Brewers Congress 2022

The Brewers Congress at a new venue in London this year. It was better for the stalls but not as good for the talks. I also heard they ended the posh dinner evening a lot earlier so all the speakers didn't look completely hung over this time. The talks still started late though so they were rattled through at a brisk pace. 

First up was Rudi Ghequire from Rodenbach brewery. My extensive notes tell me: 

Acetic acid to ethyl acetate

Centrifuges not filtered

Classic pH3.5. Grand 3.3

Then it was Jaime Jurado to talk about CO2. I took no notes at all but I did try and get a picture of every slide. CO2 prices have gone up massively and we've got a new CO2 recovery unit at work so this talk was of particular interest to me. 

Then Dawn Maskell from Heriot-Watt talked about an unfilterable haze, though rather unfashionably about how they'd identified and helped prevent it. Perhaps the haze additive commercial spin off will follow next. 

My notes and pictures seem to have died a death after this so no doubt I'd moved on to the networking. 

200 years of Burton IPA

I managed to make it to Burton for the 200 years of Burton IPA celebration. This was doing better than two of the people that were meant to speak but were sadly struck down with illness. 

India Pale Ale was first brewed in London but Allsopp's started brewing it in Burton in 1822. Allsopp's have recently been re-launched so there was a bit of an Allsopp's theme to the day. Double Diamond, though an Ind Coope brand was apparently had it's origins as Allsopp's IPA. Which means the late lamented Ind Coope Burton Ale did too. 

Jamie Allsopp, the man behind the revival was there, complete with a plaque he'd like to put where the Allsopp's brewery was. 

Unfortunately the land is now owned by Molson Coors and he hasn't got permission yet!

The Allsopp's was founded in 1742 and bought by Samuel Allsopp in 1806. 

The designs used for the modern Allsopp's branding are based on historic ones. 

Old brewing records have been found and are used for inspiration. \\

We got to try the 7.4% Celebration Ale. Brewed with pale and crystal malt with Fuggles and Challenger for bittering and Bramling Cross and Cascade for aroma. FG is 1.013 which must make the OG around 1.070. Despite the 50 IBUs it still tasted very sweet, though it's bottle conditioned so should dry out a bit. Other Allsopp's beers are being brewed, including a lager that I saw at Notting Hill Carnival of all places. Mind you, building a lager brewery didn't do the original Allsopp's much good. A revival of the legendary Arctic Ale is also planned which I very much look forward too. 

We then had someone speak about White Shield, and how they once did something very similar to what Pete Brown later did for his Hops and Glory book and flew a cask to India whilst another went by boat. By all accounts the one which took the boat journey tasted much better. 

Then Dr Harry White, formerly of Bass brewery and now chairman of the National Brewery Heritage Trust spoke about pale ale brewing in Burton. 

Good for some but not others

In 1832 Bass was brewing 15,000 barrels, with 5,000 going to India.

Bass was the bigger of the two. Their output grew rapidly after the railway arrived in 1839.

Emma Gilliland from Marston's spoke about water chemistry next. 

Gypsum (Calcium sulphate) rich Buton water being good for pale ales. The sulphate to chloride ratio is important for beer flavour, 2:1 giving a dryer beer with assertive hops, and the other way giving a sweeter beer. 

The high sulphate levels in Burton water gave a sulphury/egg smell to beer which was gloriously named  the Burton snatch. In the questions after the talk someone did ask why doesn't Marston's Pedigree taste the like it used to and certainly it's years since I've noticed anything eggy about it. I suspect they've changed what they do with the water, though Marston's still get lots from the wells on their site. 

I have spent a long time working on brewing water chemistry but I still learnt a fascinating fact. Magnesium sulphate also fluid retention, which increases the volume of the intestine, putting more pressure on peristalsis which causes the other effect Burton beers are known for.  

David Jesudason talked about the colour bar in pubs and how campaigners fought against it. 

He continued on to the asset stripping history of the East India Company (imagine Amazon running a country!) and how the excesses of luxury were for whites only. Beer marketing of India Pale Ales usually overlooks this completely, so he wanted to a de-colonised IPA. With Villages brewery he made a modern IPA using Indian spices and sugar, with money from sales going to a flood charity in Pakistan. 

Johnny Garret was up next. I have 90 minutes of nerding out written in my notes. A podcast maybe or perhaps something he does of an evening? I can't recall. He talked of the decline of British hop growing and how support is needed now. So with Meantime brewery he made Now IPA using Goldings as the bittering hop and modern varieties like Jester and Olicana as late hops. 

The main event ended with a panel discussion where someone put the boot into Greene King IPA ten minutes after their Quality Manager had left. How's that for bad timing? I'm sure she'd have given as good as she got. I did stick up for it myself but I'm sure my reasoned and entirely accurate statement on the weak IPA of old family breweries was ignored by all present.

And then it was time for the pub. 

Factors affecting foam in beer

Here's a handy table from the IBD magazine on factors affecting foam in beer. I'm delighted to see that protein rests are a foam negative factor. Take that German brewers! Though to be fair under modified malt is foam positive. 

When it's gone it's gone

On a recent visit to Thorne I was delighted to spot what looked suspiciously like an old brewery in the distance. 

The remaining letters on the worn and weathered gate backed up my suspicions:

And the Brewery History Wiki confirmed them. 

Darley's Brewery closed before I'd started drinking, which perhaps explains why I'd never heard of it, though I couldn't help but feel saddened to see such a lovely building boarded up. And it got me thinking of the other tragic losses we have only recently suffered in Britain: the closure of Jennings and Caledonian Breweries. I have been round both of them, Jennings is a wonderful tower brewery and Caledonian had one of the most amazing things you can see in a brewery: open copper coppers! Nowadays pumps are much cheaper than building breweries in a tower and no one is going to build their boiling vessels out of copper, let alone leave them unenclosed. When such things are gone they are never going to return so I mourn every loss. 

Mind you, looking at the amount of pigeons on the roof of Darley's where the cooling tray would have been I was reminded that old fashioned brewing was not without its drawbacks!

Hold The Line!

Satan's minions have once again been launching attacks on the one true living beer, this time by saying cask beer should be saved by pubs ripping out their cask lines or something. But there seems to me a better, more obvious and all together less diabolic solution: pubs should stop selling keg beer. That'll get those that are used to suckling at the devil's drainpipe drinking in the ways of righteousness!

Even in these dark times I know that it is possible for pubs to sell more cask beer. My local is now back up to six (6) hand pumps and the top two (2) best selling beers are cask beers. For their heathen customers they do sell keg beer, with Fosters coming in third. This glorious success has not been achieved by poltroonery or moral turpitude. It has been achieved by caring about cask beer and looking after it. And I've even heard from the landlady that one of the strengths of cask beer is its growing popularity with young people. So let us gird our loins, stiffen our upper lips and continue to drink beer served as god intended.

 Hold the line!

Hold the line!

As we held the line at Horsell

We will hold it everywhere

Hold the line!

Hold the line!

We will hold the line forever

Till there's cask beer everywhere

Thoughts on beer blogging

Boak and Bailey were recently asking about why beer blogs die, which got some interesting replies. I don't blog much myself nowadays so it did get me pondering. Partly I post less because I've been doing it so bleedin' long I've said a lot of things already. And for me anyway Twitter definitely has a part because things now move more quickly and more briefly. 

I'm not sure the world of beer bores has become more toxic though. When I started blogging whinging on about CAMRA was one of the main topics, something I myself indulged in until I realised the danger I was putting my immortal soul in. Then there was the rise of Craft Beer in Britain which was new and exciting and an excellent opportunity for conflict to arise. And nothing drives social media like conflict. As craft beer has now moved from being "revolutionary" to business as usual the craft crusaders seem a lot quieter. I mean there may have been some wailing and gnashing of teeth when Heineken's takeover of Beavertown was completed but I can't say I noticed anything. 

I also think that as time as moved on my interests have moved on. I spend less time reading beer blogs as well as less time writing them. For example, at the moment I'm more likely to read Ron's blogs about wandering around getting pissed than I am his ones about beer history. I'm also trying to get out training more often, admittedly not entirely successfully, and as far as beer goes there is something more worthwhile to devote my time and effort to. Having a blog still has it's uses though and I will continue to post stuff up at times but my output is likely to remain sporadic. 

Back to a hop farm

It feels like I haven't been to a hop farm since 1911, though I suppose it can't be quite that long ago. So it was good to return to one of the Redsell's farms for an IBD do. 

They grow 90% English hops (mostly East Kent Goldings, Challenger and Fuggle with some Admiral) though they do have some foreign varieties. 

American hops Cascade and Centennial are grown and the high alpha variety Eureka is being trialled.

Lager hops Perle, H. Tradition and Akoya are being trialled. Akoya has been bred as a Perle replacement, having greater drought resistance.

They do have trickle irrigation at Redsell's but it's not as good as rain. 

They don't seem to have safety shoes though. 

The English hop crop is estimated to be down 20% and overall Europe down 22%, the American crop is expected to be close to average. 

And in amongst the CPD and networking I managed to get some green hop beer in too :-)