it's just the beer talking

What is Craft Beer?

2012-01-27T20:35:00.002Z

Like pornography, it's hard to define, but I know it when I see it.

National Winter Ales Festival

2012-01-20T10:35:00.000Z

Some pictures.

It was a beer festival. Beer was consumed.

Golden Pints

2011-12-15T10:42:00.003Z

I know soon as I click 'publish' I'll start remembering things I should have included, but hey ho, let's go....

Best UK draught beer: Joint winners here. I don't want anyone to think I have a particular loyalty to my home county, it just so happens that this year three of my most memorable, almost tear-in-the eye moments, have been from beers from my own turf.

Coniston Brewery's "Blacksmith's Ale". This one snuck up on me. Although I've been drinking various Coniston beers for years, This one wasn't on my radar. In my fifteen London years, Coniston beers were eagerly anticipated on homeland visits. I think that I had been reacting viscerally to its misleading description "winter warmer", a term which suggests to me, moderately-hopped sweet toffee-ish beers. In reality it's a copper-coloured ale with abundant hops. It's magic is in the way the flavours hang together and integrate as a coherent intelligent magical whole. Borrowing a word from the wine world, this beer has "length" – its flavours develop and mutate upon every sip, it lingers, it slowly reveals new nuances. There is no greater complement for a beer – from me anyway.

Cumbrian Legendary Ales "Rothay Red IPA" – A new one. Only appeared in recent weeks. Possesses all the complexity of "Blacksmith's" but with abundant use of some kind of reddish malt and (I'm guessing) some rye.

Stringers "Furness Abbey" - Splendid Belgie-esque cask beer.

Camden Lager. Hugely quenching, biscuity. Everything you need from a standard lager. Intelligently conceived. Properly brewed. Nicely presented.

Best UK packaged beer: I'm struggling to think of any particular beer that deserves to be singled out as overall winner so I'm just going to mention some that I have found myself making repeated acquisitions of.

Coniston's "Thurstein Pilsner" is misleadingly named; if it wasn't a protected designation of origin "Kölsch"would be more appropriate. Then again, no resident of Cologne would mistake it for one of their own. It's flavour is more savoury than a Kolsch. Whereas Pilsner hops are often described as "grassy" I might be inclined to described Thurstein's as "celery salty". And I like celery salt. A lot. By the way, according to Wikipedia "The lake [Coniston] was formerly known as "Thurston Water", a name derived from the Old Norse personal name 'Thursteinn' + Old English 'waeter'.^[2]This name was used as an alternative to Coniston Water until the late 18th century."

Hardknott's "Queboid". Dave may be busy trumpeting about his new "Vitesse Noir" but I think this is his best beer.

Best Overseas packaged:

"Boont Amber" by Anderson Valley and "Anchor Bock" by Anchor of San Francisco.

Best Overall Beer:

It has to be the aforementioned Coniston Blacksmiths

Best Pumpclips:

Dunno

Best UK Brewery:

Coniston

Best Overseas Brewery:

Dunno

Pub/Bar of the Year:

The Free Trade Inn, Byker, Newcastle and the Jolly Butchers, Stoke Newington.

Beer Festival of the Year:

GBBF, simply because of the import selection and that I get to see almost all of the friends I've ever made in beer.

Supermarket of the Year:

Booths, but I really wish they would do more interesting imports. [Booths – if you're reading this – I am available for consultation]

Independent Retailer of the year:

BeerRitz

Online Retailer of the year:

Dunno, haven't used any.

Best Beer Book/Mag:

Beer. If only it was more widely available and not so on-message of the CAMRA narratives.

Best Blog:

For being an elegant writer and for not being someone who endlessly posts links to their own utterances on every bloody medium known to man http://www.beerbirrabier.com/

Not sure it counts as a blog but I rather like http://desdemoor.co.uk/

Best tweeter:

Do me a favour.

Best Online Brewery Presence:

Dunno

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year:

There have been many. If I recall a particularly outstanding one I'll come back and edit this.

What I'd like to do in 2012:

More of what I've done in 2011 but with a healthier bank balance.

Open Categories:-

Worst Pumpclip:

http://pumpclipparade.blogspot.com/2011/11/smart-brewing-company-smart-arse.html

Most Over-Rated Brewery: buy me a couple of pints and I'll tell you.

Heresy? (Hardknott Dave, avert your gaze)

2011-12-10T12:55:00.001Z

I've tasted Hardknott's mad bonkers Vitesse Noir a few times now.

It has a fantastic complex aroma of coffee and multitude of malt nuances. It's a beer that needs sipping, it's so rich and juicy and strong it defies a decent gulp. It's carbonation is barely discernable.

So in the pub recently I quipped it would benefit from a dash of Coke. The veins in Hardknott Dave's neck bulged as he forced a laugh at my heretical utterance.

At home last night I realised I was in possession of some Coke (a-Cola, that is) and a VN. So an experiment was in order.

I poured VN into two glasses. One as a control, one to receive the heretical mixer.

In the second glass I started with Coke:VN at 1:1. Yuk. The Coke overwhelmed the beer and a perfectly acceptable soft drink was ruined.

I upped the beer. 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, 1:5, 1:6, tasting the mixture at each stage. By 1:6 the overwhelming Coke sweetness was suitably diluted whilst some of its carbonation gave the cocktail a lift.

Tasting the control beer in the other glass came as a shock; it seemed extra rich, cloying and intense. The mix was lighter and easier drinking whilst the VN's abundant flavours remained. But the Coke flavour seemed to fight above its weight. Further dilution was necessary. I poured the control and the mix into one glass. Finally it was spot-on. I guess the ratio was about 1:10.

Clutching At Straws For A Silver Lining

2011-10-17T12:33:00.000+01:00

I've signed the beer tax e-petition. I hope you have too.

I don't suppose that it will have any impact whatsoever, but, what the hell, we've got nothing to lose have we?

The trouble is, strong beer is a soft target. The bigger problem is that governments want to keep on being governments rather than shadow governments. In order to do so they must keep their voters on side by being seen to punish those core voters' "out groups" (psychology speak for subjects of bigotry or prejudice).

The core voters for the current government are Daily Mail readers (well, not for the Lib Dems, but let's forget about them, everybody else does). They're not a constituency known for letting facts get in their way of their opinions. Strong beer has no hope of gaining favour with these people; and it is these people to whom the government would have to justify a drop in duty on stronger beer. The Daily Mail would stir up a storm of wrong-headed indignation.

The problem is multi-faceted:

1) It's beer – this voter demographic is keen to be regarded as middle-class. They regard beer as a working-class drink and binge-drinking as a working-class habit.

2) It's strong – Binge drinking is spiralling out of control, is it not? (remember what I said about not letting facts get in the way of opinions?).

3) Al fresco drinkers are the public face of strong beer.

4) Much strong beer is foreign. The voter demographic is notoriously xenophobic.

Our defence has two facets, neither of which I fear will have much impact :

a) The duty rise affects beers favoured by connoisseurs who generally go home quietly, failing to trouble the emergency services.

This is not likely to have much impact as connoisseurship is a euphemism for snobbery. In Daily Mail land snobbery is a very bad thing.

b) The new beer duty has a negative impact on Britain's new wave of craft breweries and pubs and bars.

This is not going to create sympathy amongst Daily Mail readers. When the Daily Mail reports on binge drinking the comments sections fill up with suggestions that the breweries should be clamped down upon. Mired in a model that is at least thirty years out of date, the DM reader uses "breweries" to mean all producers and retailers of alcohol, any alcohol. Binge drinking is increasing so "breweries" must be punished.

All in all, I fear we are stuck with this stupid tax rise. The best we can do is to gird our collective loins for action about any further duty increases.

The only silver lining I can see is that higher priced stronger craft beer may induce the higher price = higher quality perception in more people.

This was the principal used so cleverly by the marketers of Stella Artois in their "reassuringly expensive" slogan. Psychologists and economists have repeatedly demonstrated that people prefer wine they are told is expensive to wine they are told is cheap, even if it is identical – or inferior. People want to be seen as demonstrating taste and discernment, and higher price is the biggest clue available that an item is superior.

This can only be good for beer. It may even draw more people into sharing our pleasure in beer. Beer may shake off some of its downmarket reputation.

Some Armchair Beerology

2011-10-11T12:33:00.000+01:00

Please take my survey: goo.gl/gFYQo

I don't want to give to much away at the moment. I don't want to give you any prompts that affect your response, so please bear with the lack of info for the time being.

I'm aiming to get a minimum of 100 responses so please pass the link on to your beer-drinking friends.

Craftiness from CAMRA or Daily Mail being it's usual vile self?

2011-09-26T10:43:00.002+01:00

You may have noticed that I am not CAMRA's number one fan. The dogmatism, the prickliness, the thinly-veiled politics, the intransigence, the self-congratulation: you get the picture.

Nor am I a fan of the Daily Mail. The lies, the distortions, the misinformation, the racism, the bigotry, the homophobia, the misquotation, the sexism, the abuse, the entirely unveiled politics. They are all thoroughly taken apart by my favourite non-beer blogs: Tabloid Watch, Press Not Sorry, Angry Mob, Enemies of Reason, Liberal Conspiracy, Five Chinese Crackers, Buff the Banana and Mail Watch.

I know it's not good for my blood pressure, but I regularly scan the outpourings of both CAMRA and the Daily Mail.

Yesterday the Daily Mail ran a non-story about a non-contoversy (nothing unusual in that) about the Good Pub Guide charging pubs for listings. This isn't news. The DM's rubbish "story" also contradicts its previous glowing coverage of the Good Pub Guide.

The story is here. I've saved it for all time in Freezepage as the DM does have a habit of disappearing stories from its website when commenters point out glaring wrongnesses.

The interesting bit is the penultimate paragraph:

Could this keen pub-goer be the Iain Loe who is CAMRA's Research Manager and National Spokesperson? CAMRA are, of course, publishers of the Good Pub Guide's arch-rival the Good Beer Guide.

I suspect this lack of honesty is the fault of the Daily Mail. It has a history of lazy and feckless journalism and non-existant fact-checking all for the sake of whipping up its readers into false rages.

I suspect – and hope – Iain Loe and all at St Albans HQ are furious that the Daily Mail has brought their integrity into question.

Beer List

2011-08-25T11:52:00.003+01:00

In the previous post I hyped up a pub beer festival I've had a hand in organising.

The good news is: it's going to be great anyway.

The bad news is: due to the remote location and short notice we haven't been able to get as many of my wish-list beers as I would have liked.

Here's the list (updated in real time as more info comes in. If anyone can provide any info on the blank bits please comment):

You are all invited to a beer festival I'm helping to organise

2011-08-18T12:25:00.001+01:00

If you're looking for something to do in the forthcoming Bank Holiday weekend – look no further, there's a cracking beer festival requiring your presence.

It's at the Queens Arms, Biggar Village.

My role is selecting the beers. I've themed the event "Britain's Got Brewing Talent". We are busily sourcing beers from the more progressive of the country's craft-breweries. We will even have some rather interesting keg beers.

Here's the location of the pub. As you can see, it's a bit off the beaten track. I've got a spare room (single bed). Drop me a line if you fancy a visit.

A Bit of Brewing History.

2011-07-30T11:35:00.005+01:00

I was in the Stagger Inn, Stainton a few days ago for a family do, making use of Monday's happy hour and two-for-one deals.

The food is remarkably good given the low prices. Coniston Bluebird could have been a little fresher and cooler. The coloured lightbulbs add nothing to the place except to make it look a bit of a tart's boudoir. Nonetheless, it should be on your radar for a reasonable pub feed if you're visiting South Cumbria. It's a couple of miles from Cumbria's biggest tourist attraction – the South Lakes Wildlife Park – where the food offering is abysmal, so it's worth making a note of.

Hidden away on the wall of the gents' toilets are two old photographs. They aren't dated but in the corner of each is the inscription "Bass, Burton."

I managed to get a snap of one of the pics, but loitering in toilets with a camera isn't my preferred occupation, so I left the second one.

I might be mistaken, but these pictures looked like very old, possibly original, prints. Does anyone know if this picture has appeared anywhere else? Have I discovered a significant snapshot of Britain's brewing heritage, or did they pick it up at Athena?

Beer Festival Fun

2011-07-27T11:52:00.002+01:00

It's that time of year again. The GBBF is nigh.

No doubt I'll be bumping into many of you at Earls Court next week. If I haven't made your acquaintance before, please do introduce yourself. You'll find me not unadjacent to the Bières Sans Frontières bar.

I usually gravitate toward the foreign bars at the big festivals. So it was at South West London CAMRA's Battersea Beer Festival in 2003. The venue was Battersea Arts Centre, a short walk up Lavender Hill from legendary craft beer bar "Microbar".

I was there with my friends Alex (who later went on to run Microbar) and Sarah, a regular customer.

We spied some unfamiliar weiss beers which obviously needed testing. We ordered three different ones. The chap serving ticked many of the CAMRA cliche boxes – scruffy, straggly hair and beard, keys and gadgets attached to his belt etc. I used to know his name but it escapes me now. I'll point him a out at Earls Court if you like.

Anyway, he opened the three bottles. He handed Alex and me our bottles to pour ourselves. He took Sarah's glass and was about to start pouring.

"It's OK thanks, I'll do it myself"

"But it's a German weiss bier"

"Yes, I know. I'll..."

"It's meant to be poured in a particular ..."

"I do know how to pour it. Just give me the bottle"

"You know it 's brewed with wheat malt and special yeast that imparts..."

"Yes I know"

"You have to pour it very caref..."

"Yes, I do know. Please could you give me the bottle"

By now Sarah was reaching across the bar. Her hands were on top his on the bottle and glass and they were sliding backwards and forwards across the bar.

But you don't understand, It's a German weiss bier, You need to...

Sarah could stand no more. Her voice raised to a "don't mess with me" level she met his gaze and said:

"I AM FUCKING GERMAN. I AM FROM FUCKING MUNICH. STOP FUCKING PATRONISING ME."

He let go of the bottle pretty sharpish.

HardknottDave on Radio Cumbria this morning.

2011-06-30T11:00:00.002+01:00

Click HERE to listen to the excerpt.

Britain's First "Craft Beer" Bar

2011-06-28T09:17:00.007+01:00

Just over ten years ago a bar opened in London.

Not just any bar. Britain’s first new-wave beer bar. Britain’s first bar, as far as we know, explicitly using the term “craft beer.” It was our bar. Me and my brother.

In 1998 I’d had a holiday in San Francisco. I’d gone there knowing good beer was available but expecting to experience the feelings I’d always had at home – constant frustration at the lack of opportunities to drink the stuff, and the thought that my interest in beer was somehow embarrassing and not to be mentioned in polite company for fear of being perceived loutish or nerdy.

I was staying in my friends’ flat in a fairly lifeless neighbourhood of car dealerships and furniture showrooms. On my first night in San Francisco, exhausted by travelling, I needed some beer. I went down to the grocery store on the ground floor of the apartment block. I discovered a range of colourful bottles and intriguing bottles. Result! That was the night I became enchanted by Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. There were also beers from Anchor and a number of other beers from Californian, Oregon and Washington I’d never heard of.

I’d struck lucky. The local grocery store had a good beer selection.

Well, I thought I’d struck lucky. What I found in the following two weeks was that good beer was everywhere. My initial find wasn’t anything special. These beers, and more, were everywhere. And what is more, the people drinking these beers were the very people that the real ale businesses at home found hard to sell to: young people and women.

This trip, and a return visit the following year, convinced me that the struggles and complaints of marginalisation in the world of real ale were simple failures of marketing rather than incontestable laws of nature. It’s that “narrative” thing: buy into the real ale mindset and buy the idea that good beer is a hard sell.

Back home Steve and I became evangelists for a new way of selling beer. We’d often mulled over the idea of opening a pub or bar that would do quality beer in a new way, ditching the real ale shibboleths. We wouldn’t be anti-lager or anti-keg, acknowledging that CAMRA’s proposition – real ale good; everything else bad – just ain’t true[1]. Beer would be on a pedestal, loud, proud and if you didn’t like it you could go elsewhere: there’d be no pandering to mass-produced blandness.

There were, and still are, lots of real ale pubs, but that model was not what we were about. We knew there were many potential customers who wished to drink good beer but not wear the “I’m a real ale drinker” rosette. The world of real ale has it’s own dogmas and narratives. There are the beliefs that it’s hard to sell beer to young people and it’s hard to sell beer to women. Is it any wonder?

Strongly influenced by the American craft beer market with its profusion of microbreweries, the prefix “micro” spoke to us. The beers we would sell were largely characterised by their relatively small-scale production. MicroBar seemed natural and it stuck. We knew a microbar was a one-millionth of a bar of pressure but we didn’t think it was a problem.

We started doing some research into the nitty-gritty of the business: leases, funds, licenses, planning permission, suppliers – anything we could think of that might be useful to know. I found myself become a bit obsessed with identifying the subtle factors that made a bar or pub feel right. I carried around a thermometer to measure ambient temperatures; I carried a tape measure to find the optimum elbow-on-bar height. I closely watched people’s behaviour in pubs.

We spent a lot of time in the British Library’s business section in its old site at Clerkenwell. We studied marketing data and publications. All the pointers were that our emerging plan was a good one. I recently re-discovered at notebook I was using at the time. In it I found some hand-written notes:

Keynote Premium, Lagers, Beers [sic] and Ciders, 1997:

“Consumers are now discerning. They are drinking less but are prepared to pay more for something which they believe is good quality”

“The demand for premium lagers, ales and ciders has been growing continuously for many years. The cynical viewpoint is that the UK drinks industry provided low-quality drinks for far too long”

“The market for premium beers grew by 20.7% in 1992-1996, mainly dark beers.”

“The brewers have recognised that the public houses created in the sixties and seventies are no longer interested in the younger consumer but have failed to do anything about it.”

“The creation of more interesting modern on-trade outlets for drinks favours the supply of new premium brands.”

“Mature lager drinkers are discovering new, distinctive tastes from brewers in Europe, particularly Germany, Belgium and the Czech Republic.”

“Consumers in the UK are clearly interested not only in premium products but totally new concepts and brands.”

The long search for premises began. We weren’t going to compromise our ideals by being subject to a supply tie, so leased pubs were out of the question. We certainly couldn’t afford to buy the freehold of a pub. We had to look at the kind of premises that would define our business as a bar rather than pub.

We had a choice: fork out a stack of money for the lease on premises ready to trade, or fork out a stack of money making a bare “shell” premises fit for the job. There were lots of premises available but few had the requisite A3 planning status. The ones that did tended to be existing business for which the “premium” was hugely expensive. Taking on bare premises then failing to get a “change of use” to A3 was too risky.

Many months went by. We researched countless potential sites but were getting nowhere slowly. We lived in the area that is either described as Battersea or Clapham according to the whims of estate agents. One day, on Lavender Hill we passed a To Let sign on a boarded-up shop site. It looked like a disaster area but we called the agent anyway. It was in a state of disrepair after a company had taken a lease with the intention of building a Bulgarian restaurant. In documents we later inherited, the named individuals have to disappeared one at a time. They had started work knocking down walls and tearing up floors but it seems the people named were spirited away one at a time. The site was back in the hands of the landlord who was embarking on a very necessary renovation. Although the place was a wreck the Bulgarians had done something very useful – they’d successfully applied for change of use to planning permission to A3 status. The location wasn’t particularly good – few local business to provide lunchtime trade, and a somewhat grubby little corner within an otherwise affluent district – but we beggars couldn’t be choosers. It would have cost about £100,000 more to set up in the honeypots of Clapham High Street or the Junction. We’d just have to cope with being on one of the bus routes between them.

Taking on the lease of business premises is rather like buying a house. It’s a lot more complicated than renting a flat; an activity it superficially resembles. The landlord had, in principle, accepted our proposal and those obfuscating parasites known as solicitors were let loose.

Meanwhile we had to deal with another set of obfuscating parasites – the banks. We were looking for a loan of £50,000 secured against the future value of the lease and the future business[2]. We approached several. To our surprise, one said yes. The bank whose name resembles “Twat Nest” would lend us £50,000.

This was September 2000. All the ingredients were coming into place. That feeling of “keeping the plates spinning” familiar to all business owners was starting to occur.

Establishing some idea of the amount of time necessary for each of the ingredients, lease, loan, license, and countless other things, to be in place was of paramount importance. Missing ingredients would create delays and cost money. We asked the bank how long it typically takes for all the paperwork to be done and for us to get our hands on the loot. Nine weeks they said. Nine weeks.

We could be open by Christmas, or so we naively thought. The solicitors did their usual trick. They ground to a halt. Sorting out the minor niggling points in the draft lease became exercises of great tedious and tortuous letter writing. Although some were very necessary, such as the removal of the requirement that the premises be vacated between 11pm and 7am, some of the more arcane details seemed designed by solicitors to keep their colleagues in work. When a point was raised a letter had to be written to the landlord’s solicitors. This would take a week. The chap who owned the company that owned the building lived in the Caribbean. The reply would take a week and more. It was as if email and fax hadn’t been invented.

December arrived and the lease was signed. The loan funds were nowhere to be seen. We embarked on the renovation with our funds. Christmas came and went. January and February saw the building firm embark on the transformation while we dealt with a profusion of red-tape tangles.

We’d asked our solicitor about the license application. With an admirable and rare candidness he told us it wasn’t worth us spending money with him – we should do it ourselves. How to actually go about the application took all our detective powers. I believe it’s improved since the 2005 change in the licensing laws, but under the old system there was no book, leaflet or guide. Gaining insight into what was required for a new license relied on quizzing the clerks at the magistrate’s court. Do you know what the “Proper Office” is? No? Nor did we. We envisaged Victorian gentlemen busying themselves issuing enforcement notices for the covering-up of piano legs. This mysterious entity was one recipient of the application. There were eight others. An application in nine-tuplicate.

One of the terms of our lease was that we had a rent-free period of thirteen weeks in which to prepare the premises. Plenty of time – or so we thought.

The deal we had with the building company was that we’d pay a third upfront, a third during the work, and a third on satisfactory completion of the work. In mid-February the second payment was due. Five months on from the Twat Nest’s nine weeks advice, the loan money still hadn’t arrived. The builders drifted on to jobs on other sites. It would be unnecessarily tabloid to say they “downed tools” but the message was clear: we carry on building when you pay the second instalment. The rent-free thirteen weeks had evaporated and we were nowhere near ready to trade.

Things got frantic. We pestered family and friend for loans. The Twat Nest had given us corporate credit cards. In a living paradox, in effect, we borrowed money from the bank that was failing to lend us money. They gained from extra interest of course.

The building work resumed. The site needed inspecting by the council to ensure the regulations were being met. We had two or three visits from a kindly fifty-something chap wielding a clipboard. We drank cups of tea and chatted. All the boxes were ticked and nothing had to be altered. Three years later Steve called me with a sense of urgency: “put the telly on; the news; it’s that building bloke”. There he was, top of the news and on the front page of the newspapers. He had been sent down for a very long time for a particularly nasty series of rapes of young women going back twenty or so years. I had thought of myself as a pretty good judge of character but this made me reassess. Scary.

As the premises started to look like a bar we started decorating. Next door was a paint shop. They provided test pots of paints and we decorated one wall with splotches of vivid colour. After much chin-rubbing, a three colour palette was decided upon: a rich plummy dark red, a sand colour and a pale grey for the ceiling. With the decorating underway a friend visited and remarked that we’d chosen the colour scheme of Chimay Red. It wasn’t intentional.

The licensing committee sat once a month. To get a license, all the paperwork had to be in place and the premises be inspected by members of the committee to check it was fit to trade. If you couldn’t tick these boxes, or you anticipated you couldn’t tick these boxes, your application would roll over to the next month. And so it was in February, March and April 2001 we watched the licensing session come and go. Thanks to the Twat Nest’s utter shoddiness we were paying rent on our premises while not trading.

In this period were on the phone to the Twat Nest almost daily. A poster and a leaflet in the local branch declared that business managers were based locally[3] and they were available every day. Fucking liars.

One day I rang the business manager’s office. The manager’s assistant David told us Brian[4] wasn’t in the office that day. Getting frustrated I decided David would just have to do. I launched into my long list of niggling details the bank had to get a bloody move on with. About ten minutes into the call I stumped David with a question he couldn’t answer. This wrong-footed him. Letting his guard down, he said “I’ll have to hand you over to Brian for that one.” Available every day? Fucking liars.

My advice to new business owners is to treat every interaction with a bank just as you would with an estate agent or used car salesman. I also suggest recording every phone call you have with anyone important and make detailed notes of what was said. You really ought to tell those you are speaking to that you are recording them, but if you are simply recording them in order to keep notes and not retaining the recording, who’s to know? In legal proceedings contemporary notes are given a great deal of credence – so make good ones about any negotiations you undertake.[5]

We started to recruit staff. Stupidly, we put an advert in Clapham Junction job centre. We were very specific in that we wanted people who could hold a conversation. As we’d be expecting them to be familiar with the beers they’d be selling, we didn’t want teetotallers. We firmly believe that if a customer props up the bar, he or she wants conversation and to meet new people; if a customer sits at a table, he or she wants privacy. The role of bar staff is not simply to serve and drinks; bar staff are the catalysts for the social interaction of customers at the bar. The bar staff would have to be able to hold an intelligent conversation and not be shy; they would also have to serve beer correctly. The latter is the easy bit. Our interviews were designed to eliminate the candidates who we thought would struggle with the former. The fools at the job centre disregarded our needs. Streams of people came knocking at the door straight from their consultation with their job advisors. It became annoying. We were spending time fending off people who could barely speak English and, to our astonishment, we even had to interview teetotallers – umpteen times we had people tell us “Oh no, I don’t drink, I’m a devout [Christian/Muslim/Hindu].” We phoned the job centre and told them quite firmly not to send non-English speakers and teetotallers. But still they came. I presume the job centre functionaries were happy presenting to their bosses glowing figures about how many people had been successfully despatched to job interviews. That the valuable time of business owners was being wasted didn’t seem to be of any importance to them.

Time marched on apace. The place was starting to look like a bar. After long days painting, sawing and nailing we open a few bottles and put our elbows on the new varnish. Our research into suppliers had revealed James Clay & Sons. They’d been round to install two keg lines: Anchor Steam and Liberty Ale, the only US keg beers in the UK at that time. Tentatively we sampled them. Yup, that’s the stuff. The Beer Seller delivered countless cases of bottled beer and we eagerly filled our newly-leased fridges.

May arrived and with us working frantically to finish furbishing. Soon we felt we were ready for inspection by the licensing committee. On Tuesday 8^th May we dutifully attended court and went through the rigmarole of affirming and confirming our license application. The magistrates would visit the following day.

Wednesday 9^th May 2001. Butterflies the size of pterodactyls fluttered in our stomachs. At 2pm two members of the committee and a clerk knocked on the door. One of the magistrates did all the talking. A big rosy-cheeked bloke, he looked no stranger to the delights of public houses. They toured the building making sure all the essential facilities were in place. “All good”, he told us, “you’ve got your license, the full paperwork will follow.”

Sighs of relief were breathed.

That evening at 6pm, we opened the doors. Customers arrived. They drank beer.

Two weeks after we opened the loan funds from the Twat Nest arrived. This was the middle of May 2001, eight months after we’d been told nine weeks. The most painful consequence of the bank’s shiteness was that we had used the working capital we had budgeted on. I still believe that when banks' business departments pore over their spreadsheets they conclude that bankrupting small business owners is more profitable than allowing them to prosper. A big launch do, advertising, a swanky website were sacrificed. Things were tight, and remained forever tight, but it was fun, as we did our pioneering bit for craft beer in the UK.

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[1] Paraphrasing Duke Ellington “there are two kinds of beer: good, and the other kind.”

[2] Eh, that’s what it were like in t’Good Old Days, before t’banking crisis.

[3] The business banking office was in Beckenham in SE London. That can almost be described as “local”. Later, once we were up and running, the business office moved to Hertfordshire. That cannot be described as “local” by any stretch of the imagination. We almost went to the Banking Ombudsman about this. I wish we had.

[4] Not their real names.

[5] None of this constitutes legal advice.

What's your take on this story?

2011-06-16T17:40:00.001+01:00

Link: Grandfather upset after local pub closes down builds his own in his back garden.

(BTW, Warning, It's a link to the Daily Mail website. If you value your sanity do not stray further than the page I'm directing you to.)

To Spam Or Not To Spam?

2011-06-16T09:40:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I received this email from someone called Alison at Roosters Brewery.

Everyone can send an email by mistake, but this didn't seem to be a mistake.

It looked like inept PR.

I welcome press releases from pubs and breweries but they really must be explicit – an email lacking in detail and written in faux familiarity will not do.

The email was sent bcc, i.e. the recipient list was withheld. It is possible that I was the only recipient, but it is likely it was sent to a number of people.
The text is impersonal, there is no "Dear ...".
I have never ever communicated directly with anyone at Roosters. This suggests my email address has been "harvested". It does appear on the Guild of Beer Writers Website but it is disguised to forestall harvesting by bots. That Roosters are in possession of it suggest suggests it was harvested deliberately.
The text presumes that I am in possession of "pumps". I am not.

I suppose Alison could have been communicating directly with a friend or regular customer and mistakenly included the whole of the address book in the bcc field. If this is the case then, Alison, I apologise for drawing attention to your clumsiness.

	from	Alison
to		undisclosed recipients
date		15 June 2011 13:47
subject		Rooster Beer availability

All good here, hope the pumps are flowing well at your end. The Stars and Stripes is one brew only and it tastes amazing !

Talking of good things, if in the area go to the Old Bell Harrogate and order the risotto, and a beer of course. I love food, it was excellent quite the best I've had in years. Sent this out as it was a special, it needs to be on the main food list, I'm starting a campaign.

Rant rant, back to beer, have a great week,

Thanks as always Alison.

UPDATE: This email from Tom Fozard arrived today -

Hello.

Sorry to intrude upon your day.

No doubt most of you will have seen an email from Alison in your inbox yesterday. If you haven't already opened it, it was sent to you in error, so don't bother opening it - it's really not worth the effort. It was quite a dull email.

If you're thinking, 'Why are these people emailing me?! I wish they'd just leave me alone!', please email me back and I'll happily remove you from our database of Beer Writers.

If, however, you're happy for us to keep you email address so that, if and when we have something of note to let you know about, just do nothing.

Sit back, relax and keep up the good work!

Many thanks,

28,000-Word Insurgency

2011-06-01T14:42:00.004+01:00

CAMRA's Colin Valentine's unwise attack on beer bloggers has created a shit storm on those very blogs. By copying and pasting all the Valentine-gate blog posts and comments I could find into a Word document I have counted almost 28,000 words. Very few of them defend Mr Valentine.

As a long-term CAMRA-sceptic I do rather relish the spectacle of the organisation's bluster and prattle being put under the microscope by people who know what they are talking about.

Just as authoritarian regimes in North Africa and the Middle East attempt to quell revolutions that have been enabled and catalysed by the information-sharing characteristics of social networking, CAMRA's chairman attempts to discredit those he sees as dissidents. If CAMRA possessed water cannons they would have been sent to the Beer Bloggers' Conference.

At the core of the debate there is a very simple conundrum, a cognitive dissonance, which CAMRA must work out or else face continuing criticism and pressure.

Central to CAMRA's ethos is the tenet that cask beer is good, keg beer is bad. I don't know if this is explicitly stated anywhere but it is writ large in the organisation's activities: annually it publishes a book called "The Good Beer Guide" exclusively about cask ale; it prohibits keg beer at its events and seeks dissuade pubs and brewers from selling keg beer.

As we all know, the problem for CAMRA is that good keg beer does exist*. Therefore the core tenet is fallacious.

In order to divert us from the awkwardness of this contradiction, CAMRA apologists tell us that that the cask:good/keg:bad is not CAMRA's belief.

Here's Tandleman in the comments on Zythophile's piece: "Anyone that thinks that is daft. But I don’t think CAMRA actually says that". Disingenuous or what?

So, Tandleman and CAMRA friends: if cask:good/keg:bad is, as you say, not the belief of CAMRA, why does CAMRA bother to exist? What is it about real ale that makes you "campaign for" it if "real ale" and "good beer" are not synonymous?

*Good keg beer is acknowledged by CAMRA only if it is foreign, as Johnny Foreigner doesn't know any better.

Me on Radio Cumbria

2011-04-27T18:15:00.004+01:00

It would be understandable if you missed my little interview slot on Radio Cumbria about the forthcoming Cumbrian beer festival at The Rake.

Fortunately, just for posterity, with a little computer jiggery pokery, I captured a recording.

Click Here.

Yes, I know there were rather a lot of ums and errs. I'd be rubbish on Just a Minute.

Adding Insult To Injury

2011-04-27T08:48:00.001+01:00

As Pete Brown so eloquently fumed, the royal wedding beer ban is "shameful, depressing, snobbish, bigoted, blinkered, rude, clueless, cruel, idiotic."

In a second kidney punch to Britain's brewers the wedding is going to feature British wine.

Don't misunderstand me, I applaud the royals willingness to support British wine.

Apparently "The decision is in keeping with the couple's desire to show off 'what Britain does best’".

Well, bugger me, what a fucking insult.

If you were not a republican before, you should be now.

Here's the link to the story. (Warning: it's the Daily Fucking Mail. At least it's a mirror site so that vile shitrag doesn't get the benefit of your clicks.)

CAMRA's keg-bashing Motion 13

2011-04-16T12:31:00.006+01:00

CAMRA's AGM is taking place in Sheffield this weekend. You can follow its fascinating tweet-stream at http://twitter.com/#!/CAMRA_Official.

Amongst the generally tedious and nitpicking motions being discussed today is:

MOTION 13

This Conference believes in the beneficial health effects of real ale and believes that other ale products with chemical and gas additives can have a detrimental effect on public health. Conference believes that the differences between the two are significant and measurable, but acknowledges that research on this area has so far been minimal. Conference therefore resolves that CAMRA shall work with other interested parties to quantify the differences in health terms between real ale and other ale products.

Would the proposers, West Lancashire Branch, care to offer evidence for the statement "gas additives can have a detrimental effect on public health" or is it just an example of seventies throwback keg-bashing?

In order to do so they would have to demonstrate that CO2 and Nitrogen used to dispense evil keg beer are somehow chemically different to the gases we find in the air we breath.

Somehow I doubt they can.

I also doubt they can find any evidence that "chemical additives" have any detrimental effect on public health for that matter. A detrimental effect on flavour maybe.

I suspect the word "chemical" is simply a weasel word used to provoke fear and disgust in those whose scientific education is lacking.

Let's see if the motion is passed. My money is on a pass. It will be a victory for stupidity.

UPDATE: The motion wasn't passed. I'm glad I was wrong.

A CAMRA marketing department brainstorming session.

2011-04-09T20:47:00.002+01:00

Written, produced and directed by @s_pickthall

The new Michael Jackson statue seems OK to me.

2011-04-04T11:29:00.002+01:00

Throwing In The Towel?

2011-03-08T11:38:00.000Z

This is a guest post by Neil Bowness, fellow #cbag (Cumbria Beer Appreciation Group) founder and partner in Plain Creative of Kendal.

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

I'll start by saying that it isn't my sort of thing: I'm not at my most comfortable in a suit, so a black tie dinner doesn't sit too well with me. The 'entertainment' for the evening wasn't perhaps something that I would have chosen either – amateur boxing – but my fellow diners seemed to approve and the pugilists went about their sport with great gusto.

But I've already digressed. The event in question was “An Evening of Boxing” held at Kendal Town Hall last Thursday. Reception at 7:00, dinner at 7:30 prompt. Forty of your English pounds, thank you very much.

It was arranged and hosted by the Kendal & South Lakeland Licensed Victuallers Association (LVA) and, as you would expect, the landlords of the district were out in numbers along with a liberal helping of local businessmen, presided over by the town's mayor and other dignitaries.

So far, so good – nothing to write home (or on Jeff's blog) about. Well, not so good, actually, and the reason is beer.

The beer served was, to be quite honest, uninspiring: Tetley Smooth and Carlsberg. Granted, these may be staples of bars the length and breadth of the country, but one would have expected that for an event which is the highlight of the LVA's year that someone could have made at least a little effort.

I say 'a little effort' because that is all it would have taken to have some very good local beer on offer as there are, within roughly a 20 mile radius, eight very good breweries to choose from: Hawkshead, Barngates, Coniston, Cumbrian Legendary, Watermill, Dent, Winster Valley and Kirkby Lonsdale.

So would it be stretching things too far to enquire if any of these breweries would care to supply the beer for this event? I really can't imagine that any of them would pass up on the opportunity to have a couple of casks or kegs on offer for what was, essentially, a room full of landlords, so I have to assume that no-one from the LVA could be bothered trying.

Kendal is not unique in that it has seen a fair number of pubs close down, something which only last year the Chairman of the LVA commented as being a “sign of a crumbling industry”. Fair comment. But there are pubs that are doing well in my town, but they are the ones that are making an effort, especially when it comes to their wet sales.

I know the argument stands about tied pubs and what they can stock, but my argument also stands that a lot of pubs in my town have simply given up, as long as it keeps the wolf from the door. Does it come down to pure economics or do they simply not care? They would say the former, I would argue for the latter.

My companion for the evening - who had invited me to the event - suggested we left early (just after the cheese board was passed round) and it was just a short stroll to Burgundy's Wine Bar. Yes. I said “wine bar”.

Burgundy's is something of an institution, with a well-deserved reputation for its beer, both local real ale and world and specialist beers. On the bar that evening were beers from Yates and Coniston brewing alongside Fruli and Liefmans Fruit, with Goose Island, Orval and Rochefort amongst the bottled offerings. A merciful ending to the evening.

Yes, I know Burgundy's is very much a free house, but there are also tied pubs in Kendal who have negotiated some degree of flexibility when it comes to guest beers and they are the ones which are doing well. They haven't given up, they do care and their customers appreciate this.

Maybe Kendal is a snapshot of parochial market towns around the country, but as long as there are a few pubs and bars that do keep on trying then I shall continue to give them my support and, unfortunately, stay away from the others.

I must also pass comment on the food served at the event in question: it was fabulous, quite superb, the best meal I've had in Kendal for some time. It was also prepared and served by the students of Kendal College. If this is testament to their abilities then we have nothing to fear on that front, just a shame their skills could not have been paired alongside some worthy beverages.

Reinheits-Kaput?

2011-03-03T07:30:00.001Z

There's a fantastic article in Slate about declining beer sales in Germany and the self-imposed straitjacket that may have something to do with it.

Link here.

Organising a Beer Festival Judging. Part 2.

2011-02-27T11:08:00.000Z

As I mentioned in this post, I've got my first beer festival boss judge gig.

It's the Lancaster Round Table Beer Festival, which is in its 22nd year. For the first time this year it will incorporate a beer competition – the Lancashire Cup.

The festival is dedicated to showcasing the brewers of Lancashire. As there aren't actually that many Lancashire brewers the numbers are being swelled by the breweries in the bit of Lancashire which was chopped off in 1974 and bundled into Cumbria (my homelands).

The Lancashire beer list (see below) is firmly within the cask ale paradigm. The festival does include some imported keg beers, as the event is thankfully unconstrained by CAMRA dogma. The Lancashire Cup is open only to the domestic beers.

The categories are: Mild; Bitter; Best Bitter; Porter & Stout; Premium Bitter and Strong.

There's always a debate burbling in the background about stylistic definitions but my life is too short to go there. These are the categories the organisers have defined and we've got to live with them, however vague they are.

As far as I know, the organisers have not defined the judging criteria, and this is something I'll be doing.

The common criteria tend to be: Appearance; Aroma; Taste; Aftertaste (SIBA also uses Saleability).

The big question for me is: what's the optimum weighting for each criteria?

For instance:

Appearance – mark out of 5
Aroma – mark out of 10
Taste – mark out of 20
Aftertaste – mark out of 10.

What are your thoughts on this subject? Whether you've ever been a beer judge or not, how would you do it?

I'd like to incorporate a pumpclip design rating but I don't think I'll be allowed to do that. (Notice the legendary Hart Brewery is in the comp).

Your comments are appreciated.

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

The beer list:

Barngates Cat Nap 3.6%
Bowland Brewery Gold 3.8%
Burscough Brewery Priory Gold 3.9%
Coniston Bluebird 3.6%
Irwell Works Copper Plate 3.8%
Kirkby Lonsdale Ruskins 3.9%
Kirkby Lonsdale Tiffin Gold 3.6%
Lancaster Brewery Amber 3.7%
Prospect Brewery Silver Tally 3.7%
Robinson's Dizzy Blonde 3.8%
Rossendale Brewery Floral Dance 3.6%
Ulverston Brewery Flying Elephents 3.7%
Winster Old School 3.9%
Winster Best Bitter 3.7%
Arkwright's Brewery Trouble at Mill 4.0%
Arkwright's Brewery Run of the Mill 4.1%
Bank Top Flat Cap 4.0%
Burscough Brewery Ringtail 4.2%
Cumbrian Legendary Ales Langdale 4.0%
Cumbrian Legendary Ales Loweswater Gold 4.3%
Fallons Exquisite Ales Lancastrian Gold 4.0%
Fallons Exquisite Ales Goblin Ale 4.3%
Garstella (2.5BB) Eccles Cake Ale 4.2%
Greenodd Blonde 4.0%
Hart Brewery Dishy Debbie 4.0%
Hopstar Lush 4.0%
Irwell Works Richard Mason 1888 4.0%
Lancaster Brewery Blonde 4.1%
JW Lees Bitter 4.0%
Lytham Brewery Gold 4.2%
Mayflower Brewery Wigan Bier 4.2%
Moorhouses Blonde Witch 4.1%
Moorhouses Pride of Pendle 4.0%
Robinson's Unicorn 4.2%
Rossendale Brewery Glen Top 4.0%
Three B's Bee Blonde 4.0%
Thwaites Wainwright 4.1%
Bank Top Dark Mild 4.0%
Fuzzy Duck Mucky Duck 4.0%
JW Lees Brewer's Dark 3.5%
Prospect Brewery Nutty Slack 3.9%
Three B's Stokers Slate Mild 3.6%
Thwaites Nutty Black 3.0%
Coniston Special Oatmeal Stout 4.5%
Hopstar Smokey Joes Black 4.0%
Kirkby Lonsdale Jubilee Stout 5.5%
Lancaster Brewery Slate 4.2%
Lancaster Brewery Black 4.6%
Mayflower Brewery Lancashie Stout 4.0%
Rossendale Brewery Pitch Porter 5.0%
Stringers No 2 Stout 4.0%
Barngates Red Bull Terrier 4.8%
Bowland Brewery Admiral 4.4%
Fuzzy Duck Tangerine Duck 4.4%
Greenodd Brunette 4.5%
Hart Brewery Valadiction 4.8%
Lancaster Brewery Red 4.9%
Lytham Brewery Royal 4.4%
Thwaites Bomber 4.4%
Coniston No 9 Barley Wine 8.5%
Coniston Winter Warmer Blacksmith's Ale 5.0%
Liverpool One Maharaja IPA 5.3%
Liverpool One Brass Monkey 6.0%
Lytham Brewery IPA 5.6%
Stringers Victoria IPA 5.5%
Ulverston Brewery Bad Medicine 6.3%

Does Expensive Beer Taste Better?

2011-02-22T10:29:00.001Z

New Beers from Coniston Brewery

2011-01-31T12:36:00.008Z

I do get a bit bored with the super-abundance of session ale in Cumbria. In my home county, by and large, I can only dream of the exotic beers of Belgium, the USA and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, a session beer I do always look out for is Coniston Bluebird, winner of CAMRA's CBOB in 1998. Bluebird is high art. A light biscuity malt background carries a layer of Challenger late-hop in a particularly elegant way. A bottled version is contract-brewed elsewhere but we get the real thing brewed at Coniston. All their beers are created by brewing consultant David Smith, a former Sam Smiths man, who favours simple single-hop recipes with relatively low bitterness.

Last November Pete Brown was in Cumbria doing a couple of readings. I took him on a all-too-brief tour of some of the region's pubs. We called in at the Black Bull Inn, home of the Coniston Brewery. We discovered a newcomer to the Coniston portfolio – a keg beer, "Thurstein Pilsner"*. Naturally, we gave it a try. Wow! If only all keg lager was this good surely "keg" and "lager" wouldn't have such negative connotations amongst certain beer-drinking types. In keeping with the house style we found it to be biscuity with a floaty hop character – Hallertau in this instance. A six week cold-conditioning ensures the beer is especially coherent and integrated. Some gentle lemon-ness redolent of Robinson's Barley Water and a hint of white pepper contributed to what adds up to be a tremendous new thirst-quenching addition to the Cumbrian beer landscape.

I have subsequently discovered another Coniston newcomer – Number 9 Barley Wine. This is an 8.5% beer with, what is to me, an old-fashioned flavour profile. At first I didn't quite get it. All I got was a sweet toffeeish beer with a hint of sherry that reminded me of countless indifferent mid-winter offerings from countless UK breweries. But I persevered. As the beer warmed up I became more aware of the key Coniston flavour characteristic – floaty hop character. While the liquid lingered on my palate aromas delivered themselves by mysterious internal passageways to my olfactory sense. Deliberately breathing in simultaneously through nose and mouth confirmed the flavour (or rather, aroma) of a generous late addition of ~~Fuggles~~ Challenger.

Now here's the exciting news: I had a good old chat with brewery boss Ian Bradley. He's happy to give some samples to bloggers who'll promise to give the beers a review. If you write about beer, either on the internet or dead-tree media, you can have a couple of bottles. All you need to do is leave your details here.

* A note to pedants: Yes, the brewery knows "Top-fermented lager" is an odd description. They really wanted to call it a Kölsch, but that's a protected designation. It was thought preferable to use the term Pilsner as it would make more sense to the potential consumer. Awkward, yes.

Microbreweries on BBC Telly This Morning.

2011-01-30T16:56:00.001Z

Here's this mornings piece on microbreweries from the BBC.

It's only short but at least it's positive.

The Brazilian Job: My Hops and Glory Adventure (Part One)

2011-01-17T13:54:00.018Z

In October 2007 I had an adventure. You may have already read about this adventure in Pete Brown's "Hops and Glory". If you haven't, I urge you to buy the book pretty sharpish to put what follows into context.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

My Blackerry beeped.

It was Thursday lunchtime, I was carrying two tins of paint, just leaving B&Q in my blustery hometown of Barrow-in-Furness. I plonked the tins in the boot of the car and myself in the driver seat. A quick check – is that email anything interesting?

I read it … and read it again. It wasn’t making sense. My natural scepticism was telling me it was a wind-up, but the sender, Pete Brown, had never struck me as a joker. Quite the opposite really. He seemed a somewhat more taciturn character – at least until he had some beer inside him. He wasn't the sort to wear a water-squirting flower, a spinning bow tie and gadget that gives an electric shock with a handshake – nor send spoof emails promising freebie trips to exotic climes.

At home I pondered the mysterious email:

"Help save my book! Earn literary immortality!

I’m looking for someone who would be prepared to fly out to Rio at my expense - this weekend – with a very special piece of luggage.

Story so far – Barry, the barrel of traditional IPA that I was taking to India by sea, blew up in Tenerife.

Coors have a replacement keg ready to go in Burton. I’m in Brazil, and will be on a ship out of here next Wednesday, 31st October. Brazilian customs are some of the most difficult in the world. It has proven impossible to have this keg sent by conventional DHL/normal import-export channels, because they like to hold on to it for ten days (we don’t have ten days) and they would open it to take a sample (meaning the remainder wouldn’t last until India).

We have three potential routes left – we’re waiting to hear if it will be possible to go in a diplomatic bag. We’re also waiting to hear if a specialist courier company will be prepared to touch it. Our final alternative is to have someone bring it in as personal luggage.

There is a small element of risk involved in this – you’d have to come through nothing to declare and hop not to get stopped. If you did get stopped, there would be duty and a fine to pay, or the beer would be confiscated. However, foreigners are hardly ever stopped coming into Brazil – they’re usually after natives returning with contraband. The journey time out here is tortuous, between 14 and 18 hours with one or two changes (Lisbon, and maybe Sao Paolo) with the final destination being Rio. Once you get to Rio, I’m in a hotel two blocks form Copacabana beach which still has rooms free at the time of writing! I’d meet all expenses.

We’re not yet sure whether we need someone to do this – we’ll know one way or the other in the next 24 hours - but I’m looking for a volunteer to stand by in case our other options fail. You have all been selected for admirable qualities such as steely determination, general derring-do or simply having the flexibility and attitude to be able to say, ‘fuck it, why not?’ I’d say flying Friday or Saturday night would be the best idea, have a few days on the beach, fly back maybe Weds or Thurs.

Do we have any interested parties?

Cheers Pete"

I already knew of Pete’s epic journey and slowly the email started to make sense. A lightbulb lit above my head: it had dawned on me I’d been granted the chance of an adventure. The inner sceptic was banished.

I’d had an idea that for my fortieth birthday I’d have an exotic holiday – not specifically beer-related for a change, possibly music-related. A strong contender for special holiday was Rio de Janeiro where I could hear a Samba School for real, preferably at Carnaval. My fortieth birthday had been and gone. Limited finances precluded the exotic holiday. So here I was ten months after the significant birthday being offered a trip to Rio de Janeiro! Was I going to volunteer? You bet.

Here’s my email reply sent eighteen minutes after Pete’s plea:

“ME ME ME!

Brazil! Blimey, my top fantasy location (that doesn't have a particular beer connotation).

I lurv Brazilian music! I was hoping to go there for my 40th birthday earlier this year (almost Carnival season) but finances wouldn't allow it.

What are Brazilian jails like?

Jeff”

You know already I’m a beer geek. You may not also know that I’m a music geek. I like (indeed, obsess about) very rhythmic music. I love jazz, soul, funk and latin In fact I love just about all the “Afrocentric” music forms … and that includes Brazilian music. If you’re also a music geek, here’s my iTunes library. I don’t really understand how my particular musical interests came about. In my formative years in the Eighties Barrow-in-Furness was (and still is) an indie-focused town. Not me though, I’d had several musical Damascene conversions. About the time O Levels were turning into A Levels it had dawned on me that black people made music too. I hammered my local record library. I was exhilarated by what I discovered. That feeling hasn't left me.

I still had a very slight nagging feeling that I was just missing the point of a joke. An hour or two went by and another email arrived. That particular email eludes me but it said something like this: “It looks like it’s you; nobody else can do it. Get a bag packed and await further instructions.” The sense of elaborate joke was gone.

Emails flew back and forth the following day. I emailed an old school friend at the local newspaper – would he be interested in a story? Of course! Preparation continued and a few beers helped counter the surging adrenaline.

From Beer and Pub Pictures

The Big Day. My flight wasn’t until nine in the evening so I had plenty of time to drive the 350 miles to London via Burton-on-Trent where I was to collect Kev the Keg. My trusty Mondeo delivered me to Burton in time for lunch where I tracked down the legendary Steve Wellington who was mission control for Pete as well as the brewer of the beer. I can imagine the call from Tenerife: “Burton: we have a problem.” Steve was most hospitable. We chatted beer and had lunch while my inner sergeant-major shouted “GET A MOVE ON YOU’VE GOT A PLANE TO CATCH!” Steve had the replacement keg and a magnum bottle prepared. The magnum was for my hand luggage and the keg for the hold. Should they keg go astray – or be confiscated – hopefully the magnum would get through.

I help myself to few samples of the Hops and Glory special beer.

I headed for Wandsworth in South West London. My old Barrow friend Steve Bassett lives there. He has been graciously putting up with my regular invasions since I left London. He puts a roof over my head – I give him bottles and bottle-openers scavenged from beer events. I had an hour to spare. I parked the car in the only unrestricted space in Wandsworth (it’ll cost you big money for me to tell you where it is) and flopped in to Steve’s flat. Enough time for a cup of tea and a bag check before heading for Heathrow. I left Steve with four bottles of Pete’s IPA.

En-route to the airport my phone rang. A crackly Pete sounded stressed. He explained his ongoing ship’s departure had been brought forward by three days. It was now due to leave at 11.30am the following day. That would give me an hour – sixty whole minutes – to get through immigration, customs, baggage return and travel across an unfamiliar city where I don’t speak the language. Pete’s worried tone was understandable. I was worried too.

The wheelie keg-carrier being closely guarded at Heathrow

I was flying with the Brazilian airline TAM. Not being a member of the jet-set I wasn’t familiar with this airline. This lack of familiarity didn’t exactly calm my nerves. I’m not a relaxed flyer. Being stuck in a fragile aluminium tube miles in the sky is not something I relish. A myriad of disaster scenarios flood my mind, each one provoking a sharp jab of panic-laden adrenaline. Accidental missile strike; bird-strike; terrorists; pilot error; technical failure; storms: they all scare the living be-Jesus outta me. People from Barrow don’t tend to be travellers. For us, a day trip to Manchester airport is a holiday. Skiing? Our town is freezing for eleven months of the year (and just chilly for the other one). Why would you want to have a cold holiday? Barrow’s at the end of a thirty mile peninsula: beaches – "if beaches is want you want I’ll give you beaches Sunny Jim" the voice of cultural baggage nags . And why would you want to encounter foreigners? My late grandfather’s attitude was “I went abroad once, it’s all flies and powdered egg and Rommel lobbing bloody shells – you won’t catch me going there again in a hurry.” And he never did

I checked in the contraband, er, I mean luggage, without a hitch. The notably heavy, solid bag didn’t raise any eyebrows and was within the weight limit. With half an hour to kill I did the usual things – buy some fags for my mate and browse the reading matter on offer. In W.H. Smith I became aware of a man standing alongside me. Seventy-ish and exuding an air of education, his name quickly flashed into my mind. It was Kofi Anan. No minders, no hangers-on, no VIP lounge and an anorak shorter than his suit jacket. I rapidly tried to think of a way of striking up conversation with the former Secretary-General of the United Nations but he had the good sense to wander off before I could bend his ear about the CAMRA situation. I later saw him with the economy-class hoards at the gate for a flight to Nairobi.

On the flight I sat next to Nicky (or more probably, Nikki), a fitness trainer and nutritionist from Hertfordshire. Post-divorce, she was having a big holiday touring South America. Gaining altitude through clouds I closed my eyes and repeated to myself the mantra “they’ve got radar, they don’t need to see; they’ve got radar, they don’t need to see … ” A soon as the seatbelt lights went off Nikki rooted in her bag. She popped a couple of pills and nothing much was heard of her again until we landed. On my other side was that most satisfying of luxuries – an empty seat. Well, it was empty until I spilled my books, magazines and iPod on it. The flight was uneventful apart from a raging storm of panic hormones.

We were to change at Sao Paolo. Nicky was awake, or so it seemed, her eyes were open. Craning my neck I could see the rubber-streaked concrete coming up to meet us. Thump. We were down. The captain interrupted my sigh of relief by slamming on the brakes. Our seat belts strained as we all lurched forward. My forehead banged into the seat in front. Several hand-luggage lockers popped open. My initial thought was “THE RUNWAY’S BLOCKED: WE’RE DOOMED!” But no, we were just attempting to break the record for the world’s shortest landing by a commercial airliner. Nicky perked up. “I thought it might be like that. Two hundred people died in an over-run at this airport a couple of months ago.” As we taxied to the terminal in the distance I could see a big aeroplane-shaped hole in the perimeter fence. Beyond it I could see charred buildings.

At Sao Paolo my phone beeped with a text message from nervous Pete. I updated him. “On time, landed at Sao Paolo, transfer on schedule.”

I would have been quite happy to travel the two hundred and fifty miles to Rio de Janeiro by road. Not even in a motor vehicle, a donkey would do. But no, we were flying. I calmed myself by a feat of self-hypnosis. The morning sun blazed as we boarded the transfer plane. Over its P.A. I could hear the music of Tom Jobim*, Brazil’s most celebrated songwriter and musician. The man who put Brazil on the world’s music map. One of my top musical heroes. Perhaps my body’s supply of stress hormone was exhausted but I experienced the transfer flight to Rio in a state of bliss. The reassuringly new and shiny Airbus, the music, the tiredness, the golden beaches below, the thrill of being a million cultural miles away from Barrow-in-Furness – I was high. The feeling didn’t leave me until at least a week after I got home.

My airborne bossa nova reverie must have contrasted with Pete’s land-borne tension. Months of effort and thousands of pounds spent putting the venture into action – all hanging by a thread. A mono-lingual inexperienced traveller was about to attempt to evade customs with the illicit cargo the book depended on.

I made a hasty exit from the plane at Rio’s Tom Jobim Airport. If there were any seconds to gain, I was going to have them. I texted Pete that I’d landed. There was a queue at immigration, only twenty or so people. Fortunately it moved fluently and the immigration officers were quite friendly and welcoming. Next stop baggage. Kev the Keg was in one of the new-fangled bags with a built-in trolley. My own stuff was in a large rucksack. Hopefully both items had made friends and were travelling together. The luggage carousel chugged into life. I drummed my fingers on my trolley as I watched other people’s luggage do a couple of laps. I was the first passenger at the reclaim; as Sod’s Law would have it, Kev the Keg and my bag were launched through the rubber-flapped hole pretty much last. Quickly I scooted off in the direction of Customs – the hurdle over which I could trip and put the kaibosh on the whole operation. Scurrying through the airport corridors my heart pounded. Vivid images of Brazilian prisons, twenty to a cell flashed through my mind. The very worst that could happen is that I would have some form filling and a fee to pay. No, on second thoughts the very worst thing that could happen was confiscation of the cargo … and me in prison. Practically running, I headed for the green channel. My phone rang. It was Pete.

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Customs”

“Shit!”

“No, I’m in just in the queue for customs. Gotta go, it’s me.”

As I put the phone back in my pocket a cheery customs officer with his hand resting on his gun in its holster wished me “Bom dia” and waved me through. Phew. I texted Pete the good news.

In front of me were three cubicles, local taxi concessions. I asked the three simultaneously “which of you will get me to Copacabana the quickest?” The three lovely ladies chorused “we will sir”. Momentarily flummoxed, I opted for the firm on the right purely for the flawed reasoning that’s its cubicle was closest to the line of waiting cars. I gave the address of the hotel to the girl and explained I was in a hurry. She summoned a driver to whom, I presume, she described the need for speed. He nodded, turned to me and used the International Standard Body Language Gesture for “come on it’s this way, let’s get going.” He grabbed the bags and darted off to a red Peugeot.

11am and Pete rang. The driver taking him to the docks was insisting they leave. Panic was certainly not over. We had a brainwave. We’d meet in the middle. I handed my phone to the non-English speaking driver – “por favor?” Pete did likewise at his end. The drivers chatted to each other like old friends. Mine handed my phone back with a wink and a thumbs up. We accelerated away from the airport down the road past the docks. Pete rang again “they’ve decided it’s better if you come all the way to the hotel – too many potential problems doing it the other way". We sped along the highway. Hot and humid air ruffled what’s left of my hair. My heart pounded whilst bossa nova bliss conjured up images of Swinging Sixties caper movies. I saw myself as an on-the-run diamond thief evading justice in tropical Brazil or a spy tracking down an international ne’er-do-well. Rio’s ranks of near-derelict colonial-era buildings adjoining the road added to the sense of far-away exoticism.

After ten miles or so we turned off the freeway onto city streets. Of course, the traffic got considerably slower and denser. I informed Pete of the first half of this development. My driver, who I think may have been related to Emerson Fittipaldi, lit a cigarette and emitted a long sigh. Nudging bumper-to-bumper we edged through the streets. I was struck by the general calmness of Brazilian traffic. No horn-leaning, no tyre-screeching, and oddity for a city known for its lawlessness, everybody calmly obeyed traffic lights. And cheery customs and immigration officials. I was starting to like Rio.

After we’d passed through a tunnel under one of Rio’s many hills the road opened again into a dual carriageway lined by hotels and important-looking office buildings. My driver pointed to the other end of the road. He turned to give me another grin and a thumbs-up. The dense traffic nudged its way along. Not really knowing where to look I scanned ahead. I’d told Pete to look for a red Peugeot. I was looking for a fretful Yorkshireman.

I think we spotted each other pretty much at the same time. He spotted a taxi; I spotted a strange phenomenon: like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis and discovering its wings, I saw a man coming to life, emerging from an agonised former self. We pulled up at the kerb. I jumped out by Pete. Very British, we did one of those is-it-handshake-is-it-a-hug things. I think I may have punched the air. While the drivers shifted the liquid cargo Pete and I had chance for a quick chat and a couple of photographs. That was it. Our Rio meeting lasted about three and a half minutes. Looking relieved, though not entirely stress-free, Pete was off to catch his container ship. My supporting role in Hops and Glory was over. My three-day surprise holiday in Rio wasn’t though – I was determined to make the most of my adventure.

End of Part One.

* Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim wrote the song “Girl from Ipanema.” If at this point you are cringing, then you are a philistine. Ok, I concede the song has been tortured by every talentless crooner and half-competent cruise-liner band that ever existed. This doesn’t make it a bad song. It’s a brilliant song. It’s a work of art. And Tom Jobim was the genius who wrote it. On the plane to Rio we didn’t get that tune but we did hear a selection of his other equally brilliant tunes: Corcovado, Agua de Beber, Chega De Saudade, Wave, Stone Flower, Desafinado, Insensatez and more. Just ask, I’ll burn you a CD.

My TV Debut: The New Rowley Birkin

2010-12-09T09:46:00.004Z

It's not like me to go blowing my own trumpet about being a "beer expert", let alone a "leading beer expert", as if it's some kind of competition. In particular, when encountering the alchemists who actually brew the stuff I'm more than happy to STFU and remain humble in my ignorance.

But "beer expert" is what Lakes TV have called me for a Rowley Birkin scene about beer for Christmas shot in one of my favourite local pubs in my South Cumbrian homelands, The Queens Arms at Biggar Village.

You can watch it here (you'll need to follow the link that bears my name as there isn't a specific URL).

You can also catch it on proper telly, Sky 203, at 8pm this evening (Thu 9th December).

Rowley Birkin

A Myth Busted?

2010-11-23T12:31:00.005Z

I am a skeptic.*

There's a lot of rubbish out there fighting for our brain-space and often, our money. It's astonishing how many people are willing to buy into the evidence-free claims of charlatans, quacks, paranormalists, conspiracy theorists and clergy.

Homeopoathy, chiropractic, reflexology, detox, Reiki, ghosts, mediums, organic food, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, bio-dynamic agriculture, religion – I could go on for a very long time listing the things that appeal to the hard-of-thinking (e.g. Prince Charles).

Many times over the years, in the world of beer, I have heard something that provokes my skepticism. It is an idea that is as widely believed and repeated as the myth that water goes down the plug-hole different directions in different hemispheres**. Two recent mentions pushed me over the edge into researching the subject ... well, Googling it. Pete Brown mentioned it on his blog (although the exact location escapes me for the moment), and Julian Grocock, Chief Executive of SIBA, mentioned it in his welcome speech to the judges at the recent Great Northern Beer Festival.

So, what is this great myth?

It's the idea that the tongue is divided into areas that detect different aspects of flavour: salt, sweet, bitter and sour. In our beer world the myth frequently manifests itself as the suggestion that bitterness is experienced at the back of the palate, and this (as claimed by Grocock) is why we must swallow when judging beer.

A bit of Googling revealed that I'm not the only tongue flavour detection skeptic in the world. In fact, the subject seems to have been done to death in the world of wine. There are many mentions of the myth on wine blogs and websites.

It seems the origin of this myth is a scientific paper by a German psychologist. In 1901 D.P. Hanig found that sensitivity to flavours varies across the tongue, but his his result was mistranslated as meaning that different areas of the tongue detect different flavours.

The myth was reinforced in 1942 by Harvard psychologist Edwin Boring [great name!] who analysed Hanig's raw data. Unfortunately his graphs were plotted in such a way that areas of lower sensitivity were were wrongly perceived as being areas of zero sensitivity.

The false tongue flavour-map started to appear in textbooks and the myth took hold.

The subject was visited afresh by Virginia Collings in 1974. Her paper confirmed that although there are areas of variable sensitivity on the tongue, the flavour map is a myth.

This raises the question why do when swallow when judging beer yet the wine world spits when tasting wine? My guess is that it's simply a question of strength. Most beer is weaker than most wine. We just don't get hammered by swallowing the amounts of beer we need to drink to experience sufficient flavour. Certainly a good gulp of beer can be particularly enjoyable, but is it necessary to fully experience the flavour? I think not. Treat with skepticism.

Some links:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-taste-map-all-wrong

http://www.fermentarium.com/lifestyle/recent-studies-lifestyle/the-tongue-map-myth/

http://blog.sciencegeekgirl.com/2008/05/15/myth-6-your-tongue-has-a-taste-map/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/4007/

http://homewineschool.com/2009/10/29/the-tongue-taste-map-does-not-exist/

http://blog.vintagecellars.com/2010/05/tongue-map-myth/

http://www.bulkmsm.com/AyurvedicHerbalMSM/p51.htm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article6549499.ece

http://www.aromadictionary.com/articles/tonguemap_article.html

* Increasingly, "sceptic" is being spelled as "skeptic" in the UK. Here and here, for instance.

** If you are thinking to yourself "that's true, isn't it?" you need to be more skeptical.

Organising a Beer Festival Judging

2010-11-16T12:25:00.001Z

Although I've judged at many beer festivals and events I've never been chief judge.

Now that time has come.

The organisers have asked me first to define the categories. The festival is four months away and the brewers need cajoling into entering – and they need to know the categories.

Style and category definitions are often the source of bafflement, and sometimes argument amongst those involved. Tedious pedantic semantic arguments occur: "That beer's not a Strong Bitter, it's an Old Ale" etc. ad nauseum.

I'd like to keep the bickering to a minimum and get a pat on the back for my organisational flair – and I'd like your help in doing so.

What are your thoughts on what the categories should be for a British beer competition overwhelmingly dominated by cask ale?

Nutts About Alcohol

2010-11-01T15:25:00.001Z

I was going to attempt to write something about muddled thinking regarding drugs but I have little to add to this from one of my favourite non-beer blogs, Heresy Corner, so I haven't bothered.

Doing My Bit For The Beer Cause

2010-10-22T11:22:00.001+01:00

I've just received a copy of a book I've contributed too.

I'm quite flattered to get a piece into a book whose predecessor sold 150,000 copies to a mainstream readership who might not otherwise be exposed to propaganda for good beer.

The piece is a rather general "why not try beer with Christmas food?" sort of thing, not really written for a beer-specialist audience. I half expect some "you should have mentioned such-and-such" comments when you people see it. It did originally contain a few more juicy recommendations and some advice on where to find good beer but the editor deemed it surplus to requirements. Instead, a paragraph was added to the end (as if written by me) on the subject of wine – a subject about which I freely admit to knowing bugger all about.

It's a lovely book with lots of nice pictures and Christmas recipes. Many will receive a copy on Christmas Day, but that's a bit late to be swatting up on Christmas comestibles and the shops are closed so go out and buy a copy now.

Here it is on Amazon.

The Heart Sinks

2010-10-20T13:13:00.001+01:00

After reading Martyn Cornell's lovely ranty post about Mark Hunter, boss of MolsonCoors in the UK I innocently followed a link to a page within the corporate behemoth's website.

Reading down the timeline we see such loveliness as:

1744: William Worthington starts brewing in Burton-on-Trent, UK.

1900: There are more than 32 breweries in Burton, including 87 miles of private brewery track and 36 level crossings in town.

What marvelous moments in Britain's beer heritage!

But wait – what about 2009?

2009: Coors Brewers Limited changes its company name to Molson Coors Brewing Company (UK) Limited.

Chile's Best Beer

2010-10-13T09:14:00.001+01:00

Watching BBC News 24's coverage of the marvelous rescue of the trapped miners after two months of empathetic claustrophobia terrors that have occasionally kept me awake at night, I am, like millions of others, feeling quite elated at watching the happy ending in progress.

As journalistic padding there's been some talk of what the men will be most looking forward to back on the surface: loved ones; hot baths; clean clothes; sunlight; fresh air; fresh food.

Beer wasn't mentioned but I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

A bit of browsing on Ratebeer revealed this brewery, Szot, by a head and shoulders margin, as Chile's best. That's what I would want – after family, I suppose.

Californian Beer Industry Vs Marijuana Legalization?

2010-09-22T12:45:00.001+01:00

When is a beer festival not a beer festival?

2010-09-22T11:29:00.003+01:00

When it's the Tynemouth Beer [sic] Festival.

My brother, some friends, and I arrived at the Tynemouth Cricket Club shortly before 8pm on Saturday evening. There was a short queue to a ticket booth where each relieved of £10 for 8 half-pint vouchers.

We sallied forth unto the marquee. A long bar down one side carried about fifty handpumps. Strangely, there seemed to be very few pumpclips. In fact there were four pumpclips. In fact there were only four beers available – and they ran out by about 8.20pm.

A beer festival running out of beer on its final night is not unheard of. No beer festival organisers have the psychic ability to predict the exact amount of beer to stock, and having local breweries on standby to deliver some bright casks is often a sensible policy.

We could accept the lack of beer but what annoyed us was that weren't informed that supplies were drying up when parting with our cash.

Moving out of the marquee to get away from an awful rock covers band whose drummer had a flamboyant attitude to time-keeping, we observed that people were still being sold vouchers for non-existant beer until well after 9pm. There was a growing number of obviously annoyed people milling around. Some, like us, reluctantly explored the small cider and perry bar (does perry often taste of UHU? does cider often smell of fried eggs?) Some hardy souls even used their vouchers in the pavilion for John Smith's Smoothflow and Fosters.

The Queue

Only an hour or so after the beer-zero hour did we see newcomers being informed of the crisis.

I spoke to the organiser. I was struck by his cavalier attitude to the number of unhappy people. He actually seemed overjoyed that the beer had only just lasted into the third of three sessions. No doubt his spreadsheet would indicate a roaring success.

His last comment was "I have created a monster". You said it pal.

On a brighter note – an early departure allowed us to go to the Tynemouth Lodge Hotel where we found the Mordue IPA to be utterly tremendous.

Land of the Free – A Taste of Things To Come for the UK?

2010-09-14T12:53:00.003+01:00

Link: "My name is Austin, I hate underage drinking laws"

Beer Blooper

2010-09-11T18:05:00.001+01:00

Sloe Goer?

2010-09-10T10:41:00.016+01:00

In the fields behind my mother's house the hedgerows are laden with sloe berries which look like they'll be fully ripe in a couple of weeks.

Obviously we'll be having a go at sloe gin but naturally the notion of "sloe beer" is shouting at me.

Sloes are hellishly bitter so presumably they could assist in the role normally played by bittering hops whilst adding some of their own flavours.

The worry is that I don't recall ever having come across a sloe beer. A Google search on "sloe beer" only produces a thin smattering of non-illuminating hits. This could be for one of three reasons:

I'm the first to person to ever have the idea (unlikely) and I'm a genius who has had a brainwave that will make me millions (even more unlikely).
Lots of people have tried making sloe beers but nothing palatable or saleable has been forthcoming and I'm an ignoramus for not knowing this already.
There are lots of sloe beers in existence but they have all escaped my attention.

So, waddya reckon? Could sloe beer be a goer or should I stick to sloe gin?

Your comments please.

**********************************

UPDATE: Peter Alexander, a.k.a. "Tandleman" has tipped me off that Lees once produced a sloe beer. Thanks Pete. Anyone tasted it?

Dinner with @PeteBrownBeer – Guest Post By Pete Russell

2010-08-11T22:26:00.009+01:00

Guest post from beer blogging newcomer Pete Russell ! Give him a warm welcome!

___________________________________________________________________

On Monday night my Father and I went to Hardy's Brasserie in Marylebone for Pete Brown's tutored beer tasting and talk, followed by dinner with each course matched to a complimentary beer.

Pete Brown is Beer Writer of The Year and author of Hops and Glory, cataloguing his quest to recreate the voyage that India Pale Ale (IPA) took from Burton to India, as well as several other fine titles. He speaks with enthusiasm and candor about his transition from working in an advertising to following his passion and becoming a full time beer and travel writer.

First came the tasting, starting with a Harviestoun Scheihallion Pilsner,

which is

not a style I would normally choose, but it made an excellent start with subtle grass and olive flavours. It reminded me of drinking Stella and Jupiler in Brussels 10 years ago, before Inbev broke it.

Next was Otley O-Garden, a wheat beer which I was a little disappointed by, I presume it was filtered as it was mostly clear, there are certainly better wheat beers around but again probably the intention was to have a subtle introduction so as not to totally ruin our taste buds.

Pete interspersed the tasting with anecdotes from his Hops and Glory travels and general wry observations on life. He managed to get the balance about right between chat and tutored tasting.

You'll have to excuse if I start to muddle the order of the beers at this point, we had had a pint of Jenning's Cocker Hoop in the pub before we started and the staff were quite generous with the taster beers when encouraged.

Next was Mort Subite Kriek, again a style I am not fond of, and I struggle with Lambics in general. The flavours were complex and the mixture of the sweetness of the cherries and almost astringent strong flavours I could appreciate if not wholly enjoy, personally I find a few mouthfuls enough of this kind of beer and cannot really enjoy a whole bottle. That said, I can understand why people like it and one of the women at our table was very keen and had another bottle with dinner.
At our penultimate beer of the tasting we came to some of my favorite beer styles, firstly an IPA style that had all the classic powerful flavours and lovely bitter aftertastes one hopes for in a modern IPA. Thankfully it did not have ridiculous alcohol content, it is an added pleasure to enjoy a great tasting beer, knowing you can have several more and not need to be carried home. I would happily have drunk this beer for the rest of the night.

Finally, the Belgians made a second appearance with a Westmalle

Dubbel. This is another big, bold beer with earthy, caramel and fruity flavours and a big alcohol punch at 7%, it is a beer to be sipped and savoured. As Pete said, the Belgian's reputation as boring is a big con to keep the hoards away from fantastic beer like this and it's thousands of cousins in the bars of Belgium.

This was only the first half, it was followed by three course meal paired with beers to compliment them, I hope to write about this later on as the food was excellent and there was more fantastic beer to come.

Overall it was a great night, with an entertaining talk by Pete Brown, excellent food at Hardy's Brasserie and a fantastic beer selection (supplied by Utobeer). The only way I found out about the night was by following Pete Brown on Twitter, now at least I have a good explanation for these people that don't "get" Twitter.

Welcome a Guest

2010-08-09T20:00:00.000+01:00

My chum, ex Microbar regular, beer-lover Pete Russell is going be contributing to "It's just the beer talking".

Please welcome him by following him on twitter here.

The Legendary Croglin Vampire

2010-07-17T13:33:00.003+01:00

Observant Twitter followers will have noticed that I get fed up with session beer. I seem to remember tweeting "I'm drowning in an ocean of indifferent session beer" at some stage.

The problem is, my home county of Cumbria is a very conservative drinkership. It wants unchallenging session beer. 5% abv is regarded by many as ridiculously strong. Imported beers are conspicuous by their absence. I get bored and more than a little frustrated. I've nothing against session beer, I just don't want it to be the only style (or range of styles) available to me.

Fortunately there are some positive developments: "Hardknott" Dave Bailey's admirable efforts are well-documented in blogsville; Bitter End are rumoured to be brewing an 8% "extreme" IPA and Stringer's brew "Black Flag", an luscious 8% stout.

I've recently discovered another tremendous Cumbrian beer that has the potential to entertain the beer geek (as opposed to the real-ale enthusiast): Croglin Vampire by Cumbrian Legendary Ales. First brewed in 2007, its only regular outlet is the Kirkstile Inn which shares ownership with the brewery. Only rarely has it appeared anywhere else.

A few weeks ago I interviewed Roger Humphries, the owner of the pub and brewery, for my little beer column in Cumbria Life magazine. A few days later a box of bottles arrived in the post. Most were 500ml bottlings of their regular beers, of which "Loweswater Gold" is the star (current title-holder of SIBA's Northern Region Best Bottle Beer.)

Amongst the 500ml bottles were a couple of 330s which immediately provoked my curiosity. "Croglin Vampire, Doppelbock, 8% abv." I bunged them in the fridge and longed for beer-time.

I was astonished. A Cumbrian brewer producing something quite un-Cumbrian. The beer is dark ruby red with a rapidly-dimishing head leaving attractive "legs" down the side of the glass. There isn't a big aroma, just some generic malt with some forest-fruits.

But the mouthfeel and flavour! What a treat! The phrase that sprung to mind was "a symphony of malt". Layer upon layer of nuanced malt loveliness revealed themselves with a sumptuous velvety mouthfeel. Very special.

In a beer world in which shouty hop-bombs hog the limelight, malt complexity is frequently sidelined. Crog Vamp is a perfect reminder of the delights of malt.

I emailed Roger telling him how good this beer is. My enthusiasm stirred, I wanted to share this beer with the beer geek world.

The other day I had a meeting with Roger to work on a marketing plan for Crog Vamp. I've recommended that as a matter of urgency he engages with us online beer geeks in two ways: get Twittering, and send out bottles for reviews by bloggers.

Yes, you read that correctly – there are bottles available for review! If you are an internet beer reviewer you can have a bottle or two. Roger will need your address so please leave it here, and I'll pass the info on.

Inbev At It Again

2010-07-08T10:22:00.032+01:00

It gets a bit irksome doesn't it?

"Contains Only Four Ingredients: Hops, Malted Barley, Maize, Water."

As beer geeks, we're clued up about our favourite beverage. We know that no decent beer ever "contains" maize (or corn syrup as it probably manifests itself.) It annoys us that Inbev UK Ltd have the bloody cheek to rely on the average customer's ignorance to make a selling point of a cheap adjunct.

It's also annoying that they choose to ignore the humble unsung-hero of brewing: lovely miracle-worker yeast.

This campaign first appeared a couple of years. It appears to have been revived. There are umpteen hoardings carrying the advert across Newcastle. I presume they have reappeared elsewhere too.

So rather than getting annoyed and bitching to each other about AB Inbev's attitude, why don't we do something about it?

As the "four ingredients" statement is untruthful in neglecting yeast, this advertising probably breaches advertising regulations. We should complain. In fact, I've done it already. It's easy; here's the link to the Advertising Standards Authority online form: http://www.asa.org.uk/Complaints-and-ASA-action/How-to-complain/Online-Form.aspx I'm not sure that multiple complaints on individual subjects adds any weight, but it can't do any harm can it?

[Please make sure you complain about Inbev UK Ltd]

[You can see the results about other previous complaints about Stella advertising here]

****************************************************

UPDATE!

Here's the rather predictable response fro the advertising standards people:

"Dear Mr Pickthall

INBEV UK LTD/ STELLA ARTOIS

Thank you for contacting the Advertising Standards Authority. I’m sorry to hear that this ad has caused you concern.

You may be interested to know that we’ve previously received a few complaints about this ad. Complaints included concerns that the ad didn’t list yeast and carbon dioxide as ingredients.

We reviewed the ad and sought the advertisers’ response to these complaints. I should state from the outset that we will not be taking further action in respect of these complaints. I realise you feel strongly about this ad, but please let me explain how and why we reached this view.

The advertisers explained that the claim relates to the liquid produced at the end of the brewing process. Both the advertisers and we accept that yeast is used in the brewing process to start the fermentation. However, the yeast is removed after the fermentation process, using a combination of three methods, which ensures the yeast doesn’t appear in the end product.

We consider that most consumers are likely to know that yeast is needed for the brewing process, and that carbon dioxide is a by-product of that process. In our view, the ad is unlikely to mislead consumers to their detriment as to the nature of the product or how it is produced. Given this, we will not be pursuing these complaints further.

Although we’ve been unable to uphold these complaints, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.

Best regards,

Emily Henwood | Complaints Executive"

That response hasn't exactly come as a surprise. As Beernut was quick to point out, Inbev's defence would be that Stella doesn't contain yeast as it's filtered ~~to death~~ out.

Fair enough. We could all see it coming.

I'm still not satisfied with the advert. OK, I'll put my hand up to the accusation of pedantry, but their use of the word "contains" bothers me. I'd be happy with "brewed from" but as far as I can see Stella does not "contain"malted barley, maize or hops. I'm not a brewer, I don't really know how to word it in a properly technical way but Stella must rather contain proteins derived from malt and maize, and a smattering of acids from the hops. And good old alcohol and CO2 of course.

As you can see from the response email "The advertisers explained that the claim relates to the liquid produced at the end of the brewing process." Well, Mr In-Fucking-Bev, the liquid DOES NOT "contain" malted barley, maize or hops – I could bloody well see them if they were there and they would get stuck in my teeth if I were ever to lower my standards enough to consume the stuff.

I may well make another pedantry-inspired complaint.

Rant over.

Synaesthesia?

2010-06-26T11:26:00.002+01:00

My other obsession in life is music, and you'll be hearing more about this in the forthcoming mammoth blog post.

Some musicians speak to me. Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, B.B. King, Carlos Santana (in his peak years '72-'74), to name but a few, do it to me. The greatest virtuosos are capable of capturing the all complexity and nuance of the human voice. And this is the ultimate goal when you attempt to play a melodic instrument, whether you know it or not. When I am most receptive I can almost hear words. Coltrane is a chatterbox trying to tell you his life story; Shorter is taciturn but a master of the withering put-down; Miles Davis does it all: name an emotion and I'll point you to a recording that captures it. Even Sun Ra's cacaphonies make perfect sense to me. Most rock music conveys no more message to me than a baby banging its toy on its cot conveys to its parents.

What's this got to do with beer?

When I experience flavour I almost hear it and see it. Fruity, herbal hop character is shiny brass instruments; maltiness is bass and drums. Somewhere in the middle the highs and lows mingle in harmonious, or sometimes discordant, ways. At the same time I almost "see" a representation of my mental flavour encyclopaedia, and where the new beer flavour is filed. Experience a new beer and I look into my mind and I almost see lights come on, like a map in a public place that has buttons illuminating specific locations.

I have a friend who keeps no numbers in his mobile phone. He doesn't need to as he can remember them all. He'll freely admit to being a bit "spergy". Sometimes I feel I have a similar thing going on with flavour.

Recently I was in the pub with friends (funnily enough). I described a beer as having a murky midrange. One of my friends, known for his ability to cut through bluster and flummery, interjected – "what the fuck are you on about, 'the mid-range flavours'?". It was then that it dawned on me that I regularly use this, and other, musical terms when describing flavour. It seems perfectly natural to me but now I realise not everyone perceives and remembers flavours the same way.

Could this be synaesthesia? Am I a synesthete? I wonder. It would explain a lot.

[Many thanks btw to Martyn Cornell for reminding me of the music connection with this sentence: "The stay-at-home IPA was silver trumpets, with everything higher, brighter; the well-travelled, 'maderised' version was golden trombones, a baritone to its brother’s tenor."]

This Makes Me Angry For So Many Reasons

2010-06-15T10:06:00.001+01:00

http://www.theleedsbierfest.com/

[This is not the mammoth post either]

New Poll On Bottle Sizes

2010-06-14T10:07:00.001+01:00

It's over there on the right ➵

This isn't the mammoth post that's in the pipeline btw!

Bear with me...

2010-05-29T09:51:00.003+01:00

There's a big blog post coming up. It's currently on 3500 words and will probably go over 5000.

Lib Dems Leading In The Poll That Matters

2010-05-05T11:11:00.001+01:00

The Lib Dems are leading in the non-authoritative poll I'm running (which you can find at the top right of the page you are looking at.)

At 11am on the day before the general election the parties currently stand at:

Conservative: 3 votes (13%)
Labour: 1 vote (4%)
Lib Dem: 12 votes (52%)
Hung / Coalition: 1 vote (4%)
Other: 6 votes (26%)

The poll ends as voting closes on election day.

Vote in my beer poll now!

Enterprise On My Back

2010-04-21T09:58:00.004+01:00

You may recall that last year I went undercover at an Enterprise Inn recruitment indoctrination event. Since then I've been getting regular emails attempting to cajole me into taking on one of their poxy pubs and thereby work 100 hours a week for £10,000 p.a. and then get booted out after two years with a debt of £50,000.

They have a new tack – taking on an Enterprise pub as a way to indulge a passion for cask ale.

"And with Cask Ales enjoying a real renaissance, we can offer you the chance to combine your passion for keeping and serving the very best beers, supporting you every step of the way in your new venture."

At the recruitment meeting last October I asked the nice lady from Solihull about cask ale. She told me that Enterprise could supply "pretty much anything you want to sell." Further probing revealed that the cask portfolio listed 80 beers.

To get that in perspective, remember that the UK now has over 600 breweries and during the course of year each will brew a dozen or so different beers. Therefore there are approximately 7,200 different cask ales available every year. Enterprise's offering constitutes about 1.1% of the available beers.

It's not going to work is it? Certainly, a good and varying range of cask ales is a sure-fire way to create a popular pub – but you're hardly going to be able to achieve it with Enterprise's paltry portfolio of national brands.

I shall be continuing to resist Enterprise's kind offer of a pub.

GBG v. GPG

2010-04-15T08:35:00.002+01:00

A guide to beer guides

Guardian Piece Makes Interesting Points

2010-04-01T11:33:00.001+01:00

The Malt Manifesto.

Darling Budget Dismay

2010-03-25T11:28:00.000Z

Second CAMRA Facepalm in 24 hrs

2010-03-12T16:42:00.005Z

Today I became aware, courtesy of CAMRA apparatchik @tonyjerome on Twitter, that CAMRA has created a pub discount scheme.

This isn't a scheme whereby a pub can gain a discount on something and thereby reduce risk of closure; no, it's a scheme whereby CAMRA members can get discounts on beer.

Now, let's get this straight: the pub trade is up against the wall, 39 or 52 or something are closing every week, CAMRA creates a scheme that eats into already-slim profit margins.

It's astonishingly dumb. It will extra competition between the pubs that CAMRA members already favour. The ones giving the discount will attract more CAMRA customers; the real ale pubs not offering discounts will lose trade.

To create this extra price pressure is a disservice and insult to a trade that is already struggling.

Coming from an organisation that appoints itself as a guardian of pubs this scheme is a slap in the face for the very business sector it claims to support.

Another consequence will be that perfectly good pubs will find themselves edged out of the Good Beer Guide in favour of those giving discounts.

Who gains? A hardcore of tight-as-a-gnat's-chuff CAMRA loudmouths.

Any CAMRA member with any self-respect should make a point of supporting pubs by not asking for, or declining a discount under this scheme.

You couldn't make it up!

Facepalm Moment

2010-03-12T11:04:00.002Z

Perhaps I'm mellowing in my advancing years, I'm not wound up by CAMRA activities quite so much as I used to be. Perhaps CAMRA is getting better.

Now and again though, something comes along that creates that special facepalm feeling that only CAMRA can provide.

Last night I visited the Prince of Wales at Foxfield, South Cumbria's premier hardcore CAMRA hangout. In there I picked up the latest edition of the local branch's newsletter, "Furness Inn-Quirer" (geddit?).

An article on the Lancaster Brewery caught my eye. It was a familiar story – branch members hop on a train to visit a brewery and gawp gormlessly, gasping for free pints while the kindly brewer talks them through mash tuns and FVs.

The author provides a quick description of Lancaster's four key beers. One is described thusly:

"...and not for the faint hearted, is Lancaster Red, which at 4.9% is a premium strength, ruby red beer with a spicy, malty aroma and a smooth taste."

Yes you did read that correctly – 4.9%, not for the faint hearted.

Beggars belief, doesn't it?

Christmas Gets Earlier

2010-02-24T11:13:00.002Z

Cast your mind back a couple of months. What did you drink on Christmas Day?

I've landed a commission to contribute to a book of Christmas food and drink which, all being well, will be flying off the shelves next December. No, I haven't been given the Terry's Chocolate Orange or Toblerone sections. Funnily enough, I've been given the beer entry.

I don't have a huge number of words to play with so I'm going to concentrate on beer/food matching for the classic festive comestibles.

My brother and I have been attempting to create sublime beer and food matches at Christmas for years. We've come up with a few principles to narrow down our own Christmas beer search e.g. golden ale or darkish lager, low to medium bitterness, to go with the turkey.

What are your Christmas beer/food guidelines? I'd like to see if my perceptions are are shared by other beerophiles, or whether I'm going to look like a turkey with my suggestions.

Might be worth keeping it simple, such as festive comestible / beer style / example such as roast turkey / golden ale / Swannay Orkney Blast.

Your wisdom is appreciated. Remind me to get you a pint next time I see you.

Beer Electioneering Semiotics

2010-02-18T10:46:00.004Z

I often start the day with a browse of the Daily Mail's website. I know I shouldn't but it is a useful adjunct to the effects of caffeine in getting me fired up for the day.

Today this caught my eye: "Now 'Dave' claims he likes nothing better than to sit on the sofa watching darts... who does he think he's kidding?"

Apparently "Dave" Cameron has given an interview in which he talks about his love of darts, canned Guinness and 'gritty' shows on the telly."

That is of course a mendacious and patronising attempt to appeal to working class voters and should be treated with eye-rolling disdain.

But beer gets a mention – what role does it play in Dave's electioneering?

Dave Cameron is a clever bloke and more than capable of understanding and manipulating subtle messages of "brand".

Canned Guinness says (and you may contradict me here): "I'm ordinary; I don't like fancy things but canned lager is a bit too crude for me; I choose Guinness because it offers more flavour yet doesn't possess a snobby elitist image; I'm a man of the people but not undiscriminating".

It can't have escaped your notice that he is pictured clutching a pint of cask ale. I expect this has come from the DM picture library rather than issued by the Cameron machine to accompany his interview with Shortlist magazine. Nonetheless Dave would have been aware of the semiotic value being pictured with a pint of cask ale. This will no doubt go do well with Dave's core voters – the home counties middle class. For this group – the blokes at least – cask ale is the default beer choice.

When Dave became leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, for one interview (so Dave, what attracted you to the aristocratic multi-million heiress Samantha?), he was pictured in his kitchen at home with his wife and kids. Difficult to miss, on the wall behind them was a Grolsch neon. A Grolsch neon? It can't have escaped Dave's people that a prominent brand image was displayed. I imagine the intended message was "I drink lager, I'm ordinary; however I choose drink posh import-only lager, I care about provenance, flavour etc".

All-in-all, it's a fairly confused message. The only message I think I'm getting is that Dave probably is a beer drinker. I don't think the same can be said for the humourless Scottish puritan control-freak Gordon Brown.

Will Dave the Beer Drinker, or Gordon the Hair Shirt get my vote? No. Hell will freeze over before I could vote for either of them. Nor could I bring myself to vote for Nick "it's a recession: we've downgraded from Ocado to Sainsbury's" Clegg. I'm stuck on "none of the above". I suspect I'm not alone.

Beer On The Telly Again

2010-02-04T13:03:00.002Z

A few evenings ago my TIVO picked up this sympathetic piece from the formerly-nasty Michael Portillo:

Pleasing though it is that our beer history is getting some mass-media, my heart sank a little at one point.

Where?

2 mins 47 seconds.

Why the old-fashioned van? I'm no expert but that van looks 1930s to me. Just what has that got to do with brewing in 2010? OK, the thirties were in Burton's glory years but the brewery concerned is contemporary. I can see that they want to suggest "we revere the tradition we are part of", but isn't it an awkward and unnecessary way of saying it? I might be imagining it, but I think Portillo's laughter is disguising a cringe. I certainly cringed.

It bothers me that the world of cask ale is perennially keen to promote itself to more people yet it doesn't listen to those it wishes to convert. The perception "cask ale is for old men" is still inhibits the unconverted yet brewers still trot out the very "ye olde" cliches that created it.

Pub Closures – A Thought

2010-01-28T09:52:00.003Z

This post by Woolpack Dave has got me thinking about pub closures.

We regularly see the scary statistic "52 pubs closing every week". Or 36, or 19. Whatever the number is, it signifies some sort of change or upheaval in Britain's socialising habits. Costs for pubs have increased and notably the historical core of the pub business – blokes drinking lots of pints – looks fragile.

Ten years ago my brother and I were in the midst of a two year search for premises for our own beer evangelism business (please overlook the ghastly photograph, it was a much nicer place than the image might suggest). Steve and I love pubs. What we really wanted was a pub but it quickly became apparent that to do what we wanted – to sell what might termed the esoterica of the beer world – our chance of finding a pub in which to do it was zero.

The essential requirement was that whatever premises we took on it would have to be free-of-tie. To buy the freehold of a pub was way out of our budget. Free-of-tie pub tenancies and leases in London are conspicuous by their almost complete absence. So we had no choice we had to look for premises other than pubs. That's why we ended up adapting a former furniture shop.

But what had we created? People socialised, drank beer and ate food in convivial environment. A pub, in all but name. But no, the appropriate description was "a bar".

Had we been doing this now, would our business count as a pub opening? Are pub closure statistics limited to the bricks and mortar bearing the name "pub"? Are the statistics neglecting new business that are pubs in all but name? I suspect there are many others who have experienced the problem we had.

But why does that problem exist?

Obvious really. The structure of the pub industry. Pub companies owning thousands of pubs. Sure you can get your hands on a pub: but it will have to be tied. Wave goodbye to your local market knowledge, your specialist skills, your ability to innovate. Or go for a bar or cafe.

I feel sad when I see boarded-up pubs; I feel happy when enterprising people are opening bars and cafes. There's no short of people willing to invest in and run food/drink/conviviality businesses only pubs are off-limits because of the structure of the pub industry and its weapon of mass-destruction, the tie system.

If the stranglehold on the pub trade was loosened would the picture be rosier? Would the likes of Microbar, North Bar, the Rake and countless others, beer-focused or not, be thriving pubs? I think so.

BBC at it again.

2010-01-08T10:59:00.002Z

Here's another BBC news story scaremongering about alcohol.

Note the following paragraph:

The report also called for a rise in duty on spirits and white cider, mandatory health warnings on labels, and stricter regulation of alcohol advertising and promotion.

So, the story is about a report which calls for a duty rise on spirits and white cider. What image does the BBC choose to illustrate this story about spirits and white cider – a picture of someone drinking a pint of what appears to be cask ale, presumably in a pub.

Poor journalism.

Top-Notch Service – Pub Trade Take Note.

2010-01-06T12:26:00.001Z

A few days ago I took Messrs Marks and Spencer's kind offer of four bottles of Cornish IPA for the price of three.

I opened the first bottle: dull, lacking flavour, limp, oxidisation starting to rear its ugly wet cardboard head.

I opened the second then the third – the same problem. The fourth remained unopened – I'd got the message.

Braving the icy roads, clutching my receipt, I took them back to M&S.

The checkout assistant summoned a friendly lady from the stock room. A profuse apology was offered while a refund form was being filled in.

I took my money and turned to leave.

"Wait, you haven't got your replacements."

A bag containing four more bottles was thrust at me.

I paused while I wiped away a tear of joy at the niceness of the world (almost).

I Wouldn't Normally ... OK, Go On Then...

2010-01-05T17:18:00.003Z

...I'll have a copy of the Spectator.

In it you'll find a piece "Don't worry – drink and be merry"by Canadian journalist Leah McLaren who evidently spends a lot of time in the UK.

I hope it registers with the main protagonist in neo-prohibitionism – the Government, and the uncritical mass-media: the BBC, the Daily Mail, The Independent...and many more.

While I've got your attention, "Labour’s fixation with control is strangling everyone" in the Times is also worth a read.

Last-minute Christmas Shopping

2009-12-24T15:41:00.001Z

What Am I Looking For? (My Beer Of the Year Award)

2009-12-21T10:55:00.011Z

I was in the pub recently with award-winning blogger Woolpack Dave and his partner Woolpack Anne. The conversation between Dave and I (Anne, despite being entirely sober, was nodding off) was about what we look for in a beer; the quest, the never-ending search for the next great beer.

Ten years ago I was infatuated with American IPAs. I thought they were the be all and end all. My first couple of trips to California in the late nineties had convinced me that big, bold and assertive beers were the future. This thought was part of the inspiration for creating Microbar. I wanted to bring a bit of the US's craft beer culture to the UK.

Since then, I have mellowed in my view. I like to think my understanding of what sells to whom and why (in the socio-demographic and individual senses) is rather good. Years of experience and observation have tempered my enthusiasm for hop-blasts and caused me to re-appraise my early view of them as saviours of beer (I still love them and crave them especially here in Cumbria where one hop cone is passed around the various breweries for a waft over the wort).

No, today I'm looking for something that transcends the thrill of blasts of flavour and bitterness.

I'm wary of the description "balanced". For me, that word brings to mind obsessions of an older generation of cask ale drinkers: the regional brewers, sessionability, CAMRA and boring brown beer. "Balanced" is too close to "b*lan**d" for my liking.

There is no single word for what I'm looking for. Here's a selection that go some way toward describing what I crave: harmony, complexity, layeredness, aroma, integration, surprise, poise, nuance, finish, moreishness.

I hope that those descriptors give you some insight into my selection for Jeff's Beer of the Year 2009.

GOLD: Anderson Valley's Boont Amber. I first came across this on draught in a bar in San Francisco in 2003. Since then I've dreamed of its symphony of malt and superlative but subtle hop character. Fortunately someone had the good sense to bring some in for the GBBF.

From GBBF '09

SILVER: Budvar. Yes good old "ordinary" Budvar. Throughout the year I've regularly been noticing that Budvar has gained hop character in a particularly beautiful way – it meets all, rather than just several of my criteria. Many times I thought my mind must be playing tricks on me as it's such a well-established and familiar beer. Anticipating having my mental health questioned I asked the chaps from Budvar UK if there had been any change to the beer in recent months. Breezily they replied "Oh, that's since the new head brewer took over last January." I swooned. The brilliance of my tastebuds confirmed!

BRONZE: Jarrow Brewery McConnells Celebratory Port Stout. Neither really stouty or porty, nonetheless a great beer - undercurrents of treacle, chocolate and coffee with an abundant smack of hoppy orangey fruitiness. Despite pseudo-Victorian pumpclip imagery, it's actually quite modern in its flavour profile.

There are many, many more deserving of honourable mentions. If I get time later I'll add some. Now I'm off to start my Christmas shopping.

Festive Beer And Food Matching

2009-12-18T10:17:00.002Z

Last Christmas my brother and I matched Orkney Blast by Swannay Brewery with our Christmas turkey. It was heaven. This golden ale with moderate bitterness and malty character partnered the roast avian and chipolatas with distinction. Brother and I grinned while sister-in-law, mother and step-father supped their indifferent plonk.

The great thing was, we hadn't planned the pairing. It has become a tradition for us to have multiple beer aperitifs on Christmas day by sampling a selection of beers we've picked up in the preceding weeks (we deserve it, up before dawn to put the sprouts on and slaving in slaving in a hot kitchen all morning). Orkney Blast made it to the table as it was the one that we opened just as everything was ready to serve.

This year we want to repeat the food matching triumph. Going for the same beer again, if we can find it, is much too obvious – what do you recommend?

Writing About Beer Is The New Rock'n'Roll: Backstage After-Party With This Year's Sensation

2009-12-10T12:47:00.003Z

You know the cliche: such-and-such is the new rock'n'roll? Comedy, fashion, politics, knitting, you name it, it's been the new rock'n'roll.

The "beer is the new rock'n'roll" triteness (tritism?) has been lurking in my mind for a few weeks now, largely inspired by that popular beat combo Brew and his Dogs and their fanclub, er, shareholders.

I was reminded of it last week when Pete Brown was celebrating winning Beer Writer of the Year.

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

Late at night, with a group of friends away from the public gaze and already under the influence of a heady intoxicant, Pete was witnessed on his knees partaking of some unseemly ritual involving a sharpened implement and a substance known to this underground culture as "wax". With a smile on his face he went on to allow his guests to "sniff" the contents of a phial cryptically marked "Bass King's Ale, February 22nd 1902". He later poured out a syrupy liquid for his guests to consume. Soon they could be heard uncontrolably and deliriously drooling words normally reserved for flavours and aromas. Exactly what substances are being used by this dangerous counter-culture is anyone's guess. The police have been informed.

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

I Fancy a Fictional Beer

2009-11-24T22:17:00.001Z

Every time I watch My Name is Earl I try to catch the name of the bottled beer the characters drink in the Crab Shack. The label is usually partly hidden by the character's hand.

Tonight I got it. It's "Heisler".

Of course, I expected Heisler to be entirely fictional. What I didn't expect, as revealed by Google, is that Heisler has appeared in dozens, if not hundreds of TV programmes and films.

The Germanic name may be a nod toward Budweiser, but the graphic design says to me "craft beer".

Everybody seems to drink straight from the bottle so we don't get to see the fictional colour of the beer. I'd like to think it's an amber, something like Anchor Steam. I'd drink it.

Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics

2009-11-23T13:35:00.024Z

A few weeks ago I ran a survey examining political beliefs, CAMRA and the tie system.

Unfortunately I’ve been delayed in analysing it as I’ve Excel hasn’t been working on my iMac since I installed the “Snow Leopard” OS. That’s’ fixed now, thanks for all the help Mr Gates. Not. GoogleDocs was excellent for the data gathering but clumsy for playing around with it.

I’m not sure what the survey was intended to illustrate. Vaguely, I hoped it would illustrate my critique of CAMRA.

Here’s a quick synopsis of my view of CAMRA:

CAMRA’s perspective on the beer market is essentially a Marxist construct. For cask ale beers/brewers/consumers read “exploited proletariat”: for mass-produced beer and its brewers read “capitalist business oligarchy, cynical exploiters of the proletariat”. Most CAMRA’s activities and outpourings seem based on this model – its organisation mimics trade unions and its favoured vernacular including “threats”, “protests”, “boycotts” and “campaigns” apes the language of political activism. A key motivator is the fantasy that, one day, campaigning and activism will overthrow the capitalistic mass-produced beers and re-install proletarian cask ale to its rightful dominance. And this model, or modus operandi, has failed the cause it holds dearest.

Here, I’m tempted to digress deeply into what I consider to be a more reasoned vision of the beer market, cask ale's position in it and what CAMRA ought to be. But I won’t, so let’s have a look at some survey results instead. Again I emphasize I don’t consider this survey to be in any way scientifically or statistically sound, so do go levelling that accusation at me. All it is is a talking point.

It occurred to me that analysing the stats of those giving CAMRA a high score to those giving CAMRA a low score might be quite illuminating. Of the 79 complete surveys, looking at the “Please indicate your view of CAMRA” field, I’ve compared the top 15 results with bottom 15.

Anyone who is particularly clued up on stats, significance etc is welcome to a copy of the Excel file to have a play with – you can download it here.

1. Here we see that those who gave CAMRA high ratings tend to be slightly more left-wing, and slightly less liberal than thise who gave CAMRA low ratings. There was also a difference in fondness for the tie system.

2. CAMRA high raters tend to be older than CAMRA low-raters.

3. Those giving CAMRA a high rating are more likely to be CAMRA members.

4. High raters are more active CAMRA members.

5. Low-raters are more likely to be professionally involved in the brewing or selling of beer. What could be going on here? Does professional involvement in beer inoculate the individual against CAMRA? Do beery professionals see enough of beer at work to bee bothered with amateur beer activism?

A Scary Thought.

2009-11-11T09:00:00.004Z

Is this the sort of thing UK neo-probs are fantasising about?

Also here and here.

Wetherspoons Enters Never-Ending Sparkler Debate

2009-11-04T12:13:00.002Z

Last night my brother and I popped into the Union Rooms in Newcastle Upon Tyne to try their festival beers.

I ordered a Schwarzbier (can't remember the name) and Ste a Woodforde's Dragon Hall. The barman apologised the Woodfordes had finished so, rather graciously, I turned round the pumpclip for him (I how this simple task often escapes them). This was revealed:

Note the staff instruction: "Use Southern Sparkler".

Eh, a what?

Since you were wondering: The wotsit Schwarzbier was agreeable but unmemorable; York Brewery Coppergate had "tantalising hints of niceness but otherwise vegetal yuk" according to Ste; Toshi's Amber spoiled by obvious oxidisation.

We moved onto the Bridge Hotel were we discovered a brilliant beer: "Hadda's Autumn" by Vale Brewing Company. It tasted like a lower strength version of Anchor Liberty Ale. And that is a very big compliment. Liberty is one of my desert-island beers. Tremendous.

Disappointingly, we encountered no atrocious beer names all evening.

The Straw That Broke The Camel's Back

2009-10-30T13:09:00.002Z

Browsing Newcastle Real Ale Listings before I pop over there at the weekend I came across a beer name that made me wince.

It didn't just make me wince, it made think of the film "Falling Down" – with me in it.

As I don't know where to get any guns or explosives, I thought I've got to do something a bit creative.

I've had an idea lurking for some time – a collaborative blog dedicated to improving cask ale's brand image by collecting images of dismal pumclips and the like. Hopefully we would knock some sense into the brewers thusly named and shamed.

Here it is.

BTW The beer name that pushed me over the edge was "Dognobbler" by Wylam Brewery. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticising the beer, just the name. I regularly enjoy Wylam beers when I'm in the NE and John Boyle is a jolly decent chap but...

Barngates	Cat Nap	3.6%
Bowland Brewery	Gold	3.8%
Burscough Brewery	Priory Gold	3.9%
Coniston	Bluebird	3.6%
Irwell Works	Copper Plate	3.8%
Kirkby Lonsdale	Ruskins	3.9%
Kirkby Lonsdale	Tiffin Gold	3.6%
Lancaster Brewery	Amber	3.7%
Prospect Brewery	Silver Tally	3.7%
Robinson's	Dizzy Blonde	3.8%
Rossendale Brewery	Floral Dance	3.6%
Ulverston Brewery	Flying Elephents	3.7%
Winster	Old School	3.9%
Winster	Best Bitter	3.7%
Arkwright's Brewery	Trouble at Mill	4.0%
Arkwright's Brewery	Run of the Mill	4.1%
Bank Top	Flat Cap	4.0%
Burscough Brewery	Ringtail	4.2%
Cumbrian Legendary Ales	Langdale	4.0%
Cumbrian Legendary Ales	Loweswater Gold	4.3%
Fallons Exquisite Ales	Lancastrian Gold	4.0%
Fallons Exquisite Ales	Goblin Ale	4.3%
Garstella (2.5BB)	Eccles Cake Ale	4.2%
Greenodd	Blonde	4.0%
Hart Brewery	Dishy Debbie	4.0%
Hopstar	Lush	4.0%
Irwell Works	Richard Mason 1888	4.0%
Lancaster Brewery	Blonde	4.1%
JW Lees	Bitter	4.0%
Lytham Brewery	Gold	4.2%
Mayflower Brewery	Wigan Bier	4.2%
Moorhouses	Blonde Witch	4.1%
Moorhouses	Pride of Pendle	4.0%
Robinson's	Unicorn	4.2%
Rossendale Brewery	Glen Top	4.0%
Three B's	Bee Blonde	4.0%
Thwaites	Wainwright	4.1%
Bank Top	Dark Mild	4.0%
Fuzzy Duck	Mucky Duck	4.0%
JW Lees	Brewer's Dark	3.5%
Prospect Brewery	Nutty Slack	3.9%
Three B's	Stokers Slate Mild	3.6%
Thwaites	Nutty Black	3.0%
Coniston	Special Oatmeal Stout	4.5%
Hopstar	Smokey Joes Black	4.0%
Kirkby Lonsdale	Jubilee Stout	5.5%
Lancaster Brewery	Slate	4.2%
Lancaster Brewery	Black	4.6%
Mayflower Brewery	Lancashie Stout	4.0%
Rossendale Brewery	Pitch Porter	5.0%
Stringers	No 2 Stout	4.0%
Barngates	Red Bull Terrier	4.8%
Bowland Brewery	Admiral	4.4%
Fuzzy Duck	Tangerine Duck	4.4%
Greenodd	Brunette	4.5%
Hart Brewery	Valadiction	4.8%
Lancaster Brewery	Red	4.9%
Lytham Brewery	Royal	4.4%
Thwaites	Bomber	4.4%
Coniston	No 9 Barley Wine	8.5%
Coniston	Winter Warmer Blacksmith's Ale	5.0%
Liverpool One	Maharaja IPA	5.3%
Liverpool One	Brass Monkey	6.0%
Lytham Brewery	IPA	5.6%
Stringers	Victoria IPA	5.5%
Ulverston Brewery	Bad Medicine	6.3%