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.

Borefts #2

Gaustalle-Brau Natrub Zoiglbier (5.8%) - very slightly hazy, gold, hint of wildness in the aroma. Great texture, slightly heavy, slightly sweet, perfumed, fruity, big bitterness building towards a grassy finish. Great.

Mont Saleve Sorachi Bitter (2.5%) - hazy peach colour, classic Sorachi aroma (oily coconut) but somehow a tasty beer emerges from the Sorachi slickness. Enjoyable orange peel character emerges from the oiliness, before a big, big bitter finish. Good.

Buxton Wild Boar (5.7%) - tropical fruit nose, diesely undertones. Lovely balance of fruitiness, dryness and bitterness. Excellent.

This is such an unusual festival, this year spread across two sites a couple of hundred yards apart.The road between the new brewery and the old mill is a constant procession of people parading from one to the other, glass of beer in hand, crossing roads, all without incident.

Jester King Wytchmaker (7.3%) - hazy copper colour, spicy hop nose, toffee and pepper. Sweet on the palate, spicy pepper and oranges. A funky rye-driven farmhouse saison. Very good.

Buxton Tsar Bomba (9.5%) - Tsar with an old cultured strain of brett. Lush, smooth and complex, intense espresso mocha with a tickle of brett. Excellent.

Buxton Axe Edge (6.8%) - I can smell this from the tabletop two feet away. Lychees, passion fruit, diesel. Slick and sweet, touch of alcohol mid-palate, then a long and sweetly perfumed finish. Excellent.

At the old mill, a woodwind quintet strikes up, sounding for all the world like the backing band for a 'Debut'-era Bjork Unplugged session. All around them, people drink great beer and chat. The quintet are all dressed in freshly ironed white clothes, a single unit, an island of beautifully syncopated music, an oasis of cool concentration among the polite bacchanals.

Thornbridge Aussie Summer Ale (5%) - pin-bright, golden, softly fruity aroma, tropical hints ont he palate and nose, Classic Thornbridge. Made from Victoria's Secret hops - only 200kg in the world this year, of which Thornbridge got 30kg. Good.

Del Ducato Via Emilia (5%) - is there a hint of green gold about this, or is it just a trick of the mind? Noble hop character all the way through, but perfectly in balance, FOr me, a text-book pilsner. Brilliantly hoppy, but perfectly balanced. Very good.

Mont Saleve Blanche (5%) - neither as hazy nor as aromatic as you might want from a biere blanche,but hints of lemon barley water on the nose and palate, faintly cat-pissy. Doesn't really have much drinkability or moreishness. Oddly bitter finish. Not much cop, in all honesty.

Day two arrives, brisk and bright, with cartoon cotton wool clouds scudding across a Simpsons-blue sky. Everywhere people bustle about, on Saturday chores, on foot, on bikes so large they need to be climbed down from at a red light. A woman takes the lead off her chocolate Labrador, and in gentle guttural Dutch urges it onto the grass verge for a pee.

Alvinne Freaky (3.8%) - hazy copper colour, wild nose, thin body, wild tart finish. I don't think I'm a fan of their Morpheus yeast.

Del Ducato New Morning Saison (6%) - slightly yoghurty lactic aroma alongside classic saison spiciness. Pinprick carbonation, savoury celery quality. Burst of gently perfumed brett in the finish. Excellent.

Del Ducato Masochist IPA (6.5%) - hazy orange gold, tangerine aroma, tangerine palate, tangerine finish. Unsophisticated, but very good.

Bodegraven is such a sleepy suburban town that I'm struggling to see how it fits in with the mainly urban phenomenon of "craft beer". And yet people have travelled from all over the world to be here for a couple of days of low-key, almost inconspicuous beer geeking. All human life is here, and a few other forms besides, from the pot-bellied local guy, to the chi-chi Euro-femme, to hipsters of all ages and nationalities arriving on Saturday to be disappointed by Mikkeller having sold out of beer already.

Haandbryggeriet Sur Megge (8%) - peachy gold, tartly fruity nose, peach, lemons, honey, mano, pineapple, a total riot of fruit. Tart finish, faintly nutty, dry cider, more fruit. Absurdly good, monumentally good, actually indescribably good [my beer of the festival]

Narke Coffee Porter - [no note]

Kernel Topaz IPA - what to say? It's good.

ACCELERATED DRINKING PROGRAMME including Kernel Imperial Brown Stout (excellent) [it actually says this in my notebook. IN CAPS]

The Tulip Hotel, 2am Sunday morning: woken by a raucous party in the room next door. Is it an overspill from Saturday night hotel bar antics, or is it a bottle-sampling party. Sleep. Wake. Is that Craig's voice? Is that the Spanish guy I spoke to earlier? Is someone smoking? I hope the fire alarm doesn't go off.

Borefts #1

Christ, Holland is flat. From the upper deck of this train, you can see for miles. Well, you could see for miles if the Dutch nation, no doubt freaked out by the endless expanse of Netherlands all around them, hadn't planted a lot of trees. The trees follow the road, they follow the canal, they act as waymarkers, and they break up the agoraphobia-inducing sense of colossal sky pressing down with biblical force on the horizon all round.

Buxton SPA (4%abv, Nelson Sauvin dry-hopped special edition) - straw gold colour, slightly hazy. Nose is a touch dieselly, like Riesling (diesling?), almost certainly from the Nelson. Tropical fruit, then slightly tart bitterness. Good.

Thornbridge Baby Black Harry (2.8%) - given that it's advertised as being dry-hopped with Amarillo and Citra, I was expecting a bit of oomph, but it's a pretty straight down the line dark mild, roasty, designed for pints rather than dinky tasting glasses. Nice.

An adapted line from Salt N Pepa's Grammy-winning smash hit "None Of Your Business" loops over and over and over in my head: "If he wants to be a freak and be a beer geek then its none of your business". I'm heading for the Borefts Beer Festival at De Molen brewery, for two days of unashamed beer-geekery. I've got a leather-bound notebook, a purple corduroy jacket, and a mischievous intention to try and introduce the phrase "boutique brewery" to the lexicon over the weekend.

Thornbridge Wye (4.7%) - pale, nay limpid gold. Fresh air (?) and pale malt on the nose, and then the palate bursts at the finish with cucumbers. Yes, it's wet-cucumbered (the antithesis of dry-hopped) in the conditioning tank. Very good, but again, needs at least a half pint to get it.

Mikkeller SpontanDoubleBlueberry (8.5%) - thick indigo, with a persistent purple head. Tart funky nose, intense jammy aroma, violets. Fruity and tart on the tongue, big bursts of red fruit and funk in the finish. Symphonic, superb.

Bodegraven is such a sleepy, two-storey sleeper suburb of a commuter town that it's hard to believe there is anything going on here at all, let alone a dozen or more of the worlds hippest brewers in town pouring beer for a couple of thousand fans. Which makes it all the more thrilling to turn the corner on Overtocht to be confronted with the the mill, De Molen, in full sail, turning briskly in the breeze. My stomach actually lurches at the romance of it all.

Evil Twin Gooseberry Danbic (5%) - hazy pink (aged in red wine barrels) with a weirdly nutty nose. Faint hints of oloroso sherry (oxidation? age? barrels?). Tartly fruity (although could be any fruit), slightly acetic, oddly mousy finish. Interesting.

De Molen Nat & Droog (6.2%) - hazy orange - end of the keg. Massive hopsack and marmalade aroma. Big sweeetness on the palate, then spicy, then a bitterness that after a while develops an oddly chemical note to the hop character, which m'colleague The Beer Nut describes as beeing "too much like sucking hop pellets". Good, becoming odd later.

Soaking up the easy-easy nature of it all. You can wander round the brewery and look at everything, from the shiny stainless beer porn of the brewery itself, to the bottle store, to fresh-filled barrels, to the pallets upon pallets of Keykegs waiting to be filled. Mind gently boggles as it realises there are far to many beers to try.....

Jester King Petit Prince (2.5%) - hazy double-shine gold, appealing witbier/saison nose. Full carbonation, silky and smoothly drinkable, again on the palate a witbier/saison cross. Totally sessionable, and the sun has come out in agreement. Excellent

Jester King Buddha's Brew (4.7%) - cidery nose, slightly mealy and slick on the palate. Gently tart, slightly mousy, but hangs together nicely. Honey, lemon, dry cider in the finish. Good.