Author Archives: Intoxicated Rich

What’s Brewing, February – March, 2015 – Agony Column

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Whats Brewing FebMar 15It’s been a while but these people do need help.

In February, SK of Dumfries believes that some microbreweries are ‘sneaking their product in under the radar’ due to lack of definitive terms. Indeed many of these enterprises produce NO REAL ALE! They are riding on the coat tails of the burgeoning real market apparently, ahem, I think you will find it is the other way round actually. And CAMRA’s initial raison d’être? Good beer, imho.

Many thanks to TW of Cambridge, acknowledging that post-CAMRA, over 40 years on things have changed a tad. He is certainly down with the kidz.

In March, the real ale brigade are out in force. Oh dear where to start? A nemesis of mine, DS of Chelmsford questions whether TW of Cambridge should be in CAMRA. It’s been a dilemma of mine too. Some of us prefer to foment change from within though. DJH of Woking simplifies matters, craft beer is keg beer, pressurised bright beer in fact. He clearly hasn’t had a pint of London Murky recently.

The balance is provided by IM of Aberdeen who has noticed 20-somethings enjoying fantastic beer in Brewdog bars, as anyone unblinkered will do. Why should CAMRA support Belgian and Czech beers but not artisanal UK beers?

European Beer Bloggers Conference 2014, so it was

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EBBC DublinAfter such japes in Edinburgh in 2013 it was a no-brainer to sign up for 2014. And what an incentive to fulfil my credentials as a proper blogger.

Mentally I had been a blogger since the day I arrived in Edinburgh but actually, virtually, physically the blog didn’t really get off the ground very quickly. Now, the good people at Zephyr Conferences who organise the Beer Bloggers Conferences were very tolerant but they spend a lot of time getting sponsorship for these events and the sponsors do need to know they are reaching real bloggers and not just beer drinking dreamers.

Takehome message: The Beer Bloggers Conference is the best possible reason to start a beer blog.

EBBC14.Badge.100.100And 2014 saw the first conference outside the UK, in Dublin, to be sure. At that point I could name Hilden and Clearwater in the North, Porterhouse and O’Hara’s in the Free State and that was it. To be honest four competent but fairly average breweries. Guidance from Steve Lamont again proved invaluable and my solo pre-pub crawl, pub crawl yielded some fine craft beer bars and an excellent offie. L.Mulligan Grocer being the standout bar for me.

You can find all the details of EBBC14 here, I won’t bother repeating it. We learnt that monkeys are alcoholics whilst rats are binge drinkers. A lot of beer was offered, a lot of beer was drunk, in between times we learnt about the burgeoning Irish craft beer scene – and most of us were genuinely surprised at how many new breweries there were. And honestly, there were no duds. Brown Paper Bag Project, N17 and Black Donkey are just three of the 50 or so I could recommend for various reasons.

We are a grateful lot and special thanks have to go to major sponsors including the one man marketing machine that is Vaclav Berka of Pilsner Urquell, the hugely impressive tour, sampling, food and revealing Q&A at Guinness, and Beer Ireland.

To find more about Irish beer try Beoir (a sort of Irish CAMRA without the real ale hang-ups), the excellent blog by Reuben Gray who led the official pub crawl or Beer Ireland.

Why haven’t you signed up for EBBC15 yet?

The Brewers Project, Chapter 2

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Guinness ST JAMES'S GATEPersonal cab, mystery location. Woot! I am still on the Guinness PR agency guest list for The Brewers Project. Regular readers might know that I enjoy the beers but positively gush over the marketing and event organisation from the ‘boys from the black stuff’ and the lovely ladies in their British PR firm.

It’s clearly an abandoned and long closed pub in a dodgy part of the East End. But no, enter and you find it has been cunningly transformed and used by those nice guys from The Disappearing Dining Club who provided the venue for the first launch of the porters. Excited hubbub downstairs as we revisit the porters we tasted last time (and the porter cocktails).

Then upstairs to a carefully lit room filled with the aroma of hops. And Condiment Junkie. These are the guys behind Heston Blumenthal’s Sounds of the Seashore and other sensory ways of changing our perceptions of food. Yes, our heads were going to be messed with.

At this point the cycnical amongst us might have thought this was going to be to mask any lack of substance in the beer itself. Mmm, maybe, but the touch was light and deft, everyone was there to be entertained and have a good time, not to be sold to.

We tasted the beer with selected foods with different sensory elements – green light/low frequency sounds to emphasise the hop bitterness, red light/high frequency sounds to emphasise the sweetness, sounds of the meadow to emphasise the hops (really?), an extremely malty (and lovely) dessert to emphasise the malt in the beer (dominate perhaps). Did it work? Well the green light/bitter thing worked for me but ultimately it was the food pairings that had more effect, as I guess they should. I would have liked to try the food and light combinations the ‘wrong way round’ to check.

Then back downstairs to try a cocktail made using the beer, Canadian rye, some maple syrup and citrus juice, topped with cream and a malty wafer. Sounds horrible doesn’t it? It was gorgeous as a ‘dessert cocktail’.

What was the beer Rich? Did you like it? So, this was the launch of Guinness Golden GUINNESS GOLDEN ALE BOTTLE [HI] halfAle. So far, so bad. I always think of golden ales as being insipid tasteless things designed by cask ale producers to compete with the lager market. So the good news is that this isn’t a golden ale imho. It’s made with ‘specially selected amber malt’ or ‘amber malt’ as the brewer put it. The hops are pelleted Celeia, one of the Styrian family used typically in English ales. A good bittering hop but not an awful lot else.

This isn’t a complex, micro batch, collaboration craft beer so let’s not overcomplicate the tasting notes. It’s malt rather hop led – Guinness sticking to what they know – and as such tastes like a good English pale ale or ‘ordinary’ bitter. Any sweetness seems to come from the malt flavour alone so it is not at all insipid.

Now I’ve had a few bottles at home I’ve decided that I really enjoy this beer on a simple level. Provides a nice balance with most food also. Will I be buying it? If I want a reliable session bottle at home then yes maybe. In a pub, only if they release it on draught.

I’m still slightly puzzled by the choice of Golden Ale though. Is it because Guinness believe this sector has lower competition in terms of both quality and quantity? Well, that is certainly true. Is it because ‘golden’ is a more aspirational word than ‘amber’? Also true.

Here’s a thought, what about an ‘Irish Amber’?

Full disclosure: I had a great free evening out and was given 6 bottles. The above article is unpaid and unsolicited.

 

 

CAMRA – Whither or Wither

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camraCAMRA have been troubling me for some time. I know there will always be the hardliners who believe that the term real ale is enshrined in stone and should never change but what worried me more was the article in What’s Brewing January by Steve Bury, one of CAMRA’s top 40 campaigners.

Entitled ‘Is Campaign starting to lose its way?’ he fears that CAMRA is starting to send out mixed messages about craft beer. For Steve the word artisan conjures up a picture of a poor French tradesman. Leaving aside the rampant stereotyping, no Steve, an artisan is a skilled tradesman not a mass production factory worker – and exactly who I want to brew my beer.

If my tipple of choice is ‘craft beer’ then perhaps I should be considering whether to be a member of CAMRA at all, I am Steve, I am. The Cyclops system which helps bar staff describe beers is another evil because it includes beers that are not real ale. Perhaps a simpler system would be just to put ‘good beer’ on the handpumps and ‘bad beer’ on the keg lines.

Where we agree is that the lines are blurring. Where we disagree is whether this is a good or bad thing. The definition of real ale is a millstone around CAMRA’s neck completely ignoring the taste of the beer and the care with which it has been made.

Let me take you back…when the founding fathers sat down what was their aim? Was it to prescribe the only method for brewing (ignoring that of the rest of the world) or was it to try to promote good, well made beer? Remember, back then there was no good keg beer and small brewers were predominantly cask ale. The definition of real ale was a neat way to define the good beer, simple as.

And so it remained for another twenty years or so when new brewers, often Americans(!), decided that they could make beer just as well for keg dispense with the added bonuses of consistency and shelf life. And boy, did they add flavour along with the CO2.

I have always liked or disliked beer according to flavour, and yes, carbonation can be too high, just like real ale can be too flat. If I am taking a bottle of beer home with me I don’t want to have to interrogate the vendor as to production method, I want to judge on taste. Surely the founding fathers wouldn’t disagree with that?

Personally I want to support the small, artisanal producer over the big brewer – though I do respect what some of them do. Surely the founding fathers wouldn’t disagree with that?

As Steve Bury suggested, I have been seriously considering resigning from CAMRA on principle. I want to be part of an inclusive group that promotes small over big, flavour over blandness, moves with the times and attracts a demographic I can associate with.

At the risk of rampant stereotyping, ten years ago, aspirational young women were drinking a glass of chardonnay (nothing wrong with that btw), now they are down the Bermondsey beer mile drinking a half of 6% modern IPA from nice glassware and talking to the producer. They are not drinking a pint of 4% session bitter in an old pub and choosing between a windows or sleeve glass. The demographic at CAMRA beer festivals, however interesting and good the beer, is plain depressing.

Wake up CAMRA and smell the new hops!

What’s Brewing, December 2014 – Agony Column

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I do my best to help the troubled letter writers to What’s Brewing. No doubt suffused with a warm glow from ordinary bitters repackaged as ‘Christmas Ales’ the editors have picked an uncontroversial bunch of letters this month.

Instead, in preparation we have a discussion of the ‘Drinking beer is the healthy option’ headline. Since when did headlines have to be factually true? They got you to read the article. PB of Stockport and SD of Liverpool, you have been suckered in to wasting your ink.

Short measures, price of pints and children (apparently it’s up to the parents) are all mentioned but it is a tired collection of letters. I need more material!

An evening of beer and charcuterie at the Beer Boutique

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Beer BoutiqueBeer and pig, what could be better? Well, smoked beer and smoked pig perhaps? We’ll come to that later. Mid-December, thoughts of Christmas shopping on hold, we go to Putney for a small ticketed event at the craft beer shop, Beer Boutique.

The evening was organised with The Charcuterie Board and Moons Green, passionate British artisan producer of everything piggy. Quite a broad group of people from beer lovers, pig lovers (no tittering at the back) and people fancying a good evening. Nice simple format with Beer Boutique Max introducing beer and meat men introducing the meat, eating and drinking our way through six beers and six different meats.

What Max lacks in beer and brewing knowledge he more than makes up for with enthusiasm, adrenaline and genuine passion. This worked well because it broke the ice and people weren’t afraid to ask questions. Most of all it was a fun evening, no beer geekery or po-faced tasting.

The beers were all classics and the charcuterie was both beautiful and plentiful.

We kicked off with Sam Smith’s Winter Welcome and marmalade glazed ham. Both relatively undemanding but simple and classic. The slightly bocky paired well with ham glaze and neither dominated.

Saison Dupont and English saucisson sec came next. The taste of the farmyard and a perfect marriage, a really successful pairing. This classic saison has a straw flavour which matched will with the earthy pig in a charcuterie board staple.

Most adventurous on both counts were Rule of Thirds (Siren/Beavertown/Magic Rock collaboration) and guanciale, that’s cured pig cheek to you. The beer was a very good IPA but given the stellar contributors not great and the guanciale was nice, a fine way to use cheeks. Personally a straight heavily hopped Citra or Cascade with a slice of lardo might have been better. The bitter IPA cutting the high fat is a fine principle though.

Westmalle Dubbel paired venison and wild boar salami. Malty and complex, the beer held up superbly against the rich venison. Keep eating, keep drinking and layers of flavour keep coming through.

Duchesse de Bourgogne paired with rosemary bresaola. The beer, a Flanders red ale aged in oak casks, is one of my all time favourites but pairing it with charcuterie was always going to be difficult. Both beer and meat were superb. As a pairing, average.

Schlenkerla Märzen and hot smoked bacon. Do I need to say more? Rauchbiers are often described as having the smell and taste of bacon, and the Schlenkerla is the one against which they are all judged. Hot smoking of bacon is a clever twist on something we all love. Lovely.

What a great evening! I’ll say it again both the beers and charcuterie were superb. No geekery, no pretentiousness. Only disappointment was that the charcuterie was not for sale and not easily available to the public. I really hope that this is the first of many such evenings. Sign me up now.