Followup: Cask Ale Fallacies

Well, there has certainly been some interesting discussion out of the “Three Cask Ale Fallacies” post. On the back of some of this discussion some updates have been made to that post (all clearly labelled as such). It is time to post a follow-up I think, rather than muddy the waters by adding more updates to my own post.

Background

There is some discussion worth reading on the Boak & Bailey post.

Clarification

I just want to take a moment to state clearly what I am NOT claiming, and never claimed:

  1. Most importantly: I am NOT claiming that Ed is serving duff beer. I think his process is sound but I challenged some of the methods and justifications. I thought I was very clear in my post that a) I expect Ed serves fantastic beer, and b) I think Ed is the sort of cellar person we need in more pubs.
  2. I am NOT claiming that there is a one-true-way to keep cask ale. This would just be totally bonkers. I just seek to examine the reasons behind certain thinking and practices.
  3. I am NOT claiming that I am an expert on the subject. However, I do consider myself an informed commentator… who is seeking to extend and clarify his own knowledge on the subject.
  4. I am NOT claiming that the general public ought to be aware of any of the technicalities. This is a discussion for people who keep beer or are deeply interested in it. Albeit if I hear “the general public” peddling bullcrap as fact I will sometimes challenge them on it. This most often involves “I’m a CAMRA member” types who’re are proselytizing or trying to “educate”. It happens on the oxygen front predominantly. I suspect I find myself on the receiving end of such education more often than older folk purely because I spend too much time around beer and I’m under the age of 50 (I’m 34, for what that’s worth) and I’m a foreigner (Australian). So it is assumed that I need a proper education in “English beer”. This is usually hilarious… but anyway, I digress.

The conversations coming out of my original post ranged far and wide with all kinds of wild tangents of discussion and heated argument taking place. Even “CAMRA bashing” became the topic at one point. I’m sticking purely to my original points in this post.

1. Oxygen (O2) – needed in secondary/conditioning?

I see my job as the cellarman is to use what the brewer has given me (namely yeast + sugars), add some oxygen, and let rip.

There’s all many of biochemical reasons why oxygen is important – one of the most is allowed aerobic respiration to occur which re-metabolises compounds like diacetyl (produced during anaerobic).

This point hasn’t really been discussed much. I stand by my statement that any requirement for O2 to help/start “secondary” & “conditioning” is a myth.

I don’t know where the diacetyl item comes from… the material linked to in the comments appears to me to claim the opposite. (Find the “OXIDATION” section, it does explain that plenty of oxygen is needed in the wort to ensure a healthy fermentation with little diacetyl production.)

I take it by the lack of discussion on the topic that there isn’t any real technical challenge or counterexample.

With respect to Ed’s cellaring process I don’t think O2 plays any role in the quality of the beer coming out at the tap. When a cask is vented it’ll be ejecting CO2 which will mostly keep air/O2 away from the beer. If the cask is sealed with a nylon peg when it is not active then this ensures O2 continues to stay out of the picture. It won’t be until the beer is served that air/O2 is drawn into the cask as per usual with cask ale. (Where we hit a whole different kettle of fish with respect to the desirability of oxidation to “soften” beer.)

3. “Secondary” (cask conditioning) – does not occur at the brewery?

you say “do any brewers send out beer that isn’t in condition these days though?” Every single one does.

Ever drunk cask beer straight after it’s been racked and tapped? There is no condition in it whatsoever.

There has been a little discussion on this topic but not a lot. I’m standing by my position that _most_ cask beer leaves the brewery with suitable “condition” (sufficient vols CO2) to serve. (Meaning only that there is sufficient CO2, not that the beer is ready to serve… this will depend the beer and maturation required to achieve peak/desired flavour.)

There has been some lighthearted challenge on the use of the term “secondary”. A bit nitpicky perhaps… we all know that it is just a continuation of fermentation, right? And it is common practice to use the term to refer to that phase of fermentation used to achieve sufficient CO2 is in the beer. This “secondary” fermentation might take place in bottle, cask, or tank – and it doesn’t magically cease when the beer leaves the brewery. (Ignoring sterile filtered and/or pasteurised beer of course.)

As for the original point – I fully accept that sometimes beer does leave the brewery without sufficient carbonation. I said as much in my post. There is a variety of reasons for this – the yeast might just be a bit lethargic, possibly due to cold weather, or the brewery might not have given it enough time… and in this latter case I believe it is normal for a brewery to give a warning. It is also not unusual for a pub to reject a beer that does not arrive with a reasonable CO2 level. This has been my personal experience on this subject.

I have asked a few brewers about this in the last week and the uniform answer has been that they don’t let the beer out of the brewery until sufficient time has been given for the beer to reach a desirable carbonation level. (It is an amusing co-incidence that one brewer who I don’t believe was aware of this discussion warned me: you can have this beer but we’ve only just racked it so it will need a week.) The most useful bit of information on the topic I’ve found is a blog post from Jon of Stringers Brewery: Gas, and Hot Air – this discusses tank versus cask conditioning at the brewery, the relevant part of his post is the bit where cask leaves the brewery at 1.4 vols CO2 to be ready for venting at the pub at 1.5 vols CO2 (and will be finally be served below this after being vented).

Why is Ed’s experience of this at odds to the reality? It may be due to venting immediately after shaking the cask… this will cause a violent exit of CO2 from solution. So if you immediately sample the beer from this cask it probably is seemingly flat. However as Ed explains he then gives his beer plenty of time to generate some more CO2 to recover its condition.

My experience of cask ale is that is usually arrives from the brewery well carbonated. It is left on stillage for at least half a day and then vented carefully to try and retain CO2 in solution. Retaining CO2 is ideal for beer festivals, the context in which my own experience lies. I don’t have the experience of a pro cellarman, but I have vented at least 1000 casks in this way across a very wide variety of breweries and beers.

I cannot say whether one or the other method results in better beer. One could ponder that Ed’s violent “whoosh” of CO2 release carries away undesirables – sulphur compounds perhaps that give “green” beer its “Burton Snatch”/struck-match aroma? On the flip-side this could perhaps cause the beer to give up volatile hop aromas that brewers try so hard to keep inside the beer. One for some experimentation perhaps.

2. Yeast rousing (shaking/rocking casks) – is essential for good beer?

This item has been rearranged to be last as it is the “myth” I’m least convinced about. When doing my training I was instructed by a good brewer to *not* agitate casks unnecessarily. I took it as being a strict rule, coming from an experienced chap with a Heriot Watt masters degree. However I’m now thinking this was a “lies for children” sort of instruction… a rule of thumb that hides a hell of a lot more “under the bonnet”.

Where I now stand on this is: know your beer.

The factor that is most important here seems to be finings performance. A complicated subject in which there are several variables to consider (brewery fining practice, chain of supply, yeast properties, beer properties, temperature… at the least). This is why “know your beer” is the rule here.

The main item of interest seems to be performance of finings across “drops”. The feedback seems to go something like: On the first “drop” after the finings have been added to the cask the trub layer will be relatively loose. On the second drop a little tighter. On the third and maybe fourth drops the tightest. After which the finings will start to get “tired” and be less effective. This is the collected anecdotal evidence from several brewers and does not represent a set of hard rules, but seems to be a generally accepted pattern.

If you buy your beer from a brewery that fines their beer when they rack it it would have dropped once after racking. Then a second time after transit to your cellar. Then the third time after you agitate it before putting on stillage. (Unless it has been shaken about additionally along the way!)

If you buy your beer from a distributor then there is probably at least one extra step along the way, likely more! As a new distributor myself I am now ultra-aware of this and will be careful not to move casks unnecessarily in the future.

Obviously there is a vast array of possibilities here. I hear some breweries add finings only when the cask leaves the brewery – so if receiving direct from the brewery it is only on its 1st drop when it hits your cellar. Based on the ideas discussed so far there would seem to be a definite benefit to thorough agitation before putting this cask on stillage.

So, what’s the worst that can happen if you agitate? Due to chain of supply it’ll have been through 6 or more drops and simply won’t clear. (Ever? Or will it just be very slow?)

So, what’s the worse that can happen if you don’t agitate? It’ll be on its 1st or 2nd drop and may not form as tight & small a trub layer as it could – thus you have a higher ullage and you get a lower return on your cask of beer.

There are people who swear by doing it either way… I think perhaps a few more have stated that they do rouse than those who have stated that they don’t. However I’ve not had time to try and find and count all the responses.

Another question is: if a cask has been sat on its end for 24+ hours and you move that cask from that position to being sat on a traditional stillage, what happens to the trub layer and how does it settle without the additional agitation? It was specifically this situation in which I was originally instructed that there was no need to go shaking the cask unnecessary. However that is in opposition to this statement:

I’ve done some searching on the topic but haven’t found anything particularly enlightening. I did find a treasure-trove of interesting beer information along the way however: onlinelibrary.wiley.com – in this I found papers on some experimentation with finings performance: Improving the Effectiveness of Isinglass Finings for Beer Clarification by Optimisation of the Mixing Process. Part 1: Laboratory Scale Experiments (Also: Part 2: Pilot Scale, Part 3: Full Size). But whilst these papers are interesting the context is not right in the context of this discussion.

Ed Wray did a little digging to see if he could come up with any data on the topic and came up with: So no definitive answer yet. I suspect it’s one of those questions to which the answer is “it depends”.

Ed Razzall has used his connections to do a little experiment for us all. He’s going to get two glass fronted casks of Ghost Ship from Adnams and treat them both exactly the same way aside from the vigorous agitation pre-stillaging. This is exactly the sort of thing I love… experimental evidence! I’m looking forward to finding out the results. It will not give us a definitive answer to the “do” or “don’t” agitate question… but it will give us a useful and interesting datapoint.

Inconclusion

As is often the case more questions are raised than answered. I still stand by my original statements with respect to “myths” 1 (oxygen) and 3 (condition). In the case of myth 2 (rousing) we seem to have hit a clash of two differing schools of thought neither of which has any hard evidence to back itself up or shoot down the other side. Whilst the true answer may be “it depends” – I’d like to know why? Because that’s just the sort of person I am.

But I do accept there may be no clear (haha) answer to some of these questions…

Independent Manchester Beer Convention

Wow… what a weekend!

IMBC Keg Hall – Calm Before The Storm…

The Port Street Beer House folk behind the festival deserve our praise, and thanks, for making it happen. Above all, I hope it is a business success as well as a huge social success. We need more @IndyManBeerCon gigs. I’m sure that, like myself, all beer lovers throughout the nation are hoping this is just the start… I’ve already caught wind of a potential London event of this sort kicking off for 2013.

IMBC Keg Hall – Full-Swing…

Our recent beer festival left us with empty casks that we needed to drop back at Summer Wine and Buxton breweries. Oh, look, there’s this “Indy Man Beer Con” thing happening… several of our friends will be there… could be interesting. They want volunteers too, well – why not? So on Wednesday we scooted north to Holmfirth then south over the wonderful-driving Woodhead Pass to overnight in Buxton. (For beer go to the Queen’s Head or the Old Hall Hotel – we had great condition Buxton ales in both.) Then on Thursday we popped up to Manchester to help out with the IMBC set-up… a day that predictably ended in beer. Much, maybe too much, excellent beer at BrewDog Manchester and Port Street Beer House. The evening was shared with fellow Twitter beer folk & Untapped users Kirk and Chris… as you can guess it was an evening of total beer geekery. Anyway… the next day the festival begins!

IMBC Cask Hall

Weirdly for 2 days of beer festival, I actually didn’t manage to tick off even half the beers I was interested in. Next time perhaps I should focus less on chatting & volunteering and more on the drinking part?! I’m going to list some beer highlights now… at the risk of leaving things out & alienating brewers and fellow drinkers…

  • Dark Star, Critical MassDark Star, Critical Mass (2009) – mmm… rich, dry, bretty stout. Aged since 2009 in-cask with brett yeast perhaps? I can’t find any definitive info online about this particular beer! Right up my alley though.
  • Ilkley, Green Goddess – thick, sweet, spiced dessert of a Belgian “bitter”. It magically has worked, somehow, and tastes luscious. When I was behind the cask bar, this was one of the beers people were coming back to for more.
  • Dark Star, Belgian IPA – this didn’t work for me, though many people loved it – it’s not you, it’s me… However I found it interesting, especially beside the Ilkley offering. To me there was little of that lovely American hop character left in the beer, and just a huge spike of bitterness in the middle of the palate. (Dark Star need to put more info on their website, this one isn’t there either!)
  • Wild Beer Co, Modus Operandi – a brewery I’ll be watching out for. I love “wild” beers, my nose and mouth don’t mind even a lot of wet goat, sourness, funkiness, etc. The MO was balanced & smooth though, a rich & dark saisony sorta beast.
  • Magic Juice ClownMagic Rock, Clown Juice – mainly because Stu, the Magic Juice Clown. But also because it is a great beer.
  • Hardknott, Queboid – don’t misunderstand, I don’t rate Hardknott beers just because Ann & Dave are my friends. I stalked and badgered the Hardknott folk, and eventually got to know them, because I like their beer. I’m a Queboid fan and have a small collection of bottles spanning several batches going back about 3 years. This was my first experience of it on draught, and it was goooood! Dave’s really perfecting it, if not perfected. (Though I do prefer it a few degrees warmer than it was, between 8 and 10C.) I spent some time at the Hardknott bar and did enjoy introducing people to this beer and sharing in their newfound love of Queboid. (I was in no way threatening in suggesting they should love it… really, I swear.)
  • Hop RocketBitches Brewing, Chocolate Chilli Stout – through a “hop rocket” full of chillies, and with an extra smoked naga chilli thrown in just for fun. WEAPONIZED STOUT! I had this beer for about 2 hours before topping it up with more of the stout and by that time merely placing it in the vicinity of your lips caused them to try and crawl back into my mouth and down my throat. Naga foolishness aside, the stout was a grand obsidian elixir – my favourite type of beer.
  • Buxton, Tsar – following that previous point, need I say any more?
  • @MacChater prepares @SWBrewery beery cocktailsSummer Wine – the whole mixology tasting session! I’m a flavour fiend, and this sort of monkeying around with people’s perceptions & entrenched ideas about food and drink is right up my alley. Beer as a cocktail ingredient?! Don’t be daft! … but why not? Their beers themselves are brilliant, and of course divisive as any such creatures will be. Stout with ginger? Beer with licorice? Good thing I love both ginger and licorice. The gin and Paracelsus beer cocktail was just too much gin for me, I like gin… but in this case it dominated. Less next time? The rum and Calico Jack, with chocolate orange wedge, was a huge success on my tongue. I’m going to have to buy more Calico Jack now I think. Massive thanks to @MaxChater for putting this together in collaboration with the Summer Wine dudes.
  • Lovibonds, 69 IPA – a legendary beer that I’ve never managed to get into my mouth until IMBC. It really lives up to its reputation. Lovely IPA and I really must visit Lovibonds sometime… and buy a case of it. :)
  • Tempest, Brodies, Thornbridge, Kernel, Marble… too much amazing craft beer? Never! But every one I didn’t get to experience is a wrench to the heart & a deep sobbing in the soul in memory of beers still untried. Sour beers shouldn’t go unmentioned. Cantilion on cask! The Lovibonds Sour Grapes! Oh my, the sheer diversity of it all…
IMBC Cask Bar@SWBrewery Barista & the Quantum/@NorthTeaPower collab at the coffee bar!Kegs!

For me, personally, the IMBC was actually more about people anyway. Friends who I’ve met several times like @HardKnott Dave & Ann, Twitter-personalities who I’d had yet to meet like @SimonHJohnson, even coffee gods like @HasBean Steve! Not to mention brewers… many, many excellent brewers. Also folk like myself from the fringes of the beer scene – brought together in one place by the love of really great beer. Nothing else I’ve been to in the UK is comparable… GBBF, for example, doesn’t come close. It is probably a density issue – IMBC was simply wall-to-wall with the sort of beer people you want to meet. It turned out there were people there I should have met but somehow missed, chances are we were within a couple of meters of each other. So, while the IMBC beers were astounding, it really was the people that made this festival come alive. People were the magic-ingredient, beer the not-so-secret-sauce.

The quality didn’t stop at the beer and people however. The organisers had gone out of their way to get it all right. Food wasn’t an afterthought, as it too often is. Not only was there a beer & food matched dinner available to those organised enough to book it – the general festival food was varied & exciting. Gourmet hot-dogs, brilliant quality curries, and a selection of the old staple pig products. I tried them all, everything was up to scratch. If only some didn’t run out of food so early! And COFFEE! I’m a coffee geek as well as a beer geek – quality HasBean filter coffees thanks to the wonderful people at @NorthTeaPower in the afternoon? Yes please! On top of this having @acousticcoffee Dale and @HasBean Steve at the festival was almost overload… context switching between drinking & talking coffee, and serving, drinking & talking beer almost broke me I think.

Sausage inna bun queue...

Sausage inna bun time…

Posh pie!

Posh pie!

IMBC coffee heroes!

IMBC coffee heroes!

The venue too… stunning. If you’re in Manchester you must visit the Victoria Baths. Such an exciting building to hold a beer festival in, so many nooks and crannies, such architecture! You’ll get the general idea from their own website, and some of the festival photos. If there was one downside it was the capacity of the men’s toilets. I suspect this may have been part of the reason the venue was limited to 500 tickets per session when I’m sure the bars could have supported at least 50% more. Next time I wonder if a trailer of toilets out the back might be a reasonable addition to proceedings.


The “what is craft beer” debate raged on throughout the festival. We’ll never have a satisfactory definition for something so based in the eye of the beholder. Though for me, in this moment, I’m thinking craft beer is IN the beholder. Craft beer is people. Brilliant, wonderful, friendly, diverse people.

Get some Clown Juice in you!

Get some Clown Juice in you...

Don’t just take my word for it though — here’s more:

GBBF 2012

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

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

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…)