His prose is always elegant and concise, with enough information to provoke further thoughtful investigation rather than give definitive answers. He's sort of Yin to Garrett Oliver's Yang.

Much as I'm loving the new eBuzzing nonsense algorithms (so much more random than Wikio!), I still read through almost everything posted in my blog roll (drop me an email if you'd like to be included). Mainly for providing as constant stream of literate and engaging beer notes, tempered hugely by being great company at Borefts, and insisting that 9pm on Saturday night was "doppelbock o'clock", award for Best Beer Blog or Website award goes to The Beer Nut. Best Beer Twitterer doesn't make any sense - it's like best brewery - best at what? Favourite? What is this, a popularity contest?

Popularity is what Best Online Brewery Presence is all about. Or is it an unpopularity contest? Either way, BrewDog manage to butt into my week fairly regularly, and at least a quarter of the time I have to remind myself to step away from the computer and put all that swearing back in the cupboard at the latest piece of countercultural froth they've managed to concoct.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year was at the launch of Melissa Cole and Outlaw Brew Co's Mad Hatter Jasmine IPA, mainly because the beer was great and the food was ONLY THE BEST PORK PIE I'VE EVER EATEN!!! Quality always shines through.

In 2013 I’d most like to... get out a bit more.


DISCLOSURE - I buy and sell beer for a living, and work with almost all of the breweries mentioned above. I'm pretty sure my integrity is intact, your opinion may differ.

EBBC2012 #5 - Tired And Emotional

I think it's fair to say that by the time we got to the end of EBBC2012, everyone was ready for a long sleep and a blood transfusion (well, all except Alessio Leone, who was to spend the Sunday night in various Leeds bars before getting an early flight back to Italy without any sleep at all - now that's hardcore). When I got home and was asked how the weekend was, I surprised myself by hearing myself talking about it while my voice cracked with emotion at some of the things I'd heard over the weekend. Not for the first time that weekend, I actually shed a few embarrassed tears. And here's why.

Having moved over the last decade from working part-time in a good beer shop, to managing an award-winning beer shop, to launching a beer-tasting events company, to being British Beer Writer of the Year 2008, to having a book published, to buying out the company that employed me has been a long and exhausting process. There have also been a bunch of people who have been at my side along the way, and who I see as contemporaries, partners-in-crime, whatever. But if you'll permit me the indulgence, I'd like to share with you two almost eidetic moments from the weekend.

The first was after the speed-blogging event, which itself was a whole heap of fun. I think it's fair to say that Rooster's Baby-Faced Assassin was the beer of the night, just pipping Marble's Earl Grey IPA by a small margin. Tom of Rooster's has very kindly acknowledged my indirect influence in the development of this beer - undeservedly so, as all I did was say "yeah, that might work" as Tom explained the idea behind it. As I chatted to him after the event, he casually mentioned that Doug Odell was coming to brew with them in a couple of weeks, largely on the back of having tried and enjoyed Baby-Faced Assassin. Such was my delight at this news that I couldn't help but get dewy-eyed. I guess I saw a lot of similarities between Tom's journey and mine, from amateur beer enthusiast to someone who was making a living doing something they loved, and having a great time doing it.

The second moment was on the Magic Rock visit, when I was talking to head brewer Stuart Ross. Having just toured the brewery, I thought back to a brew that we'd done a couple of years ago. Stuart is a guy who has learnt his craft and apprenticed under some of the best. And looking round at the American craft brewery he and Richard Burhouse have built in Huddersfield, I couldn't help but have an immense swell of pride for the pay-off for his years of hard work. I slapped him on the shoulder and told him this, and he looked me back in the eye, without blinking, and said "And well done you, for what you've done". That is as close to an emotional outpouring as you're likely to get from a Yorkshireman, and it meant the world.

Although I make a living buying and selling beer, I try and resist the idea that these beers are brands. When I look around the warehouse full of beer, each little bay of beers from a particular brewery isn't just beer, it's a lot of hard work, hopes, aspirations and stories, not just from the brewer, but as I mentioned in the last post, the result of an awful lot of work from an awful lot of people. That's why I get emotional when I think about the industry - it's not just beer, it's peoples' lives and peoples' stories that fill your glasses. If you can join me in that belief, not only will your understanding of the topic deepen, but I also believe your beer will taste all the better for it.

@ooa09 - My Top Ten Beers

A Mr Olusola Adebusuyi tweeted me the other day asking me about what my favourite beers were, first the top three, then after I protested that was impossible, the top ten. I didn't respond at the time, because I couldn't properly formulate an answer, and a few days later, I still can't get close to starting a list.

How hard can it be to have a list of your favourite beers to hand? Why am I struggling with this apparently simple task? Surely you just start with whatever beer is your current obsession (for me, Magic Rock High Wire, on cask for preference) and work backwards from there? There is obviously going to be a of a primacy effect - whatever you've drunk most recently will be fresh in your mind, so maybe Moor Amoor (formerly Peat Porter) would make the list, not only for being a great beer, but also for defying my expectations of it - I'd foolishly been looking at the bottle for a month, worrying that a sub-5%abv porter wouldn't deliver the sort of flavour hit I was looking for, but it did, admirably. But was it better than Anchor Porter, or did I like it more? I simply can't tell you. It's just different. Why do I have to choose?

Maybe if I started scoring beers, I'd be able to formulate a list eventually. But to do this would be to sacrifice the multi-dimensional map that each beer creates in my head with its aroma, flavour and aftertaste. There's no real way of recording those sensations, other than with recourse to detailed and florid prose, or an elaborate contemporary dance. I would find that the dance routines elicited by Hook Norton's Old Hooky and Sierra Nevada's Ruthless Rye IPA are pretty similar, but one would be a more energetic version of the other. Both of these beers are about balance, and each mouthful conjures a little vignette about the balance between malt and hops with each mouthful, albeit in different accents. But do I prefer one over the other? No. And do I like them more or less than the singular hop character of Mikkeller's Single Hop Simcoe IPA? I'm not entirely sure, now I think about it.

Poking around in the cellar, looking for a nightcap, I see the iconic red and white label of a bottle of Duvel. My heart leaps momentarily, only to sink when I find that it's an empty bottle that has found its way back onto the shelf. The distance between that peak of excitement and the trough of disappointment is an unusual index of how much I like that beer, both the beer itself, and that bottle in particular.

And of course, scoring beers creates an illusion of objectivity. If, for example, I was asked to generate a numerical score for Cantillon St Lamvinus, the numbers that come out at the end would be pretty large, but it  wouldn't convey the fact that I don't like any of Cantillon's beers very much. I can't score the beer down simply because I don't like it, but neither can I feel comfortable about giving a high mark to a beer that I just don't like - my ego prevents that, I guess. I like plenty of other wild/spontaneously fermented beers - Oude Beersel, Girardin, Russian River, obvs - but like these beers, I want to be able to feel the complexity in the beer and express that in a way that impossible with number.

Beer is a personal thing. It's subjective, and most importantly, it's a continuum, from volume-produced beers at one end, to impossibly rare one-off batches at the other. Everywhere on this continuum has good and bad examples of what is on offer, and your opinion of what is good and bad is different to mine. Part of the fun of what we do - we beer drinkers, we beer writers, we beer bloggers, we brewers, we homebrewers - is to dip into the different points on that continuum. For me, it's about that journey - I'm not trying to find the ten best beers, I'm just loving the endless variety that the journey offers me.

Magic Rock Brewing: The Bottles

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.