Sixpoint Brewery - From There To Here In Seven Years

Here's a snap from my visit to Sixpoint Brewery in 2007. The mists of time and parenthood have managed to separate this image from its notes, so I've no idea who this enthusiastic gentleman is. I remember that he was mashing in when we arrived, stirring the mash with the paddle. He preferred doing it this way - it kept him in touch with the mash. And of course, he got to pour sweat into it too - hey, don't worry, it's going to be boiled for an hour. What I love about this photo is that it's already in the Sixpoint colour scheme.

Fast forward seven years, and what should arrive in the post but a brace and a half of cans from Sixpoint. I have to admit to a flash of jealousy; a couple of years ago, I got in touch with Sixpoint hoping to buy beer off them, and while the exchange of emails went well, the trail went cold after I was handed off to another member of the team. After a series of humiliating answerphone messages ("Hi, we exchanged a lot of emails and then you stopped replying. Hello? Helloooo?"), I gave it up as a bad job.

So JW Wetherspoons are now selling Sixpoint beers in cans - I know, WT and indeed F. They are part of their new craft range, and from what I can see, are going to be alarmingly reasonably priced. The Crisp is a pilsner-style lager, pale, hop-hazy and falls broadly into what me termed the "lawnmower deluxe" category. Clean, well-made, and the grassy bitterness kept me tantalisingly on the edge of a Proustian experience - what DID that beer remind me of? I will never know.

Sweet Action is described in Wetherspoon's press release as "part pale ale, part wheat, part cream ale", which of course reminds me (and you too, I'm sure) of Doctor Octagon's track "Half Shark-Alligator Half Man", and allows me to post this completely gratuitous shot of me with Kool Keith (aka Dr Octagon) when the Ultramagnetic MCs perfomed at Leeds' superb Brudenell Social Club last year. And like that gig, Sweet Action doesn't quite satisfy, coming across somehow as slightly ersatz - a bit sweet, a bit flabby, a bit "gimme fifty bucks and I'll take my headscarf off".

Bengali Tiger is a beer I've tried before - in fact, it features in my now out of print first book (if I keep saying "first", it implies a second can't be too far behind). Here's what I said about it then: "There is a crunchy hop aroma to this copper-gold IPA, but unlike a lot of 'me too' IPAs, there is also a good malt presence. The citrus zest and toffee carries through to the palate where, although the hops become more prominent, the malt still plays a supporting role". It's a good job I went to the trouble of digging that out, because my initial impression was that it had perhaps lost a bit of hop character in transit, but that tasting note chimes exactly with my recent experience of it.

So, well done Wetherspoons for doing this. In the nicest possible way, this is the tipping point where American craft beer has gone mainstream in the UK. I've read that these are retailing in 'Spoons for £2.89 each, or two for a fiver - that's a completely barking price that suggests 'Spoons are making very little per unit, but are shifting large volumes of it, and probably haven't gone for any carbon-offsetting on the deal. The beers are fundamentally decent, they look cool, and according to the press release, will be served in a world beer glass. If it was up to me, they'd be served as-is and crushed on the forehead when emptied.

The Greene King Paradox

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.

Now Drinking: Birra del Borgo Castagnale

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).

Wetherspoon's Real Ale Festival

Just a quick round-up of the eight beers I tried, across three of Wetherspoon's pubs in Leeds city centre yesterday. I was of course hoping to drop on one of the holy grails of their festival - a beer by one of the foreign guest brewers that Wetherspoon flies in for the festival. As luck would have it, the 'Spoons at Leeds railway station had Zululand Zulu Blonde (4.5%abv) on, so this was my first tick (I've not taken up ticking, it's just a figure of speech). It was a perfectly decent pale golden ale, faintly floral, with a gentle bitterness, but nothing that would make me go back for another. To be honest, it was thrown into the shade a bit by my next beer, Elland Eden (4.2%abv), which demonstrated how far the pale golden ale category had come, all brightly fruity hops and creamy malt. Yes, I know that's not actually in the festival, but it had a festival pumpclip on it. Oh well, a happy accident.

Brains Honest Ale (4.5%abv) was solid, if unexciting, and frankly paled into comparison next to the creamy, spicy delights of Val-Dieu Abbaye Blonde (5.5%abv), a huge mouthfilling blonde beer, sweet and slightly worty, with a luscious, nourishing quality - beer as a foodstuff, no less. Budelse Capucijn (6%abv) seemed disgustingly buttery in comparison, but that's the thing about comparitive tasting - your palate needs a few sips to adjust. What seemed buttery to the point of gag-inducing was revealed to be a rich, spicy dubbel, with gingerbread notes and a spicy hop finish. Very good.

Sharp's Gentle Jane (4.8%abv) is unusual, having a slightly sherried edge (I thought fino or nutty dry oloroso), alongside the trademark Sharp's character. I think the brew is innoculated with a strain of peddiococcus bacteria, which would account for the atypical flavour set. I thought it was distinctive, different and enjoyable. By comparison, Banks's Morrell's Oxford Blue (4%abv) had a lot going for it, but was a bit too restrained on the hop front to make enough impact. Wadworth's Farmers Glory (4.7%abv) was sweetly nutty, with a surprisingly dry hop finish.

Overall, the beers were in great condition, and the three 'Spoons that I visited were all perfectly decent places to drink. Maybe it would have been nice to see a few more beers amped up a bit for the festival - the Morrell's beer in particular could have been great if it had a bit more poke, looking on paper to be a C-hop riot (Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Columbus), but just missing out in the glass. But generally, my experience of the Spoonsfest is that it's a lot of good beer, in good condition, at a great price. You can't knock that.