My local Sainsbury's seem to have realised that they're making a mistake selling Fuller's Vintage at £1.99 a bottle. It's gone up to £3.29, and it isn't included in their current '4 for 3' offer.
So it's a good job I got my favourite brother in law five bottles last week :-)
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Woking beer festival
Woking beer festival rolled round again this weekend. It's the only beer festival I can walk to, being about 20 minutes from my house. Well, on the way there it took 20 minutes, it seemed to only take five to get back. Such is the power of beer.
The festival is held in the local leisure centre, so it's a bit lacking in atmosphere until the third pint kicks in.
Beer of the night for me was Acorn's Barnsley Bitter. I'd read about this beer on another beer blog and wanted to try it for myself. Despite it's modest strength (3.8% ABV) it's an excellent beer packed full of flavour. Session beers really are something British brewers do best. And speaking of session beers, I'd have been better off sticking to them all night I felt a bit poorly this morning. The lovely Lisa had to call upon the power of pork to save me, praise the lard!
The festival is held in the local leisure centre, so it's a bit lacking in atmosphere until the third pint kicks in.
Beer of the night for me was Acorn's Barnsley Bitter. I'd read about this beer on another beer blog and wanted to try it for myself. Despite it's modest strength (3.8% ABV) it's an excellent beer packed full of flavour. Session beers really are something British brewers do best. And speaking of session beers, I'd have been better off sticking to them all night I felt a bit poorly this morning. The lovely Lisa had to call upon the power of pork to save me, praise the lard!
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Breweries on the beeb!
A couple of breweries have briefly featured on the BBC recently:
You get a brief glimpse of Wayland's brewery on Escape to the Country, as the owners are looking to move to Dorset. It's a property show so apart from eyeing up out-buildings and garages and going 'you might fit a brewery in there' there's not much else of interest for the beer nerd. I was probably more interested than most as Wayland's is quite close to me and I had a brief email exchange with Scott (the owner) to see if I could come over and do some work experience when I was studying at Heriot-Watt. Nothing came of it though so Wayland's missed out on the chance to gain the coveted status of righteous brewery.
There was slightly more to see on Countryfile, for starters it had quite a lot on 'the pub is the hub' showcasing the excellent Old Crown in Hesket Newmarket, Britain's first co-operatively owned pub.
Also they had one of the presenters taking the barely from his farm to Warminster floor maltings and then he went on to Hook Norton brewery. When I was working as a brewer I once spent a day at Hook Norton learning about how they do their lab work. I met the bloke introduced on Countryfile as the head brewer, James Clarke, though what they didn't mention that he is the Hooky heir. They were very nice people at Hook Norton so I had no hesitation in including them on the list of righteous breweries.
You get a brief glimpse of Wayland's brewery on Escape to the Country, as the owners are looking to move to Dorset. It's a property show so apart from eyeing up out-buildings and garages and going 'you might fit a brewery in there' there's not much else of interest for the beer nerd. I was probably more interested than most as Wayland's is quite close to me and I had a brief email exchange with Scott (the owner) to see if I could come over and do some work experience when I was studying at Heriot-Watt. Nothing came of it though so Wayland's missed out on the chance to gain the coveted status of righteous brewery.
There was slightly more to see on Countryfile, for starters it had quite a lot on 'the pub is the hub' showcasing the excellent Old Crown in Hesket Newmarket, Britain's first co-operatively owned pub.
Also they had one of the presenters taking the barely from his farm to Warminster floor maltings and then he went on to Hook Norton brewery. When I was working as a brewer I once spent a day at Hook Norton learning about how they do their lab work. I met the bloke introduced on Countryfile as the head brewer, James Clarke, though what they didn't mention that he is the Hooky heir. They were very nice people at Hook Norton so I had no hesitation in including them on the list of righteous breweries.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Well, well, well
You heard it here first.
No sooner have I posted “I’m also getting a bit tired of James Watt’s attention seeking but that probably won’t change in a hurry " than James Watt's latest wheeze upsets the blogosphere.
A lot of my fellow beer bloggers do seem to be genuinely very pissed off. Can't say I'm surprised, as the deliberately courting controversy was wearing a bit thin and the Portman group aren't really the best target. If the Portman group's voluntary regulation was done away with then it would only be replaced with compulsory state regulation which I'm sure would be a lot harder on brewers like Brewdog.
No sooner have I posted “I’m also getting a bit tired of James Watt’s attention seeking but that probably won’t change in a hurry " than James Watt's latest wheeze upsets the blogosphere.
A lot of my fellow beer bloggers do seem to be genuinely very pissed off. Can't say I'm surprised, as the deliberately courting controversy was wearing a bit thin and the Portman group aren't really the best target. If the Portman group's voluntary regulation was done away with then it would only be replaced with compulsory state regulation which I'm sure would be a lot harder on brewers like Brewdog.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
CAMRA and Brewdog
I see from my fellow beer bloggers that James Watt from Brewdog has put the boot into CAMRA again. He said: “I blame CAMRA for single-handedly holding back innovation in British brewing”. He has said similar before, when he charmingly added the following regarding CAMRA members: "We've got better things to do with our time than worry about whether 200 fat idiots are drinking our beer or not."
He also likes to slag off session beers “Pretty much all the small UK brewers make the same boring 4% ales with the same boring hops and then package them in a folksy, old-fashioned manner”. But then as he lives in a run down shithole in Scotland that no doubt has no decent pubs it’s hardly surprising a night in the pub on cask ales isn’t his thing.
Now, as a dedicated beer nerd I know that James Watt is prone to sweeping statements that provoke debate but in the cold light of day don’t really add up. But having said that his latest pronouncement does give me an excuse to go on again about my particular bugbear with CAMRA: their line on bottled beer.
CAMRA basically define real ale as beer which has not had the yeast removed from it, so can still undergo secondary fermentation in the container it is dispensed from. This means cask beers in pubs and bottle conditioned beers. I’m quite happy with CAMRA’s promotion of cask beer. If I’m in a pub that’s what I want to drink. Cask is the best way of serving the modest in strength beers I normally drink when I’m out for an evening. You get the best flavour from the beer that way, and keg beers of similar strength seem at best bland in comparison.
When they extend the line on ‘must contain yeast’ to bottled beers thought I think it starts to break. Bottled beers, with or without yeast, have a higher level of carbonation than cask beer so the difference between real ale and keg is much less noticeable.
When CAMRA were formed there were only five bottle conditioned beers produced in Britain , so it was fairly minor issue. The premium bottled beers market has grown greatly since then and now there are hundreds of bottle conditioned beers. I’ve had some great bottle conditioned beers, but I’ve also had some great bottled beers that don’t have any yeast in. And I’ve had a lot of god awful bottle conditioned beers from microbreweries that may well have contained yeast but also contained huge amounts of bacteria.
Brewdog mostly produce bottled beers, and though they’re not all to my taste some are excellent. They are however filtered and CAMRA’s line on bottled beers is that unless they have yeast in the bottle they are not real ale so are pretty much ignored. If they’re made in Britain that is. If they’re made overseas CAMRA ignore this and say that as they have different brewing traditions it’s perfectly OK for beers to be devoid of yeast. So for example CAMRA have been prominent in defending the Czech beer Budweiser Budvar which is certainly filtered and in all probability pasteurised too.
You can start to see why Brewdog may feel hard done by by CAMRA at this point. They’re mostly ignored except when their beer is in cask, which to be honest doesn’t show it at its best. The American microbreweries who Brewdog draw their inspiration from (or blatantly copy depending on how you want to put it) have also been pretty much ignored by CAMRA.
CAMRA does seems slow to change, which is perhaps why to many younger beer nerds that don’t remember the dark days of keg they now seem part of the establishment to rail against.
I do think CAMRA need to reassess how they look at bottled beers, as the simplistic ‘does it contain yeast’ just doesn’t work as well as it does for draught beers, and as foreign brewers are exempt from this it doesn’t make sense anyway.
I’m also getting a bit tired of James Watt’s attention seeking but that probably won’t change in a hurry either.
He also likes to slag off session beers “Pretty much all the small UK brewers make the same boring 4% ales with the same boring hops and then package them in a folksy, old-fashioned manner”. But then as he lives in a run down shithole in Scotland that no doubt has no decent pubs it’s hardly surprising a night in the pub on cask ales isn’t his thing.
Now, as a dedicated beer nerd I know that James Watt is prone to sweeping statements that provoke debate but in the cold light of day don’t really add up. But having said that his latest pronouncement does give me an excuse to go on again about my particular bugbear with CAMRA: their line on bottled beer.
CAMRA basically define real ale as beer which has not had the yeast removed from it, so can still undergo secondary fermentation in the container it is dispensed from. This means cask beers in pubs and bottle conditioned beers. I’m quite happy with CAMRA’s promotion of cask beer. If I’m in a pub that’s what I want to drink. Cask is the best way of serving the modest in strength beers I normally drink when I’m out for an evening. You get the best flavour from the beer that way, and keg beers of similar strength seem at best bland in comparison.
When they extend the line on ‘must contain yeast’ to bottled beers thought I think it starts to break. Bottled beers, with or without yeast, have a higher level of carbonation than cask beer so the difference between real ale and keg is much less noticeable.
When CAMRA were formed there were only five bottle conditioned beers produced in Britain , so it was fairly minor issue. The premium bottled beers market has grown greatly since then and now there are hundreds of bottle conditioned beers. I’ve had some great bottle conditioned beers, but I’ve also had some great bottled beers that don’t have any yeast in. And I’ve had a lot of god awful bottle conditioned beers from microbreweries that may well have contained yeast but also contained huge amounts of bacteria.
Brewdog mostly produce bottled beers, and though they’re not all to my taste some are excellent. They are however filtered and CAMRA’s line on bottled beers is that unless they have yeast in the bottle they are not real ale so are pretty much ignored. If they’re made in Britain that is. If they’re made overseas CAMRA ignore this and say that as they have different brewing traditions it’s perfectly OK for beers to be devoid of yeast. So for example CAMRA have been prominent in defending the Czech beer Budweiser Budvar which is certainly filtered and in all probability pasteurised too.
You can start to see why Brewdog may feel hard done by by CAMRA at this point. They’re mostly ignored except when their beer is in cask, which to be honest doesn’t show it at its best. The American microbreweries who Brewdog draw their inspiration from (or blatantly copy depending on how you want to put it) have also been pretty much ignored by CAMRA.
CAMRA does seems slow to change, which is perhaps why to many younger beer nerds that don’t remember the dark days of keg they now seem part of the establishment to rail against.
I do think CAMRA need to reassess how they look at bottled beers, as the simplistic ‘does it contain yeast’ just doesn’t work as well as it does for draught beers, and as foreign brewers are exempt from this it doesn’t make sense anyway.
I’m also getting a bit tired of James Watt’s attention seeking but that probably won’t change in a hurry either.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Wandsworth common halloween beer festival
That looks suitably gothic for Halloween doesn't it?
On Saturday night I went to the Royal Victoria Patriotic Building. Patriotism is of course the last refuge of the scoundrel. Fortunately for us the scoundrels had seen fit to fill their refuge with casks of beer.
They has their first beer festival here back in March which was all good fun but a lot of the beers were in short supply. This time there were good stocks, though sadly no Sarah Hughes, despite the claim on the website they'd have three barrels of it.
I started on a Purity brewing's UBU as I've enjoyed it from the bottle I couldn't pass up the chance to try it on cask and very nice it was too.
Then I worked through some of the offering from brewery's I like, such as Hop Back, Dark Star, Twickenham and Timothy Taylor. The lovely Lisa was a bit under the weather so we didn't stay too long. This gave me an excuse to wander into the stronger end of things, after I'd had a suitable warm up of course. Some of my fellow beer bloggers seem to drink whatever takes their fancy, either down the pub or at home, but I tend to stay at less than 5% ABV when I'm out and about, saving the strong ones for when I'm at home.
This is beer of the less than 5%ABV variety
I had a feeling that Ballard's Wassail was in 300 beers to try before you die and it looked like some stronger stuff was called for so that went down next. You could taste it was strong (6% ABV) but not overpoweringly so. Then for what was the last of the night I had a Orkney Skull Splitter (8.5% ABV). This went down surprisingly easily, which perhaps shows that it was not just time for the lovely Lisa to be heading home.
The crowd at the festival was surprisingly young and mixed, and hardly a beard or beer gut to be seen. Though it wasn't a CAMRA festival it certainly followed the same format:
Perhaps cask beer really is becoming more fashionable.
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Poncey gastro-pub goes bust
The Morrisey-Fox pub has gone bust, despite having a TV series about it to help it get started. Morrisey and Fox did come across as arrogant plonkers who managed to piss off a lot of the locals so it's hardly surprising. The beers are still being produced, but who by remains a mystery.
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