Wild Garlic (Ransoms) Pesto, w/ Walnuts, Parmesan, & Rapeseed Oil

Ingredients:

• 250g Wild Garlic (Ransoms)
• 100g Toasted Walnut Halves
• 70g Grated Parmesan
• half a teaspoon of salt
• “enough” oil to achieve the desired consistency

No need to be too precise, everything can be adjusted to suit your tastes! An addition of the zest & juice of half a lemon would “zing” it up nicely.

This is not a recipe for anyone who fears “garlic breath”!

Thing’s I’ve used this pesto for this week: sizzled in olive oil for a simple pasta sauce; lined some puff pastry sausage rolls; simply spread on bread! Most of it went into ice-cube trays in the freezer for future use though.

I’m thinking of doing a bit more of this sort of thing, should I? It’d have more of a beery twist normally. I’ve filmed another cooking session which does involve some beer… now I just need to find the time to cut 25 minutes of video into something less tedious yet still useful.

It’d probably help if I wasn’t using my ultra-wide helmet-cam and its shitty built in mic!

Bon appetit!

My first session! Since local blogger Pints and Pubs was hosting it I figured it only polite to participate. I don’t have time for a detailed analysis of my small collection… instead I’ll reveal how I got into “cellaring” beer and that I am now recovering from this grave mental illness.

I almost went down a horrible deep and dark hole. I almost succumbed. However I’m glad to say I am now a recovering “early stage” beer hoarder. It all started with BrewDog. Sure, I already knew some beers had cellaring potential and had enjoyed “aged” beers in 1st class beer venues… but I didn’t really even drink much beer at home until BrewDog came along. I certainly didn’t “cellar” beer until their “Abstrakt” series came along.

I fell for BrewDog hook-line-and-sinker quite early on, even bought shares in the first release of Equity for Punks (I’m a proper EFP1er, not one of these EFP2er tagalongs! *grin* </trollololol>). The set-up was pretty good — make people pay a large chunk of cash for “shares” and give them a decent 20% discount on your beer. Watch as they do their best to make up for the cash spent on shares buying HUGE volumes of beer. I don’t want to add up the value of my BrewDog orders over time… it’s in the past! Now I don’t resent BrewDog at all for doing this to me as I have massively enjoyed the ride and they’ve given back a lot for our shareholder love. At the current time I do feel a bit BrewDogged Out per se but I still think they’ve done good for beer in the UK.

BrewDog Abstrakt Collection

Anyway — this is NOT a BrewDog post. But it just so happens I’ve bought and drank more BrewDog at home than anything else and it is still the dominant brand in my little collection. There are two sides to the beer in this house:

1. “cellar“ — stuff I am deliberately short-term ageing (maybe up to 4 years)
2. “drink it“ — beer for drinking, when I get around to it

The “cellar” collection started with Abstrakt and then extended to Hardknott starting with Granites and Æther Blæcs, and has since included a bottle here and there from other breweries such as Moor Fusion & New Zealand’s Liberty Debilitated Defender. The AB series forms the core I suppose, and I still have one of every Abstrakt, and one or two more of some up to AB:12. It really isn’t a very large collection and I have started drinking it faster than I collect it. In fact I don’t think I’m likely to buy more Abstrakts. But I said that last time…

The “drink it” collection has three sources: online orders, trips to events/places, and Bacchanalia in Cambridge. That is in diminishing order of where it has come from. When you order beer online it tends to be in boxes of at least 12 beers, if you order too often you get a “drinking backlog”. Most of the beers in this house are backlog. When I travel I almost always come back with some beer. Maybe a couple, maybe a box. Then there is Bacchanalia, usually I pop in if I’m passing by on the bike and get a couple of beers or maybe six. These usually get drunk right away and I think maybe only one or two in the collection are from here.

Last year the collection started to get a bit out of hand. Too many online orders being the main problem as I never really went hardcore with the “cellar” concept. I don’t know where the count peaked but it was probably 250 to 300 bottles. Things like this made moving home last May that little bit more difficult! Late last year I made a vow to slow down and try not to buy more than I’d want to drink and since then the boxes are gradually thinning out.

As for the “cellar“ — I expect I’ll keep doing this to a small extent. But limited to a couple of years ageing. Without proper cellaring facilities it isn’t really sensible to do. That said, if I had unlimited funds I’d buy a LOT of some beers and cellar them properly. The risk is high… but sometimes the rewards are too. Some of the aged Abstrakts and Hardknotts I have had have transcended their “fresh” form and become quite stunning. Some others have died horribly, become wraith-like shadows of their former selves or actually just plain foul.

As it stands now the collection is down to a paltry 115 bottles… most of them lovely. I’ve just taken them all out for a photo, which is a good excuse to re-box and re-order them tomorrow. But, oh, where to start?! Maybe down the pub… it is Friday after all.

The Collection

So how was this “Craft Beer Rising” gig? I’ve been asked this question a couple of times now and have been thinking about the answer. The simple answer is: it was a great beer event, worth the trip, and worth the money. Now read on if you’re interested in a much less simple answer…

Craft Beer Rising was a great event! Good beer, craft beer, interesting beer. It had a less craft vibe than the Independent Manchester Beer Convention and it felt a bit more like a trade-show. It had some decidedly not-at-all-craft-why-the-fuck-are-they-here attendees… but if that’s needed to pay the rent, say, and that means that events like this can work and be profitable then it is a small price to pay (and nobody forces you to drink their beer anyway.)

Importantly: Would I go again? Yes! However next time I might try and sneak myself into the trade session instead…

That’s the TL;DR — now for the properly “less simple” version…

 –VS– 

I’m probably being incredibly unfair. I’m holding Craft Beer Rising up against the Independent Manchester Beer Convention for a compare-and-contrast despite the fact that my experience of the two events was very different. I volunteered for 3 shifts at IMBC, starting with set-up, and attended the entire event from start to finish over 2 days — it was a rich experience. For CBR on the other hand I attended just a single session on Saturday afternoon — more of an in & out surgical strike!

So how do these two non-CAMRA beer events compare? Craft Beer Rising felt more like a trade-show than a beer-festival. Each brewery involved had their own little booth — all branded up, staffed by brewery employees, and fronted by a solid high bar. In this sense it felt much closer in spirit to the brewery booths at GBBF than  the more casual & slightly Heath-Robinson IMBC setup. To add to this feel we had many usual-faces of GBBF around the place as well — Marston’s, Greene King, Thwaites, and Brains for example. Even with the same staff in the latter two cases. (They recognised me from GBBF despite the lack of a mohawk!) The only real difference was the occasional keg font — in that sense this was quite clearly unlike a CAMRA event!

The presence of these breweries is probably one thing that made Craft Beer Rising feel less crafty than IMBC… This is unfair perhaps, Brains and Thwaites are making an effort to produce interesting beers that work for us non-traditionalists. Sharp’s too — sure, the brewery is owned by Molson Coors, but you’d be a jerk to call the amazing, weird, and wonderful stuff Stuart Howe does “not craft” just because of that. Marston’s and Greene King on the other hand were notably & unsurprisingly dull. I did try a couple of their ales, the Marston’s single-hop beer and the Greene King Yard Bird, both decent golden bitters and nothing wrong with them. Though to market Yard Bird as inspired by American IPAs is kind of taking the piss if you ask me. It really was a bit “why are they here?” I’m not saying the event wasn’t “craft” because these breweries were present — I’m just saying that my feel for the vibe of the event was less craft than IMBC (which felt like basking in pure distillate of craft). “Craft” is such a difficult & argument-inducing term!

In my opinion CBR was also notable for who wasn’t present. None of my ”top picks” for British craft beer were there. Again this is a purely personal thing… but no Buxton, Summer Wine, Magic Rock, Hardknott, Kernel, or Moor (just to rattle off a few that come to mind). Of course not every brewery can be represented… but for none of these to be there? Hmmm… There were of course Thornbridge, BrewDog, and the aforementioned Sharp’s. Established “craft” players with decent marketing budgets — I suspect that part of the problem might have been the cost of the event filtering out the small guys. (The Rake Bar did a bit to fill the gap. They had beers on from Summer Wine, Windsor & Eton, and Redemption for example. So some of the beer was there but the breweries weren’t.)

The feeling I got from discussions on twitter is that this odd selection of breweries turned a lot of craft-beer-loving drinkers away from the event. No harm done, because the event sold out anyway! However few people I know bothered — even those in London — and thus it was a somewhat less lively and animated affair for us. (Some did go to the “trade session” on Friday, and there I re-note that the fact I went to ALL of IMBC and just one session of CBR does make the comparison unfair.) On the up-side this meant I actually had time to “check in” most of the beers I tried on Untappd. We did meet up with Nathaniel Southwood at least, and hung out with him after the event for some beers in BrewDog Shoreditch — but 3 beer geeks does not a full party make! The sad part of this is that those who chose to reject the event because of the brewery list did miss out in my opinion. Nobody was forced to drink Greene King IPA and the good beer wasn’t any less good just because there was a cask of it in the room. There was some incredibly good beer on offer. I had made a “shortlist” of 16 different beers I wanted to try, more than enough for four and a half hours of drinking. (I didn’t manage to try them all.)

Another contributor to the different vibe was that people were trying to *sell* me their beer. No, not by the glass… they were doing that of course. I mean 50% of the time when I was chatting to someone at a stand about beer the conversation rolled around to how I can order their beer for a beer festival/pub/etc. Business cards… sales people. This contributed to the “trade show” feeling I suppose. I’ve nothing against people wanting to sell me their beer! In fact I’m quite happy to have met a chap from Osset/Rat brewery on this front & may be in touch with them if I do another CAMRA festival order in the future. Basically IMBC seemed to have more brewers and less sales people. That said, several of the breweries at IMBC were ones I’d previously dealt with thus they knew I already buy their beer (and that I already like buying their beer!)

The imported beer selection was odd at best. I think we have US companies trying to “buy in” to the UK “craft beer” market? Stone, Ballast Point, Rogue, yes… some of these make beers that are certainly worth importing. Fordham? Point? No… why bother? What’s the point? And what the fuck was up with the clear-bottled rum-flavoured Innis-and-Gun style stuff? I just felt I was being too heavily marketed at when I looked at some of these set-ups. I’d expect slick brands like BrewDog and Thornbridge to feel like this, but they were pleasant and real by comparison — with stands staffed by people who’re really into beer and not just spouting sales-pitch at you.

I didn’t spend a lot of time people-watching but the general feel and vibe of the crowd was young, so unlike typical CAMRA affairs. I’m used to being young for beer festivals, but at  CBR I felt a bit old! I think the CBR crowd may have been even younger on average than that of IMBC. This really changes the atmosphere of the event — it’s more lively, and as a result more enjoyable. People who know me probably won’t believe that… I hate crowds. But if I have to be in a crowd I’d rather it be a happy-feeling one. This may be a little unfair on CAMRA festivals but they do tend to feel, to me, quite grumpy sometimes.

I didn’t catch much by way of the talk/event programme. It seemed a little less organised than the IMBC talks/tastings. That said I’m not going to complain about being given free beer and nibbles by Melissa Cole at the one talk I did attend. Beer and food matching of course!

Just like IMBC the food at CBR was excellent… and so unlike most CAMRA festivals! I think CBR did a little better on the food front actually — merely because I didn’t have to queue for 10 minutes to get my lunch! However IMBC did have better sausage.

An eternal problem of beer festivals: toilets. The facilities were overwhelmed! Will there ever be a beer festival that has adequate toliet facilities? The worst part about the men’s toilets in this place was the high flat metal urinal. There you are taking a leak and some drunk chap steps in next to you and… well, it’s a bit splashy. Ick.

On that note I’ll wrap up this loose collection of only vaguely organised thoughts. The weekend is over, I’ve not done much at all today and I still feel pretty damn shattered. Craft Beer Rising 2013 was good fun, despite my criticisms, and I’d have liked to have done an extra session… I missed out on a few beers I’m just now hearing good things about. Oh well, maybe next time!

Colin enjoys a craft Carling on the train home.

Empire Strikes Back is an exciting IPA by Moor Beer produced to showcase a new British hop called Jester, developed by Charles Faram. For a British-hop IPA this is an amazing beer, but I must admit it isn’t quite in the same league as the best of NZ and the US.

Extra geek points: notice the Hashigo Zake bottle opener? Got that from the bar itself in exchange for British Craft Beer when I was down there in 2011. Ah, the memories. (They were probably glad to see the back of this drunken Aussie-cum-Pom, though their accountant may not have been;).

What 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.

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.

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

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!”

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

My standard lamb flavourings are rosemary and garlic (along with most of the western world I expect). Mint sauce has a special place in my heart, that being on my grandmother’s dining table. The closest I’ll come to a mint sauce at home is a deep rich balsamic with a few shreds of good fresh mint in it. Anchovies too are a favourite friend of the lamb.

However, sometimes I take an entirely different twist on things. Take a more North African direction,  at least that’s how I think of it. The basic flavour blueprint is a combination of TANG and WARM SPICE. Tang in this recipe from sumac and lime, warm spice from star anise, coriander, cumin, & cardamom plus a rather spiced ale. What all this adds up to is what I dub “nose porn”, a slow roast that emits the most tantalising flavours while cooking. By the time it is ready you’ll have to restrain yourself lest you vacuum up the delicious flesh before even making it to the dining table, and subsequently lambsplode.

Our ingredients…

• A shoulder of British lamb
  (ensure you have a baking tin it fits in!)
• 3 tablespoons of oil
  (I used Avo oil because I’m out of normal oil!)
• 15g (a knob) of fresh ginger
• Zest of a lime (plus a bit of its juice)
• 2 teaspoons of sea salt flakes
  (if using normal salt just use 1 teaspoon)
• 3 teaspoons of sumac
• 1 teaspoon of whole coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon of whole cumin seeds
• 1/4 teaspoon of whole cardamom seeds (without the green husk!)
• 330ml bottle of Belgian spiced ale
  • Commonly available around Christmas time, these are strong beers infused with various spices — especially star anise. One that I have tried recently that would work well is Affligem Noël.
  • I’ve actually used a British rendition of this style: Hardknott Rhetoric #1. This is a star anise infused Belgian-style quad.
• 3 or 4 brown onions
• 1 tablespoon of plain flour
• 2 cloves of garlic — chopped and crushed

Preheat your oven to 250°C.

Dry Fry

The nose porn beings immediately! Dry fry the spices. I do this in order from largest to smallest. Get a little frying pan hot and pop in the star anise lobes —1 minute— pop in the coriander seeds —30 seconds— pop in the cardamom seeds —1 minute— pop in the cumin seeds —1 minute— pour the lot into a pestle along with the salt. Grind and then mix in the sumac.

Grate the ginger, zest the lime — nose porn! Combine the ginger and zest with the oil.

Score Lamb

Lightly score the top (fat side) of the lamb shoulder. Rub it all over with the oil mix, massage it in — who doesn’t like a good oily shoulder massage? Then coat all over with the dry spice mix. I use a little more on top than on the bottom.

Chop your onions in half, lop off the pointy ends, peel them, and slice lengthwise.

Oil the baking dish — this may have been achieved by using it when oiling the shoulder. Scatter the onion in the base of the baking dish and place the shoulder (top-up) onto the onion.

Before

Place in the oven for a 15 to 25 minute sizzle. Make sure it browns off nicely, but doesn’t burn!

After the sizzle turn the oven temperature down to 120°C and pour the beer into the baking pan. Queue up some suitable music for hot steamy nose porn. Slowly roast for at least three hours, four was about perfect for me. (When done you should pretty much be able to slide a butter knife right through the thick part of the shoulder.)

After

Remove the shoulder from the roasting dish, pour the juices and onion into a saucepan, put the shoulder back in the roasting dish, cover and keep warm. (Should be fine in the now-turned-off oven.) Use a large kitchen spoon to remove as much fat as you can from the onions into a separate bowl. Then put the saucepan over the heat and reduce until you’re happy with the flavour (if you think it needs reducing at all!). In a different saucepan heat 1 tablespoon of the lamb fat and fry 1 tablespoon of plain flour in the fat until very lightly browned, add the garlic to this and sizzle for about 30 seconds. Now start adding juices from the onions a large spoonful at a time, whisking all the while. When you’ve got about a cup of liquid transferred mix the entirety of the rest of the onions and juices in. Add  fresh lime juice and salt, to taste. I added the juice of half a lime, giving the onion gravy a pleasing piquancy.

Carve the lamb at the table, sharing out pieces from the various parts of the shoulder. A lamb shoulder cooked like this makes for so many different flavours and textures. There’s the tasty crisp crust, the juicy internal meat, the unctuous fatty edges, the drier but very tasty meat from the leg, and the soft onion-and-beer infused meat from the underside. Serve a selection of these different meat experiences on a plate with a generous helping of onion & ale gravy… and enjoy.

Serve with side dishes of your choice. A bit of steamed cabbage in my case.

Write More

I like writing, I’d like to write more, “practice makes perfect” they say. (Not that practice is any use without someone telling you off when you fuck up, but oh well.) Writing doesn’t come naturally to me alas and a single blog post can easily become an entire day’s work, sometimes two days. Over time my blogging (on various matters) waxes and wanes under pressures of time & work and droughts of enthusiasm & inspiration.

I suspect this is a common thread amongst blogging hobbyist’s NYE resolutions: generate more content. It’s fun and rewarding to do so because it’s just another way to explore your passion for something (it doesn’t really matter if nobody reads it either, though it is nice if they do of course). Writing clarifies your thoughts on a topic I find, writing down a recipe leads to repeatability and from there to tweaks and improvements. Writing about good experiences with beer or beery places sets them in your minds and acts as a humble thank-you in the direction of the objects of your worship. When I fail to write about something I’ve loved I actually feel bad about it, as if I’ve not shown it the appreciation it truly deserves. I’ve not properly committed to its celebration.

The rest of my points are basically about how to write more…

Cook More

OK, I probably cook A LOT more than your typical modern 1st-worlder. I’m lucky, my upbringing in restaurants seems to have bestowed on me some natural instinct in the kitchen — much that others find daunting I look at as being sort of simple (most things are, you just need to try them out…) By no means am I a chef, and I doubt I could cut the mustard as a commercial cook, but I have the abilities and confidence to be creative and run off-piste in the kitchen. Sometimes I think the results are stunning, sometimes pretty terrible, and from time to time I end up with something inedible (very rare, thankfully!)

I need to set myself some tasks and goals. The River Cottage “Three Good Things” challenge was great for forcing me to sit down and think about cooking with beer. The important added factor is the need to document the recipe properly in both words and pictures. A recipe per week for 5 weeks is a little on the heavy side, but I think coming up with some sort of “series” ideas with monthly deadlines could be a useful tool.

This blog is supposed to combine my love of cooking and my love of beer, this really should be the focus!

Drink Less

… wait, what?!

I think I drink a bit too much beer. I don’t think drinking is bad. However it is easy to fall into unhealthy habits and it is difficult to balance a having-a-drink-every-night lifestyle with an appropriate amount of exercise when you’re an office desk-jockey. Drinking does really slow down my ability to be creative too, after a couple of beers it is very easy to just say “fuck it, I can’t be arsed”. It is much easier to write with a clear head, and much easier to maintain a good schedule if you don’t go to bed past midnight, sleep like crap, and thus sleep in every morning. I used to get up at 6AM regularly, these days I’m lucky to be up by 8AM.

I do try repeatedly to drink less, but I always slip back into bad habits. I’ll keep trying, maybe I’ll eventually regain the necessary discipline.

On new year’s day I’m taping up all boxes of beer in my house and not opening them until February. January 2013 will be alcohol-free. I hope…

Get Out More

I’ve become too much of a home-drinker, I ought to travel around a bit more and appreciate different places. Simple as that. There are many place in the UK I haven’t visited, I need to start seeing new places and go back to familiar & comfortable ones a little less. Sheffield, Leeds, York – I’ve never drunk in any of these cities, all well known for their beer scenes. A trip or two outside of the UK could be nice too… Italy has growing “craft beer” credentials, we’ve still never visited Eastern Europe, and there is the US too.

This includes pushing the beer-and-food agenda too, I need to visit more restaurants and hassle them for having crap beer. Also fitting in a few high-end places would be fun (but in moderation due to the cost), our recent L’enclume dinner was an excellent experience and I managed to fit in some beer advocacy too.

Relax…

I’m too stressed out all the time, for no good reason. Time to relax and look to the future more, so I leave you with beer-related things I’m really looking forward to in 2013:

• IndyManBeerCon 2013 — 2012 was amazing, 2013 has high standards to live up to! It is back in the same venue so it really ought to improve, building upon the 2012 experience.
• Wild Beers — sours, lambics, saisons, farmhouse ales: whatever you call them the future looks interesting for these forms of beer in the UK. I love them and would love to see more “home grown” options in this sphere. From all I hear and echos in the industry it seems that 2013 may be the year the wilder side of the UK beer scene makes more of a showing. There is also, of course, the Wild Beer Co itself.
• Craft Beer in Cambridge — c’mon, it’s gotta happen! Cambridge is small, but it is hipster and affluent. There must be a market here worthy of the likes of Craft, Tap, or BrewDog. If I had enough cash in the bank I’d do it myself because I’m sure it would be a business winner. I hope I’m not wrong.
• Meeting more amazing people — after the beer the second best thing about the UK’s developing beer scene is the people. Sure, there are grumbles and disagreements from time to time and certainly some mildly opposing factions out there. However, nearly every individual beer nerd I’ve met, of all ages and factions, is a genuinely great person. I think it is probably difficult to find someone who has both the capacity to care and be passionate about beer and also be, as an individual, a total cock. (There are a few around who’re purely business with an interested in beer derived only from profit margins, mostly these people are total cocks. Profits are essential, and important of course … but are not everything.)

2013… bring it on.

Cod ‘yolk’, sage cream, pea shoots salt and vinegar

Wow, a “two star” restaurant. I tend to avoid such things, I’m a perpetual shorts-and-t-shirt wearing scruffy type, sneakers & jeans are a “dressing up” alternative to shorts and sandals. Michelin stars tend to come with stuffiness and arrogance, at least that’s my general perception… but perhaps I am being unfair. L’enclume in Cartmel is anything but stuffy and arrogant; it is very tidy, neat, and well mannered though. If the restaurant were a person it would be your older perfectly dressed and polite to all comers gentleman who is also intriguingly progressive and modern-minded. I’m conjuring up an image of spritely grey haired university academics here for some reason.[1]

On our most recent trip to Cumbria we visited L’enclume on a recommendation and a whim. I was fishing on Twitter for dinner suggestions and the name popped up, as we were staying at the Derby Arms and this was a reasonable taxi-ride away from the restaurant I figured: “why the hell not?” We only visit Michelin star types of restaurant about once every two years, if that, but maybe we should add them to our schedule more often. This is how L’enclume has left me feeling anyway, like I’m really missing out.

Put simply: the food was excellent and fun. Each dish came with a little introduction and the staff were happy to put up with me asking random questions about things on the plate. There was a focus on using “wild” ingredients for highlights and garnishes, which must be difficult in winter — I never did get to ask whether any were greenhouse cultivated. Mostly the wild was represented by herbaceous greens, some a brilliant flavour addition, others more a visual garnish than of any real value to taste. The diversity and nature of the whole experience was exciting to a food geek like myself. I think you need to be a bit of a geek to get the best out of this sort of experience. While I don’t think every dish was perfect I think the overall experience was of the highest order, but then again tastes and preferences play a role here (just as it is with beer).

Unsworth’s Cartmel Peninsular

So, beer… this is supposed to be a beer blog. I’m glad to say that decent beer is an option for a change. Far too often very good restaurants will have an amazing wine list, even incredibly posh water, but the beer offering will be piddle like Becks or Stella. L’enclume stock some very local bottled ales from Cartmel’s Unsworth’s Yard Brewery, all good renditions of your typical British golden-to-amber bitter/best-bitter styles. The poor sommelier was subjected to a brief discussion about beer and perhaps a shotgun lecture on how the broad range of beer styles available provide an exciting world of contrasts and cohesions when matched with food. The local beers available, as good as they were, were not the best selection for drinking with such a degustation. With a range of excellent and very local breweries[2] available that they could promote and support, why not focus a little more on the wider possibilities of beer? Well, I’m glad to say it sounds like there is already some interest and the sommelier said they actually had a selection of local beers in their store to taste and test… I’ll be keen to hear if there is any success for local beers on this front! We did take one of the sommelier’s wine selections with our dessert, as a best bitter simply wasn’t going to be right… and it was spot-on.

I shall leave it at that… below find a selection of photos showing each course, each photo has a quick explanation of what you see taken from the menu and you can find a note or two of my own if you click to view larger versions of the photos. (If you start at the first photo you can simply navigate through the set using the “Next” links.)

[1]This metaphor was originally going down a different route which would have terminated at something like “dapper chap” or “hipster”. Probably inspired by the young, enthusiastic, and bearded maître d’. However it is hard to conjure up a hipster image without also conjuring up some sense of arrogance or pretence, so I feel the spritely grey-haired academic wins the day. [BACK]

[2] To reach beyond your standard bitters this selection includes: Coniston (who happen to make No.9 Barleywine, the 2012 champion beer of Britain), Cumbrian Legendary Ales, Hardknott, Hawkshead, Stringers and others I’m unfairly forgetting. All have permanent bottled beers spanning barleywines, IPAs, stouts, Belgian-style ales, and various “imperials” – and all are probably within a 30 minute drive of the restaurant. Wine by comparison? Very little is produced in the UK and while much of a typical wine list is European at least, there is also usually a significant proportion from the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa… that’s a long way for a bottle of wine to travel. I love wine, I grew up in a restaurant in a wine region (Margaret River, West Aus). I’m well acquainted with the stuff! I live in the UK now… beer is the local drink, the British terroir is well represented by British malts and hops. Albeit many great hops are imported from the USA, NZ, and Australia… but even then, at least the end product is “assembled” here, just down the road per se.</rant> [BACK]

I have a growing tendency to be sympathetic towards vegetarians. Animal welfare concerns me greatly, I like to know that any animal that has died for me hasn’t been mistreated (including in, and after, death). However it is pretty much impossible to guarantee this and still willingly consume animal products — including eggs, milk, and cheese. If your concern is strong enough then “going veggie” is a laudable sacrifice to make in the name of animal welfare. These days I no longer make fun of vegetarians, refer to them as cattle, or try to convince them that chicken is a vegetable — well, not often. If I have a vegetarian around for a meal I always have something appropriate prepared, so for 2011 I decided: why not try going the whole hog! (Or no hog at all, as was the case.)

I also like trying to match beers to the dishes I prepare, so this brings about the second theme of this dinner: beer matching. Hopefully with vegetarian–friendly beers. (I checked and I’m pretty sure all the beers on the menu involved only the death of yeast cells & other micro–organisms.)

All in all I think both the full–vegetarian festive feast and the beer matching was a success. With my highlight being the mushroom tordelli dish matched with Hardknott Queboid. It looked and tasted stunning!

As for the festive element? Well, the dinner was held between Christmas and the new year so I tried to “festivize” it a little. Use of chestnuts, colours in the salads, spices in the pie — just light touches really. I haven’t prepared full recipes for any of the dishes, as I just didn’t have time and keeping track takes a bit of the fun out of the cooking. Consider this a TV–chef Christmas–show style of thing, where they show you an amazing array of food and an insufficient amount of information to replicate it.

Soup
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Chestnut & Celeriac Soup with Saffron & Carraway Sodabread Crostini and a Roast Garlic & Chestnut Puree

Beer: Summer Wine Brewery ∼ Kahuna, NZ IPA

The soup was inspired by one in the 2011 River Cottage Christmas show. Hugh prepares a chestnut & sage soup which sounded rather good and I liked the coffee–cup presentation. I love celeriac and decided to add some into the soup. Before serving the soup is warmed on the stove and a generous addition of crème fraîche is made to achieve a more desirable colour and consistency.

Sodabread is great if you need bread in a hurry. In this case the bread was leftovers, it was made the day before using milk in which a pinch of saffron threads had been soaked and a generous addition of caraway seeds. The leftover bread was cut into centimetre thick slices which were put into a low oven for 30 minutes to make them crisp.

I love the rich sweet flavour of roasted garlic cloves, the same pretty much goes for chestnuts. An equal quantity of garlic and steamed chestnut was “whizzed” in a small food processor with added olive oil to achieve the desired consistency. Grated mature goats cheese and salt were added to–taste as well.

Serve as shown in the photo!

The beer match in this case was picked to be something zesty and uplifting, a modern BritIPA seemed in order with NZ hops providing the uplift: Summer Wine’s “Kahuna” NZ IPA. It worked, much as a dry yet rich white wine would in the context.

Entrée
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Mixed mushroom and local “Wobbly Bottom” mature goat cheese tordelli in herbed butter with a hint of truffle. Served with festive salad of julienne snow peas, red pepper, and celeriac.

Beer: Hardknott ∼ Queboid, BelgianStyle Double IPA

Quite the looker this dish, and very easy to prepare if you have the confidence to make up a bit of pasta dough. The pasta is a typical egg pasta, rested for a couple of hours and then rolled through a pasta machine.

The filling is a simple fry–up of onion, a medely of mushrooms from the supermarket (chestnut, oyster, enoki — for example), and butter. When the onion and mushroom is nicely caramelising add crushed garlic, sizzle a little then add a splash of stock. Finally grate in plenty of mature goats cheese to create a sticky, stringy, mess. I also added a sneaky dash of truffle oil at the end.

Make up your tordelli (just big tortellini) and pop them into boiling water for just about 2 or 3 minutes when you’re ready to serve. Don’t overcrowd in the water, if doing them in batches have a warmed and lightly oiled plate handy to place them on with a bit of plastic wrap handy to put over them.

The herbed butter was made up in advance with a selection of herbs from the garden (oregano, parsley, garlic chives, rosemary — in approximate order of amount added) and a little garlic. I keep a stick of this in the freezer. Melt, but do not sizzle, a good medallion of butter per serve in a fry–pan, gently toss the tordelli in the melted herb butter and serve into warmed bowls sharing the butter out as a drizzle over each bowl. Do the drizzle at the last second, just before serving.

The salad is a colourful combination of briefly blanched snow peas, raw red capsicum, and raw celeriac. Tossed in a little lemon juice and a dash of oil.

Queueboid was picked for its richness and Belgianesque earthy tones, a nice complement to the mushroominess of this dish. The beer’s non–Belqianesque hoppy bitterness prevents the combination from being too heavy.

Main
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Warm–spiced homegrown pumpkin, toasted walnut, & local “Wobbly Bottom” soft goat cheese flan, topped with caramelised red onion.

Beer: Magic Rock ∼ Rapture, Red IPA

We had a couple of little pumpkins in the back garden, a far–from–bumper crop from a couple of vines we’d let ramble around under the apple tree. I cannot recall the exact variety, just something we got in a free packet of seeds once. In my opinion pumpkin really needs to be roasted to get the best value out of it, roasting intensifies the flavour and sweetness of the pumpkins. So in this case they were simply cut into chunks, drizzled with a little cooking oil, and popped into a 180°C oven with a scattering of rosemary until soft. Right at the end I turn the oven up to about 250°C until black/brown crusty bits start to form on the corners of the pieces.

To be honest I can’t remember exactly what went into the flan filling, the pumpkin would have been mashed and heated in a large pot. To this I would have added any/all of: softened brown onion, a couple of handfuls of toasted walnuts, a dash of veggie stock to loosen the mix up if needed; plus grated nutmeg, ground corriander, salt, pepper, etc “to taste”. I’d have a teaspoon handy to sample the mix as I built it up and I just stop when I’m happy. I probably threw in some fresh chopped parsley too. Right at the end before putting the flan in the oven I’d have gently stirred through the crumbled soft goats cheese. In this case from Hitchin’s local Wobbly Bottom farm and picked up either at their market stall of Halsey’s Deli.

The flan topping is simply caramelised red onion. The important thing when caramelising onion for a job like this is to do it slowly in a big open frypan. The browning of caramelisation should be from a slow reduction of the water content and not burning of the onion. Start off with just a little oil and after 5 to 10 minutes when the onion is looking translucent and tacky sprinkle over just a little salt to draw more moisture out. Keep going until the onions are seemingly candied and lightly browned. If you want add and melt in a little brown caster sugar near the end for extra caramelly goodness.

To avoid making this dish too heavy I’ve skipped the usual crusty flan casing and used instead about 3 sheets of melted–butter–brushed filo pastry. The pastry is cut into squares then placed in the flan tin at angles to each other to form a sort of star. Carefully press into the flan tin (the pastry breaks easily, so this is more an action of gentle folding) and fill with the hot pumpkin mix from the stove. Top with the caramelised onion and a scattering of pumpkin seeds and a grating of a hard mature goats cheese. Into a oven at about 200C with this and bake just until the edges of the pastry are a deep goldenbrown. This won’t take long, don’t take your eyes off it!

We’re done. This is best presented on the table as a whole, perhaps with a final extra grating of the hard mature goats cheese on top.

A side–dish of quinoa was served alongside this. Dressed in a drizzle of oil and balsamic and tossed with a finely diced version of the festive–colour salad used in the tordelli dish with the addition of toasted walnuts and pumpkin seeds.

The beer match is a red hoppy ale. A red–IPA perhaps, or even a rye–PA? In my case the scrumptious Magic Rock “Rapture” a rich, but not sweet, hoppy ale which I think held up well in the role of washing down the robust pumpkin flan.

Dessert
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Layered vanilla & wasabi white chocolate semifreddo mousse, with a rich wild berry coulis.