Golden Pints 2020

 

The golden pints above you
Show me where you've gone
The magic in your blogs no longer
What we gaze upon

I have actually seen a couple of other people doing them this year but still. I blame twitter. I'm not stopping though!

Best UK Cask Beer:

A tragic year for cask beer as Des De Moor's diabolical plan took full effect. I have been able to have communion with the one true living beer more than most as the shop at work sells it but there's no denying that I've lacked spiritual sustenance this year. 

Best cask beer for me this year was when I managed to get a pint of Coniston Bluebird during a brief flowering of freedom. 

Best UK Keg Beer:

I've definitely suckled at the Devil's drainpipe this year as I was lead into a den of iniquity in between lock downs. I can't say that something cheesy from Magic Rock impressed but I can't think of any other UK keg beer I've drunk so that's the winner. 


Best UK Bottled Beer:

My bottled beer drinking has overwhelmingly been what I can blag from work. This is economically beneficial but I do at times pine for beers we don't bottle. Fortunately we do a wide range and the one I've most enjoyed is Ridgeway Very Bad Elf. 

Best UK Canned Beer:

Thanks to an xmas pressie I've drunk a UK canned beer this year. The winner is: Gipsy Hill Hepcat. Definite grapefruit taste. Craft.  


Best Overseas Draught:

Not that I've been abroad this year but whilst being dragged round dens on iniquity in London I was able to avoid harm to my immortal soul in one by sticking to foreign beer from the Devil's drainpipe, which is not haram on account of their different brewing traditions. Even if they are heathen. Ayinger Keller beer was the winner in question.  

Best Overseas Bottled Beer:

Not wanting to die with a full beer cellar when the plague struck the first casualty was that bottle of Obadiah Poundage porter I'd been saving. Very good it was too. 


Best Overseas Canned Beer:

Another tricky one as the only overseas canned beer I think I've had didn't impress, still the winner it has to be: To Øl Gose To Hollywood, bit and all.


Best collaboration brew:

Sticking to ripping off Robbie I'll go with the Obadiah Poundage.


Best Overall Beer:

Bluebird. 

Best Branding:

Not really my thing this so I'll just go with whatever Too Much Black Coffee have done for Thurstons again. . 

Best UK Brewery: 

Got to be Coniston. 


Best Overseas Brewery: 

ABInBev Goose Island. 


Best New Brewery Opening 2020:

Can't think of one.


Pub/Bar of the Year:

The Crown of course. 


Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2020:

Can't think of one of these either. 


Beer Festival of the Year:

I might cry now


Supermarket of the Year:

I don't really buy bottled or canned beer now as I can blag bottles from work. I did do some stocking up when I was near a Booths though which makes them the winners. 

Independent Retailer of the Year:

I think the only one I've been to is Cobbett's Real Ale so them. 


Online Retailer of the Year:

Not my sort of thing either.  


Best Beer Book or Magazine:

Again copying Rob, but really nothing else comes close: Historical Brewing Techniques: The Lost Art of Farmhouse Brewing by Lars Marius Garshol. I really should do a review. 

Best Beer Blog or Website:

I'm getting very much behind on beer nerdery nowadays. Barely blogging, and not reading them like I used to either. There is a winner though, and despite the dire situation it's a  pub blog: retired martin's. 

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer:

This year I'm going with Alan of A Good Beer Blog fame, he informs, educates and entertains. 

A visit to French and Jupps maltings

As there's not much chance to visit places at the moment I made the most of it when business took me to French and Jupp's maltings as they were kind enough to give me a socially distanced tour. The company has been on the same site for over a century, though some of the buildings are now let out as offices and industrial units. 

French and Jupp's originally made old style brown malt shipped down to London for porter brewing, they later made white malts but now only make coloured (i.e. crystal and roasted) malts. 

They have drum maltings where the whole drum rotates during germination to prevent the rootlets of the grains tangling. If I remember rightly they were built for 10 tonnes but they now fill them with 18 tonnes of barley, slightly larger than the ones I used to work with! 

The green (i.e. unkilned) malt goes to roasting drums where gentle moist heat allows enzymes inside the grain to convert starch to sugar before the temperature is raised and moisture reduced to crystallise the sugar and make crystal malt and cara malts. 

The roasting drum (a modified coffee roaster) below was used to make roasted malts though (e.g. amber, brown, black). 

The malt for these comes from steeping vessels that make chit malt (i.e. malt that has only just had a rootlet emerge from the grain husk) which is then kilned dry before going to the roaster. 

The temperature in a roasting drum can come close to combustion temperature (and even exceed it at times!) so colour development can be rapid and frequent sampling is required. 

Grains cut in a farinator

Chocolate malt

The temperature has to be reduced by spraying on water before the desired colour is achieved as some colour development continues during cooling. 

Old floor maltings

This last picture was taken from a footbridge over the canal that barges full of brown malt used to start their journey to London on.