Imperial Beer Club

I've had some more of my favourite beer come through the post: that's right, the free stuff. This lot was from Imperial Beer Club, a company dedicated to stronger beers.

When I'm down the pub I stick to cask beer of modest strength, but in the safety of my own home I'm quite partial to the stronger stuff so I was looking forward to this box.

The contents weren't quite what I was expecting though, but I'm probably just showing my age. The strong beers that generally grace my beer cupboards are Imperial Russian Stouts, Belgian Ales, and Barley Wines. The beers in the box however all had some quirk to mark them out as crafty compared to the more historic styles I usually drank. I was also surprised to see that a few of them had added lactose. I guess it's now part of the craft brewers' tool box to correct over attenuation.

I started with Pressure Drop's Syd Strong Cascadian Dark Rye Ale, which was perhaps not my best idea as I'm not fond of mixing dark malts and American hops. Sure enough, there was an unpleasant mix of roasted malt and citrus flavours, but the citrus soon faded leaving something drinkable enough.

Tempest had a Brave New World IPA certainly has the bitter, American hop flavour I was expecting. A bit sweet though.

By The Horns Bastard Brag Black IPA again had a harsh roast flavour over a thin body.  Do people really like this sort of thing? Probably. The harshness does mellow but I didn't really get much hops. This beer style is just not for me.

Their Hercules Hold Strong Scotch Ale was more up my street. I was barrel aged, which no doubt is where the slight sourness came from. There was quite a thick body to it, help by the addition of lactose. It was kind of like a chewy Goudenband, so not much like a Scotch Ale if you ask me, but a nice drop all the same.

Tempest's Mexicake Imperial stout had had various flavourings added to it. It was a good full bodied stout but the added vanilla was overdone a tad and the slight hint of chilli was discordant to me, it would be better off without it.

From Siren there was Blacklight Banana Imperial Stout. It was brewed as part of the Rainbow Project, which causes a minor flutter amongst beer geeks online every year but is not something I've ever paid much attention to. The beer represented the colour violet because bananas are violet under UV or something. Anyway, it was slightly smoky, full bodied imperial stout. I didn't really notice much banana thought, but I can't say that concerned me.

Mad Hatter's Return to Madness Imperial IPA. Was as brisk as a volcano on pouring. It was surprisingly dark, with a very fruity smell, thought I didn't get much phenolic flavour as I would have expected due to them using a Belgian yeast. It was way too sweet too, which makes me wonder if it fermented out properly. The claimed ABV is 11% but I wonder if it really got there.

Mad Hatter Schwartzwalder Kirschetorte was named after the German for Black Forest Gateau. It had lots of ingredients, including lactose, thought it was a  bit thinner than I expected, and I didn't get the cherries at all. It tasted like a good stout though, and was nicely balanced.

Siren's Pompelmocello IPA also had added with lactose, which I must admit was a surprise in an IPA. Particularly as the body was very thin, thought its sharp taste might have accentuated that. I wonder how thinner it would have been without the lactose? It was big on the citrus taste but i prefer things with more body.

To confirm I was getting the full craft experience there was also a small can from Northern Monk: Smokin' Bees Imperial Whisky Honey Smoked Porter. It was a big boozy beer. I didn't get any honey, but then that's a delicate flavour and this beer was full on. It was slightly smoky but it worked well and I enjoyed this one. 

Mercer's Meat Stout

Some details of the intriguing Mercer's Meat Stout are mentioned in the latest issue of the Brewery History Society newsletter:

"The Whitbread archive contained an analysis of the Meat Stout. The brew of 80 barrels at 1056°OG contained: one hundred weight and 92 pounds of meat extract, caramel from Boakes, Roberts & Co of London, along with five malts, flaked maize and other sugars. A further 45lbs of extract was added to the fermentation stage"

For those looking to introduce bovril into their brewing I make that 7g/l in the copper and 1.5g/l in the FV, which for a five gallon (23L) batch is nearly 200g (seven ounces) in total.

One foot in Gravesend

For me culture is normally something found in a Petri dish. Though I don't do much microbiology nowadays I occasionally dust off a loop, and I still look back fondly on the time I spent with bacteria. The excitement of finding Salmonella, or acid-fast cells on a slide. The wondrous heamolysis of beta-haemolyic Strepotocci or the many charms of Pseudomonas. The melted wax colony morphology and seagull shape of Campylobacter. The mucoid capsule of a good Klebsiella. I could go on. Delights one and all. But where was I? Oh yes, Gravesend.

Thanks to some friends I occasionally get a dose of high culture and find out that I am not a complete philistine. So it was that I visited Gravesend to see an art exhibition on a lightship. Dead good it was too, Weird mind, but good.

Visiting a new town also provides some prime ticking opportunities, and Gravesend was no exception. Close to a closed pub is The Compass micropub, occupying a site formerly used as a estate agency. I think that makes it a points victory for the forces of righteousness.

Though it's not a micro as some pubs I've been in, it doesn't take many people to fill it up, though there is another room out the back. The beers included Gadd's Dogbolter, a beer I once made myself very ill on when I was a student. Some people may consider of 5.6% ABV or more sessionable but I'm not one of them.

The next pub The Three Daws where I drank mild, but this was no session beer either at 4.9% ABV. It was delicious though, so it's a shame I can't remember who brewed it. Cracking pub too.

We called in at 'Spoons for some food, and had a maudlin drunk latch onto us. Occupational hazard of going to the pub I guess. The poor bloke had suffered tragedy in his life and obviously felt the need to talk about it.

A tactical withdrawal saw us back at The Compass where we got the back room to ourselves. I had a great time visiting Gravesend, catching up with old friends and going to great pubs really does have a lot to recommend it.

Woking beer festival 2016

Seeing as there have been two blog posts  about beer in Woking recently I supposed I'd better pull my finger out and report on this year's beer festival. Despite suffering from senile lightweightism I managed to end up at every session this year: working, judging and just plain drinking.

I've taken to volunteering to work on Friday night as I've enjoyed the festival since it started so I felt ought to give a bit back. The work isn't really hard, but coming at the end of the week and after I'd already done a day's work I must confess my brain was a little slow at times. I didn't drink much as I was driving but a half of Harvey's Old went down well during my break.

On Saturday lunchtime I was back for judging. It was for the South East region ordinary Bitter category. Not the sort of thing you often see beer geeks rave about but if done well they can be very good. And seeing as they'd got through to the final most of these were.

The judging was run in a very professional manner, and panel were almost unanimous in the choice of Alton's Pride as the winner. I was actually the exception, as I'd scored that one second, preferring Tring's entry, but they were both great beers. 

Then in the evening I was back as a punter. This time my choice for beer of the festival Thurston's Horsell Hop did win when CAMRA tallied the votes. Admittedly I may have been a bit biased as I'd helped pick the hops.

But there really is something special about using fresh hops and it seems a lot of other people thought so too. 

Flavour units

Flavour units are in interesting way of giving an indication of the sensory level of a particular flavour unit in beer. Paul Hughes and Denise Baxter discuss them in a chapter in their book Beer: Quality, Safety and Nutritional Aspects.

The flavour unit (FU) is a dimensionless number calculated by the concentration of the flavour compound divided by the sensory threshold. If a compound is present at less than one flavour unit it is below the sensory threshold, if it is present at one to two FUs then it is detectable and if it is present at greater than two FUs it is likely to have a major effect on flavour.

Paul Hughes was one of my lecturers at Heriot-Watt so I have come across flavour units before, though they're certainly not something widedly used in the industry. They sound very useful for describing beer flavour but I suspect that using them involves a lot more work than, for example, simply listing the lab analysis (or more likely calculated) International Bitterness Units (IBU) even though IBUs are a very poor flavour indicator.

Beer flavour is extremely complicated but the provide a handy table of the compounds which sheds some light on it.

Number of flavour units

Greater than two (substantially affect beer flavour)

Most beers

Carbon  dioxide
Ethanol
Iso-alpha-acids

Niche and defective beers*

Modified iso-alpha-acids
Humuladienone
trans-2-Nonenal
Diacetyl/pentanedione
Hydrogen sulphide
Dimethyl sulphide
3-Methyl-2-butene-1-thiol
 Acetic acid
Acetaldehyde
Iron, copper ions

0.5-2 FUs (cause small flavour changes)

Most beers
Isoamyl acetate
Ethyl hexanoate
Isoamyl alcohol
Fatty acids (C6-C10)
Ethyl acetate
Butyric acid
3-Methylbutanoic acid
Phenylacetic acid
Polyphenols
Non-volatile acids
Other hop compounds

Niche and defective beers
Modified iso-alpha-acids
Dimethyl sulphide
Humuladienone
Acetaldehyde
Acetic acid

0.1-0.5 FUs (changes at these levels do not affect beer flavour)

Most beers
2-Phenulethy acetate
3-Methlbutanal
4-Thiapentanal
Acetoin
2-Aminoacetophenone
Gamma-Valerolactone
4-Ethylguaiacol

The complexity of beer is highlighted by the note "compounds present at less than 0.1 FU are considered to account for less than 30% of total beer flavour", which to me still sounds a reasonable about for compounds you're not even close to tasting individually.

The authors conclude the chapter:

"For many beers, bitterness, alcohol and carbon dioxide dominate the sensory profile of beer, and are characters readily perceived by the consumers. Other characters, such as hoppy, fruity/estery, dimethyl sulphide and sulphury, contribute to brand differentiation. Finally, compounds such as diacetyl and aliphatic aldehydes are often indicative of defective beers."

The flavour unit ranking reminds me of George Fix's primary, secondary and tertiary effects, though with a lot more specificity. And though I fully approve of obsessing about all the details when brewing, remember some are more important than others.









* Sounds like a synonym for craft beer, doesn't it?

Back in Amsterdam

Amsterdam is clearly growing on me. After a three year gap between visits it was only three months later that I returned again. It was for another cracking do though: Ron Pattinson's birthday celebration.

I caught up with the Saturday night warm event at Dopey's Elixer, a bar with the feel of a pub. It was a really nice place I'd happily go back to. The others had only been to one place before hand, so I didn't really have to play catch up. In fact the drinking was so sedate me and John Clarke that went on to the Wildeman for more afterwards.

That's Ron's famous brother sitting at the bar

The main event kicked off at noon on Sunday at the Butcher's Tears brewery.

Starting this early was a bit of a concern. Several recreations of historic beers, previously brewed on Ron's birthday were laid on, and they started at ESB strength and worked up from that. The delightful Dolores had put on a good spread though, and having some food to soak it up defintely helped.

There was quite an international contingent, and meeting people from various countries once again reminded me how much of European culture we miss out on being on an island. It was American that impressed me the most though. Paul Langlie had a ring that worked as a bottle opener.

How cool is that?

And very impressively someone else that sounded American, whose name now escapes me but must be living locally, cycled up with a small keg of beer in his rucksack and started serving it. In fact come to think of it I'm sure he was opening a brewery soon so he's definitely one to watch out for. Once I'm reminded who is he is.

I also got to meet Roel Mulder who I'd exchanged some emails with when I was writing up the Carnivale Brettanomyces talks for the IBD magazine.

And there was a DJ that even played some Hawkwind at one point. It doesn't get much better than that. Eventually there was a bit of wandering on which didn't go entirely to plan due to things being shut on Sunday. It was probably best to have a break though, as I ended up drinking jenever with John and the Langlies at about midnight. Just the one mind, it had been a long day.

Top 10 Beer Blogs

Back when I were a lad, and where twitter is was all fields, there was a blog ranking site called Wikio. I didn't really get what the point of blog ranking was, but it seemed popular with my fellow beer nerds, and anything that links to my site sounds good to me, so I signed up.


I had no idea how they worked out the ranking, and sometimes they changed it anyway, causing abrupt changes in position out of proportion to any changes made to the blog. This didn't go down well with people who'd seen their rank fall and interest in the ranking system declined. The site was then re-branded as ebuzzing before even the people behind it had had enough and gave up the ghost. I was never that taken with it anyway (no, I never made the top 20).

I was however interested by a recent email about a new beer blog ranking site. Now you may think it's another random and arbitrary selection, hurriedly made up by someone with little understanding of beer culture. But you would be completely wrong: I'm in the top 10. Admittedly, the list only goes down to 10, and the selection does seem a little odd, but it's clearly a highly significant and objective ranking that absolutely accurately reflects the importance of this blog and gives it the recognition it deserves.