Category Archives: CAMRA

KeyKeg, KeyCask, and what is “Real Ale” anyway?

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CLICK HERE FOR AN UPDATE – 2013-02-28

Key Cask © KeyKegWhat is “KeyCask“? Last year I had it from the manufacturer that “KegKeg”[1] and “KeyCask” are the same thing, the assumption on my part being that the latter is merely a re-branding to make it less contentious amongst cask ale drinkers. To quote KeyKeg’s tweeted response to me:

“KeyKeg = KeyCask. KeyKeg is perfectly suited for Real Ale. CAMRA acknowledged this. KeyKegs for Ale will be branded as KeyCasks.” (20th Aug 2012)

On the other hand a CAMRA internal post on the matter states:

“In KeyCask the bladder is made from a semi-permeable material to allow reaction of the beer with oxygen.” (23rd May 2012 — CAMRA login required I’m afraid.)

In essence there is some confusion on the subject — and several Twitter conversations I have had over the last few months imply I’m not the only one who is uncertain. The only relevant information I can find on the KeyKeg website states “Special laminated inner bag for Ale” — does “special” mean “oxygen permeable”? Meanwhile the KeyKeg online shop lists just KeyKeg as an option for purchase, but perhaps the elusive KeyCask is only available wholesale?

I have no clear confirmation one way or the other on this one. I have sent the KeyKeg folk an email asking if they can provide any further information on the subject.

Update 2013-02-28

Now here we have it, lifted straight from a Lightweight Containers newsletter:

The KeyCask has now become a full-fledged member of the KeyKeg family. Several English and German ale brewers have opted to fill their ales in KeyCasks. With the exception of the name and the instructions on the packaging, the KeyCask is still identical to the KeyKeg – for now.

However, the Lightweight Containers R&D department is continually testing new types of inner bags for the KeyCask. If a different type of inner bag may turn out to perform even better for particular ales, it will be installed instead. For the time being, ale brewers are completely satisfied with KeyCasks. They keep the ales fresher for much longer, which suddenly means that ales can be exported.

Read on for the original KeyKeg/KeyCask oxygen WTF-confusion… but really there is no need, as it was just that: confusion. KeyKeg = KeyCask (“for now”) and for the life of me I can’t imagine why this shouldn’t be the case. If, for example, beer racked off “bright” to a poly can be served at a festival as “real ale” (it can) then KeyKeg is certainly no different. Better yet you do have the option of conditioning in KeyKeg, I spoke to Batemans brewery folk at Craft Beer Rising last weekend and they said they had been experimenting with this with definite success. I don’t think KeyKeg is always the ideal solution — but it seems like a good option for pubs with lower turnover or pubs that’d like to put something a bit stronger on that may not sell fast enough to make a 9g cask a good idea. There’s also factors of reduced transport weight and no need for container return. Anyway, more on that another time… perhaps.

However the debate doesn’t stop there — exactly why must the bladder be “semi-permeable” in the first place, why does this matter?

The CAMRA internal post on the subject has a short comment thread attached that asks some pertinent questions:

“Could do with a bit more detail here. For example: the difference between a keykeg and a keycask how to prevent one being passed off as the other what are the venting difficulties? Is there a technical report I can see?” — Peter Alexander (23rd May 2012)

From the perspective of a CAMRA volunteer running beer festivals this is a somewhat important question. Regardless of my personal views on cask/keg I want to work within the rules when running a CAMRA festival. If there is a real difference and CAMRA really only approves of one of them then us festival buyers/organisers need to know how to tell which is which. However Hardknott brewer David Bailey then asks:

“Not sure why semi-permeable bags are needed. Why do we want beer to come into contact with oxygen? Oxygen makes beer go off, not improve it. What is the problem with beer that is conditioned in the container from which it is dispensed and dispensed without any contact with extranious gas?” — David Bailey (24rd May 2012)

This was my initial reaction on hearing about the whole semi-permeable/oxygen issue. I don’t remember seeing a CAMRA definition for “real ale” that says it needs to come into contact with oxygen. The primary online CAMRA definition of “real ale” makes no mention of oxygen — then again it is pretty useless in any technical sense. All we can really garner from this definition is that secondary fermentation in cask/bottle/final-container-of-your-choice is the important part — making it “living” beer.[2]

With tank-conditioned beer going into cask near-bright for speedy pub sale being not uncommon I wonder if any of these definitions hold up in practice. Can you tell if a cask breather is being used, or if the cask ale you’re drinking was tank-conditioned and racked off near bright? What if it was tank-conditioned with injected CO² — does cylinder CO² taste different to that farted out by yeast? No. Pubs are excluded from the Good Beer Guide if they’re known to use cask breathers — even though others who do use them are often in there. (How many CAMRA branches ask their GBG pubs to confirm they never use breathers — how do they ever know for certain?) If pubs start using KeyCask then things get murkier still because even fewer branches are going to understand these newfangled devices or whether they’re being used correctly within the definition of “real ale”.

What we need if we’re to pursue “real ale” realistically are guidelines that normal people can read and understand. Ignore the container, ignore everything up until the point that you have a drinking receptacle full of beer in your hand, and from there beer in your mouth. People who like traditional beer can then rate it on their perception of carbonation level, temperature, flavour and overall quality — which is JUST AS IT IS CURRENTLY DONE in practice. But then the waters get muddied by all these borderline technicalities that have little to do with the quality of the beer.

The “definition” of “real ale” we have is inadequate, and unmeasurable in any case. It is little better than “craft beer”. What is “real ale”: “I knows it when I sees it!” — no, you just think you do.

[1] For the unaware, what KeyKeg/Cask is is essentially a “bag inside a ball“, the foiled bag contains the beer and the polycarbonate ball holds everything together under pressure. This all comes in a neat cardboard enclosure to hold it upright. You need a KeyKeg coupler to connect this up to a dispense system — as with any other keg. Typically you get beer out of the keg by introducing gas (CO² or pressurised air) between the ball and the bag, thus squeezing the beer out of the bag. Alternatively you could suck beer out of the bag with a straw if you’re desperate — or a proper hand-pump will do the trick too. Leave the air inlet on the coupler open, and the beer engine will happily pump beer out of the bag. I’ve successfully hooked beer engines up to KeyKegs at a beer festival, it works pretty well.

[2] The published “What is Real Ale” page leaves a lot to be desired. Not only is its definition of “real ale” of little technical value it makes other brash inaccurate statements, which you could call “lies” I guess: “Brewery-conditioned, or keg, beer has a longer shelf life as it is not a living product.” That’s a mean & misleading thing to be telling the general drinking public. Firstly I know of “brewery conditioned” beer that goes into cask as a “living product” so this term is not a synonym for “keg”. Secondly I know of “keg” beer that is unfiltered and unpasteurised and tastes incredibly good. Beer does not exist in a black and white world of “cask” and “keg”, as much as CAMRA policy continues to espouse the idea that it does. And “Why isn’t all beer real?” — seriously? *goesforapintofunrealbeer*. Sometimes I’m vaguely ashamed to be a CAMRA member, let alone an active one.

Drink Moor Beer — Letchworth Beer of the Festival Presentation

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In November 2012 Kathlene and I had the privilege to form a tiny delegation from North Hertfordshire CAMRA to visit the Moor Beer Company in Somerset. The purpose of our visit: to present the “Beer of the Festival” award won by their beer Revival at the 2012 Letchworth Beer and Cider festival. As reported in the previous edition of Pints of View this is a light golden and hoppy beer at 3.8% ABV. Revival was notable from the moment I first broached the cask to be rewarded by a burst of intense aroma, it was like breathing hops. The beer won the festival by popular vote, obtaining twice the number of votes of the runners up.

When you see the owl, you're there.

When you see the owl, you’re there.

Given that Somerset is a bit of a trek from North Hertfordshire we arranged to visit the brewery on a Saturday and stay overnight in a nearby inn recommended by the brewery’s owner and head brewer, Justin Hawke. After checking into the inn we continued on to the brewery… and drove straight past the small side-road it’s on. Returning back eastwards we spotted the correct turn, there was a large road sign visible from the west but no matching sign to be seen from the east. Tricky! We were soon outside a large green farm shed, a wooden owl on a bicycle wheel atop, and us knocking on the brewery door.

The wall-of-awards

The wall-of-awards

We were ushered to a corner to admire Moor’s wall of awards to keep us out of the way at first. A yeast transfer was taking place at the time and you need to be careful with your yeast! This gave us a good opportunity to study our surrounds. Moor is a typical example of a working brewery, all serious concrete and stainless steel. There is a scattering of pallets, boxes, kegs, and one luxury-item: a bottling machine. The yeast was soon safely dealt with and we were able to get the business of the award presentation and photography out of the way. We were then able to enjoy a few beer samples and have a good discussion with Justin, his staff, and a couple of local visitors. The topic, unsurprisingly, was beer — but in particular Justin’s strongly held views on matter of good beer.

Justin prefers to make, sell, and drink what he calls natural beer and doesn’t like using finings in his cask ales. These “finings” we’re talking about here are a chemical substance derived from certain types of fish which is added to cask ales to help them clear faster and brighter. The action of finings is to make yeast in the beer clump up and sink to the bottom of the barrel. The primary problem most people have with finings is that their use makes cask ale unacceptable to strict vegetarians. However Justin doesn’t believe leaving finings out is good only for vegetarians, but that it also makes the beer more flavoursome and enjoyable. Flavour components, especially hop oils, stick to small particles that are pulled down to the bottom of the barrel and thus out of your pint of beer. I have heard others counter that the haze can also carry undesirable flavours and I suspect that this is an argument that could go on for quite some time. At the end of the day the truth is in the mouth of the beer drinker.

I tasted Justin’s cask ales in unfined-form at our excellent inn, the Queen’s Arms in Cortham Denham, and can very much say that the ale was in incredibly fine form. There was a slight haze to the beer, enough to put a frown on the face of many cask ale drinkers even though the beer tastes perfectly good. This, I think, is where the battle-lines lie for unfined ales: the culture of cask ale is one where a beer will not usually be considered perfect unless it is crystal-clear. This may change over time as awareness grows, it may also be aided by the growing popularity of more heavily hopped IPAs. These strong and very hoppy ales tend to carry a “hop haze” irrespective of whether they’re fined or not.

Only time will tell on the matter of whether unfined cask ales will gain a wide acceptance in the UK. Personally I hope they do, both for the sake of my vegetarian friends and also for the simple fact that Justin’s ales do taste incredibly good. The cask of Revival we had at the Letchworth Beer Festival was fined we believe, we will certainly try to have Moor beers at future beer festivals and when this happens the beers will be unfined. You see, Justin used his last finings in December 2012 and from January 2013 all Moor beer will be unfined. You can read more about Moor Beer Company, their beers, and their stance on finings on the brewery’s website: http://moorbeer.co.uk/

I’ll leave you where I started, with Moor Brewing Co’s very fitting slogan:
“Drink Moor Beer!”

Us with the Moor team

L-R: Richard Cann (Asst. Brewer), Tom Scrancher (Asst. Brewer), Justin Hawke (Owner & Brewer), Yvan & Kathlene (N.Herts Committee), Mike Cable (Asst. Brewer), and Fred Wilde (West Country Ales)

Bottled Moor beers are available online through West Country Ales, who have a shop-front in the picturesque Cheddar Gorge. Fred Wilde, shop owner, was at the presentation and we visited his shop the next day to find a great selection of beers. Beaut Cheddar cheddar from across the road, and great west country ale… perfect. You can order Moor beers online here: http://www.westcountryales.co.uk/ — follow Fred on Twitter: @westcountryales.

If you run a pub or beer festival, we bought our Moor “Revival” from one of London’s newer beer distribution companies: Liberty Beer, they don’t currently have any regular deliveries within Hertfordshire but may be able to arrange something for you if you get in touch: http://libertybeer.co.uk/ — they’re on Twitter too: @liberty_beer.

Finally — this write-up was created as a North Hertfordshire CAMRA contribution to the Feb/Mar edition of Hertfordshire’s “Pints of View” newsletter, find it in your local Hertfordshire pub or online here: http://www.hertsale.org.uk/?newsletter

 

The Murky World of Rating Beer

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Rating beer can be a rather personal thing for both the rater and the ratee. I’d suggest that breweries try not to pay too much attention to individual beer ratings, that way far too much angst lies!

I live with two different rating systems. First there is CAMRA NBSS. This is used by most of us CAMRA geeks/branches to pick pubs for the Good Beer Guide. Importantly it is a rating of the condition of the beer, not the beer itself. We’re rating the pub’s ability to keep and serve the stuff, not the brewery. (Sometimes the brewery is responsible for beer being in bad nick, but in this case the pub shouldn’t serve it!) Personally I find it difficult to judge a 4 from a 5 in NBSS terms… the level of technical “perfection” is pretty high already at this stage and 3 is already pretty good as it is. I expect that I and others often let personal beer preferences & general mood and atmosphere determine the difference sometimes.

NBSS is the first “beer rating” scale I ever really used. Nowdays I use Untappd far more often though. My NBSS scale of rating has bled through to this, but judging on a scale of “preference” (subjective) rather than “condition” (objective). I’ve copped a little flack a couple of times from brewers I know who think I’m saying their excellent beer is a bit “average”. I use Untappd mainly as a personal record of beer with the primary purpose of ratings being to record whether or not I think a beer is worth trying or buying again. Importantly, in the way I use it, anything from 3 starts to 5 starts is “good to perfect”.

This is my attempt to explain how I use Untappd ratings:

  • (0) — (Not sure this exists as a counted rating) Not rating this beer, either I’ve had too many or I can’t be assed. Also in the case where I think the beer condition is flawed at point of sale or I think the bottle/cask is broken/infected in some way.
  • ★ — “Yuck!” — Pretty awful. Covers drainpour through to just barely drinkable. Leaves a lasting negative impression, will probably never touch the stuff again. I try to avoid giving this if I think there is a technical flaw along the lines of infection or keeping.
  • ★★ — “OK” — Good beer, about average. I’ll be quite happy to finish my pint. I’d not order another one immediately if there was something I know to be better available or something I hadn’t tried before, but I’d have another without complaint. If a bottled beer then I’d probably not buy it again. Whether or not I should buy a beer again in the future is one of the reasons I bother with ratings.
  • ★★★ — “Nice” — Very good beer. I’ll probably have another immediately. I’ll definitely buy again. Most beer I buy is “very good” in my experience, but I tend to be an “informed purchaser”. Normal British cask ales are unlikely to score higher than this, even if I think they’re perfect for style. If I give imperials/etc a 3 then I probably do think they’re a bit average. It all depends on the beer.
  • ★★★★ — ”Wow” — there is something special about this beer. It pushes past normal boundaries of flavour. It tickles my tastebuds in exciting ways. I may have to buy a case.
  • ★★★★★ — ”Oh, fucking hell, this is fucking amazing!” — As good as the beer experience gets for me. Extremely unlikely to be given to anything that doesn’t have “imperial” in its name. That’s just the way I roll.

So, there you have it. Don’t be offended if I think your beer is a ★★★ this probably means I think it is perfect.

Amusingly it appears to me that just about every beer in the world scores between 3.5 and 4 starts on Untappd.

As a resource for researching beer I find Rate Beer much more useful and worth paying attention to than any other similar resource online. Its aggregate scoring is one of the best beer-picking resources on the web IMO. They seem to use decent analysis & statistical methods to turn “ratings” into good rankings by style. But I don’t have the time for the level of detail Rate Beer entails to be a direct user of the system.

GBBF 2012

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It sounds a bit silly, but the Great British Beer Festival for me is usually mostly about the foreign beers. Nothing else in the UK can match GBBF for volume & variety of imported beer in one place. However this year I drank far more British cask beer than imports. A combination of the people I was hanging out with and the amount of time I was at the festival. If you’re at the GBBF from near opening until last orders drinking nothing but “Imperial” beers — hop bombs or lucious stouts — is going to kill your palate & also your ability to stand upright. So, my GBBF 2012: all about great cask ale. (But I did sneak in some stunning imported beers of course!)

The British do love a good queue!

The British do love a good queue!

I always come prepared with a list of preselected beers. I also always end up wildly departing from this almost immediately & just “go for it” circulating through the bars. This seems to be a common pattern amongst festival-goers I meet. It didn’t help that this year the spreadsheet I generated from the GBBF website was missing the entire Champion Beer of Britain bar! I find the GBBF website effort is a bit half-arsed really. Pretty — but not functional. Clearly a project managed by marketing folk not quite clued up on modern website usability & functionality. (A common CAMRA online–experience situation.)

I showed up at around 14:30 on Tuesday to attend the trade session with a fellow North Hertfordshire CAMRA committee friend. The trade session has practical uses, the main one being meeting brewers to discuss how we can get hold of interesting beers for our beer festivals. There are a lot more people present that you’re likely to know too, which makes for a more enjoyable day. Wandering around bumping into people I’ve not seen for a couple of years, or who I see every week (local pub landlords for example), and even who I’ve never met before but “know” on twitter — all sharing a common interest: beer!

I’m going to split some of my verbose GBBF thoughts into two additional posts:

Outside of those arenas I’ll add that I love Olympia as the GBBF venue. So much more open and airy than Earls Court. I’ve only known GBBF at Earls Court until now and always considered it a rather ugly venue for the event — all concrete with dingy corners, it felt like a beer festival in a multi-story car park (an analogy I’m stealing from Dom of the Devonshire Arms in Cambridge, he described it this way and I immediately thought “yes, that’s it exactly“).

More Olympia in future please!

More Olympia in future please!

The value of attending the GBBF is called into question every year. Why go, queue up, deal with manky glassware, pay to get in, etc. London is turning into such a hive of craft beer venues that you could make better use of your trip to the city perhaps? If it is a big trip to get to London then I’d suggest: do both! There is plenty of value in the GBBF — you’ll find rare foreign brews otherwise not available, and (to counter the door charge) the prices are pretty damn good, especially on the bottles. Generally if you pick the right times queues don’t seem to be a problem. As for the glasses — you can swap for clean ones whenever you like. No need to rinse out in the loos! (Yes, I saw this happening.) Beer-ticking aside, there is also value in having the sheer range of cask ales there in one place. If you buy cask ale for pubs or festivals then this (along with Peterborough Beer Festival and the National Winter Ale Festival) is one of the best research opportunities of the year. You’re also more likely to meet and talk to useful people in the beer industry at GBBF (and not just at the trade session), meeting people & forging sales links is part of why they’re there.

This GBBF — with everything well managed and on hand-pump — didn’t seem to suffer from the usual beer festival quality issues. I do still hear a lot of reports of flat/tired beer, maybe my experience this year was skewed as I was there on Tuesday and Wednesday? The least-good condition beers I sampled were actually from the brewery bars, interesting in that you’d consider them to have more riding on serving their own beer in the best condition!

Well, that’s my 2p worth anyway. I almost skipped GBBF this year, in retrospect I’m mighty glad that I didn’t. I expect I will certainly go again. Apologies for being unfashionably pro-GBBF.

Project Venus, Sugar and Spice

Project Venus, Sugar and Spice

Cheers!

GBBF 2012 — Great Beer

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Now, I’d be lying if I claimed all beer at GBBF was “great” — there certainly are a lot of rather dull beers. The fact that Greene King IPA is even allowed in the room makes me sad. Then again, there are people who like the stuff — does that justify it? Sorry, I’m going to say “no” and that I think these people are wrong & broken. Just as I think people who like McDonald’s are broken, and the list can go on.  May as well let Molson Coors run a Carling bar in the festival. I had a handful of “dull” beers, but only one that I thought was “broken” — rotten egg gas & TCP just doesn’t belong in a 3.8% light brown English bitter. That’s all I’ll say about not-great beer, on with the great!

I did my best to “untappd” all my beers at the festival, though did end up having to catch-up a few the following days. The great advantage of this is I have a good record of what I drank and even the occasional note if there was something distinctive about it. One clear fact is that this year GBBF was actually a “real ale” festival for me, with a peppering of foreigners sneaking in. This resulted from the combination of the company I was keeping for most of the festival, and a current “research” interest in the cask ales — I’m buying for the Letchworth Beer Festival this year (as I did last year). This “research” was productive, I ended up dumping a couple of beers from the list because I thought they just weren’t up to scratch, and adding a couple because they really did stand out (or I met the brewer — it helps!)

My notable beers of the festival, in order of imbibance, were:

Sandstone, Edge

My first Sandstone beer. After following the ever critical & acerbic James B on twitter for some time I’m glad I’ve finally had a chance to try his beer, and that it was good! I do hope I get a chance to try some more sometime. I’ve tried to find a source for our beer festivals but no luck, so far… short of driving it myself. (I like Wales, so it is definitely an option.)

Sandstone Edge

Sandstone Edge

Strands, T’ Errmmm-inator

A beer and a memory! On my Hardknott beer collection trips to Cumbria I normally stop up there for a couple of days of hillwalking. One March (last year I think) we camped at Wasdale Head and did a great Scafell loop. However the night was too cold, it hit -7C, too cold for me even (need better sleeping bags). Thus we spent the next two nights in Nether Wasdale, at the Strands Inn. Home of the T’Errmmm-inator. It was a great place. Hearty food of excellent quality and a great range of beer brewed on-site. The owners and the brewer, especially, were good for a chat too. I liked it so much I blogged it.

The beer was as good as the memory. A rich & unctuous stout.

Stone, Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale

I now think of this as Pete-beer. Nothing sets in the memory like the landlord of one of your favourite pubs rubbing your freshly shaved head.

This was on cask, and to be honest I don’t think it was better off for it. Thick, rich, sticky – it needed to be colder, and possibly fizzier.

Still a bloody fantastic beer though. If I didn’t know it in its usual form I’d not be complaining at all.

Daniel Thwaites Brewery, 13 Guns

Hey, the big(ger) guys are catching on… maybe it is just because Punk IPA is being brewed at the brewery, or perhaps it is just the sands of time. This is a really good IPA offering. Fresh and hoppy, and crisp in what I’m thinking of as the “UKIPA” style.

I tried this both with and without sparkler and in my opinion the sparkler did it no good at all. The beer felt and tasted kind of “squashed”.

Thwaites, 13 Guns

Thwaites, 13 Guns

Project Venus, Sugar And Spice

A “research beer” as I have it on my Letchworth Beer Festival list. Overall I recall ginger being dominant, and the beer being a little “rough around the edges”. But I think that given another month and a half it might smooth out. I certainly look forward to finding out. Enjoyable ale and firmly staying on my list.

I’ve been following the Project Venus beers since the start. I haven’t managed to try all of them, but I’ve had most. I ensured we had two previous ones at our festivals but I think my favourite has been the Venus Jade which I found in a local pub.

Stone & Wood, Pacific Ale

Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Well, I just had to try something from “home” (even if it is the wrong side of the country). Came through very pineapple-y and a tad thin. I took a bottle home and it was much better (less thin) in isolation, but still tasted a bit like those pineapple sweets.

Stone & Wood, Pacific Ale

Stone & Wood, Pacific Ale

Ska Brewing, Decadent Imperial IPA

I was chatting to the brewer… so I just had to, didn’t I. Pity it was a 650ml bomber and I had to drink the lot! (Me being “between friends” at that stage, and the Ska Brewing dude being well stocked already.)

This is, in my limited experience, your typical US-DIPA — loads of caramel “balanced” (countered?) with loads of hops. It works. This is a great example of it working. However, I expect that I, with my not-really-at-all-sweet-tooth, will just never appreciate heavy use of crystal malt.

I find the strong UK-IPAs coming out at the moment are generally avoiding this heavy caramel. We’re seeing more crisp, dry, and sometimes even white-wine vinous finishes to strong IPAs here. Personally I think we’re better off for it.

Ilkley Brewery Co., Siberia Rhubarb Saison

Cask! Finally! I first tried this at Melissa Cole & Mark Poynton’s beer-and-food matched degaustation at Alimentum in Cambridge. I loved it on the night and promptly ordered 12 bottled from Beer Ritz. The bottles were a little disappointing, but only due to them having far too much condition. We’ve enjoyed them regardless and even used a few for a very tasty beer-and-beetroot punch!

On cask at GBBF this beer was at its best. A word: sublime.

Ilkley, Siberia

Ilkley, Siberia

Brains, Barry Island IPA

Another larger brewery (albeit their new “craft” brewery) with a UKIPA! And another good one too. Nothing in your face, very well balanced. I’ve not really rated Brains as being of much interested until now… but I’ll be looking out for their “craft” productions in future. This particular ale is highly repeatable (perhaps a little too repeatable for the ABV).

This was another for the sparkler challenge. In this case the beer was better WITH the sparkler.

Gasthaus-Brauerei Braustelle, Cedarwood Alt

Close your eyes. Conjure up a scent — the scent of sawing through a pine sleeper. That is the dominant flavour in this beer. It is incredibly odd, yet intriguing. I’d probably not be able to handle more than a pint, but I can see some amazing uses for something like this in food pairings!

Brouwerij De Molen, Rasputin Speyside Oak Aged

OMG! Always a favourite. This is MY style of beer. Imperial Stout in Wood.

Rasputin in Wood!

Rasputin in Wood!

Brains, Weiss Weiss Baby

Most memorable name of the festival? Alas the beer didn’t work well either with or without sparkler. The girl who served me said it was really designed to be on keg. Yes, I think this is what the beer needed. Otherwise it was just kind of flat and thick. I want to find it on keg now.

The Durham Brewery, White Stout

If a stout can be a black IPA then an IPA can be a white stout!

This seems to be a pretty decent example of what I think of as a UK-IPA/Brit-IPA. The rave reviews I’ve heard are not far wrong, it is a good beer. Rich and far more hop-forward on cask than the bottle I had a couple of months ago. I found the bottled version I’ve had just a tad on the cloying side.

Bierbrouwerij Emelisse, Imperial Russian Stout

A fitting end to GBBF! I just wish I’d not missed the whisky cask versions.

Beer, Beer, Beer!

 

 

 

GBBF 2012 — Great People

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Don't forget the horses!

Don’t forget the horses!

Great Beer & Great People: complimentary ingredients. There is nothing more sad than drinking a beer alone, and nothing more dull than a gathering of people sans beer. Hyperbole aside, GBBF is generally a very friendly and happy festival I find, compared to some others I know well. I’m not sure what the magic ingredient is — perhaps the sheer size of the thing is important? Anyway, here’s a run–down of some great “people” moments at GBBF 2012.

Cheers!

Every time a glass is dropped a great cheer goes up. It’s a beer festival classic.

Accomplices

The people you go to the beer festival with. They’re half the motivation for going all the way to London. The prospect of hanging around the festival is much more pleasant if you know you’ll have friends present. Alas this year Kat was unwell… but my fellow North Herts CAMRA committee cronies were going to be in attendance — sorted! Attending the festival as a CAMRA group isn’t as dreadful some folk would think. We’re not talking the “beardy weirdy” stereotypes.

On Tuesday I attended with one fellow committee member who’s a multinational engineering wheeler-dealer in the telco — Andy has run the North Herts festivals for years now, and is also the proprietor of one of the branch’s best pubs (the Our Mutual Friend in Stevenage). On Wednesday Matt Williams (another “young” 30ish committee member like myself, current festivals organiser) and a friend were my core company — and we bumped into a couple of other North Herts friends from time to time as well. Not a single beard between us… though some may rightly consider my festive mohican haircut quite weird.

Winners

It’s always great talking to brewers about their winning beers. Whether or not they’re CAMRA fans I find brewers are always appreciative of a bit of public recognition for their hard work.

A GBBF 2012 highlight for me was chatting to Bob from Son of Sid brewery — who was bubbling over with joy at having won bronze in the mild category for Muck Cart Mild. A great chap who’s genuinely enthusiastic about beer and brewing. Modern punk-type beer snobs knock milds, and anything even vaguely traditional… I feel sorry for them. Despite the none too alluring name, Muck Cart is excellent and I’ll make a point of trying to get hold of some for our next beer festival.

Brewers

I was lucky enough to bump into “Hardknott Alex“ — the new(ish) face at one of my favourite breweries (Hardknott… duh). We met supping foreign beers at the German / Eastern Europe bar. Heathens! A long, twisty, and fun conversation about brewing, CAMRA (the good, the bad, and the ugly), and beer ensured.

Alex introduced me to his accomplice MattAdam (oops!) from the Derby Arms (nowhere near Derby, but conveniently en-route to Hardknott). It sounds like a right brilliant pub and I think I’ll be staying there on one of my fairly regular trips to the area. See, GBBF: constructive, not just a drink-a-thon.

Landlords

Drinking with Pete — landlord from the Live & Let Live in Cambridge. He’s a “Black IPA” fiend, blacker & more hops seems to be his mantra when it comes to beer. In his pub you’ll usually find some of Oakham’s best beers – be it Green Devil or a darker form of the  IPA art. Pete was kind of smashed… no surprise, he’d been drinking pints of Stone’s Sublimely Self Righteous black IPA — weighing in at 8.7%. I duly had a half-pint myself, beautiful stuff. I think it’d have been better in keg format though. I tend to find the cask US beers are just a bit too cloying and work better (for me) to be served at a cooler temperature, probably with a little more fizz.

US Imports

Free Beer!

Free Beer!

Meeting the brewer from Ska Brewery. Brilliant brewery name! Terrible flash/noisy website. I’ve forgotten the dude’s name alas, but it was good chatting with him about the differences between British and US IPAs. He’s keen to sell his beers to the UK market — I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing them over here a bit. From all the good reports I’ve heard about his visit & reception in London on the grapevine I expect there may be some interest. I kind of accidentally ended up with a whole pint of his 10% Imperial IPA - Decadent. Ah well… beaut stuff though. Just a tad too much caramel for me, as is my usual complaint for strong US IPAs. I picked up some bottles of Ska Brewery beers to take-home the next day… tucking into one right now!

Before heading on his way he handed me a few beer tokens :) Can’t complain!

New & Old Twitter Acquaintences

Tapping a dude on the shoulder to ask where he got his t–shirt. It was a Weird Beard Brew Co shirt, of interest to me as I’ve been following Bryan Spooner on twitter ever since meeting him at the 1st Brewdog AGM. Bryan & another bloke called Greg Irwin are working on getting a new craft brewery going in London. The chap I tapped on the shoulder was Greg. I sat with Bryan, Greg, and Andy Parker (and their respective GBBF accomplices) for the remainder of the evening. Buggered if I can remember much of the conversation though, I think the strong American brews were getting to my head! (Good thing my hotel was 50 meters from the entrance.)

Bumping into Tony - another 1st-wave BrewDog shareholder who I’d not seen since that first AGM. He’s a fellow techie who used to work up Glasgow way but has now moved to London. So hope to catch up again sometime — probably in a “craft beer” establishment! :) [We did in fact, not long after at Brodie's #witterfest!]

Bar Staff

An eclectic collection of folk work behind the GBBF bars; from festival organisers, through CAMRA volunteers, to brewery employees. They’re all doing a great job. Some get a bit grumpy, but what would a beer festival be without a grumpy volunteer or two. They’re not being paid to be there so I try to cut them some slack.

I tend to find the brewery bar staff the most interesting, most of them will have brewers present from time to time and all are happy to talk about their beer (and listen to polite criticism!) I found the Thwaites and Brains bars particularly friendly and helpful this year (they also had the best brewery-bar beer IMO).

One of the bars this year was tweeting, this definitely added some character to the GBBF twitter presence! The bloke running it, Ben, was wearing some sort of weird drag outfit… I never did find out what the story behind that was (assuming there is one!)

The Rest

If I’ve left someone out then it is through befuddled memory! So many excellent folk, such a mixed crowd, and a super-friendly atmosphere. It was grand!

Even the live music was excellent!
(No, not the bloody Skinner’s band…)

Stop The Beer Duty Escalator – Hobgoblin Petition & EDM 2785

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I’ve got myself caught up in the seemingly futile battle against the UK Government’s continuing attack on humble beer. The attack seems to be based on the premise that making beer more expensive (i.e. adding more tax to it) will help cover the cost of the ills it does to society. In my mind there are many things wrong with this argument, they have been well addressed by Pete Brown (and here) and CAMRA has some input too, so I won’t repeat here. Today is budget day I’m pretty certain nobody interested in this issue was waiting with baited breath for Osborne to get to the the the matter of beer duty, as expected beer duty will escalate yet again. This is no reason to stop trying – there is always the next budget.

I’ve signed the “Stop The Beer Duty Escalator” petition and emailed my MP asking him to support EDM 2785. Maybe you should too? I’ve even bought some of the Hobgoblin posters promoting the campaign, which I’m distributing to some of my local pubs.

I personalised my email to my MP, Peter Lilley, this is what I wrote:

Dear Mr Lilley,

I’m a local CAMRA member, beer drinker, and regular at a few of my local pubs in Hitchin. Some of the pubs in my area are having trouble, some have shut down, they’re squeezed from so many directions that life is becoming more difficult for landlords by the day.

I do not – nor have the time to – understand all the details about the beer duty escalator or the EDM in question, but I trust CAMRA and the wider beer industry’s advice that supporting EDM 2785 is a good thing for our pubs.

As an Australian living in the UK (I’ve been resident here for about 6 years) I feel compelled to support the British “local”. It is something unique and worth taking care of – a community hub, a place to meet people (it is in local pubs that my OH and I have met most of our non-work community of friends), even a place for business & professional networking. Good pub goers can do their best to help their locals by using them – “use it or loose it” has become a common mantra, but people can only sensibly drink so much and really are being driven out by the cost of a pint.

I’m a full time employee in a professional industry so the cost doesn’t bother me too much personally, but most of the locals keeping my favourite local pub alive are labourers, van drivers, etc, or retired – many of them are earning less now than they were 4 years ago. The price of a pint in my local has gone up 60p since we’ve been in town (less than 4 years) and some people really have stopped drinking in the pub as a result. This doesn’t mean they have stopped drinking, in fact I met one of them the other day drinking a can of lager in a nearby park. He wasn’t drunk, it was his first drink of the evening, he had picked it up for 60p from the supermarket to get one in before going to the pub because he could only afford a couple of pints at pub prices (£3.20+). EDM 2785 won’t reduce this price, but it might mean that folk like this will keep drinking a couple of pints with their friends at their local rather than resorting to supermarket beer (or worse) at home – or in the park for that matter. This helps keep the local alive so that both they and I can continue to enjoy the facility it provides.

All the best,
Yvan Seth

The story about the bloke in the park is not made up – this sort of thing is REALLY HAPPENING. The bloke in question, who I don’t know all that well, is a pretty sensible drinker from what I’ve seen. He has a few pints while playing his darts then heads home. Though I haven’t seen much of him lately, a loss for the pub in my opinion.

The day after I sent the message above I received this response

Thank you for contacting Peter Lilley. Mr Lilley understands your concerns on this mattter and has already taken up the issues raised on behalf of other consstituents of his and will be in touch as soon as he receives a reply. However, the Deputy Speaker has warned Members that Early Day Motions are in danger of losing all credibility as they are being signed indiscriminately. Mr Lilley, therefore, makes it his practice to sign only those which relate specifically to his constituency or with which he has been personally involved.

Regards

Fiona Parker
Constituency Secretary to the Rt Hon Peter Lilley MP

This is pretty much exactly the same as what I saw published as a response from Peter Lilley [pdf - page 2] in our local CAMRA newsletter around budget time last year. (Except in my case they appear to have not bothered with the spell checker.) I only found the Pints of View reference because I did a search about the issue of EDMs loosing their credibility, our local newsletter was the top link. I’m wondering how credible the issue of them loosing their credibility is? Are they actually credible anyway? I don’t know… I’m new to UK politics.

I worry that Peter probably doesn’t really care much about pushing anything but his own personal agenda. He holds an extremely safe seat and from what I’ve seen barely bothers to campaign at election time – I’m not sure how these things work, but it looks like the seat was specifically created for him. Anyway, Peter Lilley’s recent EDM activity is mostly concerned with euthanasia and immigration/border control – though I’m glad to see signed the Fish Fight EDM (probably just for the PR I suppose). None of this is  specifically related to his constituency, so making that statement in the boilerplate response seems pointless.

In turn, I’ve responded to the response with this:

Hi Fiona,

Thankyou for your reply.

I would put it forward that the plight of the British pub is of importance to all constituencies. All communities stand to loose out from the ongoing closure of public houses. Especially in the countryside and our smaller villages, where residents stand to loose their only social meeting places.

Kind Regards,
Yvan Seth

I’m interested to see if I get any further response that isn’t a boilerplate standard reply.

In the meantime, please sign the petition (it takes near to no time) and email your MP if they haven’t already signed the EDM and you’re feeling eager (also next to no time if you use the CAMRA standard email, but I do recommend adding a personal note of your own).

I’m left with one lingering concern though: if the Save-the-NHS folk failed, then what hope do we have?