Champion Keg Beer of Britain?

I got an email today with details of the SIBA National Brewery-Conditioned Draught (Keg) Beer Competition.

It's going to be at The Canalhouse 48-52 Canal Street, Nottingham NG1 7EH on Thursday 10 February 2011. A beer festival will follow over the weekend.

After some recent discussions it will be interesting to see how many breweries enter. 

I can't recall ever seeing a quality (or proper real or craft or local however you want to put it) keg beer in a pub in Britain, though I was pleased to see Fuller's ESB on keg when I was in the States. And I must have been in pubs that serve it, but when I'm in a pub I only have eyes for the handpumps. 

Someone's making money out of pubs

Pub group Mitchells & Butlers has seen its annual profits rise by a whopping 26%. Sadly this doesn't mean that the good times are back for boozers - drink sales are actually down, the company has got rid of many of its drink led pubs and the growth area is in food sales.

Robinsons Old Tom

One of the beers I got for my birthday (thanks Gordon!) was Robinson's Old Tom.
 

At 8.5% ABV it made an excellent night cap on Sunday. Drinking a beer of that strength got me thinking about the best beer review website I've ever seen so I looked it up and sure enough a review was there. As you can't improve upon the perfection that is Trampjuice I won't bore you by rambling on about the beer but will simply quote the review in full:

"Bottle Says: too pissed to remember, although i can remember a cat on it.

BRN Says: Well before you accuse old BRN of becoming a bitter drinking pipe and slippers, port and cheese consuming old Grandad, let me put you all straight and tell you that this deceptive little Bitter chimes in at a very healthy and inebriating 8.5%. Only a mere 0.5% weaker than the beloved Carlsberg Special Brew, and putting it at the top of the tree of 'Special' Bitters if there are such a thing.

The label looks high end with a picture of a cat (whom i presume is 'Old Tom'), on a red label with Gold trim. The bottle does look quality, and high end and does nothing to promote its potency. In short this is a very subtle brew, and one that I'm sure doesn't get abused like I'm about to (can imagine it next to a ploughmans). The bottle is only 275ml which is very disapointing, however since this isn't your standard trampage fare I'm prepared to overlook the said indiscretion.

I open the brew and again its a subtle opening. No massive hiss or hint of gas. The brew pours out very thickly (where as my Knife and Fork) and has a VERY deep port wine finish. It also boasts a fruity and malty aroma. I have to put several of these Fuckers into my pint glass to fill it, which doesn't come cheap. Clearly this is for Mark 2 Jag sporting Tramps.

I take the glass and attempt to take a hearty (first pint) swig. Wow!!! this drink is thick, rich and warming, its so rich and malty that i now realise that this drink is going to be almost impossible to abuse (losing tramp points BIG time), i soldier through pint 1 in what must be a personal record of 27 minutes. In short I'm having to sip the fucker That said its already starting to kick in???. I've already resigned myself that this is going to be a long night's work. I get to pint 5 and its starting to disagree with me. it also feels like I've drunk 5 pints of wine, I'm also pissed.

I'm 2 1/2 hrs in now and only on pint 5. I bravely soldier on at a snails pace and get to pint 7 by which time I'm well and truly chonged and its been some 5 hours. The last 2 pints have been a struggle and I'm literally having to force it down. I also feel like I've drunk 7 pints of wine , and eaten 3 very hearty roast dinners (interestingly I've only peed twice???). I retire to bed feeling about 3 stone heavier. I awake the next day with a head like there's a pneumatic drill going in it and a severely upset stomach. I spend all day on the shitter and my shit is Guinness black and pure liquid . apart form that I'm okay although I'm sure my blood has thickened ten fold. 

In Conclusion: Although this is a tramp juice percentage bitter, this drink has no place in a tramps hand. It is nigh on impossible to abuse (unless you've got a good 5 hrs handy), due to its sip only nature. its thickness and strong taste and its price to quantity ratio is piss poor. Believe me if you try and neck this you wont get far, and you'll probably vomit right back up. There are much better, cheaper and 100% easier cainable drinks out there than this 'Gentlemans' tipple. Due to its nice presentation, subtlety, and percentage I'm giving it a more than generous 2/10"

Beer on the radio

Michael Turner, the Fuller's Chief was on the radio briefly yesterday, announcing that their profits were up. The presenter asked if being the unusual combination of a brewing and pub business was an advantage, to which the answer was yes.

Strangely enough, Lord Young, the person that caused combined breweries and pub businesses to be a rarity was on next. He's generally viewed with contempt in the industry, as stripped of their tied estates the big breweries have been much more marginal businesses, and have now all come under foreign ownership. I'm not so sure myself, as though the big pub companies are undoubtedly horrors, the range of draught beers I see in my local pubs is far, far bigger than it was back in the day. 

I also noticed that noted beer expert Melissa Cole was on Radio Wales talking about making beer less blokey. The main points I can remember were don't try and start people on brown bitter as it's an acquired taste, and don't give them some patronising pink pap just because they're women. As is usual when hearing stuff from a professional beer writer there were a few technical points that made be raise an eyebrow but the piece was quite enjoyable so I won't go off on one. It starts at about 48.47.

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We've won something!

For the first time we have won a brewing industry competition.

Was it for the wonderful beers I make? No, it was for a pump clip which I didn't design. I did have some minor input into how it looks though, and it was me that took the trouble to send in the competition entry.  

Oh well, apparently we're going to get a trophy, which will be nice.  

Ale and pie competition

I continued my professional  development by attending an Institute of Brewing and Distilling meeting at the Sloaney Pony in Parson's Green. The evening's meeting was about the all important issue of beer and food pairing.

Now generally this is something I don't really care for, as lingering over a meal whilst sipping a drink seems more like wine drinkers territory to me. What's wrong with scoffing your food so you can move on to the more important business of guzzling your beer? I made an exception in this case as it was about ale and pie pairing, which seemed too good to miss, and they'd decided to spice it up by making it a competition.  

Aside from the first one they're only in approximate order as some of the details escape me now. Each pie was scored in a number of categories, from overall appearance to the more complex issues such as ale and meat aroma and texture, pastry crispiness, and quality of the gravy. As we didn't have a pie flavour wheel to hand we were slightly relieved that the overall score was simply made on marks out of ten. 

• From Shepherd Neame there was a 'Hop pickers' beef pie. I can't remember what beer came with this, I think I was too excited that the free beer had started arriving. The pie was moist and well seasoned but the meat had the look of lips and arse holes about it, so a fairly average pie. 
  
  
• Campden BRI brought a Chicken and bacon pie with Badgers beer. The pie was good, as the dedicated researchers at the BRI had discovered the universal truth that adding bacon to most things improves them. The beer had an amazing floral aroma, with hints of tropical fruit and then I realised it was Badgers and my interest waned. 
  
  
• Elgoods supplied the excellently named 'Cow and Dog pie', this being a beef pie made with Black dog mild. That was also the beer we were supplied with. The pie had big flavours and the lovely Lisa and I thought this was the best pie of the night and I even enjoyed the mild. 
  
  
• Fullers came with a beef and mushroom pie served with ESB. The filling was good but the pastry was very hard so we had to mark them down for that but the copious quantities of the malty ESB counted in their favour. 
  
  
• Windsor and Eton had a home made Venison and Sloe berry pie with Black IPA. An interesting combination but my portion was a bit dry. The beer was also interesting but not something I'd rush back for more of: it tasted like a hoppy, citrus flavoured American IPA, but burnt.  
  
  
• Wells and Young's brought a steak and kidney paired with Young's Special. The pie and the suet crust were flavoured with thyme which worked really well, and despite the presence of kidneys in the pie this was voted the winner. Young's Special is not my favourite beer but it was clean and crisp and went down well enough. 
  
  
• There were also Beef pies which looked suspiciously pukka but turned out to be from the Real Pie Company. These came with Guinness Foreign Extra Stout. I didn't think much of the pie, but I'm quite partial to Guinness FES. I could wax lyrical about the earthy flavour from the long maturation but I don't think they bother with that anymore and just bung in some lactic acid. 

We were then treated to some chocolate cake, which was a great relief to the hungry vegetarian on the table. I thought it could have done with some dried fruit* though. 

Rather bizarrely a buffet arrived at this point which for obvious reasons there wasn't much appetite for. It did mean we got to take home a food parcel though.  

It was a great night for picking up gossip too. Some things Fuller's have been up to caused me great excitement (or should that be great eXXcitement?) and as there was another IBD meeting going on downstairs (the examiners were meeting) so I was able to catch up with one of my old lecturers from Heriot-Watt. I think I was still talking coherently at that point but fortunately the lovely Lisa had kept her eye on the clock as time really was getting on. So after some brief difficulty figuring out how the whole opening a door malarkey worked we were on our way. 

Here's some of our booty from the night

* BINGO! With apologies to Mark Dredge.

Woking beer festival 2010

I went to my local beer festival on Saturday. I was particularly excited this year as I'd spied that some Marble beers were on, a brewery that is highly rated by my fellow beer nerds.  

First up was a half of Pint (3.9% ABV), which even at this early stage of the evening caused some confusion to the man behind bar. This beer has more hops than you can shake a stick at, making it seem more like drinking grapefruit juice. A bit OTT for me to be honest. W90 (3.7% ABV) seemed a bit more balanced but the hops were heading in the piney direction which always makes me think of toilet duck. Interesting beers, but not ones I was keen to drink more of. 

I was after something next where the hops hadn't been cranked up to 11 so a pint of the reassuringly blandly named Stringers Best (4.2% ABV) seemed ideal. I thought it was great, and could have happily spent an evening on it, but it was not to be. This was a beer festival after all.

So I followed it with the Stringers No. 2 stout. Again it was good drinking at only 4% ABV, but I was feeling the need for something with a bit more oomph at this point. There were a couple of beers from the righteous brewery Pilgrim on offer and Saturn Alia (4.9% ABV) did the trick. A ruby beer with some body, it was just what I was after. 

At this point I moved on to the small hall and got chatting to the bloke who runs Egham beer festival. I drank the beer he recommended which was very nice but what it was I couldn't say. Only three pints in an losing track already - you can see where this is heading. The lovely Lisa thinks it was Langham LSD, which could explain why my memory is a bit hazy. 

Other beers of note included Dorking brewery Dry Hop Gold (3.8%) which was packed full of flavour for its modest strength, Inveralmond Thrappledouse (4.3%), Houston Texas (4.3%) and Andwell's Rudy Darter (4.6%) which I seem to recall we had a few of towards the end. This was another ruby beer, and I'm sure the darker ones keep out the winter chill better. Which was just as well as we were walking home.