Beer on the telly! Me on the telly!

Beer has had a few favourable telly appearances recently. National newspapers still seem reluctant to give coverage to things beery but telly people seem increasingly willing to acknowledge that beer exists.

You are probably aware of the Hairy Bikers. They make hugely popular telly programmes and they sell caboodles of recipe books. Gordon, Nigella, Jamie and others also do these things but, pleasingly for us beer geeks, the Hairy Bikers are rather fond of beer and quite happy to say so.

The first episode of the Hairy Bikers new series "Everyday Gourmets" will feature beer. To be more precise, Dave and Si will "find out how beer can be as good a match with food as wine."

Dave and Si invited me to do a spot on camera talking them through beer and food matching. The scenes were shot last July at the highly agreeable Holyrood 9a pub in Edinburgh. I'm not going to go into detail about what beers I chose – you'll have to watch the programme to find out. I will though forestall comments on my beer selections.

I know what you beer geeks are like: you know lots of obscure beers. You like matching beer and food; you can match food with a myriad of obscure beers. You'll see my selections and think "you idiot Pickthall, you should have known beer X from brewery Y would have been perfect for that dish." 

The average peak time telly viewer is not a beer geek. The show's producers know that. They know their viewers and they know what provokes angry letters in green ink. Obscure beers only available on the beer geek underground for instance. I was instructed not to choose anything too obscure. As it happened, the dishes we featured were only decided upon once we'd arrived at the venue for the shoot. I could therefore only choose from the beers Holyrood 9a had in stock, and what was on the shelves of the Waitrose on the other side of the city centre. Hence the absence of anything too esoteric to annoy the green ink brigade.

I suspect I will also get criticism from some quarters for not exclusively featuring British beers. I also suspect there will be purists who will declare the beers I chose to be rubbish because they are not necessarily bottle-conditioned. Well, either way, I don't give a toss. I stand by my selections. I hope you enjoy them too.

p.s. I've also written a beer and food bit for the Hairys' next book "Great Curries." Rodenbach Grand Cru with vindaloo anyone?

The Palate Cleansing Taste Of Onion

This Walkers Sensations packaging blurb has had me chuckling all morning.

"The UK is ripe for a beer-drinking revolution" - 2001

Here's a piece the Daily Telegraph did on Microbar from August 2001. I dug it out while searching for quotes for a press release for Steve's brewing venture "Out There Brewing Company."

Some of the quotes from Steve and I were subject to some journalist license. Certainly neither of us said the words "personally, I blame most of the acts of random violence in the north east on Stella Artois", although the words "Stella Artois", "violence" and "north east" are likely to have occurred in a Pickthall jeremiad about the then-woeful state of British beer drinking.

I particularly like the quote that appears at the end: "Woolly CAMRA-types don't like what we're doing because we don't sell real ale." Again, we have been awkwardly paraphrased. This quote doesn't really capture what we were trying to express. A better quote would have been "Woolly CAMRA-types don't like what we are doing because we don't buy into their narratives. We don't use the term 'real ale' preferring instead 'craft beer'."

The line "with evangelists such as the Pickthalls working to promote craft-made beers, British beer-drinkers should before long have an alternative to lager that is not just real ale" is an interesting one. The reporter seems not to have grasped that we were pro-[good] lager and that our disavowal of the term "real ale" in preference for "craft beer" was in part motived by our desire to de-demonise lager. Also, could this be the first documented British use of "craft beers", albeit appearing as "craft-made beers"?

Click to go large and legible.

SIBA Beer Judging – Not Fit For Purpose?

I recently judged at SIBA’s Great Northern Beer Competition at the Mercure Hotel in Manchester.

SIBA is an organisation I respect.

I have considerably more respect for SIBA than I do another beer organisation that possesses a pseudo-Marxist perspective on the beer market, is notoriously dogmatic and intransigent, and promotes the fallacy that all real ale is good beer and its corollary, all non-real ale is bad beer.

I judged at the same SIBA event two years ago. It was a dispiriting experience. I witnessed incidents of spectacular beer-judging cluelessness.

SIBA adopts the position that beer judging should reflect the preferences of the kind of people who consume its members’ beers. No particular credentials are required to be a SIBA judge other than being a beer drinker and being somehow connected with the trades of brewing or selling beers (with a few random “dignitaries” requiring smoke blowing up their arses.)

Two years ago, two particular incidents occurred which stick in my mind. In one round of judging there was a bloke in a faded Pink Floyd t-shirt and mullet who decided he was the table’s expert. He told us he’d been working at beer festivals for thirty years etcetera ad nauseam. He pronounced his verdict on every beer we encountered. I soon realised he was the taste equivalent of cloth-eared when he failed to mark down a beer that was strongly diacetyl.

The second incident was similar. In a later round a chap in a brewery polo shirt (it transpired he was an employee of the brewery) appointed himself as the table loudmouth. In a round of worthy-but-dull pale golden beers we encountered one with a vivid fruity flavour. Mr Loudmouth announced “that’s my kind of beer” (his exact words stick in my mind.) Unfortunately the flavour was the unmistakeable (to me) green apple tang of acetaldehyde.

In both cases I could see the more inexperienced judges re-assess their scores upwards after hearing the mistaken praise from the know-alls. There was one very nice couple on the second table who had won a “win a day judging beer” competition in a pub. I watched them do what a lot of inexperienced judges do – picking up clues from others before forming their opinions. They marked the acetaldehyde beer highly.

I didn't judge last year but this year I was persuaded to judge again by Jon Kyme of the wonderful Stringers Beer of Ulverston. It wasn’t without trepidation that I travelled to Manchester.

My trepidations and reservationswere warranted. I found myself on a table judging premium bitters (if I recall correctly.) We encountered four or five worthy but dull beers. No glaring faults but nothing very interesting. Two of the beers were more vivid,  possessing a hop character that suggested an American influence. They were both well-executed and intelligently conceived without being mouth-puckeringly bitter. A fellow judge declared “they smell, my customers wouldn’t drink them” and presented a histrionic grimace. Her body-language was as if she’d been offered a dog-shit sandwich. As the loudmouth of the table, more timid, inexperienced judges lapped it up and the beers scored badly. I was tempted to offer a spirited defence of the beers and a critique of her ability to judge beer, but I felt it not worth the risk of the red mist descending. I kept schtum.

In a later round I found myself once again on the same table as this Bet Lynch. Amongst the array of worthy but dull beers there was one that was strongly diacetyl. Junior Bet Lynch commented "Ooh, that’s nice, it’s kind of…” Her words tailed off and I filled in "butterscotch.” "Yes, that's it!" This time I had to explain that the flavour and aroma of butterscotch was undesirable. The existence of the unmistakeable oxidised flavour of damp cardboard in the finish confirmed to me this beer was fucked. Bet Lynch deferred to my superior wisdom. Wise.

I insisted the beer was off. Our runner took away the offending jug of beer and returned with a replacement. The runner told us that the brewer of the beer was helping behind the scenes and that he had spotted his own beer being returned. The brewer was told his beer was suspected of being off. We were told the brewer had responded “it’s supposed to be like that – malty.” Our second jug was similarly off. I gave it a rock-bottom score. I don’t suppose it scored highly with my fellow judges, but I might be wrong.

On my final table of the day I found myself judging with a large domineering chap who worked for a brewery, and a couple of his chums. Mr Bellicose chose to chunter audibly through his judging – "eeh, I couldn't drink six pints o' that" or "I could drink that all night" and scored the beers accordingly. The beers he favoured were the blandest; the beers he marked down had more flavour. "Well Mr Bellicose," I wanted to shout, "we don't give a fuck what you would choose to pour down your fat ignorant neck."

After the judging I was talking toWill France of the marvellous Port Street Beer House. He made similar observations about conspicuously bad judging. As manager of a trendy crafty beer catwalk outlet he knew his customers wouldn’t be too impressed by an insipid 3.8% session beer, just as Bet Lynch’s customers wouldn’t be impressed by a 6% hop-bomb. 

In one corner there are judges like Will and myself: familiar with a wide range of styles of beer, knowledgeable about common off-flavours, unperturbed by big flavours or high strength. In the other corner there is Bet Lynch and Mr Bellicose: their judging defined by narrow parameters of acceptability.

This raises a question: which kind of judge better serves SIBA’s desire to award prizes to the best beers by its members? Will France and I or Bet Lynch and Mr Bellicose?

It’s not hard is it?

The profusion of the the Bet Lynch and Mr Bellicose type of judge is letting down SIBA. SIBA’s policy of turning beer judging into a jolly for all-and-sundry is lowering the standard of judging and undermining the validity of its competitions. The results may well reflect the views of many ordinary drinkers, but ordinary drinkers aren't necessarily capable of making sound judgements.

---------------------------

P.s. To whom it may concern in SIBA: biscuits for cheese are NOT suitable palate-cleansers. Sugars and fats of Hovis biscuits and TUCs have the opposite effect.

"All Lager Tastes The Same"

In my local CAMRA newsletter, the Furness Innquirer (geddit?), I spotted this:

The irksome sentence occurs in a contributor's beer-related observations in an account of a holiday to India.

This sort of utterance boils my piss.

All lager does not taste the same. It doesn't; it really doesn't. The writer offers the caveat "to my tastebuds" but in doing so undermines his own status as a beer aficionado that is conferred by having his words published in a CAMRA publication. If the author's tastebuds are so deficient that all lagers taste the same to him then all ales must also taste the same.

The likely scenario is that the author simply hasn't tasted good lager and only got as far as Coors, Carling etc. – lagers that are designed to have minimum flavour.

What irks me is the possibility that a neophyte beer lover may read this and get the idea that there is some truth in it, after all it's in a CAMRA publication and CAMRA knows about beer, right? The neophyte may miss years of ecstatic bottom-fermented pleasure because of this horse shit. 


I know how that feels. It only dawned on me after ten or so years of beer drinking that lager may after all have some merit. I was a victim of exactly this sort of low-level brainwashing. I missed years of beery pleasure because of the anti-lager meme – and I've never even been a CAMRA member.

The standard Tandle-onian defence of this sort of hogwash is something like "they're only well-meaning amateurs, just overlook it." But no, I can't overlook it. It bothers me that this kind of anti-connoisseurship message carries the CAMRA imprimatur. It is a disservice to good beer.

Leeds International Beer Festival

As I type, the Saturday evening sesaion of the Leeds International Beer Festival will be in full swing. My brother Steve and I attended last night.

As a non-CAMRA event the format seemed a little strange – brewers manned their own stands and dispensed their own beer. And as a non-CAMRA event cask breathers, keykegs, and regular kegs were on view.

Among the festival goers there were lots of women and young people – evidence of the way beer has come out of its long-standing cultural ghetto.

Being a warm evening many people chose to sit outside on the front steps of the proud Victorian town hall. Surprisingly there was an absence of finger-wagging stewards – and festival-goers were allowed outside with their glasses. Disasters failed to ensue.

It was an enjoyable event but I have one major complaint: the name "Leeds International Beer Feer Festival" suggests international beer should be a prominent feature. The only imported draught beers we encountered were by Odell and Sierra Nevada*. There were a few more bottled American beers but where were beers from Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and elsewhere? Very disappointing.

*Sierra Nevada's Saison was sublime.

UPDATE: I've just had a flashback: I recall seeing some Italian beers. Still, my point stands, for an "International" beer festival there wasn't much foreign beer.

CAMRA-Bashing from 2001

Another dusty clipping from my archive.

CAMRA attacked in consumer poll 

16 August 2001

Liverpool brewer’s research concludes real ale group is out-of-touch
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has again been attacked for being out of touch with today’s beer drinkers.

New research by Liverpool brewer Cains found that confusion over the terminology used by CAMRA to describe real ale means drinkers are becoming alienated.

The report comes just two weeks after CAMRA was widely criticised for its decision to ban two Greene King ales from the Great British Beer Festival and has fuelled claims that CAMRA is no longer representative of ordinary drinkers.

Cains conducted its research in and around Liverpool to identify the strengths and weaknesses of its brands.

It discovered that there was “widespread co nfusion” about real ale. Many drinkers thought it was the “obscure stuff drunk at beer festivals”.

But the most damning part of the research came in responses that mentioned CAMRA.
Many of the respondents referred to CAMRA in a negative way, claiming they would not drink real ale because it “is the stuff drunk by CAMRA members”.

In fact, Cains concluded that “rather than making real ale widely appealing, CAMRA may now be helping to make it exclusive”.

This criticism is ill-timed for the consumer group, which is already under fire from Greene King supporters for banning Old Speckled Hen and Ruddles County from this yearís Great British Beer Festival (GBBF).

But CAMRA has defended itself strongly against the latest criticisms.
Spokesman Tony Jerome said the new NaturALE pha se of its Ask if it’s Cask campaign, which features nude models, had gone a long way towards changing people’s perceptions of real ale.

“The campaign has used stylish images, including young male and female models to emphasise the natural aspects of real ale,” he said.

He added that CAMRA was now concentrating its marketing strategies on appealing to all drinkers and had employed a membership officer to target different age groups.
Mr Jerome also challenged brewers, such as Cains, to get behind the CAMRA campaign.
“We are targeting female drinkers who are usually ignored by brewers’ laddish marketing strategies,” he said.

“The Ask if it’s Cask campaign is challenging the bigger brewers to put some of their large marketing budgets behind real ale to target the youngsters.”

Before "Craft Beer"

I have all sorts of old stuff lurking in my documents folder. Lots of old beer-related clipping from as long ago as 1998 which was about the time newspapers were starting to publish on the web.

Here's an article I found recently. I've tried googling chunks of the text but to no avail; I don't know where or when it appeared. The phrase "the Millennium effect is expected to halt the rot" would date it to the late nineties.

How the beer market has changed and how the tone of beer coverage has changed with it.

No longer ale and hearty

Beer must become the new wine says Richard Neill

SOMEHOW, the beer-belly-and-facial-hair stereotype has got to be erased and replaced with a sexier image

Despite little change in the average darts player's girth - normally around about the eight-pint pregnancy mark - the average Briton is actually drinking less beer than he used to.
Recent figures released by the Drinks Forecast show that beer consumption has dropped in the past five consecutive quarters and, although the Millennium effect is expected to halt the rot, the decline is expected to continue once the New Year hangover subsides.

For hundreds of years, beer has been the nation's favourite tipple - even Elizabeth I used to have a quart of ale every breakfast - and that legacy has created a unique drinking culture. American tourists travel thousands of miles just to soak up the pleasure of sitting in Ye Olde Tourist Trappe with a pint of Ru …sty Widdle, while watching the classic evening migratory pattern of the thirsty British male. This normally involves a random series of movements from bar stool to loo to bar and back to bar stool, that reaches a perfect synchronisation of participants with one simple shout of "Time, gentlemen, please".

Yet if the current downward trend continues, this culture, these habits, and - most important - these flavours may well disappear for good. The number of village pubs is declining as fast as the number of post offices; regional breweries are closing down everywhere; and famous ales are being wiped off the corporate balance sheet and replaced with lagers, and ales that taste like lagers.

This year alone, Mitchell's of Lancaster, Ward's of Sheffield, Vaux of Sunderland and Alloa Brewery have all ceased production and, unlike distilleries (which can often be revived), they will never brew again.

Some of our older readers might remember drinking Old Dambust Ãer, Strong's Country Bitter and Blackpool's Best, but memories are all they are now. These and many more great beers have been axed for good. And if that is not suficiently depressing, just consider the following facts. Almost one in 10 pints drunk in this country is Carling lager; more than 80 per cent of all beer produced comes from just four giant breweries; and the most popular name for new shopping centres is The Maltings (after the breweries whose sites they now occupy). It is enough to make you cry into a pint of creamy, flavourless nitrokeg.
But blame for the demise of the ale drinker cannot just be directed at the corporate policy of a few big companies. Changes in tastes and social behaviour have as much to do with shrinking ale sales as anything else. It is difficult to pinpoint an exact moment when the rot set in. England rugby player Colin Smart's memorable post-match decision to drink a pint of aftershave instead of beer is one possibility. Bu «t the session-drinking male is definitely a dying breed.

The "pint after work" has been replaced with the "gym after work" and even that most reliable of ale drinkers - the rugby prop forward - has changed quaffing habits. With the arrival of the new super-fit "total rugby player", you are more likely to see Jason Leonard swigging Badoit than bitter these days.

Iain Loe of Camra, whose membership, ironically, is at an all-time high of more than 50,000, believes the increasingly fickle behaviour of drinkers has also contributed to the problems. "People are just not loyal to one particular favourite beer any more," says Loe, who also blames the lack of generic promotion for real ale.

Perhaps in response to the alarming sales figures, Camra has switched some of the emphasis of its campaigning away from negative sniping at the latest Firkin Forgettable or All Bar One Decent Pint towards a more positive approach of highlighting the good things about real ale. With the survival of beer (whether it is a microbrew or big brand) at stake, Camra knows that promotion is now more vital than protectionism.

So what is the solution? How can the brewing industry turn around its image and get more young people excited about Fuggles and Golding Hops, instead of Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon? The answer lies in these two grape varieties. To make itself more popular, beer's best option is to reinvent itself as the new wine.

Over the past two decades, wine consumption has grown to the extent that it recently overtook beer in off-licence sales. Thanks to its healthy image and our gradual switch towards more Continental eating and drinking habits, this once-maligned drink has had a turnaround in fortunes of Martini cocktail pro ßportions. You only have to compare the size of beer and wine ranges in supermarkets or look at the relative grain to grape consumption in the new "gastropubs" to realise how wine now reaches the parts that beers used to dominate (never mind reach).

The challenge that beer faces is very different to that faced by wine 20 years ago. While wine had to escape its elitist trappings, beer has to break free of its working-class associations and become more sophisticated. Somehow, the beer-belly-and-facial-hair stereotype has got to be erased and replaced with a sexier image.

And it is happening, albeit slowly. If you had walked into Safeway's recent press tasting for its new ßbottled-beer range (and had not looked at what everyone was sipping), you would have thought you had walked into a wine testing. The same sniffing-and-spitting routine was going on, the same scribbling of notes on colour, aroma and taste.

Having crusaded for years to bring wine to the masses, our supermarkets now seem determined to do the same for good old ale, and the efforts being made by Safeway, Tesco and others could be the best chance of a bright beer future.

Who knows, if real ale really does manage to change into new clothes and return to being the nation's favourite form of lubrication, the great British beer gut might not be forced into extinction after all.