Golden Pint Awards 2012

Though I've had a snifter or two of the beers I make I'm not nominating any of them as that  would be wrong.


Best UK Draught Beer: Hmmm...so many pints drunk, so many brain cells dissolved, By The Horns Lambeth Walk was recent enough to stick in the mind though so deserves a mention, but as I actually went back for more of Butcombe Gold  (despite being at a beer festival) that's the winner.
Best UK Bottled Beer: I do try to keep up with the latest happening breweries and Buxton Axe Edge was very good, but I bought most Guinness FES and though it's not brewed in Britain Diageo are a British company so surely that counts? Maybe as far as bottles go it should be divided between supermarket beers and specialist shop beers?
Best Overseas Draught Beer: I had an American sour beer at the GBBF which was good, can't remember what it was called though.
Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Having cunningly sneaked Guinness FES into the best UK bottled beer category I'm free to have Orval win this one, again.
Best Overall Beer: Butcombe Gold.
Best Pumpclip or Label: Pandazilla
Best UK Brewery: They didn't win any of the beer categories but for being consistently good Dark Star. Best local brewery goes to Surrey Hills.
Best Overseas Brewery: It'll have to be Orval.
Pub/Bar of the Year: The Crown, Horsell.
Beer Festival of the Year: GBBF
Supermarket of the Year: Booths
Independent Retailer of the Year: Nobel Green Wines, my new source of Orval.
Online Retailer of the Year: The only beers I've bought online this year came from ebay. I finally got hold of Colne Spring Ale, though an 80s version. .
Best Beer Book or Magazine: Brewers and Distillers By Profession by Ray Anderson. It was very entertaining, answered a lot of questions about the IBD and had stuff about my brewing hero Horace Brown too.
Best Beer Blog or Website: It's still the beer history blogs I like best, and the gong's going to Zythophile this year.
Best Beer Twitterer: I'm slowly getting the hang of twitter. JamesB ‏@jamesbwxm seems to manage a steady stream without being boring, which I think is the point, as does @robsterowski but ‏@BoakandBailey have to get the prize for being the most interesting.
Best Online Brewery presence: I've enjoyed the Desert Island Beers on the Allgates Brewery blog so them.
Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: I've done some this year. Oh yes, proper sophisticated me. I liked the vanilla beer with vanilla pudding best.
In 2013 I’d Most Like To…This one got me in a reflective mood. Looking back on the past year not everything has gone as I might have hoped in the world of beer, but it hasn't done too badly either, so why did I think of the negatives first? I guess for me the glass is half empty. Though fortunately that doesn't last long as soon it's totally empty and it's time for another!

Highlights have included a trip to the National Hop Collection, being converted to the joys of Green Hopped Beer thanks to Eddie Gadd (though admittedly drinking my beer not his), and drinking Greene King 5X at the GBBF which was a long held ambition fulfilled. I've also brewed a beer style from Martyn Cornell's extinct list, and I've had my magnum opus published by the Brewery History Society.

As to next year... not sure. Make more historic beer? Get some new or possibly old hops to play with? Get more involved with SIBA? Do more serious writing? Do some serious study? Finally get hold of some of the revived Courage Imperial Russian Stout? Don't know, hopefully some of the above, but really first I need to finish my long and tedious plod through The Oxford Companion to Beer pointing out errors I've spotted.

Open Category: Best beery innovation of the year goes to the Kent Green Hop Beer Fortnight.

And as one pint is never enough here's some Golden Pints from the lovely Lisa:

Best UK Draught Beer: Old Dairy Gold Top
Best UK Bottled: Meantime Chocolate Porter
Best Overseas Draught Beer:
Best Overseas Bottled Beer:
Best Overall Beer: Old Dairy Gold Top
Best Pumpclip or Label: Dorking DB Number One
Best UK Brewery: Old Dairy
Best Overseas Brewery:
Pub/Bar of the Year: The Kirkstile Inn
Beer Festival of the Year: Farnham Beer Exhibition
Supermarket of the Year: Booths
Independent Retailer of the Year: Cobbets Real Ales
Online Retailer of the Year:
Best Beer Book or Magazine: London Drinker
Best Beer Blog or Website: Ed's Beer Site
Best Beer Twitterer:  Roger Humphreys - @CroglinVampire
Best Online Brewery Presence:
Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: Innis and Gunn with apple pie and cream.
In 2013 I’d most like to...have my own brewery
Open category – you decide the topic: Adopt a pub, stop the beer duty escalator, world peace.

It's arrived at last!

I've been waiting over a year for it, but when I got home from work yesterday I finally got my hand on a copy of For the Love of Hops by Stan Hieronymus.

I'm only two chapters in but my main question has already been answered*, and the Farnham Whitebine has even got a mention. I'm going to have a busy reading weekend, but one thing I can already say is that as getting information on hops is not easy this book really is a must for anyone interested in them.












*Sadly the answer is "it's complicated".

Sharp's Brewery horizontal tasting.

Recently I was lucky enough to win a crate of Sharp's beers. I won't go into the details other than to say it involved an equality and diversity dilemma of fiendish complexity.

It gave us the opportunity for a beer tasting night. I've heard the term vertical tasting used a few times, particularly in relation to drinking a range of years of Fuller's Vintage Ale. I suspect it's comes from the world of wine and as such is alien to our culture. And now I'm getting on a bit I prefer to sit down anyway.

So we went for a horizontal tasting, different beers, no particular years, just drink til your fall over, which fits in much more with British beer culture.

Every one we had during the evening was bottle conditioned. There was a brewery conditioned Doom Bar in the box too but that got used for cooking.

 

Cornish Pilsner: Pleasant enough for a lager, slightly sweet.

Single Brew: Pale, lively, balanced. Pleasant easy drinking.

Sharp's Special: Bit thin, but more flavour than the previous two.

Chalkies Bark: Mild ginger flavour. Floral. The lovely Lisa reckoned it would go with a curry rather than a lager.She must be getting into this food and beer pairing thing.

Chalkies Bite: Smokey bacon. Belgian.

Honey Spice Tripel: honey flavour, sweet, belgian, could do with more spice.

Quadrupel Ale: We'd saved the best til last, this is really good. Beautiful ruby plum colour. Balanced, got sweetingness but not cloying. Fruity. I could spot the Simcoe, a hop I'm not fond of but it really works here.Starts sweet but dry finish so not sickly. The lovely Lisa told me to make a note of this one, as she might want some more.

After that things to a bit messy.

 

We foolishly carried on drinking other stuff, and soon it was time to carry Lisa to bed. The horizontal tasting had been a success!

A meal fit for idiots and imbeciles

It was roast beef, plum pudding and strong ale for me yesterday. I'm sure the inmates of the Eastern Counties’ Asylum for Idiots and Imbeciles would have felt right at home.

Roast beef, strong ale...

and plum pudding!

Using my new found knowledge of beer and food pairing, and with assistance from my favourite sister, a carefully chosen selection of beers was assembled. OK, the main basis they were chosen on is that they were strong and dark, but rest easy, every single one of them went with food. Except the ones that were drunk outside of meal times.

One of our few pale beers, Kernel Table Beer (3.2% ABV) opened proceedings, lots of new world hops and perhaps a bit thin but impressively flavoursome for the strength. Other highlights included Meantime Porter, Anchor Christmas Ale, Young's Double Chocolate Stout and my very own Snow Top.

I never did find a use for the string and boiled egg though.

Xmas drinking.

I've got all chistmassy. The Enver Hoxha picture is stuck to the wall, and a bottle of Guinness Special Export in my hand. Is it time to start the drinkalongaton yet?

Joan Crawford has risen from the grave

Actually we won't be seeing Joan Crawford again this side of the zombie apocalypse, but I can reveal that a previously extinct British beer style has now been revived.  After some experimenting and a bit of research, I've brewed at work a stock ale that undergoes a true secondary fermentation with Brettanomyces yeast. 

Weighing in at a hefty 10.5% ABV it's a beer that I've no doubt will continue to mature for years to come. It's called "Over The Top", not a name I would have chosen myself, but I couldn't really object as it gave me an excuse to link to this again:

Hawkwind and Blue Öyster Cult in the same post! Can it get any better? Only if I could find a way of working Planet Gong into it...

The beer will be appearing in shops soon, and will even be for sale on the website once I find out what the password's been changed to.

Strawberry-Pink Not Compulsory!

I've just read The Search for the Perfect Pub: Looking For the Moon Under Water, the title referring to Orwell's famous essay on his ideal pub. I like Orwell's writings a lot, even if he did throw his lot in with British imperialism in the end, and having already done a bit of searching myself this was a must read.

The book is an enjoyable and entertaining tour around Britain, though perhaps it could just as easily be called "The search for an old boozer". Not that I'm complaining, as that's how pubs should be. Included in the tour are visits to pubs that I've been to, and interviews with people I've met, which made it all the more enjoyable.

But the real gem of the book is saved for the last chapter. Almost unbelievably they get to talk to a landlady of one of Orwell's old locals. And his drinking habits are discussed, including the mug he drank out of:

"I had a china mug he would borrow and then he would bring it back the next day. In fact, I've still got it." She goes to a glass fronted-cabinet and takes out a small white mochaware jug. It's an extraordinary thing; cold to the touch and with a tortoiseshell motif and a thin pale blue band at the lip.

"He borrowed it many times and he really liked it."

This revelation makes clear that it's the drinking out of china that's important, regardless of its colour. The search for the perfect pub is still a long and difficult task, but knowing that flexibility is allowed in the colour of the china mugs makes it that much easier.