Burton is swathed in several shades of grey. It seems to carry the look really well.. and often. The taxi driver isn't sure about taking me to the National Brewery Centre until I say the magic word: museum. "You mean the Bass Museum?", he mumbles. Clearly, some things are slow to change in Beer Town.

At the Bass Museum Coors Visitor Centre National Brewery Centre, Brooklyn Brewery's Garrett Oliver is patiently awaiting the start of a tasting in support of the Oxford Companion to Beer. He's the very definition of dapper and happy to have an chat about his editorship of the book. The preface suggests that he wasn't madly keen on taking on that responsibility. Was the thought of it really that daunting?

"I simply couldn't imagine how anybody, especially someone who has a job already, could possibly do this", says Oliver, "and I also knew that a book takes over your life". That work, The Brewmaster's Table, re-inforced his position not only as an authority on beer and food matching but as a effusive writer who could render technical detail with panache. Eventually, he came around to the idea of editing the Oxford Companion to Beer as a positive experience: "I would come out of the process being a stronger brewer and simply knowing a lot more than I used to".

Not that the role was straightforward. "It's a weird brief that the editor has", he explained, "because you're basically a conveyor of information, much of it from other people. But you have to be able to understand all of it... if you have no technical brewing background you couldn't edit things on organic chemistry, for instance".

A matter of perspective was something else that he brought to the book. "You also have to have a broad world view; for example on a piece about Berliner Weisse you get great information from a German writer (Fritz Briem) but then you would also be able to add in that it is widely brewed now by small breweries in the US and a few in Italy and Japan, having been there and had those beers."

When I asked him who he thought the book was aimed at and he answered, "the broad enthusiast, the amateur brewer, a resource for the professional brewer", you can begin to understand why it touches upon a such a variety of topics. Which is something that Oliver feels has been lacking in the past: "It's quite surprising what is not out there already... go and find a book readily accessible to the public that gives you more than two sentences on, say, dry hopping. You will find, to your surprise, there is almost nothing".

Not that there's everything you ever wanted to know about beer but were afraid to ask a hundred experts, though. "Across such a broad range of disciplines it has to be comprehensive," he reasons, "but I'm not sure definitive exists. Maybe it will at some point in the future but I don't think anyone can do that yet". And it's the exclusions and different interpretations that have had certain beer blogs buzzing since the book's release. Was he prepared for such criticism?

"The comments I've seen are not, by and large, errata.," he explained. "I certainly expected criticism but I thought it would be more philosophical, someone arguing for example that cask breather is anathema or someone arguing about sparklers or swan necks.. what I didn't expect was somebody quibbling about matters of history that are highly disputed. I don't understand the tone and I don't understand the lack of balance".

Oliver is happy to carry on talking about why fewer breweries made the final cut, or how some articles needed "more humanity breathing into them", but eventually I have to ask the obvious question and then make my confession. When a man world-renowned for beer and food matching comes to England, what pairing does he most look forward to?

"At it's very best.. I had a pint of Adnams - many pints of Adnams - sitting at the seaside. And when you get someone who actually knows how to make fish and chips - when you have it done perfectly - boy! It's particularly awesome!" So then I don't feel too bad that I'm slightly sceptical about this matching malarkey. "With beer you have the element of surprise", he says. And with that, he tries to convert me...

There's now a dozen or so writers, retailers and beer enthusiasts around the table and he takes us all through a selection of Brooklyn beers paired with straightforward English snacking food. The dry, lemonish Local 1 tastes fine with smoked salmon. To be honest, I'd say it worked fine with any damn dish that it wanted to dance with. But what happened next was a step change.

It's simple enough. Local 2 - robust Belgian slightly spicy stuff- with a thumb-thick slab of pork pie. Both really tasty. And then he starts to explain. How the caramalisation of the pie crust latches onto the fruitiness in the beer. How there's a contrast between the saltiness of the pie and the sweetness of Local 2's dark Belgian sugars. In thirty seconds flat, I'd gone from knowing that I liked a beer & food combo to understanding, in terms of taste, *why* I liked it.

After that, things started falling into place rapidly. The never-usually-bottled-IPA, Blast, felt soft yet spritzy, maybe some minerality taking the edges off the 70-ish IBU count. With prickling vegetable samosas, Blast was calm like a bomb. Black Chocolate Stout and Stilton has become one of Oliver's iconic pairings and it's easy to understand why; fudge. The beer has the taste of it; the cheese has the consistency of it. Blue funk and chocolate kisses. Wow.

The final beer on the table, Black Ops, doesn't actually exist of course. So there was nothing to pair it with. Because we never tasted it. Right?

Two things struck me about Garrett Oliver. He'll never tire of talking to people about beer, even in the Midlands on a wet Wednesday, because he's driven by a passion. And he's the perfect man to take on an impossible job.

After all, if he can make me look at pork pie and beer in a different light, the editorship of the Oxford Companion to beer must have been a walk in the park.



Many thanks to Garrett Oliver for his time, the Oxford University Press for the lunch and Chris 'Stoph' McBride for the photo. >

One of my plans - yes, this level of ass-hattery does actually involve a modicum of planning - was to try some staple US IPAs that can be bought in the UK. As luck would have it, the following can all be bought in the UK from those jolly decent chaps at My Brewery Tap. And so begins an IPA trip from sea to shining sea. Via Colorado.

Because it's Saturday and I have other things to do like scream at the prats on Radio 5 Live, cook tea and generally forget where I left the laptop, I'm going to keep this brief.

5pm: Brooklyn East India Pale Ale. It stinks. In a great way. Earthy, creamy, orange peel, Willamette spice? Ballsy not blousey. Like White Shield on steroids.

6pm: Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA. I think I'm about to have a Gazza moment. Too much Crystal malt. Sappy bitterness. All rather messy.

7pm: Odell IPA. Different class to the others so far. Pineapple in a glass with a bitter bite. Went great with cheeseburger and fries.

8pm: Great Divide Titan IPA. Box-ticker. Orange body, resin nose, bready note, citric punch. Tick, tick, tick, tick. All in balance, almost better than the sum of its parts.

9pm: Sierra Nevada Torpedo. Harsh but fair. Plenty of Magnum to blow the back of your taste buds away. Trickle of Citra to salve them.

Kudos to myBrewerytap for donating these beers.

Today's Obviously Made Up Fact About IPA:

Traditional English IPAs actually contained either few hops or none at all, a style that
many modern-day English brewers have now successfully recreated. >

Let's start with some facts. Beer Exposed was a great exhibition. I met many great Ratebeerians. And some normal people, too. I drank too much, ate too little and left my coat behind. But it was such a pure rollercoaster of great beers and good times. Twelve other things I know for sure, dear toper, so twelve things only will I tell...




Des Mulcahy and Matt Roclawski know how to throw a show. The outstanding venue (Islington's Business Design Centre) was a perfect place to showcase their heady mix of world-class beers, enthusiastic speakers and an easy-going vibe. Des and Matt put together a passionate package that didn't encourage a free-for-all, nor solemn ticking, but let the audience fulfil the exhibition's tenets of 'explore, educate, enlighten'.



Ian Harrison is a jovial beer monster. One of this countries outstanding beer raters and co-founder of the site Pubs & Beer.co.uk , this guy never stopped smiling and enthusing about beer from the moment I met him in the pub beforehand right up to the last beer we shared. He never bored of first-time Schlenkerla Rauchbier drinkers saying 'wow! it's like smoky bacon crisps!' Wandering around with him as he pushed me towards beers that I wouldn't normally have tried was one of the session's highlight.




Flashy stands = poorer beers. Some stands had little in the way of backdrops, literature and the whole corporate shebang. Brooklyn, Brewdog and Thornbridge all let their beer do the talking - racking the bottles up and chewing the fat with you. To sell dodgy Lithuanian cider, wazzy Chinese lager and the spawn of Suffolk's Beelzebub it seems you needed three layers of slap, nightgowns and a sparkler that produced a glass of froth. Svyturys, Tsingtao and Greene King were proponents of 'style' over substance. Shame on them all.



Meantime is an outstandingly assured brewer. I just love the way Meantime operate - competent across beer styles, unafraid to experiment with flavours, distinctive marketing, assured nationwide presence. Bottles you want to hold, beers you want to savour. IPA, London Porter and Coffee Beer prove to me that their mission to bring the consumer the 'most exciting flavours' is superbly successful. Even more kudos for them to be away in a corner, a simple presence, where the beers were enjoyed with passion.



There's always a surprising beer around the corner. I used to equate Zywiec Brewery with underpeforming lager, so I wouldn't have given their stall a second glance if it hadn't been for Ian mentioning their porter. And what a whopper it was; fresh coffee and chocolate, smooth feel and a drying finish. Great to be blindsided by such a beer, glad to given the opportunity. Explore, educate and enlighten indeed!



Fullers are doing something right. It's all too easy to take the rise out of regional brewers, seemingly spending more on fancy glasses than quality ingredients. But Fullers have a keen eye on the English beer market. London Pride may not be everyone's choice tipple, but the thousands who like it are rewarded by a solid, well-made bitter. I make the journey to my nearest Fullers pub - in Birmingham, their northernmost outpost - to get a couple of sessions on London Porter when it's released as a seasonal special. And as the stand here proved, there's always something interesting lurking in the back catalogue - two versions of Vintage as well as the Gale's Prize Old. Fullers are prepared to keep such niche beers going for an appreciative audience, whilst other regionals rebadge and water down once great brews. I know which approach I prefer.



Thornbridge almost burst with ambition. A low-key presence here for this high-achieving brewer, but Thornbridge marketing manager Alex was more than happy to thrust a Kipling at you and let you know what's going down up at the Hall. How the current bottles are good, but when they get their own bottling plant they'll have top quality bottle-conditioned beers available. Why maturing beers in sherry butts is a natural progression from whisky barrel experimentation. How brewers' competitions bring out the best in each of them. Wet-hopped beers, Belgian-style dubbels, beers with herbs grown in the Hall's garden.... Thornbridge could rest on their well-hopped laurels and spend all day brewing their 40+ award winning Jaipur. But they're prepared to experiment with beers that are indeed 'never ordinary'. It's always a joy to meet up with them, even more so to see 'beer newbies' fall under their Thornbridge spell. Seems we all start with Jaipur and then never want the variety to end.



Eric Wallace knocks out a damn fine milk stout He regaled us with tales of US over-hopping and his reaction to the trend, 400lb Monkey, and then revealed what for me was the black ace up Left Hand Brewery's sleeve; a milk stout that achieved a smooth segue through sweet nutty chocolate notes into a drying creamy finish. Eric said he thought it would appeal to the British drinker and he's absolutely spot on. A beer that deserves distribution wider than its likely to achieve over here.



Ratebeerians are the best beer bods I know . Passionate about the styles they love and the styles they love to hate. Knowledgeable about the craft, art and science of brewing. Never insular to the extent of only breathing malt & hops, though - some of the funniest, warmest, most well-rounded people I know are the ones I've met through ratebeer.com . The beers are key to them but not to the exclusion of having a good time. Getting a whole bunch of them together in the same place with great ales is bound to end in fun, sweat and beers. So, to those ratebeer crew that I remember meeting on the day - harrisoni, duff, phil_l, mes_&_sim, thewolf, reakt, magicdave_6 - I salute you.




Collaboration produces world-beating beers. Smaller producers and respected brewers seem to be almost falling over themselves to get into the mash tun together. Perhaps it's borne out of homebrewing, where the community is open, helpful and respectful of the advice offered and received. I'm familiar with some of the English collaborations involving Garret Oliver, Brooklyn's brewmaster (such as Kelham Island's awesome Smoked Porter). So it was an unexpected pleasure to sample an interesting collaboration between him and the Schneider brewer Hans-Peter Drexler. Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse was brewed on the Brooklyn plant using Schneider yeast. A feisty dry-hopped weizen, this was the the beer that persuaded Ian to get his notebook out and start rating. I'll add a full review to Bottled Up sometime soon (I brought two bottles back with me) but suffice to say it was a stunning sherbert fizz of a beer. And the perfect example of what brewers (and friends) are capable of when they knock their noggins together.



Brewdog have a beer for all seasons. I love Brewdog. I've even forgiven Martin Richie for leaving Thornbridge. Because they brew, without doubt, the best quality, no-compromise beers in Scotland. Punk IPA has been my picnic bottle of this soggy summer. And Paradox will be warming my cockles by the fire all through the winter. It was the first time I'd met James and the first time I'd tried Smokehead (their bourbon-barrel matured Paradox); both were intriguing and beguiling, one was smokey and one is a fan of cookie dough... this was a stand that us ratebeerians gravitated to, always a great beer and a good banter to be had. And, guys.... you've got a Paradox matured in a 1968 Islay cask? I'm 40 this year and have been looking for a suitable drink to celebrate with....



and, last but by no means first ...

Phil Lowry is an alien from the Planet Beer. He can't be human. This guy is beer personified. He serves the stuff, drinks the stuff, brews and buys and sells the stuff. Publican-turned-retailer, qualified lecturer, beer sommelier, keen brewer, writer and photographer... makes you sick, eh? At Beer Exposed, he was literally showing the scars of his exploits from where his latest brew had exploded in his face whilst in production. Does he stop? Nah, he's behind the Beermerchants.com bar, pouring and talking and - every now and then - magicking up a bottle of something special. Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast, Struise Black Albert, aged Liefmans... Phil's homebrew... although I was too busy drinking Fruli and getting lost in the limpid blue eyes of the lady next to me to take many notes. (And, Mrs H, if you're reading this, yes I *do* prefer your auburn eyes to anyone else's in the whole widest world :-)

Phil travels widely for his beer, meets the makers and shakers, and - in a world of fat tickers and braying wannabe's - can talk the talk and walk the walk without sounding arrogant. The beermerchants stand was the place to be, outstanding beers and a great mix of beer faces old and new. Phil's enthusiasm was contagious and generosity legendary. Many thanks to him for the invite and for the chance, for a few hours, to be part of an event that has redefined how beer can be presented to a willing and enthusiastic audience.



Beer Exposed has proven that there is a market for intelligent, informed events in the beer sphere. A million miles away from the vast festival halls crammed with sweaty yobs, the easy-going atmosphere of relaxed drinkers having a good time - one driven by the beers but never dictated to by them - firmly exposed the myth that beer events are no more than swill sessions for weirdy-beardies. More of the same next year, please... this country's drinkers deserve more events like Beer Exposed.

PS - all photos by me which is why they're a bit shaky. Slideshow and more pics available (though, sadly, not the one of Duff receiving double nipple action from Ang and Tom) on my Flickr site.

PPS - huge thanks to Ray Alcock, concierge at the Business Design Centre, for mailing me my coat back for free. Now, that's what I call service!!!

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