Category Archives: “Real Ale”

GBBF 2012 — Great People

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Don't forget the horses!

Don’t forget the horses!

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

Cheers!

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

Accomplices

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

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

Winners

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

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

Brewers

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

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

Landlords

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

US Imports

Free Beer!

Free Beer!

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

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

New & Old Twitter Acquaintences

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

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

Bar Staff

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

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

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

The Rest

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

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

Windsor & Eton “Treetops” Diamond Jubilee Stew

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[tl;dr: skip the windbag intro and shoot straight to the recipe!]

Ingredients

The 2012 Hitchin Beer Festival is now firmly in the past. At the end of the festival there was some beer left and us volunteers got to take what we can home with us. Cask ale doesn’t keep too well, so there isn’t a lot of point taking more home than you’re likely to drink in the next 24 hours. However, beer can be for cooking as well as for drinking. When the festival shut its doors there was still quite a lot of the Windsor & Eton “Treetops” stout left at the end – despite it being our “beer of the festival” winner. Windsor & Eton suffer, but perhaps profit in this case, from being at the end of the alphabet and thus at the back of the hall. Treetops was brewed to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and is named after the African estate she was at when she inherited the throne. It is described by the brewery as “a rich, intense Africa Export Stout brewed from a blend of British and African ingredients, including coffee and vanilla” – my mouth waters as I copy-&-paste those words! All in all it was a very worthy festival winner, though my personal vote was cast for the same brewery’s “Conqueror” which has a little more “hop” in its step.

A good rich stout generally makes for a good stew and with this in mind I trundled home after closing up at the festival with 6 pints of Treetops in my bag (plus 2 pints of “Conqueror” and 2 of “Windsor Knot” – my own mini @webrew festival!).

I’ve used beef shin as my stewing meat. In my opinion it cannot be beaten for this sort of long-slow cooking. It doesn’t need any fancy trimming, just take the shin as it comes from the butcher and quarter of halve each round – purely for convenience in handling. Once it is cooked it should be fall-apart tender. If you can’t get shin then any cut sold as stewing steak will do.

Browning Shin

The practice of flour-coating meat is a little controversial. Older books refer to it along the lines of “sealing” the meat to keep the “juices in”, which doesn’t make a lot of sense as a bit of flour isn’t going to achieve this. Let alone the fact that we want the juices to flow freely between the meat and the stew stock. That said, I do think it may have a role to play in both caramelising the meat and in thickening the stock – of course you can add it any old way for the latter. If for no other reason, then I’ll do it because it is kind of fun and feels “right”. Skip the flour if you prefer! On with the show…

Ready for stewing…

Ingredients

The meat:

  • 2kg – beef shin (roughly quartered)
  • 1 cup – plain flour
  • 1.5tsp – ground ginger
  • 1.5tsp – ground coriander seed

The stewing liquor:

  • 90g – tomato purée,
  • 2 – medium brown onions (diced) – about 425g
  • 1 – whole garlic (sliced) – at least 40g
  • 20g – fresh ginger (peeled & matchsticked)
  • 3 pints – Windsor & Eton Treetops Stout (or any rich stout)

To extend with vegetables add:

  • 3 or 4 – parsnips (peeled & cubed) – about 590g
  • 3 or 4 – beetroot (peeled & cubed) – about 450g
  • 1 pint – same stout as above

Method

Shin – browned!

Thoroughly mix the spices into the plain flour. Use a fine sieve to sprinkle this over the beef pieces until they’re entirely coated. (Use of a sieve here means excess seasoned flour can be kept for another time.) Heat 2tbsp of vegetable oil in large casserole, I use a 28cm Chasseur – a sound investment I made 8 years ago. Heat the oil until it begins to smoke and then place meat in to brown. Do this in 3 or 4 batches, the chunks of meat should sit in the bottom of the casserole without touching each other. This ensures moisture can escape and you caramelize the meat rather than simmer it in its own juices. Coat the base of the pan with another tbsp of oil between each batch – don’t be afraid of smoke. (The smoke detector in my kitchen never has a battery in it!)

Now is probably a good time to pre-heat your oven to 150°C (300°F).

Cartouched!

With the browned beef shin placed to one side add another tablespoon of oil to the pot and toss in the chopped onion. Sweat and brown the onion over high heat, using a wooden spoon or, better yet, a flat-edged wooden spatula to scrape the browned goodness from the base of the pan with the sweating onions. Do this for about 5 minutes and then add a cup of the stout and make sure the last flavoursome crusty bits are worked off the bottom of the pan. Now add the tomato paste, garlic, ginger, and stout. Bring the stew to simmering point, place a cartouche of baking paper over the stew, then the lid on the casserole. Into the oven! (The “cartouche” is simply a piece of baking paper cut to exactly fit the casserole – to make this I put the casserole lid on a square of baking paper and run a knife around it. This paper is placed directly on the stew, enticing out most air bubbles. The theory is that this means the liquid evaporates more slowly and any meat near the surface stays moist. However, IANAC!)

Stew!

Check the stew after 4 hours. The meat should be tender but not disintegrating, the liquor should be thick, deep brown, glistening, velvety, sumptuously rich… do taste some with a spoon, carefully. At this stage you have an excellent stew and could stop right here! Barring any desired salt or sugar adjustments, it should need some salt really. However, if you want to extend the stew with the addition of the vegetables continue…

Stew + Vegetables

I’ve chosen beetroot and parsnip, which release a lot of sweetness. However, about 1 kg of any typical stewing vegetables will do. Carefully, so as to not break up the meat too much, stir the raw vegetable cubes through the stew and add the extra pint of stout. Bring to simmering point on the stove again and then pop back into the oven for an hour at most, lest you over-cook the vegetables. Adding the vegetables at this late stage ensures that don’t turn to mush and retain a bit of “bite”.

There you have it. A great stew that will be even better after a day sitting in the fridge.

Enjoy with a glass of stout and a refreshing green salad with a sharp vinaigrette dressing. I didn’t have a Windsor & Eton Treetops handy alas, but the BrewDog Imperial Russian suited. Dig in!

Treetops Stew

For more helpful guiding photos for this recipe click here for the full Treetops Stew gallery.