My first 'radical brew' a success!

Chai and beer actually do work together

Having been inspired by reading Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing I had a go at making a Chai tea flavoured beer recently.

My home brewing has wandered over the years from brewing beers like those you buy to brewing beers like those you can't buy. Sometimes I feel 'wouldn't it be great to have a barrel of ESB at home' and sometimes I feel 'why should I spend all day brewing something I can just go out buy'. As I'm not working at the moment I've got plenty of time but not much money so I've actually been doing both and I've been pretty much alternating between brewing a best bitter and something more unusual. Some of the ideas in Radical Brewing are way more unusual than anything I've tried before so I've been very inspired but also a little wary. I couldn't quite bring myself to spend all day making five gallons of chai tea beer in case it was shite so I just diverted five litres of the wort from a best bitter brew and adapted it.

Much to my delight the lovely Lisa gave the chai beer the thumbs up so my first radical brew was a success. The spiciness of the chai comes through very well though I thought it was a little astringent, though that might have come from the grains. Lisa is very fond of her beer and she's also a real tea lover so perhaps as I was combining the two I couldn't really go wrong. Chai tea beer is certainly one I'll try again, though not for a few brews as there are some other strange ideas I want to try ...

Campaign for Good Beer?

Since I've started reading the thoughts of other beer nerds online I've noticed there's a certain amount of disquiet about CAMRA:

This person has after much dithering decided not to joining CAMRA as they obsess about marginal issues and ignorantly only promote ale in the good beer guide. He jokingly says he'd like to see CAMEL - the Campaign for (cheap) Economic Lager. 

This person has had run-ins with CAMRA members and wants to see a Campaign for Proper Keg Beer. 

And this person thinks that CAMRA members are fat beardy wierdys who fart lots and are too cosy with Weatherspoons.
 
I'm sure I could go on.

But is this all justified? Do we need something new? I do have my own problems with CAMRA so I'd hesitate to say they're not guilty but so far I think the case is not proven.

Yes there are fat social misfits in CAMRA, probably at a higher proportion than in the general population (does anyone remember 'Team Tango'?)  but I can't help but feel that someone who spends their free time writing a beer blog is on dangerous ground when they start mocking others. I'm happy to be out and  proud as a beer nerd! And I've had more problems with people farting in pubs than at beer festivals (which are usually held in places with high ceilings). Bring back smoking that's what I say, you never noticed farts when pubs smelt of fags.

As to decent keg ales and lagers CAMRA does in fact actively promote them provided they come from outside the UK. OK, so that get out clause CAMRA give themselves is clearly bullshit but it does mean you usually see quality keg beers at CAMRA beer festivals at the foreign beer bar. At Greenwich beer and jazz festival as well as the foreign beer bar there was even a bar from Meantime brewery selling their 'proper' keg beers.

Now I have drunk some decent keg beer in my time, at Sam Smith's pubs and the Meantime brewery's pub amongst others but to be honest I still prefer decent cask beer to decent keg. Whilst I was at Heriot-Watt I even got a try a beer in both cask form and filtered and kegged form. The keg beer was good but the cask version was noticeably better.

CAMRA members can come across as being like Orwellian sheep chanting 'cask beer good, keg beer bad' but to be honest I still think this is a good starting point. The problem really arises when they don't take this as a starting point but, as Richard Boston said back in 1976 "show the fanaticism of religious dementia". He continued "It has been said of some of their members that they would drink castor oil if it came from a handpump, and would reject nectar if it had no more than looked at carbon dioxide". People who behave like that are obviously twats but surely they can only be small minority of CAMRA members.

One of my particular bugbears with CAMRA is the simplistic line on bottled beers that 'bottle conditioned = good and filtered = bad'. The higher carbonation you get in bottled beer makes the difference between 'real ale' and keg much less obvious. I'm sure most hardened beer nerds will have  come across horribly infected bottle conditioned beers from micros and be fully aware that there some cracking stuff in bottles without yeast. But once again CAMRA do actually fudge this one a fair bit. In '300 beers to try before you die' there are loads of beers without yeast in that are highly praised, many of them from the UK.   

As to CAMRA's links to Weatherspoons I'm not convinced there's anything more going on than the discount vouchers for members and the plug CAMRA gets in the Weatherspoons magazine. I suspect that CAMRA are simply sticking to their long held policy of promoting pubs almost exclusively on the quality of their beer. Awful pubs Weatherspoons may be, but they do generally have a wide range of cask beers on and they're usually kept well. As it is, I do disagree with rating a pub solely on the quality of its beer as drinking a decent pint in a shithole doesn't alter the fact that you're in a shithole, but the Good Beer Guide still has its uses. It does, after all, make clear when a pub is a Weatherspoons so they're easily avoidable. I should have twigged that Surrey University sports bar would also be as crap as it sounds despite the decent beer though. 

So is something new needed to replace CAMRA? No, I don't think it's necessary.

Should CAMRA evolve into a Campaign for Good Beer? Yes, but I think that's happening anyway. 

Should people get involved to help this happen? Well, you can if you like but even though I'm a member I can't see myself going to a CAMRA branch meeting. It would be full of beardy wierdys and smell of farts. No, I shall campaign for good beer by buying it, making it and drinking it. And of course mouthing off on the internet about it!


 

Beers in Ripley

Beer in Ripley

On Saturday myself and the lovely Lisa ended up drinking in Ripley as one of our friends had arranged a get together there. Ripley is just off the A3 and back in the day was on the main road from London to Portsmouth.

Because of this old transport connection, and the large number of local alkies, Ripley has maintained an impressively large number of pubs for its size. We started in a lovely looking old pub, the Ship, with a pint of London Pride. Sadly it tasted a bit watery so we weren't overly impressed. The other beers on offer weren't very inspiring either, being Greene King Abbot, Hogsback TEA and the recently revived Courage Best. Quite why the rights to this boring beer have been bought by Wells and Young's is a mystery to me. When I first started going to pubs Courage and Allied pretty much had the local area sewn up so Courage Best was a very common beer. Universally known as Courage Worst it was an insipid weak brown beer lacking in taste. Wells and Young's have managed to capture this lack of character perfectly making a boring beer with a slight sweetness. 

When one of our friends who lives locally said that they had Surrey Hills Shere Drop on in the Half Moon we didn't take much prompting to move on. The Half Moon isn't as nice a looking pub, but there were lots of seats and the beer was far superior. Shere Drop is a pale beer with plenty of citrusy hops so despite the price (£3.20 a pint!) we managed to sink quite a few. With prices this high I can see why pub trade is falling, but sometimes it's worth it. 

Have you been sucking the monkey again?

Informative beer blogger Zythophile has recently posted on the difference between porter and stout (nothing in case you're wondering). Part of the evidence he's gathered comes from a court case reported in the Times in 1803 when an ordered barrel of beer (described as both fine old porter and excellent brown stout) was found to be empty on arrival. Apparently someone had been 'sucking the monkey' and had surreptitiously drained the cask. Further research shows the term comes from sailors using straws to sneak booze out of the grog barrel. It's sad to see that an excellent phrase such as this has fallen into disuse so I'll be doing my best to re-introduce it to the English language at the earliest opportunity. 

Guinness and St Patricks day

Oirish bilge

OK, so St Patrick's day was a couple of days ago but I've been a bit busy doing more important things, including brewing my own stout, which I'm sure will taste much better than the international nitro-keg brand.

I couldn't help but notice thought that the usual Oirish bilge promoting Guinness made its appearance for St Patrick's day. Offensive to the eye and brain as such stuff is the fact that Arthur Guinness was a protestant, and as such unlikely to have much time for catholic saints, makes it even more annoying. Still, I suppose historical or religious accuracy are going to count for very little if they get in the way of a marketing opportunity. 

American style IPA night

Can you guess which one is the homebrew? 

Having brewed a beer inspired by Goose Island IPA I decided the time had come to compare it to the original. I also had the Dogfish head 60 minute IPA my mum had kindly brought me from Delaware and to make an evening of it I threw in a bottle of Scotlands very own American IPA Brewdog Punk IPA. 

First up was my homebrew, my first attempt at an American IPA. The grist was all pale malt and the hops a combination of Styrian goldings, centennial and cascade. I'm normally a terrible reductionist when it comes to homebrewing, only altering one thing at a time so I can see what changes it makes. This means I usually only have one type of hop, using it for bittering and aroma. As I'd gone for three types here I decided to mix them all up at all stages to see if I could pick out the different hop types or if they would merge into a new flavour. As it turned out I could detect the fresh flavour of the Styrians and the grapefruit of the cascade. I'd never used centennial  though it's meant to be very similar to cascade so I guess it added to the grapefruit flavour. To be more like the Goose Island IPA which inspired this brew I should probably have added the Styrians early in the boil and focussed on cascade later and for dry hopping. 

This became more apparent when I started on the next brew: Goose Island IPA. There was a much stronger grapefuit aroma and flavour than in my homebrewed beer. I've already discussed the hops but there was also more body to this beer than mine. Attenuation is quite hard to control when homebrewing as I can't just cool the fermenting vessel down when I want the fermentation to finish. This meant there were very little residual sugars in my beer making it very easy drinking but lacking in body. I'll probably add a touch of crystal or cara malt next time I make and American IPA as my current one goes down far too easily for the strength it is (6.5% ABV).

Then I got on to Dogfish head 60 minute IPA, a beer I'd been looking forward to for weeks. Sadly this was a real disapointment. I don't know if I'd got a dodgy bottle or it was a bad batch but the smell of the beer reminded me more of corned beef than anything else. I've no idea what causes this in beer but it's not a desirable characteristic. I did drink the rest of the beer but it certainly wasn't the clean tasting hop overdose I was expecting. Oh well, maybe the other bottles will be better. 

I didn't get as far as the Punk IPA as I was feeling a bit mellow by now and I'd already had few good sessions that week. It's still sitting in the cupboard though so its time will come soon ...

Beer and food

Just about every other person blahing on about beer feels the need to mention beer and food matching so here's a great combination I had in the Old Mitre last night:



The hop bitterness of the beer cut through the pork lardiness of the pie. Or something.

To be honest I find all this 'matching food and beer' guff a load of garbage. People have been going on about it for quite a while now and the amount of words written on it shows no signs of abating. But despite all this I've seen no evidence at all that it's taking off and a good job too. As far as I'm concerned it's an unwanted attempt to bring wine culture into beer drinking. Food should be scoffed down so you can then get on with the serious business of drinking not dragged out endlessly so beer bores can play at being wine snobs.