It's dark and freezing outside, bonfire smoke and crap fireworks fill the sky and I've started wearing Toasties around the house. Time for a summer beer, then.
Quantock Brewery have been around for just about two years and Sunraker was first brewed last year, winning Somerset Beer of the Festival at CAMRA Somerset's 2008 festival. It's a fantastic-looking pale gold colour, with an evaporating head and an aroma that I can't quite nail at the moment.
There's some baked lemon flavours in there, carried on a creamy palate that seems odd on the first sip but makes perfect sense several gulps later. The drying finish is punctuated by floral leftovers; still creamy, a little bready, un-nervingly satisfying.
Now I know what the aroma is - almost. It reminds me of a beer I brewed with Thornbridge called Julius; we chucked all kinds of stuff into it, but there's something herbal in the nose of Sunraker that rings a bell. Almost minty, spicy... ish.
To be honest, the creamy feel got slighly cloying towards the end. Several pints from cask, in a beer garden, on a summers day may feel different, mind....
Twenty-plus BrewDog beers that I could have picked out the box tonight and I get the one I get really dischuffed with. Arse.
Dogma is the reincarnation of Speedball, the Portman Group-bating beer of last year. The labels may have changed (see below) but the mad ingredients remain the same. There's guarana. There's Californian poppy Even kola nut and Scottish heather honey. Perhaps just a dash of leprechaun toenail shaving too. It all sounds like too much.
Now then, I've tried this on cask (at the Coach & Horses in Dronfield, one of those uber-rare guest beers amongst the Thornbridge handpulls). There, it was softly sweet with warming pepper and dulled herbal essences. Whereas every bottle I've tried has been akin to drinking an apothecary's floor sweepings that have been suspended in a caramel gloop.
How do I find it tonight? An aroma like Lockets from my old grandma's coat pocket. A surfeit of white pepper fights its way out. Plenty of caramel and honey as soon as the glass reaches my lips, but it's those waves of warming pepper that puts me off. The longer it lingers on the palate, the more sickly-sweet medicinal it becomes.
And then.... something happens. Well, it seems to after twenty minutes. The honey on the nose goes earthier, deeper honey in the flavour begins to arrest the pepper. Left to go flatter and warmer, Dogma takes on some of those rounder notes I found on cask.
Can I finish the glass? Do I want to? I'm only half way down, it's been nearly half an hour, and I honestly can't say .
In the meantime, here's a footnote (click on the pic to enlarge). The Speedball label that drew the ire of Portman is on the left; the revised Dogma one on the right. It's s shame that they didn't keep the line about it being "a light chestnut, slow motion rollercoaster of a beer".
Innis and Gunn have been steadily expanding their range of barrel-aged beers in the last few years. I've never been a great fan of the too-sweet Original beer in the range, but some of the specials have had a pleasant twist. The brewery sent me through a few samples; I was keen on finding out whether they could deliver a spirited finish beyond their initial sweetness.
The 6% Blonde pushed its way out of the fridge first. Now, I'm sceptical about beers that promise subtle fruity nuances whilst at the same time insisting on being served chilled. The vanilla was more to the fore here than in the Original, albeit delivering clean oak notes rather than a sweet-toothed muddle. A reasonable malt base maintained the flavour, though any hop lift was lost through the chill. There were some soft citric notes in there, but the vanilla sweetness outweighed them as the beer warmed. As a standalone beer, it didn't really stand out - but (too late) I thought it could have make for a great dessert-course beer, perhaps something caramel-laden or a good 'n chunky rice pudding.
At 7.4%, the Rum Cask Finish sounds like a beer to be enjoyed with cheese & crackers & repeats of Top Gear in front of a roaring fire. But out of the fridge, I feared it would be too cold to enjoy in such a manner. The temperature wasn't the issue, though - the sweetness and washy rum reminded me of a badly-made cocktail. Rather than warming in a spicy fashion, the rum finish seemed to have stripped the cask of astringency and delivered it alongside a dollop of sugar into the bottle. Too heavy-handed for me.
So it was with a little trepidation that I reached for the Canadian Cask version. But I was glad that I did. Seventy-one days in an unspecified Canadian whisky cask seems to have worked wonders - or perhaps it was the addition of malted rye that gave it some gorgeous toffee and raisin notes. The vanilla sweetness was suppressed, the malts balanced finer, the oak notes supportive rather than smothering. Easily the most accomplished and balanced Innis & Gunn beer I've tried.
The only downside here is that the Canadian Cask version was a limited export-only edition. Bugger. The others are available in Sainsburys, so at least I can try the Blonde again the next time I fancy a beer to go alongside a creme caramel.
No, I haven't dropped a donut on the keyboard again. Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men’s health issues, specifically prostate cancer.
The Thornbridge guys and gals are involved in the fundraising this year, with the brewers joining in and the regulars at their pubs being persuaded to contribute too. Cat at the Coach & Horses convinced me to give in a whirl. My tache capacity may be smaller than a stunted amoeba, but I'll give anything a go for charidee.
One man dies every hour of prostate cancer in the UK; more than 35,000 men will be diagnosed this year and prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK. Enough to make me think; hopefully enough to make you want to donate. Click here to donate online using your credit card, debit card or PayPal account.
PS - those ever-enterprising bods at BrewDog are taking part too, with 25% of the sale price of a Movember beer being donated to the charity. Nice one, Mo Brothers!
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So, here we arrive at the latest BrewDog take on lager. Sorry, "artisan rebel pilsner". I was vaguely disappointed to start with. Rather liked those flowery notes of Hop Rocker; here it was a hidden hop whiff with a harder fruit feel up front. The lingering sweetness was there again, yet now an assertive caramel backbone flexed its way across your palate. And then the finish won me around, some lovely marmaladey hops and decent astringency.
Damn, I fancy another one now. With some hop-flower action in the aroma, I'd fancy three more. Here's hoping BrewDog don't stop their lager experimentaton here.
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It's not the bastard son of Dean Friedman. It's the too-close country cousin of Hop Rocker. Cult Lager took what Hop Rocker started and buggered it up. Gone are the delicate flowers. Instead we have cardboardy malts. All rather wet, if you know what I mean (if you don't , mail me and I'll send you a diagram). Some redeeming and unexpected spice - my tasting was rather tardy in respect to its best before date, which may explain that.
But when it warmed a little, there was a four-minute window when the sweetness and light malt almost worked. Before it sluiced off down the path and joined the crap supermarket lager brigade, busy scrawling obscenities on the bins with marker pens.
Cult doesn't give lager a bad name. But it does make inappropriate gestures.
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Let's kick this Brewdog-a-day malarkey off with some lagers. After all, I truely believe that decent UK lager could be the turn-on to great tasting beer for a sizeable chunk of the drinking population.
Hop Rocker was, I think, the brewer's first foray into the lager market. Back in 2008 it was one of the beers that attracted the wrath of the Portman Group who objected to the label claim of it being "nourishing food stuff". Yeah, whatever.
But is it nourishing? Well, I found it to be nom-nom-umm. Good floral spots around the aroma, some sweetness, slight malt, underpowered finish. It's almost as if they forgot to put the drying finale in there.
Still, it gave me an excuse to buy some Hereford Hop cheese to taste alongside. The sweetness of both worked well together.
I don't want to damn with faint praise - if this was the only lager on the bar at the next wedding from hell that I attend, I'd at least have one thing to smile about. Perhaps Hop Rocker ought to be judged more as work in progress - tomorrow I'll take a look at its next incarnation
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I feel sorry for the industrial metal band, Ministry. Jesus may have built their hotrod... but BrewDog pimped by kitchen.
And why would they want to go and do that? Well, I've about thirty different beers of theirs, bought, blagged and bequeathed over the last few months. So, for the whole of November I'm letting the Dogs out - one beer at a time. As you'd get heartily sick of seeing endless bottle photos, I'll do what I can to make the kitchen as punk-pimped as possible.
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So, Bottled Up is back with the first offering plucked from the myBrewerytap.com '52 Week Beer Club' sampler. There's four 'summer ales' in there; the clocks may have just gone back but those beers will give me the chance to splash a little liquid sunshine into the autumn months.
My memories of Saffron beers are rather hazy. I know I've had one, during my brewery-scooping phase, but I can't remember anything that set it aside from the hundreds of other pale beers from new outfits that I tried. So it was fun to get reacquainted with the Hertfordshire brewer and this cool-filtered blonde.
First aroma impressions were of baked lemon and a surprisingly light maltiness. As it warmed there were hints of runny honey coming through, but also an occasional whiff of glue. More baked lemon on the palate, though, with a soft soapy mouthfeel.
Certainly one I'd try again. Makes me want cheesecake.... and I just happen to have some in the fridge. There's serendipity for you.
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It's not every day that I get offered free beer. Honest. I didn't get any on Tuesday last week, for instance. When the offers do come in, though, I tend to be selective - life's too short to review boring beer. I like to support the innovators, those brewers and retailers whose business model doesn't start and finish with dodgy bottles flogged at farmer's markets.
And myBrewerytap.com certainly seem to have come up with a great scheme. They're working with several dozen microbrewers across England and Wales to open up access to the kind of beers you won't find on supermarket shelves. You're buying from the brewers themselves - myBrewerytap.com process the payment, organise delivery and take a commission. It means that smaller brewers don't have to suffer the hassle of running an on-line store, whilst the beer-buying public get the chance to buy from a range of bottles that would put many independent off-licenses to shame.
One particular innovation of theirs really appeals - the 52 Week Beer Club. It does exactly what is says on the tin, delivering you a case of thirteen different beers every three months. The first case gathers together bottles from the likes of Fulstow, Saffron, Brentwood and Quantock - beers not often seen outside their home counties. But there's more than that - a bottle opener and pint glass are in the box too, along with genuinely useful tasting notes and brewery profiles.
myBrewerytap.com have been generous enough to enrol me into the 52 Week Beer Club for free. This means I have no excuse not to publish Bottled Up, my bottled beer review, on a weekly basis. Starting in about ten minutes time....
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There are many things that endear me to the Flowerpot in Derby. One of them is the predictable randomness of the beer choice. There could be Oakham or Durham beers, perhaps something from Marble or Thornbridge if you're lucky. There's always something from the on-site Headless brewery, of course; beers very much in the light-citric mold of Whim or Oakham. But never being sure of what's on is a real draw for me - especially at the weekend, when the choice of 16-odd beers (split between handpull and gravity) could be anything depending on what had landed in the cellar and how much the punters drank the night before.
Yesterday, a swift Saturday liquid lunch there offered up Marble Ginger and Thornbridge Jaipur. And, yes, I did mix them for the flavoursome joy that is Ginger Jaipur. The chance of those two beers still being on at Sunday lunchtime was slim to nil - great beer sells fast around here. And so it came to pass. But that meant I could random order a few pints knowing they'd still be quality.
One was straw - Millstone Tiger Rut, riven with Chinook, slight bodied but creamy lemon flavoured.
Another was chestnut - Durham Genesis, a keenly balanced, well-fruited, earthy bitter
The last was ruby - York Centurion's Ghost, plenty of toasty roastness atop a smooth malty base.
Three beers, three styles. Each in cracking quality, each distinctive in its aroma and flavour profile. And complete vindication for drinking whatever beer a good pub has to offer.
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Let's say you love BrewDog - love the beers, the experimentation, the attitude. But you're not keen on parting with 230 quid for a share in the company.
Because it costs too much / offers little financial return.
What if the offer was repositioned?
What if you could join a membership club, let's call it 'The BrewDog Pack'?
What if the benefits were;
- 20% discount at their online shop - the chance to buy beers brewed only for club members - newsletters/Tweets/SMS to alert you when new beers are available - exclusive 'meet the brewer' sessions held around the UK - an annual members get-together with lashings of beer - your name etched into the wall of the new brewery, which your membership fee helped to fund
What if you paid £10 a year for the privilege?
Would you be interested?
So, what if you could only buy a lifetime membership?
What if that lifetime membership entitled you to an introductory case of beer brewed uniquely for members, along with a glass, t-shirt and bottle opener?
What if that lifetime membership also gave you an equity share in the business?
Last Friday I ventured up to Sheffield with Mrs Reluctant to see Spandau Ballet. So true, funny how it seems...
On the way, we needed to find a spot for lunch and while away a few hours before the concert started. Somewhere with good food, great beer and an easy-going vibe. The Coach & Horses in Dronfield proved to be the ideal choice - as always.
Just inside Derbyshire but only six miles out of Sheffield city centre, the C&H fulfils many roles - real ale haunt, brewery showcase (for Thornbridge), foodie pub and thriving local. Its success is built upon insightful investment by Thornbridge Brewery and imaginative management by Cat Mueller. The head chef, Mark Taylor, can often be found at the bar - for Thornbridge beer to use in his appetising modern British dishes. The bar staff are sparky and well beer-educated. You may even end up being served by one of the Thornbridge brewers; the brewery manager Kelly Ryan is Cat's partner and not averse to pouring the odd pint for, ahem, quality control purposes.
Given that I live thirty miles away, I end up here often enough - via two trains straight after work, or taking the bus here after a refreshing afternoon around the Sheffield pub circuit. Or persuading my wife to drive us up here for a lazy weekend lunch. With a pint of Jaipur in hand, I'd think to myself... 'I really ought to write about this pub. Maybe even resurrect my late lamented Pubs To Love series'. Then I'd have another four pints and forget all about it.
But this time I've remembered to write something, spurred by a unique clutch of awards. The Coach won Sheffield CAMRA's District Pub of the Year award back in August; Thornbridge Jaipur won Champion Beer of the 2009 Sheffield CAMRA festival at the beginning of October. Last week, at the Brewing Business Awards run by the Society of Independent Brewers, Thornbridge won Best Support for On Trade Customer - recognition of how it turned the Coach around from a failing pub to a thriving concern. So I got a warm fuzzy feeling to be drinking an award-winning beer in an award-winning pub. Then again, I often get a warm fuzzy feeling when I drink Jaipur....
I'm proud to tell people that I'm a Coach customer - with a pub this good on my doorstep (almost), it would be rude of me not to drink there as often as I can manage.
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In a ground-breaking and revolutionary business move, Reluctant Scooper is considering offering his readership the chance to own part of his fastly-growing blog. The audacious move gives people the chance to know what it feels like to own part of a blog run by a middle-aged fat man with a reasonable beer cellar but a dubious taste in chunky jumpers. Much more than an investment, people will be buying into the Reluctant Scooper philosophy, vision and culture as shareholders will also have involvement in the running of the blog and be allowed to vote online on key decisions. Like kicking me in the arse to write more often. Or whether I should have yet another bottle of Brewdog Hardcore.
That community of literally some investors will receive a lifetime discount on my homebrew (when I get around to brewing it), a fawning piece of vacuous PR on this site and a steak in one of the most ground-breaking, revolutionary and downright cool restaurants of our time. Or a Little Chef, depending on your location. Whatever money raised will provide the funding for a carbon-neutral piss-up at a local brewery.
Notes:
1) Investments, like Reluctant's waistband, can go down as well as up. Though, given his girth, not down by much. 2) I would retain the right to instruct shareholders to come over and bring me beer / butcher press releases when I can't be arsed to / clean my fermentation bucket out. Generally, be my beer bitches.
3) Best of luck to the guys at Brewdog with their share scheme. As someone who works with startup companies, I know how difficult it is to secure equity deals that are attractive to both sides, particularly in this economic climate. And like 98% of the 'ground-breaking' deals I'm offered to participate in, I have to say... I'm out.
"It has been a pleasant Bummel, on the whole," said Harris; "I shall be glad to get back, and yet I am sorry it is over, if you understand me."
"What is a 'Bummel'?" said George. "How would you translate it?"
"A 'Bummel'," I explained, "I should describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started."
Autumn's closing in, Sunday lunch was sat in a pot waiting to be heated, the Brazilian Grand Prix had the common decency not to start until 5 o'clock, so I had no excuse not to lash on my boots and go out to kick some leaves around for a while. All I had to do was be back before the pot bubbled over. And find a beer to take with me.
I live minutes away from some gorgeous rolling countryside, so I owe it to myself to get out and about when I can. The fact that there's an excellent farm shop and an award winning pub within a 20 minutes walk either side of the house tends to force me out now and again. But today, with the leaves turning, the wind whistling and no need to be back until late afternoon, a bummel seemed a worthy thing to do.
So I wandered over the bottom fields, disturbing knots of rooks picking over clotted brown earth. Through copses shredding turned leaves into a keen breeze. Then over a sandstone ridge where the woodland has been clinging on for time immemorial. And with long-tailed tits scampering over the branches, with squirrels diving for dear life, with the wind literally whistling through my hair, I stood back and enjoyed a beer:
Brewdog Paradox Longrow carries a whiff of smoke, some toasty roasty notes, clean whisky and some dark, dark cherry buried deep into an accomplished malted finish. Nothing but great beer, tweeting birds and rustling trees for fifteen minutes. The rest of the walk was taken with a dirty great smile on my face. I really ought to bummel more often.
Top quote from Jerome K Jerome, 'Three Men On A Bummel'. Photos (c) me
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Now, I like Brewdog beers. One the one hand, Punk IPA is chock full of enticing hops. And Punk Monk IPA has the allure of Belgian yeast. But which is better? There's only one way to find out.... FIGHT!
Looks: Punk has a hophaze about it, Monk positively breathes out light. Both have been in the fridge for weeks. Monk looks incredibly appealing, so it delivers an uppercut to Punk's frosty jaw. 0-1 to Monk.
Aroma: Punk explodes with fat, juicy citrics. Monk sees those citrics and raises with ground spice, wafting brine and a sustained sugary goosegog tang. Spices to the solar plexus make it 0-2 to Monk.
Flavour: Punk rides a crescendo; those fat hops deliver gorgeous tropical fruit flavours, a smear of caramel and biscuit lifts the balance. Monk takes the fruits and yeasts them up a bit; spices itch away around the edges but the esters fall away too soon. A slightly thin feel there means that Punk punches back to the midriff: 1-2.
Palate: Punk pulls off the kind of trick that the very Devil couldn't do; drying hops vie with warming alcohol to turn out a well balanced finish. It seems too good to beat... but Monk responds with that late surge of spicy, yeasty, fiendishly moreish-ness. 1-3 to the Monk. And, laydeez en geentelmeen, we have got ourselves a winner!
Punk folds, albeit not like a 'cheap hooker who got punched in the stomach by a fat guy with sores on his face'. Monk triumphs; if only it could sustain those full-fat estery notes in mid-bout, it could be a contender for a world crown.
Put it this way; in jazz terms, Punk is indeed John Zorn (off the wall, transatlantic influence) but Monk is pure Theo (tight, unorthodox, idiosyncratic). If you gottem, crack open the bottles, listen up and decide for yourself:
Take two opinionated hopheads with a manifesto, let them loose on a brew kit and maturate. What do you end up with?
Steel City Brewing. The backstory can be found here; suffice to say this is a story about a couple of guys who love hops, enthuse about hops, believe there ought to be more hoppy beers and so decided to get off their arses and brew a beer full of the damn stuff.
And how did it turn out? From my sampling tonight at the launch event in Sheffield, surprisingly well. Why surprising? Because I've drank with Dave and Gazza and I know that they don't just love a hoppy beer - they like a glass so crammed with Humulus lupulus that noses bleed spontaneously. Their first brew, Hop Manifesto, proved to be commendably restrained - certainly hoppy on the nose (Amarillo dry hopped, natch) but the Centennial, Cascade and Chinook in the body were pegged back, albeit perhaps by accident rather than design. Dave said that they'd over-watered the brew, so the ABV and intensity dropped from expected levels. It's a good, clean hopped beer - as a first brew, it puts down an assured marker. They know they can go hoppier - and a tad more maltier, because rippling-muscle hops without a malt backbone would just make for a pongy infusion (Brewdog Nanny State, anyone?)
There were two other versions of Hop Manifesto on the Harlequin bar tonight; a none-dry-hopped version bearing the catchy name Bez Suchého Chmele and a lemon-zested variant for uber-scooper Brian Moore's 70th birthday, Life of Brian. The latter was a huge Toilet Duck mess; the former I found to be a better drink than Hop Manifesto itself. Why? Hop Manifesto's Amarillo dry-hop was enticing, but the full-on-ness expectation wasn't followed through into the flavour. Whereas Bez Suchého Chmele just gets on with the job of being a clean, lean hop delivery system - a tad more Maris wouldn't go amiss, but there was still a balance that surprised and delighted.
So, Steel City Brewing say they "know what hops are for". They're not far wrong. 'Underpowering' the first brew may be a salutary lesson - slap those hops in, lads, just don't forget that those fermentable sugars don't just appear out of fresh air. Please, please, pretty please do brew a hoppy stout this winter (I'm always glad to assist by standing around, making tea, offering sarcasm etc). And - lemons. Always go for half as much as you think you need. Then half again.
(As our roving reporter photo at the head of this article shows, sometimes Dave Unpronounceable does actually appear to work for a living. Be assured that he was charging for that beer. We were in Yorkshire, after all).
PS - 'nuff respect to Pete Roberts at the Brew Company, where Steel City are let loose to do their stuff.
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I have a fridge full of beer. Placed there on the assumption that, when I get home from work, they'd be just the beers I'd fancy. I was wrong.
I have a cellar full of beer. When I say cellar, I mean a converted garage. When I say full of beer, I mean there's boxes crammed between the spare toilet rolls and the ironing board. Those boxes are stuffed with a selection of interesting and well-regarded beers. You'd think these would be the beers I'd fancy at any and every time. You'd be wrong.
You see, the beers in the fridge were put there when I knew I fancied something light and hoppy. Tonight, I don't want light and hoppy. The boxes are full of beers that are dark, and challenging, and rare and .... too good to drink tonight. Too good to drink any damn night of the week. And there's my problem.
Really; MY problem. I shove my hand in a box, pull out a bottle, think; "nah, I can't drink THAT tonight because it's so rare/it's my last one/it's the only one I'll ever see". Etc.
And tonight I thought - stuff that for a game of soldiers. What's the point of tracking down great beers and not enjoying them? Why not drink them for the hell of it? Sod the clever article idea/food pairing/session tasting/special occasion. Drink 'em like you stole 'em.
So, right now, I'm enjoying a 2008 Alaskan Smoked Porter. Chocolate bacon, unexpected hop nibbles, ash-like woodsmoke notes.... a damn fine beer, far more manageable than Schlenkerla. And absolute vindication for drinking the great beers you have. Right now.
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I've been off the sherbert recently, a pesky chest infection making for a deadened palate and no appetite for alcohol. With the tubes feeling clearer today, I ventured forth for a pint or three.
The beer was great - Oakham Akhenaten was blisteringly full of hops - but even better was the afternoon nap that followed. Back home, feeling mellow, citrics still licking around my mouth, the crossword was put to one side... and two hours of blissful snoozing was enjoyed.
There are few things finer in life than the post-pub afternoon nap. Sheer contentment in a to-hell-with-the-housework style. If you get the opportunity to indulge in one, I'd thoroughly recommend it.
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The last time I visited the offices of Thornbridge brewery, I noticed a large cardboard box full of picture frames in one corner, It turns out they were awards, presented to them by festival organisers across the country. Were they reluctant to hang them? Embarrassed, perhaps? Gladly, no - the simple answer is that the walls were already crammed full of certificates.
And the majority of those were for Jaipur IPA, a beer that's been winning awards since it arrived in 2005. With 57 awards (and counting) in four years, it was disappointing for it not have been chosen for judging at the Great British Beer festival this year. When a beer is winning CAMRA festival awards - consistently - it would seem that it deserves to be placed alongside its peers and be judged at national level.
Thornbridge didn't leave empty handed from Earls Court, though. With a silver medal for Kipling and a bronze for their perennially-underrated bitter, Lord Marples, their award count kept climbing. And I'm pleased to see that the plaudits are still stacking up.
The last few weeks have seen success in the World Beer Awards (Halcyon being judged the World's Best Harvest Ale and Bracia being highly commended in the World's Best Spiced beer section) and at the International Bottled Beer Challenge (gold for Kipling and Bracia, silver for Saint Petersburg). That brings to one hundred the number of industry and consumer awards Thornbridge has won since September 2005.
A hundred awards - from competitions held all around the world - is a phenomenal achievement for such a young brewery. I love their beers and their attitude and look forward to them covering their wider walls with awards at the new brewery site in Bakewell. And to celebrate their 200th award in a few years with something sparkling - time to get that Derbyshire lambik developed, guys!
PS - Castleton confectioners Cocoadance won a Great Taste Award this year for a beer flavoured truffle. Which beer did they use? Jaipur, of course...
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#1: Broughton's Pies. Not a tinfoil-thrice-baked pie. Or a slop-in-a-dish-with-puffy-stuff-floating-on-top pie. Just huge slabs of meaty goodness, encased in shortcrust pasty, hewn from a pie several feet wide. With chips. And mushy peas. Proper festival grub.
#2: Tony's Pork Scratchings. Legendary. They curl, they have bristles on, they are shrapnel-hard on the outside and gooey-soft on the inside. I swear that some of them are whole eyebrows. That wink at you from inside the packet. Never have cholesterol-ridden offcuts tasted so good.
#3: The posh seats. Hosted in the Town Hall, upstairs there are cinema-style seats that give you a panoramic view over the carnage beneath. You get to see the stained glass and wrought ironwork ceiling supports close up. But you don't throw pork scratchings at the topers below. That's how you get ejected. And an ASBO.
#4: Martin Atterbury. At lunchtimes, the WurliTzer leaps forth onto the stage and Marty plays all the tunes. Dambusters. Rule Brittania. Coconut Airways. Too Drunk To Fuck. Possibly not the last two. But he does often wear a salmon-coloured suit and he wears it well.
#5: Public transport. It's five minutes from the bus stop serving Derby. And it's five minutes from the railway station that's opposite that very same bus stop. And thanks to Cross-Country trains, you can get to Burton from all over the country. Mind you, thanks to Cross Country Trains there's no guarantee which station you'll end up travelling via on your way home.
#6: Beers. They have a habit at Burton. They like to put on really good beers that people want to drink. As opposed to beers that thirty people want to tick. So, there will be beers from the likes of Dark Star (Espresso, APA), Brewdog (Edge, Trashy Blonde, 77 Lager, Hardcore IPA), Thornbridge (Seaforth, Jaipur, Epic Halcyon) plus a whole heap of other great stuff.
#7: I'll buy you a beer. All you have to do is approach me with a rolled-up copy of What's Brewing and say "You are the Reluctant Scooper and I claim my free half!".
The problem with bottled beer is that there's far too much of the damned stuff. Only a few years ago I could walk into my regular shopping haunts and be greeted by the same couple of dozen familiar bottles. Seen them, drank them, found most of them to be boring. Nowadays, the blighters are getting everywhere and multiplying faster than rampant yeast - supermarkets have competitions, farmer's markets often have brewers' stalls, off-licenses are carving out a niche and as for t'internet...
All this choice is great, but you still need guidance on which bottle to plump for. With brewer's label blurb often leaving a lot to the imagination, a concise third-party guide would aid weary topers as they wend their way around the shops. And here's where Jeff Evans rides to the rescue. For the last eleven years, he's edited the Good Bottled Beer Guide produced by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and the latest edition (the seventh) proves to be even more indispensable than ever.
CAMRA are rightly proud of their 'Real Ale in a Bottle' accreditation scheme and this Guide is a proud flagbearer for it. All of the beers featured in the guide are bottle-conditioned - where yeast has been kept in the bottle, allowing the beer to ferment again. This means there's no place for the thousands of bottled beers that are filtered and/or pasturised but that still leaves more than enough to talk about.
Jeff's done a sterling job of cramming in a ton of salient stuff without compromising the book's clarity and usability. Over 1300 bottle-conditioned beers are listed here with just under a third of those benefiting from detailed tasting notes and background information. That's the real value of the book for me; thirteen sections dividing beers by style with a short overview, followed by well laid-out reviews of individual beers. The detail given on hops and malts is a useful insight, some of the potted histories are genuinely interesting and the tasting notes actually make sense. The latter is a challenge when reviewing a multiplicity of beers under a distinctive style, like India Pale Ale for example; there are only so many ways you can rearrange the words citrus/tangy/tropical whilst namechecking oranges, lemons and pineapples but Jeff Evans carries it off well.
It's a good looking book, inside and out, with an soft embossed cover and a clear layout. There's appropriate use of photos and logos, never swamping the text. And the compact format (7.5 x 4.5 inches) makes it more-or-less jacket pocket sized, ideal for when you're beer buying out and about.
The ratings system is straightforward - a star to highlight beers of "outstanding quality" and a rosette to identify breweries producing beer of a "consistently high standard". Some readers will want more ratings info - I'd be happy with none at all. When the tasting notes are so detailed, I'd rather base my purchase on that information.
There's plenty of added reference detail in here, too; a comprehensive brewery A-Z with contact details along with a list of notable retailers (both 'real world' shops and internet sites). The mini-essays prove to be interesting reading, particularly for the beer novice with "Brewing for the Bottle" and "Growing Old Gracefully" giving concise overviews of the brewing process and bottle aging respectively.
Some of the ancillary stuff I could do without; the now-ubiquitous food matching advice proves little more than the fact that cheese goes with most beer and the international section (although well written) mentions too many beers that are difficult to get hold of in the UK, even through specialist retailers.
One thing that proved a little frustrating was the lack of cross referencing between the brewery beer lists and the main content of the book - it would have been useful to know which beers merited a full review. Having found a brewery I like, the only way I could find more beer reviews for that brewer was to plough through the whole book, one section at a time.
But the proof of a beer review book is in the drinking. I found a beer knocking around the cellar that I hadn't tried before - Meantime's London Pale Ale - and compared my tasting notes with the Guide. Which pretty much nailed it; earthy hops, lilting sweetness, dry finish. I got a real mineral edge in there as well. If I'd bought the beer on the strength of the book's review, I certainly wouldn't have been disappointed.
Faced with an ever-growing amount of bottled-conditioned beer on the market, the Good Bottled Beer Guide is an indispensable reference.
You can buy it at your friendly local neighbourhood bookseller for £12.99. Online deals are invariably cheaper. But why not buy direct from CAMRA - that way, they get a larger share of the profit to plough back into campaigning.
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This bottle of Cantillon Iris has been in and out of my fridge for weeks. It's made way for a glut of supermarket BrewDog. Shuffled to one side to accommodate champers for celebrations. Relegated to the kitchen table when wine was on my mind.
But today it claimed a place in the cooler, so that it could come out to play in the unexpected September sun. My post-gardening beers are usually cheap and cheerful lagers or hardcore IPAs. Today I thought I'd do something different after the lawnmowing; the result being that it's been a pleasure to sip my way through this bottle one fluteful at a time.
As for Iris - it had more flowery dry tartness than a Derby city bus shelter on a wet Wednesday night. Just funky enough. If this is the last of summer, Iris is a great beer to toast its farewell with.
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Here's a unfeasibly-long postcard I sent to my dear old friend, Hugh Jarse, last summer. It never arrived - Hugh having changed address at Her Majesty's Pleasure yet again - so now it's been returned I thought I'd share it with you.
Dear Hugh. Well, here I am in the capital of the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire. Sheffield is dreadfully sunny and hot, with none of the sleet and hail that the brochures promised at this time of year. Passport control was very lax. All that time spent learning the names of champion whippets was wasted – no-one asked me any questions and I was allowed to leave the station unmolested.
I met up with Gazza, Mrs Gazza, Dave Swij... zwege... Dave Unpronounceable and a few others before ordering a breakfast so large that it arrived on a plate bigger than my head. For a Wetherspoons it was a real culture shock – there was a barmaid who was chatty, polite and knowledgeable about beer. I wonder if that attitude can be exported to the further reaches of the JDW empire?
Suitably cholesterolised, we took a bracing walk downriver to a charming public house. The Harlequin offered a superb range of beers, light and dark, weak and strong, handpull and gravity, little and large, eggs and bacon, Tom and Jerry.... a slew of beers were imbibed as several more jolly Ratebeer types joined us. Even when Dave farted and blamed it on a sleepy Alsatian, we still enjoyed the brews which included such delights as Weyerbacher Double Simcoe.
Eventually, we moved on to the Fat Cat, just down the road. Here we sat outside, warm sun permeating the slight shadows. There is a certain joy in taking the Yorkshire air of an afternoon, particularly when said air is located next to a fine drinking establishment. Such joy is multiplied by a beer brewed within sight of the bar (well, it would be if you could see through several brick walls). A Kelham Island special was ordered. "Mieszko!" said I. "Bless you!" came the reply...
Sustenance was now required by all and sundry. Rather than partake of the award-winning menu here, the party decided to build up further our appetites and take a sturdy yomp to another pub further down the valley. Thirty seconds later, we'd arrived there. The Kelham Island Tavern was mackerel-tin busy so I wasted no time in securing my usual round - one pint of Pictish Brewers Gold, two Red Leicester cobs. The wait for hot food proved lengthy, too many hungry topers in one place, so my reserve cob soon became the subject of a bidding war. Until my fellows realised that the basket on the bar was full of them. More friends turned up, Steve and Chrissie having been taking in some of the architectural delights of the city beforehand.
Amongst the melee, a bottle of De Struise Pannepot appeared from nowhere. Well, it appeared from the rucksack of an exceptionally-bearded Scottish gentleman sat next to me. Craig (for it was he, hirsute-of-chin) and I shared surreptitiously this fine Belgian ale and I made note to secure further supplies for winter-fireside-topering.
Once food orders had been satiated finally, we wended our way to the Wellington. Here, our thirsty crowd all flocked to order Pictish El Diablo, a notably hoppy stout. Indeed, so popular it proved that before I reached the bar it "burst", the latter apparently being a beer aficionado term for "run out". I settled for Oakham Endless Summer; weak in alcohol, strong in hop flavour. Shortly after, a chance remark (which was sadly not recorded) led to the gentleman next to me displaying his training shoes as surrogate mammaries. Or "Mes's Nike Tits" as they became known.
Not only are the beers tasty at the Wellington, but it is well situated within this Valley Of Beer. Only a few minutes amble from the other houses visited so far and so close to the passing tramline that the windows rattle as one passes. Our party availed itself of the aforementioned transportation to whisk us onward to our next calling point, the Hillsborough Hotel. Here, we were encouraged outside once again by the bracing mid-evening air and panoramic views over the Don Valley. And of the dry ski-slope. And of Mecca Bingo. Plenty of high-quality, low-cost, on-site brewed beer was imbibed, the Crown Hillsborough Pale Ale becoming a swift favourite around the table. And it was charming to watch the doyen of scoopers, Gazza Prescott, holding court in front of the camera.
The rest of the day descended into a steady haze. Another pub or two was found, fellow topers tailed off and away, an enthusiastic homebrewer tried to convince me that elderflower wheat beer was the future. It had been the usual pleasure to crawl the Valley of Beer, moreso to be in good company. I look forward to inviting you over here for a drink or four sometime in the near future; do let me know if your injunctions and court orders prevent you from travelling to this particular county.
... as soon as the drugs start working. Now on the seventh day of a throat infection, The medication has me sleeping up to 18 hours a day. With a mouth feeling like it's full of glue and razor blades. No palate, no appetite. When I tried a sip of alcohol, my throat swelled up alarmingly.
So, no beer festivalling this weekend. If I'm awake for long enough, I may get around to writing up some more articles. LOL. (OK, not LOL, not with my throat...)
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"Summer's gone / days spent with the grass and sun But I don't mind / to pretend I do seems really dumb"
Autumn is almost upon us. Summer was that fleeting afternoon of insipid heat, followed by a few days of uncomfortable warmth, bookended by several weeks of blustery fluster that brought the world and their ankle-biters out to every pub garden. I'm never that sad to see summer move on, but it does have one thing going for it - drinking hoppy stuff in the sun.
Because summer beer to me means hops - oily fruit tickling the parched throat. So the summer beers that I look back on with a wry smile, in no particular order, are;
Ostravar Pils From the bottle, in my conservatory. With lawns mowed, edges clipped, borders turned, bushes trimmed and slugs deaded. There are few feelings finer than the first lawnmower beer, one that's been whipped out the freezer and barely wets the edges as you bolt it down. Then let out a hugely satisfying belch to let the neighbours know that your gardening day is truly done.
Pictish Brewers Gold In the beer garden of the Kelham Island Tavern, Sheffield. A suntrap melange of palms and ferns and splashes of shrubbery colour, no more than a well-hefted stone's throw from decayed factories and flash flats. Because every sip of it tastes like victory; balance over bludgeon, assured quality over reckless ambition. Because twenty minutes spent by a yucca with a Red Leicester cob, a crossword and a damn fine pint makes the rest of the day's dreary detail recede.
Marble Dobber No sparkler, by the pint, sat with mates, by the bins out the back of the Marble Arch, Manchester. For the sheer joy of necking one of England's finest cask IPAs at its home ground, with a bunch of beery friends who loved it too. For the joy of watching people try it for the first time, and realise how I must have looked thirty seconds earlier.
Thornbridge/Epic Halcyon At the Coach & Horses, Dronfield, Derbyshire. Outside, it was packed. Clear sky, sharp sun, the weather that leads a blondie like me to bleach and burn. So my retreat was beaten back into a calmer bar with an accommodating leather chair. Where I was sustained by a barbecued fish on a stick along with lashings of lip-twisting IPA. Where the comfort of great beer, great food and great music became almost tangible. Thornbridge Jaipur On this occasion, in the Bear Inn, Alderwasley, Derbyshire. As there are few finer moments across my summers than a back-knackering walk uphill, on a clear-blue-sky day, and happening across a pub selling one of my standout beers. As taut muscles relaxed and my palate welcomed back favourite flavours, I became the very definition of contentment. Albeit with five more miles to walk.
You know what? Summer sounds alright after all. But.... I'm ready for knocking the snow off my boots, glowing inglenooks, barley wines that warm the cockles of your thermals, finding that imperial stout you stashed away two years ago in the back of the garage.
We had joy. We had fun. Drank IPAs in the sun. But the weather weren't what it oughta. And I'm gagging for a porter.
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And the award for Grinding Inevitability In Beer Blogging goes to... Reluctant Scooper for the obligatory Brewdog article. Want to know why I write about them? I like their beers. I'd buy shit booze and write about that instead but my masochistic streak doesn't run that deep. It only goes as far as supporting Nottingham Forest.
Anyhoo. Once upon a time there were three beers and their names were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. But Brewdog didn't brew those. They *did* brew Dogma, Chaos Theory and Hardcore. Rumours that those names were inspired by a certain someone's Lovefilm.com rental list are unsubstantiated.
Let's start with Dogma.
Tastes of... white pepper and liquid caramel. Smells like... honey from the back of the cupboard. That's turned kinda special. If it were a track by Radiohead it would be... I Might Be Wrong
Let's middle with Chaos Theory.
Tastes of...... orange peel impregnated with pine needles Smells like...bitter jelly If it were a track by Radiohead it would be... No Surprises
Let's finish with Hardcore
Tastes of... Boxing Day fruit salad split under the Christmas tree. And rubbed with a caramel cloth., Smells like... fractured grapefruit stirred with a sticky hop stick If it were a track by Radiohead it would be... Everything In Its Right Place
Blag blah Sainsbury's, blah blah four for the price of three, blah blah probably next to the charcoal briquettes unless you shop in Edinburgh.
And that’s it. I promised myself I’d stop at two hundred and
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If you've suffered this site for long enough, you know I love to scoop. There's a joy to be held in finding new, interesting, adventurous beers. A delight delivered by the fulfillment of expectation. But also the thrill in tasting the beer that blindsided and surprised you.
My Reluctancy in scooping is borne out of too much bland bitter, brewed by this month's new micro. Of too much tinkering; a hop pellet there, a malt bill shifted here, an uneven regular brew leaping Lazarus-like onto the bar as a rebadge everywhere.
But in the back of my mind, there's always Reluctant's Conundrum; if you don't scoop the new beer/brewery, you may miss out something special. After all, what if I hadn't tasted Thornbridge (or Oakham or BrewDog or, or, or) at the time that I did? Sure, I would have had their beers by now, but being an 'early adopter' has given me a couple of years worth of fantastic beery experience.
It's great to find the beer styles/brewers that you love. It's great to try something different. It may be the Worse Beer You've Ever Tasted - Official. Or it could be the beer that changes your topering habits for a lifetime.
We may be living in a golden age for UK brewing. With technological advances, environmental concerns and consumer/producer enthusiasm, the next twenty years could see revolutions in brewing quality beers at a local scale. The scope for scooping is massive.
There are great pubs in my village / the city / the Midlands and Yorkshire, depending on how far I want to drag myself for a pint. There are some quality breweries on my doorstep. And there's a hugely influential, articulate and intelligent bunch of beery bods on the t'internet. So I could just sit back, read the blogs and drink what I know to be good.
Problem is, in twenty years time, I'd be the bitter man at the bar bemoaning, "this stuff used to taste better when I was younger... and what the hell is oak-aged double imperial goozeberry hefeweizen, anyway?". So I'm happy to be Reluctant a little while longer. The thrill of the chase, the surprise of the unexpected, both make beer drinking in this day and age an unmitigated joy.
My last wish is to keep on scooping Reluctantly.... and for a few more people to do the same. Go find the beers and breweries that others are excited about. See how they measure up to your palate and expectations. And then take the time to savour them. Find the balance between chasing the tail of that new beer and snuggling up next to an old favourite. Don't forget why you drink the stuff in the first place. Life's too short to spend it with indifferent beers.
Someone once said opinions are like arseholes - everybody's got one, and everybody thinks everybody else's stinks. Well, I'm happy to keep stinking up the internet. One beer at a time.
In England, we talk of microbrewing. We define by size; by a volume limit, a taxation break. Microbrewers are seen as good, macrobrewers bad, with regional brewers caught between a rock and a hard place.
For me, size doesn't matter. Quality does. Looking Stateside, there's a true minority - 5% - of the brewery scene who are dwarfed by the Bud-Miller-Coors Goliaths. Small in market share, big in ideas and confidence. And they are proud to call themselves craft brewers.
Defining what they brew and how its brewed not by scale but by the passion and care invested into it. Brewing that involves "...innovation, independence, curiosity, collaboration, character and family".
A few breweries over here describe themselves in similar terms. Our homebrewing scene is guided by an organisation called the Craft Brewing Association.
I've rattled through a long wishlist this month. But I one wish I'd love to come true would be a shift in thinking; define the UK beer scene by the quality of the brewers and beers, not by their size. To be proud of a pint produced by craftspeople.
Saying you're a craft brewer is a statement of intent; a guarantee; a challenge. An inspiration to the consumer and an aspiration for the homebrewer.
What's in a word, you say? It's just another lame marketing ploy? Play the video below and tell me if you still think that craft brewing would be no more than a rebranding tag.
