Marginalia are a wonderous thing. By the side of failed crosswords, boring books, faded magazines and jaded op-ed pieces I have acquired a wealth of random scribblings. Often libellous, sometimes legible, always nearly related to beer.
Before throwing away newspapers, I check to see if I’ve folded over a page-corner – my indicator-to-self that there’s an interesting article there. Or some random beer scribbling that may be worth developing. Or a picture of Kelly Brook in the buff. Here’s one such preserved slurred musing I’ve just found; “Comfortably Numb – 1980 beer names”. As in, potential beer names taken from hits in 1980. It ran down the margin, over the Sudoku and into an advert for some cock’s V8 droptop. As I honestly have nothing better to do, I’ll share them with you. If you brew a beer and give it one of these names, let me know. I’ll even help you come and drink it.
Ace of Spades – must be a dark beer. 5.2% ABV
Atmosphere – dark, brooding, unsettling. NOT MILD.
Back In Black – does what it says on the tin.
Chemical Warfare – stupidly hopped something.
Comfortably Numb – barley wine, natch
Crazy Train – Nutty. and fruity.
Decades – uses ten hops
Enola Gay – huge dry-hopped hop-bomb of a hoppy IPA
Geno – Washington State hops used
I can't stand up for falling down – a light ale
I wanna be sedated – a milky imperial weiss
To Cut A Long Story Short – an IPA brewed to an old recipe
Tattooed Love Boys – black beer with blueberries
Stereotype – Crystal malt, Fuggles/Golding hopped. But good
Special Brew – legal problems with this?
Rocket From A Bottle – self explanatory
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You’ve just walked from one end of the National Exhibition Centre to the other, both halves seemingly in different postcodes. You’ve got a throat dryer than the Atacama. You’ve free access to a fridge chock full of beers – Trappist ales, Belgian bruins, double IPAs. What do you satiate that itching thirst with?
Lager, of course.
Nothing – and I do mean nothing – is as refreshing as a cold lager on a parched palate. Those flavours you’d usually savour in a hoppy beer would be too sticky. Maltiness would just clag the gap left where your tonsils were whipped out. You need something crisp, something cold.
We were pouring samples of two great lagers. Moritz is a clean, soft Spanish pils sprinkled with Saaz. Rothaus Tannenzäpfle is a South German pils with echoes of pine needles; there’s a herbal edge to its sweet malt base. I loved them both and drank them deeply all day.
There’s an awful lot of shit lager in the world. But there’s some well made, carefully crafted, thoroughly enjoyable examples out there too.
#3) Never underestimate the popularity of fruit beer
Not everyone likes a double IPA. Not everyone likes a traditional bitter. But I reckon you’d be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t like some sort of fruit beer. I lost count of the times people said to me “I don’t usually like beer/fruit, but that was lovely”. Often it was the ladies who hadn’t been keen on beer (as it was ‘bitter’ or ‘pongy’) and the gents who weren’t sure about fruit (as it was ‘girly, like Bacardi Breezers’).
Putting a decent fruit beer in their hands changed all that. “Does the banana beer taste of banana?”, asked someone. Hell crikey, yes. Mongozo Banana smells and tastes of sweet, Fair Trade bananas. And Mongozo Coconut smells and tastes of coconut milk, as do you when yet another bottle spurts everywhere. Indeed, Mongozo Snozberry would indubitably smell and taste of snozberry.
People were surprised that the beers didn’t taste tacky. That you could recognise the aroma and flavours as those of the fruit in question. Soon, the ladies were supping their beers and joining the back of the sampling queue for more. Four barrel-chested, shovel-handed guys weren’t interested in lagers, they just wanted more coconut beer.
With those flavours licking round their lips, it was time for a gentle segue into kriek and framboise. The pop of the cork, the steady carbonation, the assertive flavours. Here, people found beers to accompany dessert courses, to offer sparkle at a party, to savour out on the decking. Meanwhile, the strawberries-and-cream dream that is Fruli was evaporating from the bar next door.
But *you* still don’t like fruit beer, you say? I bet you just haven’t found the right one…
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#1) It’s a challenge to educate people with beer samples.
With four beers to sample, and a queue of thirsty punters, I reckon I had about thirty seconds to describe the beer styles on offer, push for a decision and pour a beer whilst giving just a sliver of its backstory. Then it was on to the next customer. And repeat for the best part of five hours. You want the customer to try a great beer and understand why it’s great, you want them to remember the beer’s name and – let’s be honest – you want them to buy some either today or on-line at some time. It’s a huge ask in thirty seconds.
#2) Some people say the most obvious things. I had to avoid the obvious answers.
“I don’t like beer, but I like this one”.
Congratulations, that’s because you’ve just tasted your first well-crafted beer made with quality ingredients.
“What’s the strongest beer you’ve got?”
Well, how about forgetting what gets you pissed quickest and try a beer with strong flavours instead? Here’s a chance to redefine your drinking parameters; seize it.
“I don’t like Belgian beer”.
Yeah, that bucket of Jupiler you tried on that stag trip to Brugge was obviously representative of the country’s rich and varied beer heritage.
“Have you got any bitter?”.
Do we have bitter-tasting beer? Yes, some of the world’s finest. But if you mean four-percentish brown slurry, then the answer is no. A sensory descriptor should not define a beer style; both become devalued as a result.
It was actually refreshing to be in a position where I could challenge someone’s beer assumptions. Open their eyes to perceiving beer in a way they’d never done before.. I actually got a kick out of putting a good beer in someone’s hands and seeing a flicker in their eye, a smile on their face, the inkling of a beer epiphany taking place.
I’m a thirsty kind of guy. Not just for the old malt-and-hop-wash, but for beer knowledge. I’m trying to cram in experience at all ends of the industry; one thing I’d never done was work the counter of a trade stand at an exhibition. So when the BBC Good Food Show and 'Tasting Beers Live' rolled into the National Exhibition Centre, with my good friends at beermerchants in attendance, I jumped at the chance to be a bar monkey for the weekend.
The ‘Tasting Beers Live’ side of the show took place in its own area, right at the arse end of the arena. I was sceptical that many would stumble across it, or that it would end up becoming a ‘man-creche’ of blokes desperate to escape from their wife’s wisteria habit. But business was brisk; when we ran tastings the queues soon formed, at other times there was always someone who wanted to stop and chat about the beers.
On the upside, it was great to put good beer into people’s hands and see them get a real kick of tasting something that was new to them – which was a darn site tastier to many they’d tried before. The range of beers by Viven, the truly-fruity Mongozo beers, classic European lagers and pils, all were gratefully received and sampled eagerly.
The only downside was a perception, re-inforced by physical segregation, that beer tasting had to be separate from good food. Yes, there was a beer-and-food stand. Yes, Richard Fox did a sterling job using his beers (and ours) in cooking a range of stunning dishes. But because the sampling stalls were roped off from the main event, perhaps partly driven by licensing restrictions, perhaps to channel customers into paying £7 for a glass and tokens, it seemed like beer was taking itself too seriously and consciously setting itself apart from the rest of the show. For all the exhibitors in there, nothing could have been further from the truth.
I went there for the experience and, boy, there was plenty to be had.. I’ll share some of those with you throughout this week.. In the meantime, huge thanks to beermerchants for letting me loose on the unsuspecting public and props to Sean for not getting too hacked off when I sprayed Mongozo Coconut over him. For the third time. At least we smelt like we’d been on a spa trip, not a beer exhibition ;-)
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There's something about a splash of sunshine that makes me want to bring on the gueuze.
The phhht of the cork from the bottle. The itchng fizz of effervescence in a champagne glass. The sour tang, the makes-your-tabs-laugh tartness, perhaps a funky feel, maybe a lemon twist... truely the drink that keeps on giving. And as for kriek - I can't think of a finer fruit beer than a cherry-blessed, slightly chilled glass of sheer gorgeousness.
I've made gueuze and kriek my summer Thursday beers of choice this year. Partly because they're great beers to sip in the sun, sat in the garden, lawns mown the day before. Also because I knock together a light tea for myself on a Thursday whilst Mrs Scooper is out herding cats - I mean, running a Rainbow Guide unit. So I've been playing around with a host of dishes that complement and contrast the flavours of the beers.
Muusels and fries was a given. Hackneyed, perhaps, but there's that certain something in the way that gueuze cuts across the buttery sauce. Salmon quiche worked surprisingly well. Duck legs steeped in kriek and mustard were fantastic - a jagged-tooth palate-snagger of heat and fruit, sour and nutty. Goat's cheese salad with a few slippery beets was superb.
I'm building myself up to try the Sean Paxton-inspired venison crusted with coriander and orange peel. Tonight, it's duck on toast; a robust pâté trowelled thickly onto thick slices of toasted Hovis. Alongside, a sublime kriek from Moriau that's been gathering dust for years but still tastes and looks lithe and sparkly. The other beers so far this summer haven't disappointed either, such as a feisty Hanssens kriek and a dashingly dry Grand Cru from Cantillon. And there's plenty more waiting in the wings, Saint Lamvinus and Iris from Cantillon, Drie Fonteinen, Girardin, Boon Mariage Parfait... it's going to be a long, goozey-boozy summer.
Many thanks to Imperial Commander, Gold Cup jockey Paddy Brennan and owner Nigel Twiston-Davies for expanding my tenner at 7-1 into a case of gueuze from beermerchants.
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Have you heard the one about the Dutch brewery with the German-sounding name that used leggy South Africans to get up the noses of a global brewer famous for its American and Belgian brands? No? Have you been comatose for the last 24 hours?
Hats off to Bavaria, the Dutch brewers, who pulled off yet another guerrilla marketing wheeze by having thirty-six women ditch their Danish shirts and reveal their almost-wholly-unbranded 'Dutch Dresses'. And thanks to Robbie "Mr. Naive" Earle for allegedly dipping into his own pocket to the sum of almost four grand to buy the face-value tickets that somehow found their way into the hands of the orange-clad lovelies.
There are, of course, many questions left unanswered. Why did Robbie Earle buy so many tickets and, allegedly, aim to buy many more for future games? How can FIFA claim that the orange dresses, with no discernible logo, are "recognisable items associated directly with the brewery in question"? What have Bavaria got against AB Bev, given that they've pulled this kind of stunt before in 2006? Surely not the brewery equivalent of sour grapes after InBev squealed over the 2007 Dutch beer price-fixing scandal, resulting in InBev walking and Bavaria being fined? Why didn't FIFA just eject the 'advertising mules', as one English newspaper called them, given that they shouldn't have been using the tickets? Is it because of the dangerous precedent it would set? What would Jack Warner, the FIFA vice-president previously embroiled in a ticket sales scandal, make of it all?
Somewhere in here, there's a point to be made about beer marketing.I think it's this; exclusivity deals are bound to make a brewery look like an arse at some point. Whether it's the beer you can buy in a stadium or a sponsorship deal for an event, the bigger and more obnoxious the deal, the harder and funnier they can be made to prat-fall. If only by three dozen attractive women in tight dresses.
PS - for the funniest take on the whole caboodle, you need read only one article. As always, it's the Daily Mash
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Sleek-sided bottle. Bastard plastic 'cork'. Sore palms. Unavoidable yeasty swirlings. Nun's fart-splutter as it opens. Horse-piss amber on the pour. Aroma? Not really. Fine lace mesh head, tilted glass leaves a pin-head constellation smear. Aroma now? Warm fresh banana fudge. Alcohol I can feel behind my eyes, slightly. There's malt sweetness with the yeastyness. A sip smoothens exponentially; flecks of orange peel vie with a vanilla wash. Aroma now? Glue not yet set on the back of an Airfix Spitfire's wing.
Warm flesh required around the glass. Preference; toned thighs Actuality; chubby hands. Coaxing vanilla now, rewarded with drunken caramel leaking around the edges. A prickle on the tongue, kindling an almost-lost sensory memory, something randomly Belgium in a smoky Brugge cafe bar.Spots of dryness stick in the palate. An undefined essence of ester lingers.
So young. Maybe too young. Too lithe. Too subtle. It needs age. It needs weight. It sits in the glass and knows with cock-sure confidence that it could be an amazing, outstanding, stop-the-fucking-traffic beer. But not yet. Like many on the cusp of maturity, it needs a few years to sit in the dark whilst breaking hearts occasionally.
Two more bottles of Brewdog's 10.2% 'vanilla bean infused belgian quad' will now go and wallflower my cellar party til next spring. Let's see if they blossom then.
Abstrakt 01 has sold on on the official website but I dare say that some independent retailer has a bottle or five stashed away. Ask around. You may be surprised.
Somewhere in deepest darkest Laaaaandan right about now - well, OK, at the bright-and-breezy beer theatre that is Cask in Pimlico, the pre-launch party for Abstrakt 02 should be getting underway. The 16% 'Triple Dry Hopped Imperial Red Ale' goes on sale from the Abstrakt website tomorrow.
It was almost the perfect evening of cricket. Cool skies cleared to blue along the embankment. Trent Bridge was buzzing with an expectant crowd; the Hounds Road stand was bathed in sun. Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire played a true Twenty-Twenty showcase with thumping sixes and mad dashes between the wickets. But as the shadows lengthened and Samit Patel brought the home side home to a comfortable victory, I realised there was one thing missing – some really great beer.
Before the match, I’d enjoyed a couple of pints of gloriously pale, hoppy beer at the Southbank bar. BG Sips from Blue Monkey shines in the glass, dances on the palate and drives hops down your throat with the same ruthlessness than Alex Hales dispatches sixes with.
Which makes the beer choice inside Trent Bridge all the more disappointing. I’m not stuck by Carling; I struggle to get past the canned sweetcorn aroma. I’d rather eat my own foot cheese than drink Worthington. Which left me desperate enough to drink Magners, a couple of pints bloating me up enough to become the unofficial Trent Bridge blimp.
Now I understand the economic practicalities at play. Refreshments may be run by a concession, that concession may be tied in to a particular partner. But I still think Trent Bridge was missing a trick by not offering at least some quality bottled beers. Thornbridge Jaipur would have been magnificent, likewise Brewdog Punk IPA. I’d have certainly enjoyed something cold and continental – Budvar or Kuppers would have been spot on. Even when poured into a plastic glass.
Would I have paid handsomely for the privilege? Probably. Given that the mark-up on the beers available seemed to be about 20% of city centre prices, I’d have been happy to savour a cool IPA or kolsch whilst Notts thrashed fantastic.
Perhaps this raises a wider question about the availability of cask and bottled beer at sporting venues. I know that Thwaites had a beer tent at Old Trafford for the Bangladesh test and I’m sure that Kent have a CAMRA-run bar open at some of the championship matches. Not quite so grand as drinking Bear Republic Racer 5 at a Giants game, mind, but it’s an improvement.
Can you get a great beer at your favourite sporting event? If not, should we be badgering the powers that be for something better with which to celebrate victory or drown our sorrows?
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.. So there I was, walking along, minding my own business, watching a digger knacker the crap out of what used to be Williams Fasteners on Green Lane (makers of "bolts, nuts, studs, screws, washers, nails, hinges, rivets, sockets". That's a lot of fastening) when two blokes stopped me. And said;
"Is there a pub 'round 'ere?".
"Several", I said, "any one in particular?"
"Yeah", said the big fella, "the one that's won all the awards".
"No problem" I said. "Just walk up the road and bear left. Or right."
I never saw the big fella and his mate again anywhere around the Valley of Beer. But, truth be told, there's plenty of places to stumble into. I hope they got to drink some of the best beer that Sheffield had to offer on a gray Thursday. I know I did.
What beers were they, you say? Ah, that's another story...
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As a kid, I loved the I-Spy books. The family holiday in Devon gave me a chance to spy those ‘exotic’ car registrations. I’d even buy a clean copy of ‘I-Spy On The Motorway’ to see if I could complete it on the run between Birmingham and Exeter. When I heard that Adrian Tierney-Jones had brought out the Real Ale Record Book, the pitch for which was ‘I-Spy for grown-ups’, I had a shiver of excitement not experienced since spying a flashing overhead sign warning of impending lane closures around the Almondsbury interchange.
The Real Ale Record Book is, quite literally, a cask ale ticker’s book. Which is great but there’s an opportunity going begging, methinks. ‘I-Spy Down The Pub’ is just asking to be written; perhaps it’d look something like this…
Five years ago today, at a fledgling Derbyshire brewery, a beer legend was born.
It took an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Italian, a heap of hops and a far-sighted vision to bring the beer to market. It took first place in the Sheffield CAMRA beer of the festival award in 2005. Over sixty awards later, it's still taking the beer world by storm.
In some pubs, it sells out as soon as it goes on. In bottles, it now graces the fridges of the world's best beer bars. In short; Warrior, Chinook, Centennial, Ahtanum, Maris Otter, Vienna, lots of love and attention.
It's been almost five years since I first tasted a beer that would have a profound effect on my big fat beery life. Tonight, I'll raise a glass in celebration of its official birthday.
A beer that makes grown men cry when it runs out. That lifts the spirits of weary topers wherever it's found. That has given rise to a whole new set of adjectives.
A very hoppy birthday to Thornbridge Jaipur. Cheers!
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Four of my favourite breweries. If a pub is serving one of their beers, that's probably what I'll end up drinking. Sometimes, there may be two of those breweries on offer. Very occasionally (like Derby's Flowerpot on a good weekend) there may be three to choose from. Rarely do I see all four together.
So the beer boards I saw yesterday had me salivating. A pub with six casks on handpull and another seven served on gravity straight from the cellar, offering a stellar lineup of some of Britain's best beers. The effortlessly-drinkable Marble Pint. A bundle of bitter fruits in Oakham Citra. Some lush, copper-hoppy goodness of Thornbridge Lumford. And the grassy-edged, toffee-middled, floral-riven experience that is Brewdog Punk IPA.
Drank in that order, with another sneaky Pint at the end, it was quite possibly the finest afternoon's cask beer drinking that I've ever had. In a pub that was comfy, clean, buzzing with friendly locals. And a ladies netball team. And a bunch of raspberry-cider drinkers wearing the shortest skirts and highest heels known to man.
So, that's a pub offering top-quality beers from my favourite brewers on a regular basis. With comfy chairs. And engaging customers. With a bus stop right outside. Three guesses where I'm going to be on a regular basis from now on...
I've been here before with exhortations about Russian River's Blind Pig. But here goes again.
Hoppy beers invariably taste better when fresh. When you get the chance to drink hoppy beers that have tucked away a few air miles, you ought to drink them at your earliest convenience.
So tonight, I will mostly be revelling in the humulus lupulus overload delivered by two US brewers; 21st Amendment's Brew Free! Or Die IPA and Captain Lawrence's Captain's Reserve Imperial IPA. The latter I had at the Great British Beer festival last year, indeed I drank it until I was decidedly wobbly. The former - well, Nico and Shaun's 'tasty crack can' has been something I've lusted after ever since hearing their Brewing Network ads. It's IPA, chock-full of six lush hops, all in a can. In fact, I'm chugging it back right now.
You got hoppy beer? Drink the mother-suckers. Your palate will thank you for doing so.
ps - the fresh fresh fresh bottles of Viven IIPA and Brewdog Punk IPA earlier on were all rather fine and dandy too. Thanks to Phil Lowry for the Belgo-US hop shocks and a yay! to Asda for stocking Punk and making my early morning shopping worthwhile.
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Barrow Hill in a nutshell; a beer festival held in a working locomotive shed. Sounds like madness? Well, there’s a fair few reasons why it works so well:
Only a queue or two – Well, the forty-minute queue for the free bus wasn’t too bad- it was a sunny day after all – although the bus-bores in front of me and the train-bores behind me left me wish I’d brought my mp3 player with me. What I now don’t know about exhaust parameters and the finer points of timetabling of 1970s West Midlands routes isn’t worth remembering. But at the fest, the queues for tokens were short and bar service was swift. Yes, even when it was Dom from Marble who was serving.
A really good foreign bottle bar – With the notable exception of GBBF, foreign bottles beers are often treated with disinterest or disdain at many British festivals. Here, the list was small but perfectly formed, with delights such as Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA for a hopshock, the De Molen-Mikkeller collaboration ‘Mikkel & Menno’ for a peachy perfume fix and Emelisse Stout for a roast explosion.
Liver and onions - Yes, there was real ale sausage. Yes, there was hog roast. But there’s something special about a cob stuffed full of just-cooked-enough liver and slippery fried onion. The sort of nom that ought to be available at more fests.
Local beer for local people – Plenty of beer from around the country was on offer, but with over two dozen breweries in the county they were right to showcase some of Derbyshire’s finest. Old favourites such as Thornbridge Jaipur vied for attention alongside new brews from the likes of Barlow, with all of the Derbyshire Brewers Collective represented. And there were some real gems; imagine a beer as complex as Mikkeller Jackie Brown but with less alcohol, so it’s more quaffable. That’s Ashover Mrs Brown, that it.
Smoke, steam and diesel – of course, the combination of heritage buses, working locomotives and real ale can bring out the worst kind of corduroy-clad saddo. But there’s something other-worldy about sitting on a wall in the blistering sun as two locos hiss and cough and chuff and splutter past you. And to sit in the compartment of a corridor coach, drinking beer with strangers as the train is pushed/pulled to the end of a non-descript cutting and back again, is surely one of the most esoteric pleasures at a British beer festival.
A brewer or two. Or three. Or more – It’s not unusual to find a brewer or two at a beer festival; professional networking, quality assurance and all that… So it’s always a pleasure to meet up with a few, chew the fat, put the world to rights and have semi-cogent conversations about flocculation. Perhaps. Janine, Matt, Kelly, Dom, here’s to you; it’s always a pleasure to share a beer with guys and gals who are passionate about what they brew.
Eclecticism – Sandal wearers who didn’t all have beards. Transport ‘enthusiasts’ and stag parties. Brass bands, R&B, impromptu a capella. Small brewers (Leila Cottage), large brewers (Fullers). Few festivals have this broad attraction. Barrow Hill had it in spades.
Ice cream on a bus – simple as that. An ice cream van is parked next to the bus stop. Result; me and Matt Clarke from Thornbridge, the last ones on, end up standing up, eating ice cream, not falling over, not depositing our cornets into the driver’s lap. The perfect end to a beery, sunny day.
If you were there, you don’t need me to tell you how good Barrow Hill Rail Ale festival is. If you weren’t there, why not? You’ve just missed one of the best events on Britain’s ale calendar. Just don’t miss out in May 2011!
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Twas in the year of 2010 and in the 15th day of May
Which the lovers of hops and malt will oft say
Especially those that visited the Twissup in Burton
“It was most magnificent”, of that they are certain
The meeting point was the illustrious Coopers Arms
Which was very full indeed of many beer-related charms
Although when a certain Scooper drank the last pint of Jaipur
Many in the queue behind we heard to say “Oh No!”
An ascent of the Shobnall Maltings tower was then expedited
From there the whole glorious town of Burton could be sighted
The breweries, the Town Hall, the Coopers Shopping Centre
And several ale establishments into which the group would soon venture
Off to White Shield Brewery where the inimitable Steve Wellington
Showed all his ‘old faithful’ copper and mash tun
Later the feast of food laid out was indeed supreme
Although some fool laced his P2 stout with very clotted cream
With bellies full of beef dripping fried chips and sausage
The group strolled in the sun to the next brewery at Burton Bridge
Within the rosy-faced topers professed a fondness
Of Bruce’s Porter, Festival, Bitter and Golden Delicious
Many decided later to go forth on a ramble
Onwards to another public house, the Wetmore Whistle
Sadly to say, from reading what they Twit
It appears that the beers they tried were pretty well not up to the standard expected
Some hardy topers at the Burton Bridge tarried a while
Before making their way to a bar known as the Dial
A watering hole diverse; customers such as those not yet shaving
Accompanying women whose tans were sprayed on that morning
Ignoring the stares of those drinkers jejune,
Our Tweeters were soon all drinking Blue Moon
Many opted for a slice of fruit in their beer, an orange
Which from a drinkability perspective added immeasurably to the challenge.
As the evening wore on, the Tweeters drifted apart
With some travelling home to assuage their sweetheart
Others stayed to drink more Molson-Coors portfolio product
And fall asleep in curry houses, inciting rude group conduct
Success to the organisers of the Grand Burton Twissup!
For making the day flow smoothly without a hiccup.
Our thoughts now when on buses, on trains and at aerodrome
Will be on how beer dispense is shortly to be revolutionised at home...
With the merest of apologies to William McGonnagal
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Spending an hour or two in a pub with ex-pat friends; fat chewed, micky taken, gossip shared, frothy pints providing the perfect social lubricant
Sitting in a snug, the cricket commentary on the radio just loud enough, the crossword just taxing enough, the peanuts just salty enough, the beer just bitter enough, this toper just content enough
A lazy boozy afternoon with workmates, visiting pubs and bars I’d never usually set foot in, proving that good drink can be found in unexpected places; Belgian ale, German lager, Somerset cider, English IPA
Scooping with the greatest reluctance; twenty beers to try in Derby’s Flowerpot, four pints downed, all the same beer – the pith and pine and smooth caramel of Thornbridge Seaforth
Mowing the lawns because a cold beer tastes even better when you’re watching robins bounding after insects over freshly cut grass
Deciding that the only thing better than drinking a bottle of West Coast USA hop-bomb IPA is to drink three in a row. Blind Pig, Pliny, Racer 5; fresh, fresh, fresh
Tripping around London and grazing my jaw as it dropped to the floor - the opulence of the Princess Louise, Holborn; the contemporary cool of the Cask, Pimlico; the voracity for quality keg in the Rake, Southwark
Discovering that, sometimes, just one bottle of beer can deliver all the flavour, aroma and bitterness that your palate asks for at the time. 330 millilitres of Brewdog 5AM Saint; my prescribed dosage for an evening’s hop satiation
Sharing a pint with a brewer who is contented and confident; those qualities being reflected in his beers
Drinking local, hoppy, fruity, pale-as-maiden-water beers by a city river in the patchy sun, slowly demolishing a chip butty slathered in melting butter
Standing on top of a maltings tower in Burton-upon-Trent, trying to imagine how the town must have looked in its glory days; riven with railways and belching, stinking, fascinating brewing
Drinking brewer’s homebrew; boiled in a saucepan, fermented in a water bottle, un-named, unknown ABV, no style prescribed - just beer. Just because. The only reason is just because.
There's my last twelve days. One post. Less is more.
Warning: this post contains images of West Coast USA beer porn.
How fantastic does it feel when someone gives you beer? If you're participating in the Twitter beerswap, you know what I mean. You've bundled off a parcel of goodies to someone and in return you're receiving random beer. Unless you're the poor sod to whom I was supposed to send beer last year when beerswap first ran. And I forgot. Shit. If I can remember who you are, I'll pull a bottle from my super secret stash and send it to you.
When you meet up with beery people, there's often a flurry of bubble-wrap and bottle for furtive exchange under pub tables. Brewers and writers who want to spread the word, local beers that are common as horse muck to one man but rare as rocking hoss shit to another, or imports from far-flung shores that make their way around the chain.
Think of those great beers you may have been given. How you'd probably never have got to try them if it wasn't for some benevolent soul.
Now think how great it feels to be the one who dishes the beer goodies out.
We've all got good beer near to us. Pick up a couple of bottles, stash them in a bag and the next time you meet up with friends from further away, pass those beers on. Spread the malt & hops. You'll find it's contagious.
My good friends Scott and Mary Frost will be winging their way back to California soon with a selection of Thornbridge and Hopshackle's finest. Meanwhile, I'll be choking some of these beers down this weekend. Cheers, Frosties!
It's been in print for as donkey's years. It's crammed full of 4500+ pubs, brewery profiles and sizzling gypsies (well, two out of three ain't bad). But in this digital age, can the Good Beer Guide hold its own or will it all get pretty bitter?
Let's start positive. As a guide book, the Good Beer Guide (GBG) gets the basics right. Logically ordered for easy access (pubs, breweries and beers all in alphabetical order) with clear type and comprehensive symbology, the guide is easy to use although at 888 pages it's literally more than a handful. Mind you, as I'm not being precious about books I tend to dis-assemble - that is, rip chunks -out of it so that I only have to carry around the county sections that I'm interested in. Having a myriad of authors - the many local branches who submit entries to this national guide - gives the GBG a homely, quirky feel that's a million miles away from some homogeneous guide-by-numbers publications that I could name. There's plenty of detail, often peppered with history and local flavour, routinely packed into the 100-ish words describing each pub.
Top marks for presentation and content, then. But the devil is in the detail. The GBG suffers the same problems that afflict printed guidebooks in general; the info is out-of-date as soon as its published. We're into May now and the Guide has 2010 on the cover but it was published in September 2009. From what I can gather about branch selection policy, the entries may have been submitted for publication as early as February that year. Surveying for those selections could even have been in late 2008. As summer approaches and guidebook sales are at their peak, thirsty topers may be relying on information that's eighteen months old already.
In fairness, the CAMRA website makes a stab at updating details but I fear there's been many more changes to opening hours and ownership than those reported. Perhaps there's the rub - although membership may be 100,000+ I suspect the active element who notify branch and national of such changes are very low in number. In the past, I've asked CAMRA to consider an on-line version that's more suited to updating but that probably won't happen for two reasons. If they can't get regular updates from some branches already, what hope do they have of keeping a web-based version current? And any electronic version would surely lower sales of the printed guide, putting a dent in the CAMRA coffers.
Selection for the GBG is an issue, too. With only so many pages to fill, the number of pubs that each branch can submit for guide inclusion is limited. I get the feeling that good pubs serving consistently good beer sometimes fall out of the GBG simply because it's not their 'turn' to feature this time around. A quick Google search of branch selection criteria highlights inconsistencies; CAMRA's National Beer Scoring System really ought to underpin selection but too often it's qualified by vagaries such as "a certain number of visits", "a certain mark for inclusion" and other factors "taken into account". I feel that a consistent, transparent selection process would improve the stature of the GBG and do away with the 'cronyism' accusations that are often made against it.
There's an easy way by which the GBG could increase the number of featured pubs by almost a third if it wanted to - scrap the breweries A-Z that takes up nearly 200 pages. With new breweries starting up on a regular basis and the beer ranges of all brewers in constant flux, I don't see the point of filling a quarter of the book with this kind of information. Yes, I know it's a good BEER guide but surely its raison d'etre is to identify the best pubs, clubs and bars serving that good beer. Websites like Quaffale and Beermad have far more comprehensive and up-to-date gen on breweries and beers than CAMRA could ever manage, so perhaps the GBG ought to stick to the knitting and just offer more pub entries - if the branches believe there's a demand not satisfied by the current quota.
The Good Beer Guide is an imperfect resource. Even so, like a knackered old labrador it still deserves space on the back seat of the car - for the time being.
I love beers and brewers who seek to challenge expectations. Marble turn out a solid range of keenly-hopped organic beers from two breweries, one in the back of a Grade 2 listed pub and another underneath nearby railway arches. Their beers are always forward with flavour and style; sometimes, they take brewing to another level. Decadence is proof positive that world-class beer is alive and well and living in Manchester.
As with many great beers, Decadence has a history. First brewed in 2007 as a small batch to celebrate the breweries tenth anniversary and one-thousandth brew, Marble decided to rework the recipe in 2009 and bring the beer to a wider audience. Lashings of chocolate malt in the double-brew mash vie with berryish Willamette and stacks of the New Zealand hop Rakau to produce a complex imperial stout.
Bitter chocolate is undercut by something fruity - it starts off hedgerow-like and ends up more exotic, more plump and fulsome and passion-fruity perhaps. A coffee-wash banters with just a smidgen of salt, soy and liqorice before juicy hops turn the lactic tang into an ever-dryer finish.
The beer's presentation is as stunning as the flavour. Marble's in-house designer, John Macklin, wanted Decadence to look as good as it tastes and it doesn't disappoint. The intricate silk screen design caresses the bottle as it it were lace. Renowned Dutch brewers De Molen supplied the corks, which have been caged before sealing with wax to optimise the beer's cellar life.
The beer went down well with a steak pie when I drank it a few weeks ago. Dominic from Marble says it's a perfect accompaniment to gamey meats and rich stews. I think it will go with anything it damn well wants to. Let's be honest, any beer borne of a brewday where Metallica's 'Death Magnetic' was playing constantly is going to be chock-full of attitude. It's assertive without being cocky. It knows it truely deserves a place at the top table. Decadence has escaped from Marble's arches and is now taking on the world - and about time.
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April's attempt at dieting was almost successful. Tuna pasta salad, good. Bananas, good. Shadow boxing, good. But then... eight pints around Sheffield along with a full Sunday lunch, bad. Several bottles of imperial stout with bars of Valrhona chocolate, bad. Just one more chunk of Stilton with a large pork pie and several pints of bitter, bad.
Time to get serious in May, then. But before I do, and seeing as it's Bank Holiday tomorrow, it's time for a few beers. I'd be surprised if most of this motley crew don't appear in the books that I'm currently reading for review here; Zak Avery's "500 beers" and Adrian Tierney-Jones' "1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die". I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to say about them. I'm also fairly keen on drinking the beers too :-)
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I've always had a sneaking appreciation for the Shepherd Neame Spitfire adverts. Visually arresting, the World War Two-themed posters and TV commercials have courted controversy at times but have stayed (nearly always) on the right side of the advertising guidelines.
This year, Spitfire is twenty years old and to celebrate it's been given a new website that showcases those classic ads as well as offering you the chance to make your own. Those spiffing chaps at Sheps also have beer to give away - a case of Spitfire could be yours if you watch the video below and spot which famous English landmark features in the film. Send your answer by email to toby.young@the7thchamber.com.
Honesty note: I received a case of Spitfire Ale in return for writing this article - that case will be donated to a Help For Heroes picnic fundraiser that I'm attending at the end of the month. Thanks to Shepherd Neame for their continued support of this charity.
After a gap of almost two years, Burton is about to make its brewing history come alive again. Saturday 1st of May sees the opening of the National Brewery Centre on the site of the Bass Museum which closed in 2008.
As well as the hundreds of displays and artefacts on show, the new centre promises more interactivity than before with performers in period costume recreating characters from the town's past. I already pity the poor sod who gets to play Michael Thomas Bass II; I suspect that certain anorak-clad groups will bore him rigid.
The old favourites are all (hopefully) still there - it'll be good to see the 1921 model of Burton, laced with locomotives, actually working properly. New shire horses Major and Trooper will be around at the weekends. There's even a holographic presenter - Pepper's Ghost - to welcome visitors to the attraction.
Let's not forget about the beer, mind. A beer tasting masterclass is included in the price of admission and the Brewery Tap will be serving beers brewed on-site by the White Shield brewery. There will be 'beer bites', too - here's hoping Staffordshire tapas offers adequate soakage for thirsty topers.
I'll pop down this weekend (gardening duties permitting) to see for myself how the Bass Museum legacy has been handled.
The National Brewery Centre opens Saturday 1st of May. Opening hours are 10-6; the Brewery Tap bar and restaurant opens 11-11. Admission for adults, including drinks, is £8.95 with concessions at £6.95. Child admission in £4.95 and a family ticket (two adults and two children) costs £24.95.
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Beer style is a fairly crude market segmenter. The beer scene may have evolved around its artisan edges, but marketers loves comfortable labels. Lager for the lads. Bitter for the old boys. Stout for those on the craic. Something implausibly fruit-based for the ladies. Barrel-aged double triple gooseberry hefeweizen for the craft beer aficionado.
So having set up these broad-brush steroetypes, how does the industry sell different styles to contented topers? Do they sing the praises of other beer types? Bearing in mind they've spent millions trying to define whom a drinker is by the kind of beer they choose? Do they tinker with preferred tipples; assist the drinker to segue between styles without making seismic shifts? "It's a bitter that looks like lager! It's stout, but it's red! It's bitter, but it's sweet and fruity! It's lager, but it's... err... a bit weaker than the one you drink at the moment!"
I'd love to see a pub serve random beer. Because, what often defines a drinker's preference is historical antecedence and the power of brand advertising. How about offering up a flight of five third-pints, served in black glasses; lager, bitter, stout, wheat, fruit. Get drinkers to compare and contrast. Forget prejudice, just experiment instead. I'm not talking about craft beer geek stuff at brewpubs - just regular keg beers in regular bars for regular drinkers.
I didn't swap Guinness for gueuze overnight. Unbeknownst-to-me beers from well-intentioned friends and semi-sociopathic landlords helped me along the way. I'd like to see more pubs offer up a random range and see if drinkers' artificially-restricted beer horizons can be broadened.
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Surprisingly, I'm not much of a Sunday luncher. My wife, her mother, grandmother and god-mother get together to talk about the week's hatched, matched and dispatched over a slab of something roasted. I'm usually in the pub, at the races or not quite on the footpath that I intended to.
So Sunday sustenance for me is usually late in the afternoon, often comprises of sliced pig and is always accompanied by beer. Today it was smoked gammon, splinter-thin fries to poke into runny yolks and a couple of decent British bottles. Marble Tawny 3 had grass and hay glossed over pineapples on a biscuity base; Fyne Avalanche was all soft and citric and floral and just... wow!
As the last of the Avalanche left my lips, it started to rain. And so I needed no excuse to not mow the lawn. And open another beer instead. Hard knock life, eh?
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A few days ago, pub conversation turned to the gathered topers' inability to last out a late night/early morning drinking session. Perhaps we're of that certain age, given that our round table discussions nowadays are more hip op than hip hop.
At which point, I mentioned Larry Miller's 'Five Levels of Drinking'. And no-one had a clue what I was rabbiting on about. I can't remember the first time I heard it but I do remember beer frothing out of my nose as I tried to laugh internal organs out of my body. The sentiments of the sketch had me banged to rights.
For all of you who've somehow never seen it, here's Larry in all his glory:
It's been some time since I delved into 'Merry-Go-Down', that essential reader for topers, so I thought I'd revisit it. An extract by Thomas Nashe caught my eye - in 'Pierce Penniless: His Supplication to the Devil' (1592), Nash identifies eight kinds of drunkenness:
1) Ape-drunke; one where the toper "leapes, and sings, and hollowes, and danceth for the heavens".
2) Lion-drunke; "He flings the pots about the house, calls his Hostesse whore, breakes the glasse windowes with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him".
3) Swine drunke; the subject is "heavy, lumpish, and sleepie, and cries for a little more drinke, and a fewe more cloathes".
4) Sheepe drunk; a drinker "wise in his owne conceipt, when he cannot bring forth a right word".
5) Mawdlen drunke; "A fellow will weepe for kindness in the midst of his ale, and kisse you, saying; By God Captaine I love thee, goe thy waies thou dost not thinke so often of me as I do of thee, i would (if it pleased God) could I not love thee so well as I do, and then he puts his finger in his eie, and cries".
6) Martin drunke; "a man is drunke and drinkes himself sober ere he stirre".
7) Goate drunke; one who "hath no minde but on Lechery".
8) Fox drunke; "He is craftie drunke, as many of the Dutch men bee, will never bargaine but when they are drunke".
Rather than something to be revered, Nash warns the reader against the 'slavering brewery, that will make you have stinking breathes, and your bodies smell like Brewer's aprons". Yeah, right.
But I can identify myself lurking on that list several times over. Certainly I've been prone to swine-drunkenness in my time. And I know a few martin-drunk types, who may or may not actually be called Martin and must remain nameless for legal reasons.
Which kind of drunk are you? I'm sure you want to tell the world. We've probably all seen the photos on Facebook, anyway...
Incidentally, Thomas Nashe is credited with the first English usage of the word 'dildo', in his soft porn poem 'The Choice of Valentines'.
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New colour scheme, new features, new wishlist. Same old attitude, same old rules, same old situation.
Extensive market research has been conducted. Opinions of topers from far and wide were gathered over countless pints. Some ideas were ditched like hot trub. Others have been in maturation for months and are ready to be dry-hopped with heaps of sarcasm.
Expect tales of brewing, of brewers on the piss, of topering along the river. Expect book reviews, beer reviews, cheese and choc and pie reviews. Mmmmm, cheesy chocolate pie.
More A-Zs. More Fifteen Fabulous Facts. More TLAs. More OMGWTFBBQ to the power of eleventy-one.
I'm putting it out and about. I'm brewing, racking and packing. I'm pulling, washing and stacking. I'm selling, buying and flying.
My advice? Count to ten and run for cover...*
* and still no apologies for the musical allusions - this post was brought to you with the assistance of Julian Cope et al played VERY LOUDLY
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Some say that a beer lover can never have too many books about beers of the world. Well... actually, I can. I've been there, bought them, cross-referenced them, bought an extra shelf for them and later dispactched 90% of them off to the charity shop. Because most of them are the worse kind of self-congratulatory claptrap.
"Look at me! I've drank lots of beer! I've managed to reword the phrase "mid-brown bitterish beer with a clean finish" over a hundred times! And I've included beers in here that a) you can't buy any more, b) you've never heard of and c) you'll never get to drink! All you can do is stare slackjawed at the pictures! HA!"
So, it's with even greater Reluctance than usual that I delved into a new offering. "World's Best Beers" is a weighty coffee-table tome that promised "a unique portfolio of boutique beers to savour, cherish and enjoy ". Was it worthwhile? You bet.
In fact, there are five reasons why it works so well and makes other 'best of' beer books feel lacklustre;
- It's written by Ben McFarland. Funny, passionate; not nerdy, not dry. And he brought us Beer Snob Bingo.
- It does actually look great. There's a keen use of white space, clean photos of pump clips/bottles to illustrate the beers, an uncluttered layout with touches of amber, russet and gold . It's beer-erotica, all those brews clad in bespoke glassware.
- There are honest tasting ratings. After all, it's not merely an illustrated directory. Rather than being overly-analytical, Ben offers ratings based on broad style indicators (such as Dark Side and Hop Head) as well as more emotive collections like the avant-garde ('New World'), off-the-wall ('All The Unusual') or beers best suited to quiet contemplation ('Think While You Drink').
- The articles are thriller rather than filler; sure, there's the seemingly-obligatory brewing/glassware/styles overview but the pearls here are the brewery profiles. The likes of Thornbridge, Mikkeller, Cantillon and Baladin are examined with insight and enthusiasm.
- Beer and food pairings are often deliberately esoteric or a pure lottery but I'm won over by Ben's suggestions. He makes a surefire case for pairings based on a keen understanding of how flavours complement or contrast, albeit whilst still including the cop-out of 'all beer goes with pizza'. But for pairing honey glazed duck with Kwak, the man deserves plaudits beyond his wildest dreams.
In fact, the whole of the food section is outstanding. Having 'guest' articles such as Stephen Beaumont's pairing rules, the El Bulli guide to the science of food and musings by Garrat Oliver makes for a more-rounded read than those books that include a beer-food chapter seemingly for the sake of it.
Best-beer books are an expression of the author's personality. That's why some are overly-factual and dense. Others are glossy and shallow. World's Best Beers is witty, irreverent, passionate and stylish. It's proof positive that beer writing can be entertainingly vicarious.
World's Best Beers: 1000 Unmissable Brews from Portland to Prague by Ben McFarland is published by Jacqui Small and available at all good booksellers, although in smaller stores you have to ask the lady behind the counter nicely to see if she can get a copy ordered in. They can't stock everything, you know. It's bad for their cashflow.
