Reconnections

 It's fair to say that the last few years have wreaked havoc on the way that we've lived our lives. People have lost their jobs. People have lost their businesses. People have lost their lives. But finally, it feels (to me, anyway) that we are all returning to some sort of normal, to a life lived outside the home, to a life in our chosen third places.

So it was with no small measure of delight that I boarded the 9.48 from Leeds to Sheffield on Friday morning with a beer-writing hero, colleague, and friend Adrian Tierney-Jones. Delight because I knew that I would have his undivided attention for the duration of the train journey, and we hadn't seen each other for, ooooh, five years? We talked of many things, of friends and foes, of death and attrition, but the most notable finding from that journey was that we were both at New Order's Albert Hall gig in October 1986 - I was raving front of house, he was interviewing the band backstage.

We were heading for Sheffield's Indie Beer Feast, now in its fifth year - or is it five years since the first one? It's hard to know how to count it. Anyway, Jules and the team are hanging in there. I was going because, well, shit, this is what I always used to do. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is what I like to do. Meet people. Make connections. Join dots.

Not only Mr. Tierney, but also actual Pete Brown. If Adrian is a hero, Pete is a colossus. He's got a couple of decades-worth of writing chops filed away in a fast-access data bank. He's giving a tutored talk on one of Evin's beers in 30 minutes. But neither he nor Evin - another absolute titan - know which beer. But it doesn't matter, because whatever you throw at Pete, he deals with. 

And the beers? A bretted table beer from Red Willow to start - perfect. Kernel Pale Ale - perfect. D'or Mouse from SMoD - crunchy and delicious. Rock Leopard We Must Love Or Stars Must Fall - snappy and complex. McColl's El Capitan - delicious. Neptune Lost At Sea - delicious. Those last two were both absolutely banging west coast IPAs. Which was better? The jury's still out. I had to run to a pre-4pm train. 

Anyway, thank you Indie Beer Feast, for a few short hours today, the stars aligned and you were perfection to me. 

Strip Mining The Christmas Recycling

[PREFACE] This article contains links to Beer Ritz. I haven't written the article just to include the links, but in these lean times it feels perverse not to include them. Everyone always assumed I blogged to publicise the various businesses and enterprises I was involved in, so eventually, here we are.

I've only just got round to taking the Christmas glass recycling to the bottle bank. Yes, that's incredibly slovenly, but it didn't need emptying until just now. This doesn't necessarily signify a reduction in my drinking - cans go in the green bin now - although it's true that I do drink a lot less these days. But it was interesting to work through a few seams of empty bottles to the bottom of the bin and remind myself of what I chose to drink (and share) over Christmas. 

First up, The Kernel. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways into the mixed glass recycling pod. Quite a lot really. They brewery were kind enough to send us a selection case for Christmas, but I already had Table Beer and a couple of Pale Ales in the cellar anyway. Like The Fall, as John Peel had it, they are always the same, and always different. They are simple and satisfying, delicious and drinkable, heroic and humdrum. And for the brewery who coined the "London murky" style, their beers are now remarkably haze-free.

Working down, past the Christmas day wines, past the Michters (one bottle a year, on my birthday), we get to the Belgians, three bottles of each. Two from St Bernardus - the Tripel, and the peerless Christmas Ale. Their ABT is still a go-to of mine, but ABT and Xmas seemed like a surfeit of riches. The Tripel was there as a foil to Westmalle Triple, a sort of a taste-off, trying to answer a question about how triples work. I didn't find an answer, but the clues all point to the yeast - Westmalle yeast seems to produce a drier, cleaner beer, St Bernardus a rounder sweeter beer. I guess this explains why St Bernardus' darker beers are all sensational but the Tripel slightly flabby, and the Westmalle Tripel arguably the classic of the style, but the Westmall Dubbel lacking in complexity. More research needed.

Outliers: De Ranke Pere Noel - not bought to test a theory, or out of love and loyalty, but just because it was there and, well, why not. De Ranke's beers are genuinely world-class, and Pere Noel has a delicious pine-resin note to it that smells like christmas trees (to my nose). And Poperings Hommel, just because I'd had a bottle of Ridgeway Very Bad Elf that was so stuffed with classic hops that it reminded me of Hommel. And it was ages since I'd last had one.

A Night Less Ordinary with @friendsofham

So, who would turn down the opportunity to host two consecutive nights of beer and charcuterie at one of Leeds' most iconic buildings, the Corn Exchange? No, me neither. Thanks to Friends of Ham, 40-odd people (or 40 odd people, depending on who you sat next to) got to taste some unusual charcuterie paired with unusual beers.

The opener, ventrecina del Vastese was paired with a reception beer, Wild and Fyne's Cool as a Cucumber. To be fair, most people had finished the beer before the meat arrived - first beer of the night, glug and it's gone - but the fiery poke of the cured pork was gently soothed with the cucumber and mint session saison.

The air-dried mutton was lucky enough to be paired with Kernel London Sour. While the mutton was pretty lean and clean, that tell-tale note of lanolin that hangs around mutton was washed clean and crisp against the Berliner weisse styling of this beer.

When you agree to host an evening of "challenging" food and beer, you have to accept that not everything is going to be to everyone's tastes. The smoked lardo from Black Hand in Hackney had a good depth of flavour, but the short cure meant that it perhaps tasted and felt a little too much like what it was. Happily, Williams Bros/Heather Ale Alba Scots Pine Ale did a good job of restoring balance, giving a bold sluicing of sweet, piney goodness to challenged palates.

Do you like black pudding? Do you like chorizo? Then you'll love Black Chorizo! It's as simple as that, a perfect cross between two perfect types of sausage. Only challenging really if you're a bit squeamish about eating blood, although having typed that, it seems a perfectly reasonable thing to be squeamish about. This was paired with Fantome de Saison, which differed hugely from bottles I've had in the past by not smelling like a pair of dirty goats copulating in an abandoned dairy. It was soft, redolent of strawberries and mangoes, and quite ethereal. Not challenging, but certainly less ordinary.

Magret of duck, cured and smoked over beechwood, was very easy to like, and my favourite charcuterie of the night. Happily, it was paired with Siren Americano, a beer which I don't have the full story behind, but could quite happily be described as an American MilDIPA. The nutty malt and coffee wove beautifully into the fatty, unctuous duck before oodles of hops show up to kick the shit out of you.

Guanciale is whole cured pigs cheek. Being a lover of this particular cut when you buy it prepared from a butcher, I was excited by this, but the reality was a bit much even for me, the whole cheek being a lot more fatty and challenging than the little nugget of muscle that most carnivores think of when they see the word "cheek" on a menu. The cure was good, but hadn't really masked the fact that pigs cheeks spend a lot of time being buried in the soil, rooting through all manner of things that you don't want to think about. I can see it working in a carbonara though, as knowledgeable host Cat from FoH explained that it was this cut, not pancetta, that was the classic carbonara ingredient. But that's sort of the point of these events, to be pushed outside of your comfort zone a bit. Happily, judicious application of Duysters Tuverbol, an unlikely blend of a triple and lambic from Drie Fonteinen, acted as cleansing balm to this. The picture here shows two guests modelling the guanciale - apparently, you do this to warm it up and improve the texture.

Just to show I'm not a total wuss, the final charcuterie was my favourite. Salamella al fegato is a sausage of heart and liver cured with orange peel, fennel and vino cotto (boiled wine must). It's the sort of thing that I happily spread on toast for breakfast when I'm in Spain, much to the disgust of my family. It's a bit haggis-y, and so what better accompaniment than a spirit, albeit a freeze-distilled one: Watt Dickie from BrewDog was the logical conclusion to a challenging evening, and actually a pretty decent foil to the ofally nice salamella del fegato.

Props go to the whole Friends of Ham posse for conceiving of the night, finding an amazing venue, and getting me to host it. And special thanks to everyone who came and ate, drank, and was merry.