CAMRA and Brewdog

I see from my fellow beer bloggers that James Watt from Brewdog has put the boot into CAMRA again. He said: “I blame CAMRA for single-handedly holding back innovation in British brewing”. He has said similar before, when he charmingly added the following regarding CAMRA members: "We've got better things to do with our time than worry about whether 200 fat idiots are drinking our beer or not."

He also likes to slag off session beers “Pretty much all the small UK brewers make the same boring 4% ales with the same boring hops and then package them in a folksy, old-fashioned manner”.  But then as he lives in a run down shithole in Scotland that no doubt has no decent pubs it’s hardly surprising a night in the pub on cask ales isn’t his thing.

Now, as a dedicated beer nerd I know that James Watt is prone to sweeping statements that provoke debate but in the cold light of day don’t really add up. But having said that his latest pronouncement does give me an excuse to go on again about my particular bugbear with CAMRA: their line on bottled beer.

CAMRA basically define real ale as beer which has not had the yeast removed from it, so can still undergo secondary fermentation in the container it is dispensed from. This means cask beers in pubs and bottle conditioned beers. I’m quite happy with CAMRA’s promotion of cask beer. If I’m in a pub that’s what I want to drink. Cask is the best way of serving the modest in strength beers I normally drink when I’m out for an evening. You get the best flavour from the beer that way, and keg beers of similar strength seem at best bland in comparison.

When they extend the line on ‘must contain yeast’ to bottled beers thought I think it starts to break. Bottled beers, with or without yeast, have a higher level of carbonation than cask beer so the difference between real ale and keg is much less noticeable.

When CAMRA were formed there were only five bottle conditioned beers produced in Britain , so it was fairly minor issue. The premium bottled beers market has grown greatly since then and now there are hundreds of bottle conditioned beers. I’ve had some great bottle conditioned beers, but I’ve also had some great bottled beers that don’t have any yeast in. And I’ve had a lot of god awful bottle conditioned beers from microbreweries that may well have contained yeast but also contained huge amounts of bacteria.

Brewdog mostly produce bottled beers, and though they’re not all to my taste some are excellent. They are however filtered and CAMRA’s line on bottled beers is that unless they have yeast in the bottle they are not real ale so are pretty much ignored. If they’re made in Britain that is. If they’re made overseas CAMRA ignore this and say that as they have different brewing traditions it’s perfectly OK for beers to be devoid of yeast. So for example CAMRA have been prominent in defending the Czech beer Budweiser Budvar which is certainly filtered and in all probability pasteurised too.

You can start to see why Brewdog may feel hard done by by CAMRA at this point. They’re mostly ignored except when their beer is in cask, which to be honest doesn’t show it at its best. The American microbreweries who Brewdog draw their inspiration from (or blatantly copy depending on how you want to put it) have also been pretty much ignored by CAMRA.

CAMRA does seems slow to change, which is perhaps why to many younger beer nerds that don’t remember the dark days of keg they now seem part of the establishment to rail against.

I do think CAMRA need to reassess how they look at bottled beers, as the simplistic ‘does it contain yeast’ just doesn’t work as well as it does for draught beers, and as foreign brewers are exempt from this it doesn’t make sense anyway.

I’m also getting a bit tired of James Watt’s attention seeking but that probably won’t change in a hurry either.

 

Wandsworth common halloween beer festival

That looks suitably gothic for Halloween doesn't it?

On Saturday night I went to the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building. Patriotism is of course the last refuge of the scoundrel. Fortunately for us the scoundrels had seen fit to fill their refuge with casks of beer.

They has their first beer festival here back in March which was all good fun but a lot of the beers were in short supply. This time there were good stocks, though sadly no Sarah Hughes, despite the claim on the website they'd have three barrels of it.

I started on a Purity brewing's UBU as I've enjoyed it from the bottle I couldn't pass up the chance to try it on cask and very nice it was too.

Then I worked through some of the offering from brewery's I like, such as Hop Back, Dark Star, Twickenham and Timothy Taylor. The lovely Lisa was a bit under the weather so we didn't stay too long. This gave me an excuse to wander into the stronger end of things, after I'd had a suitable warm up of course. Some of my fellow beer bloggers seem to drink whatever takes their fancy, either down the pub or at home, but I tend to stay at less than 5% ABV when I'm out and about, saving the strong ones for when I'm at home.


This is beer of the less than 5%ABV variety

I had a feeling that Ballard's Wassail was in 300 beers to try before you die and it looked like some stronger stuff was called for so that went down next. You could taste it was strong (6% ABV) but not overpoweringly so. Then for what was the last of the night I had a Orkney Skull Splitter (8.5% ABV). This went down surprisingly easily, which perhaps shows that it was not just time for the lovely Lisa to be heading home.

The crowd at the festival was surprisingly young and mixed, and hardly a beard or beer gut to be seen. Though it wasn't a CAMRA festival it certainly followed the same format:




Perhaps cask beer really is becoming more fashionable.

Poncey gastro-pub goes bust

The Morrisey-Fox pub has gone bust, despite having a TV series about it to help it get started. Morrisey and Fox did come across as arrogant plonkers who managed to piss off a lot of the locals so it's hardly surprising. The beers are still being produced, but who by remains a mystery.  

Alcohol is the fifth most dangerous drug

Professor David Nutt has just been sacked as the government's drugs advisor.It seemed he favoured scientific facts over political expediency.

I haven't managed to find his full ranking of drugs danger but the article I've linked to contains this snippet:

"Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth. Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively"

So be careful out there!

EDIT: The full report from Professor Nutt is here.

Rob's stag do (part two)

After dragging myself out of bed to fill myself with fried pork products it was time for round two.
Thanks to a tip off from a Daleside drayman we knew that the beer designed by Rob himself would be on at a Wetherspoons pub. So, shortly after twelve we found ourselves there ordering pints of Daleside Autumn Leaves. I must admit I wasn't at my perkiest at this point but the combination of malts and hops brilliantly blended by Rob produced what was without doubt the best pint I'd had that day.


Rob posing by his beer

We moved on to Brigantes after that, a posh looking bar with and excellent beer range. One of the beers had a silhouette of Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson on the clip so I couldn't resist a pint of 'Living in the cask' by Elland brewery. It was a good pint too (similar to Landlord), though drinking it reminded that I saw Jethro Tull back in '85 which made me feel like an old git. Not as much an old git as Ian Anderson though, he was no spring chicken back then.


Rob and his dad in Brigantes

Next it was back to the maltings. I felt at this point that the pub crawl planning ability of the lovely Lisa wouldn't have gone amiss. In a beer oasis like York, with so many pubs still to visit, I think we were a long way from the need to make any repeat visits.

I took a detour to do some shopping as the lovely Lisa wanted me to bring her a beer from the York brewery. I also took the opportunity to get myself a pork pie as down South we can't get proper ones like you get in Yorkshire. Sadly the one I managed to find was a disgrace to the county and I may as well have had one from a Southern supermarket. Anyway, back to the beer.

By the time I caught up with the others Rob had already had a bottle of Lee's Harvest Ale and was polishing off a Rodenbach Grand Cru. I had a sip of that one and it was, as ever, sour but superb. It was back on to the cask beer for me though and I had a pint of Rooster's Yankee. It's another of pale hoppy beer full of Cascade hops. I'd avoided it when I'd seen it last night in the Ackhorne as it's the only beer in 300 beers to try before you die that the lovely Lisa had had but I hadn't and she was quite pleased having one over me in the beer stakes.



This time I was having it though so down it went. We started wending back to the hotel as some people wanted to get changed for the evening but we managed to call in at the Corner Pin on the way where I had a pint of Jenning's Little Gem. It was only a modest 4% ABV but managed to pack in a lot of flavour, especially considering it was served through the typical Northern sparkler.



I didn't bother getting changed but I did have time for a cup of tea to refresh me before starting out again. We were meeting some people from Daleside brewery at the next pub, the Postern Gate. This was our second Wetherspoons pub of the day. One Wetherspoons pub can be considered a misfortune but surely two is carelessness? Still, the beer range was good, and of course cheap, though the Wetherspoons policy of not turning round pump clips for beers that are off gets on my tits. I had an O'Hanlon's Port Stout, which was OK and an Exmoor Gold, which was good.

Next stop was the Phoenix, a pub which has just had a nice refurbishment. It was Landlord for me again here.



We shuffled on to the Edinburgh Arms next, a big pub that seems to be trying to compete with Wetherspoons on price. I'm not sure if this is the best business plan. Still the beer I had (York guzzler) was good. We only had a brief stop here as time was running low for the guys from Daleside as they had a train to catch. We dashed on to the Ackhorne where I had more Rooster's Yankee.




After that we those of us that were left went on to some god awful rock bar. They had crap beer and to be honest the place smelt like a toilet. At this point I made my excuses and left, along with the more aged members of our party. I guess there comes a time in a man's life when he just really doesn't want to sit in bars that smell of poo.

We did managed to call in at the lighthorseman on the way back to the hotel for a another pint though. I had a Golden Wunder, which was Thwaites 'Oktoberfest' beer made with German hops, though with a name like that surely it should be made of crisps? Anyway, that we me done for the weekend, all that was left was to sleep it off before re-fueling on fried pork for the journey home.


Young Rob resting after a busy weekend

Entrapment!

I've just got back from my local Sainsbury's laden with clanking bottles again. Last week it was Fuller's Vintage Ale going cheap that got me, now they're selling off beer competition leftovers for 50p a bottle. I piled all the Brewdog Chaos Theory into my trolley but I thought taking all the Williams Brothers IPA would be going too far, so there's still some of them on the shelves in the Brookwood branch. If you have a Sainsbury's nearby it's well worth checking it out ASAP.

Rob's stag do (part one)

I've just beer to the beer oasis that is York for young Rob's stag do. I know Rob from when I was studying brewing at Heriot-Watt. He now works for Daleside brewery.

First stop was the Lowther pub:



It was only a brief stop though as the only cask beer they had on was John Smith's, so we made our excuses and left.

In York you're never far from the next pub so we called in at the King's Head.



The is a Sam Smith's pub and was a keg only establishment, as it didn't even have their piss poor Old Brewery Bitter on. More annoyingly it didn't have their wheat beer on either so I had a bottle of pale ale. It was OK but nothing special.

After this things improved as we got to the Ackhorne.



This had some decent beers on but I wasn't too taken with my first choice Saltaire Blackcurrant cascade. It had the citrussy smell of Cascade hops but I found the flavour too much in the way of blackcurrant. My next choice was more like it, Wylam Summer Magic. This was a pale beer with Amarillo hops that really hit the spot.

The it was on to the Maltings, an excellent beer pub I've been to before.



My first one here was Outlaw IPA. It seems Outlaw brewing is the name that Roosters brewery use for their experimental beers. Outlaw IPA was beyond being a pale hoppy beer and was in fact a full on American style IPA. I'm not convinced cask is the best way to serve this type of beer but it certainly worked in this case. If Roosters fancy doing any more experimenting I'm quite happy to be a guinea pig.



For my next beer I was looking for something darker. No matter how good golden coloured beers are I don't generally make a session of them as they don't seem to sit that well. So I went for Summer Wine brewery's Teleporter. This was at the other end of things from Outlaw IPA, being as black as your hat and made from ten types of malt. It was excellent and put me back in balance.

Then it was on to the Guy Fawkes, the pub I stayed in when I was last in York.



The sign's had a V for Vendetta makeover.

I went for a Timothy Taylor's Landlord here and it was as lovely as ever. There was a brief outbreak of arm wrestling at this point for reasons I can't quite remember. It was clearly time for some food now so some of us went off for a curry, whilst others moved on to the next pub. Still having my wits about me I opted for the curry, washed down with plenty of water.

We caught up with pub goers at the Old White Swan.



They were looking a bit worse for wear and had decided that maybe food wasn't such a bad idea after all.



I had a Yorkshire terrier, another pale hoppy beer, but a good example of the style.

It was getting late by now and some people there was talk of going on to a club. That's not really my thing so it was bed time for me, and as the talk the next day was of Chardonay I don't think I missed anything.