SIBA North Judging: Possibly Slightly Less Unfit For Purpose Than Last Year

Last year at about this time I had a grumble about poor judging at the SIBA North event in Manchester. I had witnessed a woeful ignorance of off flavours from several judges. I also noticed that many judges preferred bland beer to tastier beer, marking them accordingly. It seemed many judges were treating the event as a jolly day out drinking beer at someone else’s expense.

This year’s North West event was held at Hawkshead Brewery’s beer hall at Staveley near Kendal, in my home county of Cumbria. The beer hall is considerably smaller than last year's Manchester venue. The number of Staveley judges was about a third of the number of Manchester judges. I noticed the absence of some of the clueless judges I’d made a mental note of the previous year.

The first of my three rounds was bottled pale ale. Or, at least I think it was; my scrawled note said “bpa”. Three of the eight beers showed the unmistakeable damp cardboard flavour of oxidisation – one of them was particularly bad. I kept schtum while my three fellow judges murmured their general approval of the beers. I thought about correcting my fellow judges but decided not to be the know-all dick of the table. Several times I heard the beers to be declared “balanced.”* Result: bad beer got reasonable marks.

My second round was speciality beers. I opted to judge this round as I’d previously witnessed reluctance by some judges to have a go at funny foreign styles at rocket fuel strengths as high as a jaw-dropping 7% abv. Two of my three fellow judges expressed disappointment at being allocated the “weird stuff”, as one of them described it.

The beers were entertaining. Fortunately none showed any off flavours. One, described as “spiced”, tasted like mildly alcoholic Coca Cola. Another was an extremely good dark raspberry fruit beer with a sour note. It was a marvellous beer: if you had told me it was from a very good Belgian brewery I would have believed you. Two of my fellow three judges took exception to it, screwing up their faces in disgust. They marked it very low.

My third round was bottled golden ales. One beer was hellishly bitter, other than that they were competent though unremarkable beers.

Not being a SIBA grandee, I didn't judge the final round.

All in all, my piss boiled less than last year – possibly because I didn't have to fork out £30 for a rail ticket**. But questions for SIBA remain: just what are people doing judging a round in which they are likely to encounter something outside their parochial tastes? Just why are people who don’t know common off flavours judging beer?

Many thanks to Jon and Becky of Stringers Beer for the lift to Stavely and to John and Lucy of Barngates Brewery for the lift home.

 * I am suspicious of the descriptor “balanced.” It is often used where the word “bland” would be more appropriate. I find its use is often indicative of entry-level beer appreciation.

** Yes, I know SIBA is a good cause and all that, but so is my never-ending overdraft.

A happy brewer: category prize-
winner Roger Humphries of Cumbrian Legendary Ales

My reputation in ruins

My local paper, the North Western Evening Mail, has described me as a "real ale buff."

I am offended. 

I have spent years trying emphasise the point that I am not a real ale buff. I've certainly got nothing against cask-conditioned ale – far from it: I consume it several times a week and have done for a quarter of a century. No, it's just the baggage that comes with the notion of being a real ale buff – amateurism, zealotry, anti-lagerism and anti-keggism – that puts me off.

My reputation is in ruins.

Call me a beer geek, call me a craft beer aficionado, call me anything but a real ale buff.

BTW: Please visit the site - www.brewedincumbria.com

What is craft beer?

I've been meaning to have a go at this subject, but as yet I can't be arsed. So here's one pub's take on the subject. It's from The Feathers Inn in Northumberland.

Beer on the telly! Me on the telly!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Palate Cleansing Taste Of Onion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click to go large and legible.

SIBA Beer Judging – Not Fit For Purpose?

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

SIBA is an organisation I respect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s not hard is it?

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

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

Leeds International Beer Festival

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

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

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

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

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

*Sierra Nevada's Saison was sublime.

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