Ed's Beer Site
A site where a man with far too much interest in beer gets to write about it.
Friday, 31 January 2025
The Session: What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018?
Tuesday, 31 December 2024
Golden Pints 2024
Like a great gold gong that's beating,
Like a brass-bell fanfare greeting,
Summoning the day.

Best UK Cask Beer:
Best UK Keg Beer:
Having been abroad I've suckled at the devil's drainpipe in the heathen manner. And my mate Marek has at times brought keg been over when it's his round. Wonderful human being that he is he wasn't brought up in the faith so doesn't recognise the spiritual peril he is placing himself in by doing this. What was favourite though? Who knows? I don't pay attention to such things. I did enjoy our walk to Rivington brewery though so something from them.
Best UK Bottled Beer:
Carefully selected for me by my favourite nephew Harvey's Tom Paine hit the spot.
Oh god, cans too. Surely this can't be pleasing to god. The ludicrously waxed can a mate got me for my happy birthday made me laugh and it was filled with an imperial stout which I approve of so Decimus Rusticus from Baron Brewing.
Best Overseas Draught:
Best Overseas Bottled Beer:
What have I had this year? Hmmm...I did go to the Guinness brewery so let's have FES, another great beer that sticks it to those think diacetyl has no place in beer.
Best Overseas Canned Beer:
It's bad enough having to try and remember a British canned beer. I did neck a can of something Polish at the airport though so that's this year's winner.
Best collaboration brew:
Have I had any? I've a vague feeling I have but I can't remember what.
Best Overall Beer:
Thustons Horsell Hop.
Best Branding:
Let's go with the waxed can as I didn't cut myself getting rid of the wax.
Best UK Brewery:
Thurstons.
Best Overseas Brewery:
Guinness was amazing, it's like a bleedin' city.
Best New Brewery Opening 2024
Can't think of one.
Pub/Bar of the Year:
The Crown of course.
Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2024
Can't think of one of these either.
Beer Festival of the Year:
Hmmm... Woking's gone. No GBBF. Didn't get to Farnham. Oooo...there is the beer festival the Crown has so that.
Supermarket of the Year:
Independent Retailer of the Year:
Cobbett's Real Ale is handy when I'm in need of something special so they're the winner again
Online Retailer of the Year:
I actually bought some beer online this year as the special offer on the Fuller's (Asahi) advent calendar was a bargain so they win this one.
Best Beer Book or Magazine:
The one I've enjoyed the most is Martyn Cornell's Around the World in 80 Beers. I suspect beer list books are the ones that sell but the subtitle "a global history of brewing" sums it up better. It's far more than just a list of beers. There are some fascinating facts in it that I found a delight, I mean who knew the first person to swim the English channel drank beer on the way? Or that the heather ale recipe myth Williams Bros. use is hugely popular in Russia? But ignore the bit about the male Fuggle, there ain't no such thing.
Best Beer Blog or Website:
Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer:
It should shift to Blue Sky really so I'll go for Boak and Bailey who are over there.
Thursday, 5 December 2024
Thomas Hardy: My Part in his Downfall
I was going to use Return of the Native for the title of this post but I'm so slow other people have got there before me. I don't know what the book's about anyway, it was Far From the Madding Crowd I was forced to study at school, in all its interminable tedium. It didn't leave me with a high opinion of Thomas Hardy. The man was clearly being paid by the word and milking it for all he could:
“That’s my fist.” Here he placed his fist, rather smaller in size than a common loaf, in the mathematical centre of the maltster’s little table, and with it gave a bump or two thereon, as if to ensure that their eyes all thoroughly took in the idea of fistiness before he went further.”
Dull, dull, dull.
Thomas Hardy beers on the other hand are a different matter. I was quite partial to Hardy Country when Eldridge Pope still existed and their other beer that referenced the tedious twerp, Thomas Hardy's Ale, has a well deserved legendary status. One of the five bottle conditioned beers still in production when CAMRA were formed it's managed to survive the closure of Eldridge Pope, being contract brewed at O'Hanlon's, Meantime and now Hepworths.
The last is of particular interest to me as I worked at Hepworths when production moved there. For this legendary beer another beer legend, Derek Prentice, is the brewing consultant employed by the brand owner and we worked with him to bring the beer back again.
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Derek during mashing in of Thomas Hardy's Ale |
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Fermentation started well but it was a struggle to get to target gravity |
We had to throw everything we could at it to get the beer down to target gravity and the ABV up to the strength we wanted. It spent a long, long time in tank. Some of the first batch, made of three brews, was bottled before I left Hepworths but I never saw it in the wild in the UK so I suspect it all went to Italy. After the beer stopped being brewed by O'Hanlons the brand was bought by the Italians of Interbrau who I guess don't distribute in Britain. And as far as I know the Armagnac barrel trial never got beyond the samples I hand bottled so it wasn't distributed to anyone at all.
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The barrel trial |
Well, I did get some samples myself. Purely for professional purposes of course, those organoleptic properties needed to be assessed. It was absolutely gorgeous.
Another batch of Thomas Hardy's Ale was brewed soon after I'd left the company. I did enquire how the fermentation had gone and you'll be glad to hear that lessons had been learned as this time it went fine. The beer's also now got a British distributor and some was even made available on cask:
This did get me doing some searching and I managed to get some thanks to a detour to The Rake on my way to see Alexei Sayle.
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Who is that fat bastard? |
I've drunk it from all of the breweries it's been made at but I'd never had it on cask before so I'm delighted the timing worked out for me. It was a great start to the evening, strong and rich it certainly lives up to the name of barley wine. I hope that putting some in cask becomes a regular feature when it's brewed and that the brewing continues for many years to come.
Sunday, 15 September 2024
A visit to Teeling distillery
The last stop of the Irish study tour for me was Teeling distillery. Most people went on to Whiplash brewery afterward but I had to meet my cousin's husband so on this occasion you won't get to see me acting like a maniac.
Teeling Distillery was built in 2015.
They have a wet mill and do single infusion mashes in a lauter tun at 66°C twice a day. Malt and pot still whiskey is made, the pot still being 50% raw barley with added alpha amylase and beta glucanase enymes.
Saturday, 10 August 2024
Crossing boundaries
Considering that debate still rages about the 1974 county boundary changes I would tread very lightly if I was proposing any boundary changes myself. But CAMRA currently has a plan to change its branch structure so no branch straddles CAMRA region or county boundaries. From what I can gather it's a top down proposal from the National Executive.
It has lead to much wailing and gnashing of teeth on CAMRA's internal forum, with 877 comments at the time of writing. And my inbox has been busy with disgruntled members sharing their displeasure on my local branch's email list, for my local branch is in two counties.
But for how much longer? |
Personally speaking I'm a bottom up man so am dubious about the proposal. Though a devout member of our Mother Church I'm not vey active in the branch, but it is the branch I've been in since I was a teenager so I would be sad to see it end. Our branch chairman has written a long reply detailing how the branch came to be and why its current structure works.
I've also seen Good Beer Guide tickers make the point that "GBG Counties" are a law unto themselves, which makes imposing strict borders against the wishes of those on the ground all the more peculier peculiar. For the sake of Real Ale I hope an amicable solution can be found, the trouble with pissing off volunteers is volunteers are free to piss off.
An online petition against the changes can be found here.
Sunday, 4 August 2024
The Rotherhithe Round
There are few genuinely innovative things in beer. So when me and a mate discovered a pub crawl that not only loops round to end where it starts but involves going both over and under the Thames I knew we were on to something rare and special. #PubPeople I bring you The Rotherhithe Round.
It didn't start well for me as I'd made a mess of the public transport. Fortunately my mate Luca was chilled about my late arrival at the Prospect of Whitby, our starting point. I had a pint of best from a brewery I forget, but it came in jugs which gives the pub a bonus point. It's a big pub but it was rammed so we didn't get to sit on the riverside and only stayed for one.
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A wizard's staff has a knob on the end |
When we finally emerged into the daylight and could go back to breathing air not fumes we found we were close to Cable Street, site of the famous battle where the fascists did not pass despite the best efforts of the police. Though I'm sure it doesn't count as psychogeography if you know where you're going we detoured down there whilst discussing physical opposition to fascism, something that has sadly become more necessary again.
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A short swim or a long and toxic walk away |
And with that we had completed The Rotherhithe Round, perhaps the greatest innovation in pub crawls since 1911.
Saturday, 20 July 2024
A visit to Guinness brewery
Back in Dublin for the first time since 1911 I finally got to go round the Guinness brewery at St James's Gate.
Diageo own have Guinness brewed in "46-50" breweries, of which only five brew draught Guinness, most making the far superior Foreign Extra Stout (FES). It has a lot of diacetyl though (>250ppb!), which just shows that it's not always a bad thing.
They were in the process of commissioning two new 1000 keg per hour kegging lines when we visited. The fill 20, 30 and 50L kegs, with high gravity beer being cut to sales strength just before packaging. The beer gets 25 Pasteurisation Units (PUs). CO2 is 1.8-2.4 volumes and nitrogen 2.5-4. Which sounds quite a wide range to me but you can't argue with hastily scribbled notes when you try and decipher them.
They mash in at 64.5°C rising to 72°C. There are two MCVs and one lauter tun for each stream.
They have 10hl and 5hl breweries, which use 300 and 90kg respectively.
The keg filler will go at 30 kegs/hr and they have a hybrid can and bottle filler.
As Guinness supplies the UK from Dublin a lot of beer is tankered out: 60-65%! Forty 300hl tankers a day leave the site, most going to Runcorn, some to Belfast. They can fill a tanker in 45 minutes.
That was the last brewery I went to on the Irish study tour and they really had left the best till last, it was fantastic. But did it make the best Irish stout? More on that later.