Time to get serious

The latest round of whinging on about CAMRA in the world of internet beer nerdery lead me to post a fundamentalist rant of my own. Slightly surprisingly one of the comments my rant received was asking a serious question so I thought I'd better do a more serious post.

Jason Stevenson of Lovibonds brewery asked "Why do you assume that because beer is in a keg it somehow has to be filtered or pasteurised?". Elsewhere Jeff Rosenmeier of Lovibond's has said that it is a myth perpetuated by CAMRA that keg beer is filtered and pasteruised. 

Now at the simplest level kegs are cylinder shaped draught beer containers. In theory they could be filled with whatever you like, you could fill them with engine oil if you wanted to. Sticking with beer though, according to Lewis and Young in the standard industry text book Brewing: "A major change in brewing technology was the filtration and pasteurization of the beer in the brewery and packaging under pressure of carbon dioxide into metal kegs." 

CAMRA was formed in reaction against this change to keg beer, and in defence of unfiltered and unpasteruised cask beer or real ale as they define it.

People from Lovibond's have said that they neither filter or pasteruise their keg beers, but this is not what kegs were designed for and must surely be a rarity. Even if other breweries apart from Lovibonds make unfiltered and unpasteruised keg beer I'd be very surprised if production topped 10,000 barrels a year.  

Over 13 million barrels of keg beer are sold in the UK each year, so according to my estimate over 99.9% of keg beer in the UK is filtered.  So that's why I assume keg beer is filtered or pasteurised, not because of some CAMRA myth, but because 999 times out of a 1000 I'd be right.

That would be an ecumenical matter?

Though I was brought up in the one true faith, and have always observed the sabbath (getting to the pub at least once at the weekend) I have not always been above criticising CAMRA. But entering the world of internet beer nerdery has made me re-examine my beliefs and contemplate the role of beer in my life. By looking deeply into my soul I can see that I was wrong to question the wisdom of the church founded by the four apostles.

Many of my fellow beer bloggers advocate an ecumenical approach to beer, accepting all styles of beer as equally valid and trying to see the good in them all. Though I would not deny anyone the right to drink whatever booze is available I don't think we should forget that unless you are drinking cask conditioned beer in a pub or beer festival you are not having a complete drinking experience.

Sadly I can see some bloggers have let their natural desires for fulfilled beeritual life lead them to heresy and protestantism. Even the writer of the cask report has attacked the catechism of our faith, seeking to undermine our foundations. Clearly Satan and his minions have been at work, seeking to tempt people from the living beer to inferior fizzy filtered products.

We should spare no efforts in winning back such lost souls, and redouble our efforts to convert the pagans. Cask beer is still in woefully short supply in many areas of the holy land, and the dark forces of keggery are waiting at every turn.

But we can march forward in hope. At last the decline in cask beer has been turned around, more people are rejecting the works of Satan and embracing the one true faith. Cask beer is even growing outside of its spiritual home, appearing in the USA and Ireland. I would urge other followers of the faith to join me in an albeergensian crusade to eliminate heresy and glorify the living beer.

Faith of our fathers, Protz’s prayers
Shall win our country back to Thee;
And through the truth that comes from CAMRA,
England shall then indeed be free.

Amarcord La Volpina

Whilst I was perusing the beers in the shop at the world's best petrol station I spied some from Italy that caught my eye, like this one for example. 

Appealing though it looked nice it cost about nine quid a bottle, so bollocks to that. Looking further I found some Amarcord beers that were a bit more sensibly priced.

La Volpina reassuringly had the words 'Strong Pale Ale' on the label in English, which sounded right up my street.

When I've been in Italy I've pretty much stuck to imported German wheat beers so an Italian ale sounded quite interesting. Sadly it was a bit rubbish. 

At 6.5% ABV it was I was expecting something I could get my teeth into but it turned out to be quite thin without much in the way of hops. A bit sweet and not much else really.

The taste did remind me of a beer I'd picked up in a supermarket in Italy though: Courage Bulldog. I was excited when I saw it there, as despite having been to more Courage pubs than is good for you I'd never heard of it back home. At least as far as beer goes though, sweet and thin doesn't really do it for me so the excitement was short lived. I wouldn't be surprised if La Volpina is based on Bulldog: an Italian beer based on a British beer brewed for export to Italy. It doesn't even sound appealing does it? And it wasn't.

Bye Kelly Ryan!

Not that I've ever met you. But I have drunk some of your beers.

The best petrol station in the world?

As part of the boss's wide and varied expansion plans I went to look at a brewery for sale in Oxfordshire yesterday.

It was on a small industrial estate behind a petrol station. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary there. But going in to the Londis shop attached to the petrol station was an almost surreal experience. Whilst look for the toilet I saw a bottle of the ultra-premium Champagne beer Deus on the shelf. After doing a double take I looked closer and saw there were row upon row of exciting beers from the US, Belgium and Italy, as well as the UK. Despite my best efforts to control myself I was still like a kid in a sweet shop and I left with a clanking box full of beer tucked under my arm. 

Is the Jet Garage on the A338 at Grove, Wantage the best petrol station in the world?

Trade talk at Munton's Maltings

Today I went to a trade day organised by the the BFBi at Munton's Maltings in Stowmarket. 

The place was huge but by following the directions of staff placed strategically every five paces I managed to get to where I was meant to be.  We were treated to a range of talks, mainly on malt and barley, with a bit of hops thrown in for good measure. The important points seemed to be that malt's going up in price but hops should be about the same.

I found some of the side comments more interesting though: like the fact that Munton's is mainly owned by the Wells family of Charles Wells fame, and that Styrian golding hops Bobek and Celeia are now going to be called Styrian golding B and Styrian golding C.  But then I'm a beer nerd not a hard nosed business man. 

We got taken on a tour too which was more interesting than I'd expected. Having sat through many an hour of barley lectures, on such fascinating topics as 'does gibberellic acid diffuse from the scutellum or is it transported through the aleurone?' I felt I'd already heard more than I'd ever want to about barley, but Muntons being maltsters and malt extract producers brought a new twist. Germinating barley is one thing but seeing the machines where malteser cores are made is another.

A germination vessel. Yup, it's barley.

A band drier. This is where maltesers come from. 

I also manged to meet up with a bloke from Murphy's I've only know before though Jim's beer kit and someone I was at Heriot-Watt with that's now working at Harvistoun brewery. Which was nice. All in all it was a very enjoyable day and the CPD* I manged to accumulate was the best yet. 

*CPD is know by some as Continuing Professional Development which certain professional bodies insist must be accumulated by attending a set number of hours each year at trade talks and shows. Taking my lead from a dental hygienist friend of mine I've learnt that the important thing at such events is in fact how much you can stuff a carrier bag full of freebies. I got two mugs, a memory stick, a bottle of beer and a loaf of beer bread amongst other goodies this time, and a packet of maltesers. 

Alcohol worse than crack cocaine

David Nutt has been at it again, this time saying that alcohol does more harm than heroin or crack cocaine.

I did have some sympathy with him when got sacked from his job as drugs advisor to the government for what seemed like trying to bring some science into drugs policy. I rapidly went off him when the pub curmudgeon point out that he's working to an anti-alcohol agenda.

Last year he was saying that alcohol is the fifth most dangerous drug but now it's somehow leapt into first place. Such a marked change over the course of a year makes me think that what Nutt is up to is not so much scientific analysis as lies, damned lies and statistics.