Kelly Ryan, Begone!

Hairy-handed and Hobbit-like, Antipodean refugee Kelly Ryan has struggled to fit into the UK brewing scene. After years of ham-fisted attempts at brewing something drinkable, he finally hit paydirt by somehow falling into a recently-vacated job. He was lucky to somehow gain the confidence of brewer Stefano Cossi - perhaps it was his fancy double degree in Microbiology and Food Science and Technology from the University of Otago. Clearly Thornbridge Brewery are not in the habit of checking references - there is in fact no such place as Otago.

After two long years of woeful incompetence, Thornbridge were forced to invest heavily in automated technology in an attempt to prevent Kelly from ruining any more beer. To this day, it is a mystery how Kelly's mere presence in a brewery can have such a detrimental effect on the beer that is being brewed, but it does. A programme of international mentorship, under the guise of a series of collaborative brews, all failed to stop the rot. Sadly, all the costly investment in brewing technology, not to mention endless hand-waxing and lessons in walking upright, have come to nought. In a last-ditch attempt to save what reputation he has, Kelly is returning to New Zealand.

This momentous event has seen a great outpouring of emotion in the blogosphere. No more shall we have to suffer exotically-monikered beers stuffed awkardly with crude hop character. No more absurd diatribes on forcing carbon dioxide into beer. And finally, no more tedious innovation and pursuit of some mythical, elysian notion of brewing. Frankly, it's been exhausting, and I think I speak for every beer-lover in the UK when I say that we're glad it's over.

Kelly Ryan, begone. You are dead to us already.

(For a more detailed exploration of the sort of contempt in which I hold Kelly's abilities, see Halcyon, Larkspur, and Jaipur & Bottle Conditioning)

BrewDog's Next Beer: Ahab's Undoing

"Ahab's Undoing is a Polydimensional meta-rauchbock, sealed in a Brazilian Rosewood kilderkin and implanted into the abdomen of a live sperm whale, named Billie Joe in honour of Punk pioneers Green Day. The whale then roams the seven seas for 50 years, monitored by satellite and armed with nukes to keep the sushi-eaters at bay, before being lured into an arena at Deep Sea World (Inverkeithing, Firth of Forth) where the beer is "tapped" with a harpoon gun and "poured" via the animal's blowhole, into sequin-encrusted replicas of Duchamp's urinal (customed-made by Damien Hirst, using telekinesis) which are then presented to a select gathering of truly open-minded beer lovers.

"In an attempt to subvert the capitalist structures propping up the ossified cadaver of the bland booze mainstream, we will not be charging money for the opportunity to sample beer history in the making - instead, interested parties will be required to hand over their firstborn offspring, to be used as fermentable material in our next opus-in-waiting, which is tentatively titled Brave New World.

"The beer itself is infused with an innovative mixture of protozoan zooplankton from the South Pacific and top-quality bespoke dogfood (reflecting the life-cycle of the whale), and is brewed to an unprecedented -50%abv. This singularly unique and uncommonly individualistic barnstorming tour de force of antialcoholic exclusivity will induce such a profound state of sobriety in the discerning rebel iconoclast that he or she will never think of anything the same way twice for the rest of their taboo-busting and preconception-immolating livespan.

It's a truly insurrectionary brew, the beer equivalent of the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. Don yer sowesters, friends - thar she fuckin' blows!"

[Emailed to me by Dan Payne, Beer-Ritz employee extraordinaire, demon cinematic projectionist, and DJ of rare talent. Thanks Dan]

On Pub Quizzes and Hop Cannons: A Birthday Ramble

It's my birthday. I'm 40. I'm having a beer and food dinner with friends later, as mentioned here, and as you may guess, I'm going to write about in excrutiating detail. But for now, a ramble of things that have happened lately.

First up, there's an effort being made to stage the world's biggest pub quiz. I haven't seen any other bloggers mention it (apologies if you have, I can't read everything), so why not have a look at their website, or follow them on Teitter. Go on, it's for charity.

Secondly, at the start of the year I wrote a spoof piece about the worst beer in the world. In it, I mention that the brewery resorted to shooting hops from a cannon. What a ludicrous thought - who in their right mind would do such a thing? Well, at the Dogfish Head dinner the other evening, I was talking to Andreas from Vertical Drinks (the importers), and he mentioned that the 90 Minute IPA actually does have hops shot into it from a gas-activated cannon. You can see the video about it here.

Finally, thanks to everyone for their best wishes, via Twitter, email, text and old-fashioned but much-prized cards - I'm touched. With astounding timing, as I sat typing this, a courier arrived at the door with a gift case of beer from Hall & Woodhouse, or Badger as they are more commonly known. Thanks very much to Badger for their generosity. I'm off to see them in a few weeks, and you can expect a write up on that, and their beers, in the fullness of time. Cheers!

Worst Beer in the World Created in Belgian Brewery

One of the worst beers ever brewed has apparently been created in a small Belgian brewery.

Proprietor of De Spoofbrouwerij, Piers ran dom Shite, says that he wanted to do something to "really put our little brewery on the map".

"We used every technique we could think of - extreme continuous hopping, freeze and boil distillation, smashing the malt with the little toffee hammers, everything. At one point, we even fired hops out of a cannon straight into the boiling copper" explained Mr ran dom Shite. "We used many different strains of yeast - cultured, uncultured and barbarous - to get the fermentation going. Then we just wandered off and left it over the weekend. It smelled pretty bad when we came back, but we skimmed the scum off and put it into the old barrels".

Months of barrel ageing have produced a beer that unpleasantly acidic, overly bitter, and full of dangerous higher alcohols. Members of various beer rating and advocacy communities are thought to be appalled by the description of the beer, but nonetheless excited to try it.

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For the avoidance of doubt, this is a spoof, inspired by this. It's one thing making a beer big, bold and beautiful, it's quite another thing to go all out for numbers. It's like making the noisiest car in the world, or, as Garrett Oliver says, the saltiest food - it's missing the point completely.

Complexity, length and balance - that's what it's all about, not hoppiest, strongest or bitterest. Sure, push the envelope, but remember - it's meant to be beer. I was particularly impressed that the ratings for Mikkeller X Hop Juice say things like one dimensionsal, thin, funny experiment, but it still chalks up a high rating.

(As I was writing this, I wondered if BrewDog's Tactical Nuclear Penguin fell foul of the "shooting for the high numbers" rule, but I don't think it does - it's an interesting beer liqueur in its own right, unusual and extreme, but still enjoyable, albeit with a bit of prior knowledge of what it is. And anyway, TNP is no longer the strongest beer in the world - it's been eclipsed by Schorschbrau Schorsch Bock)