tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-85878037087987366582024-03-14T06:48:29.766-07:00Brewing In A BedsitterAdventures in small batch homebrew.DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-90161210668818878232023-06-13T03:44:00.003-07:002023-06-13T03:45:38.805-07:00Terroir - putting the locally sourced boot in<p>All beer geeks like to occasionally have something that reminds us of when we were first getting into craft beer, so I enjoyed seeing some proper Beer Discourse triggered by <a hredf="https://www.pelliclemag.com/home/2023/6/7/there-is-no-such-thing-as-terroir-in-beer">a Matt Curtis article</a> yesterday.</p>
<p>The thrust of the article, which I broadly agree with, is that beer is unavoidably a product of essentially industrial processes, and hence that to try to ape (parts of) the wine world in aspiring to some sort of "low intervention" beer that "expresses place" through the agriculturally-derived character of its ingredients is fundamentally wrongheaded. (Some interesting criticism of the article has been from the angle that this is equally wrongheaded in the wine-world too, but that's another story...)</p>
<p>As someone who's been banging the <a href="http://brewinabedsit.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-psychogeography-of-fenland-mild.html">"agricultural terroir in beer is bollocks" drum</a> since the days when Matt was enthusiastically evangelizing for it, I feel like I've got some right to stick my oar in with my own take on the topic.</p>
<p>I think if I was going to characterize my brand of terroir-scepticism, I'd say that it starts from the fact that I don't believe that the link between flavours derived from the growing conditions and the character of the place where those growing conditions occur is particularly intuitive to humans, and hence that using hyperlocal ingredients isn't particularly interesting from the point of view of the stuff in the glass. If you have a local farm that produces hops with a specific interesting flavour then that's great, if you have local microflora that include yeast with unique and interesting character then that's fantastic, but there's no intrinsic reason that beer produced with those hops or that yeast will evoke the place where you brewed it any more than if you'd shipped the same hops or the same yeast starter halfway across the country to brew with them. Wine drinkers have had years of training themselves to associate this flavour profile with that landscape, beer drinkers haven't and aren't going to do that any time soon, not least because so many other variables are inevitably at play in the flavour of beer.</p>
<p>There's been a lot of pushback against Matt's article and in favour of the idea of terroir in beer. I think the idea is alluring because it seems to give us a way out of the sense of international homogenization that has come with the era of ubiquitous NEIPA (and before that with ubiquitous industrial lager, and probably before that with Burton IPA and London Porter) but for me it's unsatisfying because the sort of variation induced by local ingredients is essentially arbitrary. I'm far more interested in the sort of local-specificity that comes about when people use whatever ingredients and processes they want, but tailor their products to the preferences of local drinkers and the nature of local drinking to produce a beer that reflects the human culture of their area as well as the soil chemistry. The use of hyperlocal ingredients seem not just irrelevant to this, but potentially counterproductive as it often seems to manifest itself in mixed fermentation, fruit beers and other nontraditional flavours that are mostly of interest to a geographically dispersed audience of beer geeks and not to many drinkers in your immediate locality.</p>
<p>Fundamentally, I think there are plenty of good reasons to work with small and/or local suppliers, but the idea that doing so will let you magically bottle the essence of your surroundings isn't one of them.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-59830108028093589772021-04-18T14:45:00.000-07:002021-04-18T14:45:48.283-07:00Pies, Pints and Capitalist Realism<p>I assume by this point that most people subscribe to <a href="https://vittles.substack.com/">Vittles?</a> But for those who don't, this week's article was a rumination by Jonathan Nunn on his (and his cockney dad's) complex relationship with traditional Pie and Mash shops.</p>
<p>A central point of the piece is that a key problem for modern pie and mash shops is that the food is, fundamentally, just not that nice. Or at least, not that well adjusted to modern tastes, which expect mashed potato to be pepped up with butter and seasoning, and which sometimes enjoy sauces that aren't green and gelatinous. But it's the refusal to move with the times, the strict adherence to a formula that evolved for a very different era, that also makes the pie and mash shops so important to the people who love them.</p>
<p>There's an obvious parallel to pubs here. The basic British boozer - dingy, tatty, wet-led, mostly uninterested in drinks that aren't beer, almost completely uninterested in in drinks that aren't alcoholic - seems like more of the same thing: a business from the mid twentieth century soldiering on in the twenty first, simultaneously treasured and threatened because of its refusal to evolve. While I wouldn't describe them as "not that nice", I can't help suspecting that a lot of my favourite pubs would actually do better, financially, if someone spruced them up a bit and tilted the offer more towards family meals instead of sessions on pints.</p>
<p>I think this points to something more complicated in our affection for these places than the simple nostalgia that the Vittles piece talks about. It goes hand in hand with the lionising of the sort of dictatorial landlord who bars punters for looking at a chair the wrong way and of a general "like it or lump it" attitude to giving the customer what they want: "please do not ask for draught lager as a punch in the gob often offends". I think that part of what appeals to us about these places is the refusal bow to the customer-is-always-right adapt-or-die logic of modern capitalism. They seem to contradict the Capitalist Realist assertion that every business must necessarily be on the lookout for ways to adapt to maximise revenue, and demonstrate an escape from an all-pervading competitive ethos that even the biggest proponents of free-market economics must occasionally get tired of. In this sense, you could see a traditional boozer or a pie and mash shop as a sort of Temporary Autonomous Zone for middle-aged white men.</p>
<p>The question, though, will always be whether the logic of modern capitalism can still be kept at bay when the rent comes due or the bills need paying?</p>
DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-85616368837278346442021-01-01T10:46:00.001-08:002021-01-01T10:54:16.854-08:002020 - The Good Bits<p>Right, 2020.</p>
<p>It goes without saying that a lot of fairly terrible stuff has happened this year. I'm not going to dwell on that more than is necessary. Weirdly, from a personal point of view we've had one of the best things that ever happened to us too, with the birth of our tiny baby Robbie at the beginning of October. COVID turned our lives upside down, and then the new arrival turned it - more upside down?</p>
<p>Anyway, I've never been the biggest fan of the strictly categorized Golden Pints format, so I'm just going to run through the best beer stuff that I can think of from the year, and then the best other stuff.</p>
<p>Probably my top brewery of the year was <a href="https://durationbeer.com/">Duration</a>, whose stuff we've been getting via their webshop and from Thirsty. They're basically just very good at brewing, with excellent takes on both the obligatory hoppy pales and a good range of more diverse styles - Belgian Wit, American Stout, Pilsner and so on. We're really hoping that once everything's a bit more sensible we'll be able to get up to their brewery in North Norfolk, which sounds like it's going to be an amazing destination.</p>
<p>My favourite new discoveries were <a href="https://www.threehillsbrewing.com/">Three Hills</a> and <a href="https://www.pastorebrewing.com/">Pastore</a>. The beers that I've had from Three Hills have mostly been big, juicy NEIPAs, a style that I'm not always blown away by, but Three Hills seem to absolutely nail it, combining the massive fruity hop thing with a drinkability that a lot of other examples seem to miss. I also had a fantastic barrel aged Imperial Stout from them as my big silly drink to see in the New Year. Waterbeach-based Pastore, on the other hand, are mixed fermentation and sour specialists, something that I was always going to go for. Their Wild Saison was particularly enjoyable.</p>
<p>For obvious reasons, it's been harder than ever to talk about "pubs of the year". We have had a load of great stuff in deliveries from <a href="https://thirsty.selz.com/">Thirsty</a> in Cambridge. When it's felt safe enough, we've been for outdoor food and drinks at the Castle, the Maypole and the Blue Moon, although our trips out have been fairly limited - we've applying some extra level of paranoia on accounts of the whole pregnancy / baby thing.</p>
<p>In terms of beer writing - or at least, writing by people who write about beer - a couple of things have really stuck in the memory: Lily Waite on <a href="https://www.pelliclemag.com/home/2020/11/2/walking-is-still-honest-cornwall-bosigran-beer">going for a nice walk and a pint</a>, and Katie Mather on <a href="https://www.pelliclemag.com/home/hand-held-rebellion">the Proustian associations of burger vans.</a></p>
<p>My homebrew theme of the year has been rebrews and tweaks of recipes that I've brewed before. I'm not sure whether it's a function of lockdown (the lack of homebrew club meetings or the increased tendency to just be around the house and fancy a pint of something drinkable) or whether I've just hit the point in my brewing progress where I've got a slightly shorter list of crazy new ideas to try out and a longer list of past brews to mine. I've also been brewing a lot of session-strength beers - this is probably also related to the parenthood thing? Hop of the year has been HBC-472. It's kind-of Sabro-esque in a pale, but it really shines in a dark beer, bringing a sort of coconut-and-bourbon flavour that's strangely reminiscent of barrel-aged character. I'd be surprised not to see a lot more of this over the next few years.</p>
<p>Other new stuff that's kept me going this year:
<ul>
<li>Local food deliveries, including ingredients from <a href="https://radmorefarmshop.co.uk/">Radmore Farm Shop,</a> <a href="https://www.cambridgefruitcompany.com/">Cambridge Fruit Company</a> and <a href="https://culinaris.co.uk/">Culinaris</a>, pizza from <a href="https://www.scottsallday.com/">Scott's All Day</a>, dumplings from <a href="https://deliveroo.co.uk/menu/cambridge/cambridge-south/cambridge-alliance-ltd-zhonghua-snacks">Zonghua Snacks</a> and curry from the <a href="http://thetiffintruck.co.uk/">Tiffin Truck</a>.</li>
<li>Fancy tea from <a href="https://waterlootea.com/">Waterloo Teas</a> and <a href="https://www.tchaiovna.com/">Tchai-Ovna.</a></li>
<li>Baking and pickling just like everyone else under lockdown.</li>
<li>Bandcamp Fridays - I've been listening to <a href="https://waclawzimpel.bandcamp.com/album/massive-oscillations">cosmic skronk from Waclaw Zimpel</a>, <a href="https://familydrone.bandcamp.com/album/walk-it-dry">regular skronk from Sly and the Family Drone</a>, <a href="https://sarahlouise.bandcamp.com/album/deeper-woods">spacey appalachian folk from Sarah Louise</a>, slick techno from <a href="https://eye4eyerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/nine-omega">Altered Natives</a> and <a href="https://hieroglyphicbeingofficial.bandcamp.com/album/black-hands-vol-5">Hieroglyphic Being</a> and <a href="https://mumblesmuzak.bandcamp.com/album/chaotic-bisexual-energy-live-at-the-queer-mas-all-gayer-2k19">neurotic post-hardcore from Mumbles</a>. The latter is particularly bittersweet, being a live recording from one of the last gigs that I went to - the 2019 Queermas All-Gayer at the Blue Moon.</li>
<li>Getting back into chess - I'm RamblinDave on <a href="https://lichess.org/">lichess</a> if anyone wants to say hello on there. I've also been watching far too many <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/RosenChess">Eric Rosen videos</a> on Youtube.</li>
<li>Reading <a href="https://vittles.substack.com/">Vittles</a> - if you don't already have a subscription, you probably need one.</li>
<li>And last but far from least, the arrival of a tiny assistant brewer.</li>
</ul>
</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-69708273836069470422020-09-25T13:54:00.003-07:002020-09-25T14:32:13.624-07:00Subcultural Capitalists<p>I'm kind of assuming that everyone's already read <a href="https://twitter.com/LilyWaite_">Lily Waite</a>'s <a href="https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2020/9/20/after-opacity-concerning-hyperreality-and-simulacra-in-contemporary-beer">thing for Good Beer Hunting</a> about the postmodernist reading of craft beer and NEIPA as a simulacrum by now. If you haven't then stop what you're doing and go and do it now.</p>
<p>I'm not going to say anything specific about that bit except that it's really good, but if it's Critical Beer Theory week now then I might as well get around to writing something about another bit of theory that I've read that I keep coming back to when I'm thinking about beer.</p>
<p><i><a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Club_Cultures.html?id=u84cOSvUADUC">Club Cultures</a></i> is a 1995 book by Sarah Thornton that picks apart the inner workings of dance music subcultures. It was original in the sociology of the time for studying night clubs and dance music culture neither as simply a mechanism of pacification by the capitalist entertainment industry, nor as a form of collective resistance to a dominant culture, but just as the location of a microsociety of their own, with their own systems of status and distinction and mythology to be studied. As a book, it's a fascinating read for a non-specialist like me - I came to it as someone who was into dance music rather than someone who was into sociology. Thornton develops interesting theoretical constructs to describe what she sees, while grounding them in enough of concrete examples of the sort of behaviour that she's talking about that make the book approachable.</p>
<p>One of the key ideas that the book deploys is subcultural capital. This is inspired by the idea of cultural capital, which the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu introduced in the 70s to describe the accumulation of knowledge, cultural artifacts, behaviour and social contacts that can help "the right sort of chaps" to smooth their way through life, particularly in the public and professional spheres, even without needing to be particularly rich in cash. Thornton's subcultural relocation of the idea refers to tangible and intangible stuff that makes a clubber "hip" - the clothes, the dance moves, the hairstyle, the collection of white-label vinyl, and the stock of stories about legendary clubs and raves they've been to and scene insiders that they've hung out with. Unlike Bordieu's original idea of cultural capital, your subcultural capital is unlikely to be something you can build a career on - although for DJs, designers, promoters and journalists it's stock in trade - but it is what gets you past exclusive door policies, sees you invited to the best afterparties and even if you don't think about concrete advantages, it's what gives you a sense of worth in the value system of the scene.</p>
<p>A feature of subcultural capital is something that as carefully as you accumulate it, it can appreciate or depreciate just like regular capital - your collection of vintage soul records won't get you as much cred if your mates have all suddenly got into acid house, but you might hit the jackpot if the great little night you've been going to turns out to be the epicentre of the new scene that everyone's talking about. </p>
<p>We can sort of see where this is going, right? Because club scenes aren't the only subcultures that this stuff applies to.<p>
<p>Beer culture, in its full breadth, would be hard to describe as a youth culture. It maybe doesn't have the same intensity as dance music culture, either - it's hard to compare a Meet the Brewer night or a CAMRA branch meeting with an all-night rave, and even people who are "into beer" generally find it less of an all-consuming lifestyle than a really dedicated live-for-the-weekend clubber. But it does also fit the basic template of what Thornton calls a "taste culture", and it's hard not to see the logic of subcultural capital playing out.<p>
<p><i>"It's great that they've managed to get Batham's Bitter for this year's festival!" "Oh, the bitter's good but the mild is really where it's at..."</i></p>
<p><i>"We were really lucky - Armand himself was around when we were visiting and he gave us a quick tour of the barrel store..."</i></p>
<p><i>"Well, I was in Boston for work, so obviously I had to get out to Trillium..."</i></p>
<p>Obviously it'd be daft to claim that all of this stuff is just status games - I mean, sought-after beers and legendary pubs are often worth seeking out regardless of any bragging rights - but what I do end up wondering about is how we guard the capital that we've already accumulated.</p>
<p>A standard beery moan on social media is that not only do I not like this beer, not only is this beer bad, but that those people who like this bad beer are wrong to be enjoying it, and their enjoyment of it demonstrates their lack of moral fibre, and shouldn't they be drinking proper beers like the ones that I like? And this sense that not only do we not like certain beers but we feel actively upset by their popularity starts to feel a lot less like honest personal enjoyment and a lot more like wrangling over subcultural capital - who's going to care about my encyclopedic knowledge of British family brewers if all the young people are drinking kegged American IPAs? Who's going to be interested in my trip to the West Coast to drink Pliny at source if they're all chasing the latest hopgravy? Is anyone going to care that I've brought Westvleteren to the bottle share if they're all more interested in whatever dessert-flavoured lactose nonsense Omnipollo have cooked up now? We don't just not enjoy this stuff - we're actively threatened by it.</p>
<p>Is this the whole story? I'm not sure. But you don't have to spend long watching beer culture to realise that there's maybe a bit more going on than just how much people enjoy pouring different liquids down their throats...</p>
DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-52731108942875136882020-05-01T10:18:00.001-07:002020-05-01T11:12:02.403-07:00The Session, Quarantine Edition: Where Are You At<p>Whelp, <a href="https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/the-sessions/">The Session</a> is running again, and Al at <a href="http://www.fuggled.net/2020/04/the-session-quarantine-edition.html">Fuggled</a> has asked a simple question that's perhaps more meaningful now than it would be at a lot of other times - where are we all at right now?</p>
<p>Well, we're broadly fine. To steal a line from Brian Aldiss (throwing some very British shade at the works of John Wyndham), we're having a very cosy catastrophe - working from home in a comfortable house, pottering in the garden, getting food orders in from local farm shops and delis, and largely insulated from the direct effects of the pandemic.</p>
<p>Beer-wise, I'm still drinking nice stuff. I've bought cases in from Duration and Burning Sky and I'm eyeing up Partizan's online shop. I've also had nice things delivered from <a href="https://www.thirstymarketplace.co.uk/">Thirsty,</a> our local bar and bottle shop, and I've done a couple of batches of homebrew. We've also got a nice stash of assorted lambics and other odds and ends to raid.</p>
<p>But there's a slight regret even associated with having nice beer to drink, and that's the awareness that - particularly with Alison being temporarily off the sauce for (otherwise harmless) medical reasons - there's no-one else drinking it with me.</p>
<p>This isn't just about the social aspect of beer culture, although we are missing the pub and we are missing seeing friends. It's about the realization that even the pleasure of good beer itself is partly in sharing it with other people. It's missing getting a round of pints in and all stopping a second to mutually appreciate the beer before the conversation kicks up again. It's missing somebody trying your homebrew at a barbecue and saying "wait, you brewed this yourself?" It's missing the moment when someone coming back from the bar at a beer festival saying "you lot have got to try this - no, just smell it, even!" It's about rummaging in the cupboard to find just that special bottle to share with someone.</p>
<p>So yeah, I'm fine, things are as comfortable as they could be under the circumstances, but I'm still looking forward to being out and have friends to share beers with again.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-56977768252789061002020-02-05T11:35:00.002-08:002020-02-05T11:35:52.819-08:00Value Theory<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/food/shortcuts/2020/feb/04/96-pound-bottle-of-beer-expensive-as-vintage-wine">So it looks like the "expensive beer" discourse is back.</a></p>
<p>First, a declaration of interest. I quite like fancy, expensive beers, and I know that many of the things that I like in fancy beers - mixed fermentation, barrel aging, high gravity, expensive hops - add to the cost of the beer. A lot of these sorts of beers are also fairly niche, meaning that the brewers have limited opportunities to save money through economies of scale. Good supply chain - keeping beer in coldstores rather than warm warehouses - isn't cheap either. Once we've gone through all this, and added the percentag emarkups that different links in the supply chain need to add to stay in business, some things that I like can end up fairly pricey. And I'm okay with that - only being able to buy them when I'm feeling flush seems better than not being able to buy them at all.</p>
<p>Second, another declaration of interest. I also like cheap, good beer. I like the fact that beer is an everyday drink, something that large swathes of the population can share and bond over as a routine matter. I like the fact that there are breweries and pubs out there who are still delivering a high quality product but keeping a firm eye on the price point, so I can go out with a mixed group of friends or family and drink some truly fantastic beers in a nice pub without anyone having to sell any organs to afford it.</p>
<p>A lot of the current discussion is about choosing one of these to the exclusion of the other, but like a lot of people, I don't see any reason that we can't have both. People often point at wine as an example where this already happens - I'm not a wine buff, but as far as I can tell, sought-after vintages that are accessible only to oligarchs seem to co-exist fairly happily with well respected, well made wines with more everyday price tags. Food is another example - the fact that there may be really good high-end restaurants in a given town doesn't challenge the existence of great cheap eats, and rather than existing in separate bubbles, these places are often points on a continuum that's of interest to a lot of the same people.</p>
<p>But the flip side to this is that the whole discourse around food and around wine is full of attention to value for money. It's not that people won't countenance expensive food or wine, but they're also willing to talk about a fantastic red for a tenner that they've discovered, or to how to get the most for your money when you do decide to splash out on a special bottle. Two staples of the food columns are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/25/roti-king-london-restaurant-review">tributes to great little places that do amazing food for next to no money</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/09/le-cinq-paris-restaurant-review-jay-rayner">vicious hatchet jobs on top-end places that don't live up to their top-end prices.</a></p>
<p>So maybe this is what beer really needs in its conversation, if we're going to do both things. Sure, we'll often be happy to justify the high price of a mixed ferm saison or a barrel aged stout, or to explain why a beer costs more in a bar in Central London than it does from the brewery door in rural Flanders. But we should also be willing to call out, albeit maybe a bit more diplomatically than Jay Rayner's example, when the quality of the product doesn't seem to be worth the price we're being asked to pay - when the expensively hand-fettled ingredients aren't really reflected in a better beer, or when the hazy pale imported at great cost from Copenhagen is really no better than the one brewed down the road that we could have at half the price. And if we're going to laud the skill and attention to detail that gives rise to a barrel aged mixed-fermentation saison that deserves the same respect as a fine wine, we should also talk about the skill and attention to detail that another brewer uses to streamline costs without sacrificing quality and produce a world class pale ale at a far more accessible price.</p>
<p>In short, if we aren't going to draw battle lines over price, we really need to be willing to talk critically about value.</p>
DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-33317026744432095992020-01-16T14:33:00.000-08:002020-01-16T14:33:15.764-08:00Mild for the Modern Homebrewer<p>While it's no secret that mild as a mass-market beer is in a bad way, one place where it actually seems to be doing alright is our local homebrew club. At a group that meets in the back room of a craft beer bar, and where the styles presented range from Brut IPA to Hefeweisen, from experimental sours to Imperial Stouts, Dark Milds still crop up surprisingly regularly.</p>
<p>To me, though, the idea of Dark Mild as a "brewer's beer" makes a lot of sense. Well-made mild is nice to drink, of course - rich and satisfying without being too heavy or too strong - but they're also interesting to brew. The current range of fashionable beer styles offers relatively few opportunities to explore characterful sugars and crystal malts, but Dark Mild puts them front and centre, and invites you to explore and combine them to your heart's content.</p>
<p>But what exactly are we talking about? With that in mind, I'd like to present the following - a Modern Mild Manifesto.</p>
<p><b>Modern Mild is first and foremost about dark sugar and caramel flavours.</b> Characterful base malt and British yeast probably feature, too. A chocolate note from roast malt is also common in contemporary milds, and while purists will argue that it's not traditional, to me it seems like a worthy development. However, roasty flavours should stay in a supporting role, and on no accounts should a mild be turned into a baby stout - in fact, a session Dubbel might be a better way to think about it.</p>
<p><b>Modern Mild is easy to drink both in terms of strength and character.</b> Ideally, it should be interesting but unobtrusive, characterful but restrained - the sort of beer that doesn't demand your attention but does reward it. (Ambient beer, perhaps?) Modern homebrewers might push the strength a shade higher than most late 20th Century commercial examples, but it should still feel very sessionable.</p>
<p><b>Modern Mild isn't restricted to historic ingredients.</b> Yes, mild is traditionally brewed with British malts, adjuncts, caramel and invert sugar, but alongside that, the modern homebrewer has a free rein to experiment with continental malts and a whole world of culinary and brewing sugars. Historic Mild, brewed with strictly traditional ingredients to strictly traditional recipes is also a Good Thing, but it's a different thing.</p>
<p>That said, <b>Modern Mild is basically about malt, hops, sugar, yeast and water.</b> If you want to build a mild recipe around fruit, spices, sweets or breakfast cereal then I'm not going to stop you or even discourage you (much), but you should be aware that by doing this you're turning the style into something else rather than enriching what it is.</p>
<p>Maybe this is the start of a dynamic new movement of Modern Milds? I doubt that we're going to sweep hazy IPA off the taps of the nation's craft beer bars, but we could at least bring a bit of extra interest to its homebrew clubs.</p>
<p>For the record, the recipe for the mild that I'm currently drinking is roughly as follows:</p>
<p><i>65% Golden Promise, 18% soft dark brown sugar, 11% Medium Crystal, 5% dark chocolate to 1.042 OG. Mashed at about 67 degrees, with the sugar added in the boil, First Gold hops to 18.3 IBU at the start of the boil and no late hops, fermented with Windsor yeast. 4.3% ABV.</i></p>
<p>This came out stronger than I intended (bafflingly so, actually - my software predicted 1.036) and is probably at the upper end of what's acceptable for dark malt character but it's a very drinkable beer and a good start. For the next iteration I'll probably roll off the chocolate malt a bit and bring in some more interesting crystal malt - maybe Special B, maybe Crystal Rye.</p>
<p>Hopefully this post will inspire a few homebrewers - I'd love to hear from anyone who tries brewing my recipe, something like it, or who's come up with their own take on the style.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-19482253232480907532019-11-12T05:36:00.001-08:002019-11-12T05:36:50.913-08:00In Defence of the New<p>The craft beer scene's thirst for novelty can be one of its more ridiculous aspects. I sometimes wonder whether anyone would actually notice if there were only really a couple of dozen different New England DIPAs, being repeatedly repackaged with different combinations of collaborating breweries listed on different snazzy cans with different cryptic names. But this sort of endless variation seems to be what sells, at least at the more rarefied end of the market. The beer list at a premier league craft beer bar - or somewhere with aspirations to be one - is typically packed with one-offs, special editions, new breweries and collaborations, with maybe just a tap or two at the start reserved for established local favourites.</p>
<p>This neophile tendency is obvious in the craft beer scene, but it has its counterpart in the world of more traditional British beers, too. Real ale enthusiasts still often seek out the "beer range varies" freehouse with its endlessly rotating lineup of real ales, inevitably from "local microbreweries". A local pub to us, the Cambridge Blue, keeps tally of its "beers so far", presumably in the decade or so since the current landlord took over. Despite the fact that this is currently into the tens of thousands, for my money the best beer there is often Dark Star's Hophead, one of the few regular fixtures.</p>
<p>This sort of thing is easy to take the piss out of - I mean hell, I just did, twice. It's also commonly pointed at as a microcosm of what's wrong with the world - the anally-retentive list-ticking impulse, the image-obsessed millenial's need to be seen drinking the latest sought-after beer to get "numbers" on "the gram", or the power of marketing or a good hype machine to make quality irrelevant. But I think this is missing the point.</p>
<p>The fact is that if we're interested enough in beer to talk about it, to write about it and to seek out the best places to drink it then we've been through at least one phase in our drinking when we've seriously expanded our horizons. For myself, I know that at some point I went from drinking whatever alcopop, macro lager or spirit-and-mixer was current with my mates to realising that I actually quite liked the pongy stuff on the handpumps. And from drinking anything from a handpump to knowing that there was a whole world of real ales out there and that I definitely liked some more than others. I've got into Belgian beer and modern craft from a position of no knowledge, and had some amazing beers along the way, and to be honest I'm still quite excited by how many great German and Czech beers, even styles, I've still got to taste for the first time.</p>
<p>The desire to always be trying new beers is rooted, on some level, in the belief that we might still be in one of those phases, or at least in a lingering habit that we picked up while we were. It's about a belief that there are great new beers out there, from great new breweries, in great new styles, and that they could be better than anything we've tried - so much so that it's worth taking a chance on a new beer even over a beer that we know we like. And at some point this has genuinely been true for almost all of us, so while we might not all share that belief right now, at least not enough to tempt us away from Sussex Best, Orval or Kernel Pale, it seems rather mean-spirited to be so quick to just laugh at it or dismiss it as just hype-chasing.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-53147103754810836312019-09-28T15:50:00.001-07:002019-09-28T15:50:17.734-07:00The Citra Sketch<p>Scene: A craft beer bar. One table is occupied by a group of hipsters with flat peak caps on. A man and his wife enter.</p>
<p>Man: You sit here, dear. </p>
<p>Wife: All right. </p>
<p>Man (to Waitress): Evening! </p>
<p>Waitress: Evening! </p>
<p>Man: Well, what've you got? </p>
<p>Waitress: Well, there's IPA with mosaic and simcoe; IPA with mosaic and centennial; IPA with mosaic and citra; IPA with mosaic, simcoe and citra; IPA with mosaic, simcoe, centennial and citra; IPA with citra, simcoe, centennial and citra; IPA with citra, mosaic, citra, citra, simcoe and citra, IPA with citra, vic secret, citra, citra, mosaic, citra, centennial and citra; </p>
<p>Hipsters (starting to chant): Citra citra citra citra... </p>
<p>Waitress: ...citra, citra, citra, mosaic, and citra; IPA with citra, citra, citra, citra, citra, mosaic, citra, citra, citra... </p>
<p>Hipsters (singing): Citra! Lovely citra! Lovely citra! </p>
<p>Waitress: ...or American farmhouse ale with spelt and rye malt, aged for 18 months in red wine barrels, refermented with brett on heirloom varietal apricots and dry hopped with mosaic and citra.</p>
<p>Wife: Have you got anything without citra? </p>
<p>Waitress: Well, there's IPA with citra, mosaic, simcoe and citra, that's not got much citra in it. </p>
<p>Wife: I don't want ANY citra! </p>
<p>Man: Why can't she have IPA with mosica, simcoe, citra and vic secret? </p>
<p>Wife: THAT'S got citra in it! </p>
<p>Man: Hasn't got as much citra in it as IPA with citra, mosaic, simcoe and citra, has it? </p>
<small>With apologies to Monty Python.</small>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-35275925828089818282019-06-04T13:51:00.001-07:002019-06-04T13:54:32.316-07:00Position Statement - CAMRA, Cask and Keg<p>News <a href="https://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Article/2019/06/03/Craft-keg-beer-allowed-at-CAMRA-GBBF-for-the-first-time?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04-Jun-2019&c=EDkKgb9Z9o7cYcfzqo9ZyCI38PJZtDqX&p2=">here</a> that CAMRA are to have an official Keykeg bar at the Great British Beer Festival. It's worth pointing out that several of their regional festivals have been doing this for a couple of years now, but I guess that this is news in that the GBBF is symbolically the Last Great Citadel of Cask.</p>
<p>Anyway, on a basic level this is a sensible step in the right direction. Embracing a wider range of good beer at their flagship festival makes the organisation seem more pragmatic and modern, while they can still keep cask ale at the front and centre of the event.</p>
<p>It does have a weird catch though: keykeg beer is only to be served if it's keykeg conditioned and not force carbonated. This distinction of real vs not-real keg is something that most normal drinkers don't seem to give two hoots about - people who want a pint of cask bitter won't suddenly tolerate something cold and fizzy because the carbonation is natural, while people who want a keg DIPA or a sour are unlikely to care where the fizz in it came from. But according to CAMRA's definitions, being conditioned in the keykeg makes it Real Ale not Evil Keg, and this is what makes it acceptable for them to serve. To me this means that the news seems... less good than it could be.</p>
<p>With that in mind, and since nobody asked, here's the official Brewing In A Bedsitter position statement on Where I Think CAMRA Should Be At In Relation To Real Ale And Dispense.</p>
<p><ul>
<li>CAMRA should have a specific objective to protect and promote cask conditioned ale. It's a weird, unique and distinctive tradition that will always be at risk in a world that prefers to simplify and streamline things, and it should always be part of CAMRA's business to look out for it.</li>
<li>CAMRA should stop worrying about the realness or otherwise of beers coming from other forms of dispense (keykeg, RIAB etc) - in most cases where their realness or otherwise is worth caring about they aren't particularly under threat.</li>
<li>CAMRA should be happy to celebrate and promote beers that aren't cask ale, regardless of whether they consider them to Real Ale or not; this will make them more effective at defending cask ale, because this makes them look like open-minded beer enthusiasts whose opinions on cask ale are worth taking seriously.</li>
<li>CAMRA should stop asserting as a matter of fact that Real Ale (or cask ale) is Objectively Better rather than just being Important and Good, because this makes them look like a bunch of religious fanatics whose opinions on cask ale can be safely ignored. It's fine if individual members have an overall preference for cask ale, but belief in (and assertion of) its absolute superiority shouldn't be a matter of policy.</li>
</ul></p>
<p>In all honesty, I don't do that much for CAMRA beyond the odd bit of beer festival volunteering, so I don't expect them to pay that much attention to my opinions about what they should do. But for the record, there they are.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-16047780651374978792019-05-17T14:20:00.003-07:002019-05-17T14:20:29.936-07:00Local Craft Beer at Eat Cambridge<p>If there's one thing that Cambridge food-scene boosters are really good at, it's getting breathlessly excited about a Hot New Thing happening here, even though in a national context it's so old hat that your granny is kind of over it. Hence I rolled my eyes a bit when, a full decade after Punk IPA started appearing in supermarkets, the publicity for the <a href="http://www.eat-cambridge.co.uk/">Eat Cambridge</a> food festival announced a panel discussion on "the hot trend of 2019": craft beer.</p>
<p>I swallowed my cynicism and went along, though, because the people talking seemed likely to have some interesting stuff to say. This turned out to be a good decision.</p>
<p>On the panel, we had a representative from Brewboard, who took over Black Bar's kit and premises in Harston in 2017, and rapidly brought out a solid range of well-executed US-style craft standards - the sort of stuff that might get lost in the noise in a town like Manchester or Leeds, but which Cambridge had been missing for a while.</p>
<p>We also had Tom and Sam, founders of Calverleys, who have been operating around Cambridge since 2014, brewing an eclectic range of stuff. I used to find their beers a bit hit and miss, but the last few that I've tried have impressed me a lot more - maybe they're tightening things up a bit, or maybe it's just me.</p>
<p>Milton Brewery, the veterans of the Cambridge scene, were represented by their founder Richard Naisby. He's also involved with SIBA and is a fairly canny industry-watcher. If you don't already know Milton, they're probably best described as being part of the proto-craft / Weird Real Ale generation; founded in 1999, fitting comfortably within real ale culture in many ways, but pushing the style envelope rather more than most of their traditionalist predecessors.</p>
<p>Wylde Sky were the newest brewery featured, and the beers I've had from them so far have mostly been very good. Their brewer, Paulo, was representing them. He's half Scottish, half Brazillian, and previously worked in a brewery in Brazil. He didn't mention which one - this seemed almost pointed, and I wondered whether it was secretly some InBev thing, but a bit of internet research suggests that it was probably just too obscure to be worth naming. There's an echo of a well known Sussex craft brewery in the name, and it's maybe there in the beer too - one of their launch beers was an extremely well done clean saison.</p>
<p>The whole thing was kept moving by food journalist Andrew Webb. I wasn't taking notes or anything, but there were a few things from the conversation that stuck in memory.</p>
<p>The host apologized for the lack of diversity on the panel (six blokes, including the himself). It's a bit of shame that the organisers didn't spot this and actually do something about it, to be honest.</p>
<p>The session tried to include more-or-less every topic relating to craft beer in an hour, from the rise of canning to beer and food. This was presumably to cover the bases for people who don't know much about beer or what's been going on in the last decade, but having a more focused topic might have made for more interesting chat. Particularly with five people on the panel, it felt like a lot of topics were skipped over very quickly.</p>
<p>One recurring theme was the importance of tap rooms. Three of the four brewers represented have tap rooms at their breweries and those three all saw them as being core to their operation. As well as being a revenue stream, it's an opportunity to see the response to a new beer immediately and set up a very tight feedback loop from punters to the brewer. It wasn't discussed at the time, but this idea resonates with a sense of localism that I find more natural than the current efforts to artificially force "terroir" on beer. It seems far more interesting to me that beer should be tightly coupled to the brewery's local drinking culture rather than it's local ingredients.</p>
<p>All the brewers agreed that the next big growth areas for beer were likely likely to be low-alcohol, vegan and gluten-free. I got the impression that this annoyed the host a bit, who'd asked the question hoping for the inside gen on the latest wild and wacky IPA substyle or something.</p>
<p>I can't remember how the topic came up, but Richard had an interesting story about working in steelworks in South Yorkshire in the nineties, where the workers used to finish the day by drinking massive volumes of weak, salted beer, provided on the foundry floor by their employers as a way to replace the water and salts that they sweat out doing hard physical work in a hot environment.</p>
<p>During the questions at the end, I asked (as non passive-aggressively as I could) how the assembled brewers thought Cambridge compared with other UK cities in beer terms. The host tried to turn this into an Oxford vs Cambridge thing, but fortunately the panel were having none of it. Paulo said we were making progress but we've got a long way to go, which I'd say is fair. Sam was optimistic based on the response that he sees in the taproom every weekend.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-3114403430106242382019-01-09T11:02:00.001-08:002019-01-09T11:02:25.281-08:00Underneath the Arches<p>One of the staples of online beer forums is international visitors asking for local recommendations, and I normally try to help where I can. Something that always seems jarring to me, though, is the question a lot of American beer geeks ask: "which breweries should I visit"?</p>
<p>As a British punter, it's never really occurred to me that on visiting a new town in the UK or on the continent, my first goal should be to go and visit some breweries. Maybe if there's somewhere famous with an interesting tour then it might be worth it? Maybe if there's a tap room that's got a reputation in itself? But as a default first port of call for a regular punter, I'd assume that I'd be spending most of my drinking time in regular pubs and bars. That's where I can get a cross-section of the local craft scene under one roof, it's where I can find the local trad breweries' stuff sold in the best possible condition, it's generally where I'll find local life and local culture. Fermenting vessels look the same almost everywhere - pubs don't.</p>
<p>So I don't know. Is this an American thing? Or a general beer geek thing that I'm missing out on? And why? Does it work out for them? Do they find what they're looking for? Are they greeted by chatty brewers, eager to crack out a bottle from their personal stash and shoot the breeze for an hour with a bunch of bros in a Three Floyds caps? Or do they find themselves parked on a bench in a cold railway arch being served flights of thirds by disinterested hipsters, wondering what the hell's going on with the beer culture in this crazy country?</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-53511234320976317882018-12-07T04:19:00.000-08:002018-12-07T04:19:20.396-08:00One Last Beer<p>So, <a href="https://appellationbeer.com/blog/session-142-announcement-one-more-for-the-road/">The Session</a> is coming to an end, and for the final installment, we've been asked to think about "a beer for the end of a life, an end of a meal, an end of a day, an end of a relationship."</p>
<p>Now, there are some obvious truisms about the last beer of the night. It's got to be big. It's probably dark. It's likely to be expensive, too. However much we like to praise beers for their subtlety, elegance and drinkability, the last beer is the time to reach for imperial stouts and barleywines.</p>
<p>This makes sense purely in terms of tasting, of course: it's relatively unappealing to go from a very big beer to a lighter and subtler one. The temptation is always to make each beer one-louder than the last, so naturally you're going to want the biggest, baddest beer available to be the one you finish with. But there's also a another component to it. Time stands still while you're drinking a big, rich beer. Last orders has come and gone, you know that the time is coming where you're going to be turfed out into the dark and the rain, but until then you're living every moment in a boozy kaleidescope of rich flavours and high spirits.</p>
<p>What goes for the last drink of the night goes a thousandfold for your last drink on the planet. You've heard the bell, and you know that you haven't got much longer in this bright, cheery place, but you've got one more glassful to get what joy you can. But for this most final of final beers, there's another element in play, too. It feels somehow wrong to ask for your last beer to be something rare, exotic, seldom tasted - to me it feels like it should be something comfortingly familiar, a connection back to many happy nights before.</p>
<p>Big and rich, yet comfortingly familiar? For me, the beer that covers that, with a slight hint of something beyond the temporal is St Bernardus 12. See you on the other side!</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-47509469724645906182018-11-25T15:09:00.002-08:002018-11-25T15:09:18.709-08:00Within You Without You<p>The small but intense world of traditional lambic is often good for microdrama, and the latest storm in a tasting glass is the news that Drie Fonteinen and Girardin are leaving HORAL, the association of traditional lambic producers. There's no official statement from either brewery that I'm aware of, but it's tempting to speculate that their reasons might be similar to the reason that Cantillon never joined in the first place - the belief that HORAL's position as the protectors of traditional lambic is undermined by its inclusion of breweries like Belle Vue and De Troch the bulk of whose output is exactly the sort of sweetened industrial lambic that many people would argue the traditional drink needs saving from.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in the UK, SIBA, the Society of Independent Brewers, has had some back and forth over the last few years over its membership criteria. A motion to apply a stricter upper limit on capacity was nearly passed last year, while this year a motion in the opposite direction to significantly increase the upper limit was rejected after vigorous campaigning from smaller breweries. There are some reasonable arguments on both sides - on the one hand, more involvement of larger independent brewers would have added clout to some of SIBA's operations, on the other hand, larger brewers with sizable estates of tied houses are very different businesses from the small breweries who make up most of SIBA's membership, and have interests that would often be at odds with them.</p>
<p>In the US, the Brewers Association has long been the butt of jokes for its habit of increasing the upper capacity limit for what it considers to be a craft brewery to match the capacity of Sierra Nevada and Boston Beer Company. This year, it's further proposing to remove one of the three basic components of its definition of a craft brewery - essentially, that the majority of a craft brewery's output must actually be beer - in a move which it admits is prompted by, if not solely for the benefit of, Boston Beer Company, which is getting an increasing amount of its income from sales of non-beer products.</p>
<p>At its AGM this April, CAMRA members voted to change their articles of association. While still keeping the promotion of real ale as an objective, they added an updated one, "to play a leading role in the provision of information, education and training to all those with an interest in beer, cider and perry of any type." A motion to also including acting "as the voice [...] of all pub goers and beer, cider and perry drinkers" to also campaign on behalf of all drinkers of "quality beer" achieved a clear majority, but failed to reach the 75% majority necessary for a constitutional change.</p>
<p>It feels like there's a common thread to all of these stories. As long as no two people or businesses are the same, any mutual interest group is going to involve a union of disparate elements. And the question of where you draw the line - how broad a base is too broad, and when do you decide that it's actually better to have at least some people outside the tent pissing in - is almost always vexed. There's seldom an easy answer to this and I doubt that people, either within or without the strange little world of beer, are going to stop arguing over it any time soon.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-60170455138744157962018-09-20T09:47:00.000-07:002018-09-20T09:47:40.914-07:00Restaurants, beer and comfort zones<p><a href="https://twitter.com/totalcurtis/status/1042370772986200064">Matt Curtis</a> has raised the subject of beer in restaurants again. It's always a popular topic; most beer people would love to have a choice of interesting beers to drink before, during or after a meal, but the fancier restaurants get, the more obstinately they seem to stick to extremely un-fancy beer.</p>
<p>One bit of writing where a smart restaurant does sell beer is in Dorothy L Sayers' 1933 novel Murder Must Advertise. A middle-class advertising clerk doing some rather incompetent detective work has clumsily tailed his quarry to Simpson's in the Strand, a restaurant well above his pay-grade. There he sits, tense and irritable, struggling with the business of ordering his lunch and an accompanying drink.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
“What will you drink, sir?”<br/>
“Lager,” said Willis, at random.<br/>
“Pilsener, sir, or Barclay's London Lager?”<br/>
“Oh, Pilsener.”<br/>
“Light or dark, sir?”<br/>
“Light—dark—no, I mean light.”<br/>
“Large light Pilsener, sir?”<br/>
“Yes, yes.”<br/>
“Tankard, sir?”<br/>
“Yes, no—damn it! Bring it in anything that's got a hole in the top.” There seemed no end to the questions that could be asked about beer
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I think that maybe this hints at one reason - beyond tight margins, beyond lack of knowledge, beyond, in a narrow sense, snobbery - that restaurants might chose not to serve better beer and coffee.</p>
<p>When we go out, we tend to want to go to places where we feel at home, places that give us constant little reassurances that we belong there and should feel at ease. Offering people stuff that they don't understand - even if they don't have to order it, even if your friendly staff are eager to help them to navigate their way through it - undermines that. It says, this is a place for people who understand about this stuff - people who know and care about the difference between wit and weizen, or between a long black and a batch brew. Look at the way that people say "I just want a black coffee" or "I just want a pint of beer" - it isn't just a request for a drink, it's a prickly, defensive statement of identity from someone who feels challenged and excluded by a list of options that they don't understand.</p>
<p>People with the money and inclination to eat in a fancy restaurant are paying, at least in part, to feel like they're epitome of good taste. But in practice, while they can probably be expected to know enough about food to navigate the menu, and at least enough about wine to know that asking the sommelier for a recommendation isn't an admission of defeat, they are currently relatively unlikely to know or care much about craft beer of third-wave coffee. And when a traditional fine-dining restaurant restricts its beer list to a macro lager and a well-known bottled bitter or offers catering-grade dark roast coffee rather than single-estate Arabica, it isn't just cutting costs, it's reassuring the majority of their customers that there's nothing wrong with their lack of interest in either.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-53417943112858358412018-06-06T10:53:00.000-07:002018-06-06T11:01:40.560-07:00The Session 136 - Roundup!<p>For this months instalment of <a href="https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/the-sessions/">the Session,</a> I asked the world's beer bloggers to think a bit about Farmhouse Beer - what does it mean, and why do people care? Now the time is up, I've got some great responses, and a fascinating range of perspectives.<p>
<p>To <a href="http://www.beeretseq.com/session-136-farmhouse-brewing/">Gary Gillman,</a> "farmhouse beer" really just means saison or saison-inflected beers, and it's actually not something he's particularly into.</p>
<p>Other contributions talked about farmhouse breweries in a more literal sense. Al at <a href="http://www.fuggled.net/2018/06/the-session-136-farm-brewing-in-virginia.html">Fuggled</a> talked about a change in the law that's sparked a new wave of farm-based brewing in Virginia. Stan Hieronymous at <a href="http://appellationbeer.com/blog/session-136-how-you-gonna-keep-em-down-on-the-farm/">Appellation Beer
</a> posted an excerpt from his book, Brewing Local - an in depth profile of Piney River brewing in the Ozark mountains of Missouri. Meanwhile <a href="http://www.thebrewsite.com/the-session-136-farmhouse-brewing/">Jon Abernathy</a> discussed the historic farmhouse brewing traditions of Oregon, and pondered how a modern homebrewer might draw inspiration from older them.</p>
<p>On the other side of the Atlantic, <a href="https://boakandbailey.com/2018/06/session-136-farmhouse-brewing-cheap-fast-fresh/">Boak and Bailey</a> considered English farmhouse brewing traditions, and how, if at all, they could relate to modern commercial brewing. <a href="http://edsbeer.blogspot.com/2018/06/a-talk-on-farmhouse-brewing-by-lars.html">Ed Wray</a> snuck in a post that I suspect he was going to write anyway, but it's good stuff so we'll have it. It's a summary of a talk by Lars covering long-established farmhouse brewing traditions in Norway, Latvia and (briefly) Suffolk. Finally, for <a href="https://brewinabedsit.blogspot.com/2018/06/session-136-farmhouse-brewing-not.html">my own piece</a> I wrote about a much newer brewery from Suffolk, and why a 21st Century style like New England IPA seems to me to be a plausible thing for a "farm brewery" to produce.</p>
<p>So that wraps it up for this session. Thanks to everyone who took part - it's been a pleasure and a privilege to have so many good beer writers acting on my whim. The next few hosting spots still seem to be open, and I'd encourage any blogger who wants to get involved to pick a topic and grab one as soon as possible!</p> DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-14295818442995800852018-06-01T14:33:00.000-07:002018-06-01T14:34:41.577-07:00Session #136: Farmhouse Brewing - Not Looking For A New England<p>Before I opened the can of Green Path, the flagship IPA from Suffolk-based brewery Burnt Mill, I had a good idea of what I was going to get, and I had a good idea of how this post was going to go. It's a New England IPA, of course. Burnt Mill describe themselves as a "farm brewery", and the design of the can - field, windmill and sky, all in impressionistic green and blue watercolour - anchors them solidly in the Suffolk countryside. While the phrase "farmhouse beer" and the associated rural imagery have traditionally conjured up images of saisons, spontaneous fermentation and complex, subtle beers aged in dusty wooden barrels, to me it increasingly feels plausible when applied to soft, hazy, juicy New England IPA, too.</p>
<p>This is, on the face of it, strange. There's no obvious lineage linking Trillium or Cloudwater to historic farmhouse brewing traditions, or even, beyond a shared appeal to beer geeks, to new-wave farmhouse breweries like Jester King. Maybe, then, it's something to do with the the hazy appearance of NEIPA as visible evidence of the presence of oats or wheat in the grist, cereal crops making themselves visible in a class of beers where they've traditionally been kept firmly out of the way of the hops. You can also read the haze as a signifying the work of a simple rustic artisan rather than a scientifically precise industrial technician. The particular importance of freshness to the style maybe suggests a sort of pre-modern utopia, before industrialised distribution, with beer going from field to fermenter to glass. The connection might also be influenced by the association of New England IPA with rural Vermont, and hence Hill Farmstead, even though that brewery isn't actually one of the drivers of the style.</p>
<p>This clearly a loose and rather fanciful association - style defining NEIPAs are currently being brewed with scientific precision and meticulous attention to detail in Boston, Manchester and New York, among other places. But it goes some way toward explaining why I knew without opening the can that this beer was going to be a soft, hazy, juicy IPA.</p>
<p>But it wasn't, of course.</p>
<p>As I'd have known if I'd bothered to read the can rather than just admiring the pastel-shaded artwork, Green Paths is brewed in the classic West Coast style. And it's really quite fantastic. It pours clear-ish, at least by modern standards. Big juicy hop aromas follow through with a prickly citrus-toffee body, creamy mouthfeel and a long bittersweet finish. It's bold but it's balanced. Green Paths tastes like the IPA that first got you into this whole craft thing, updated to make an impression on your DIPA-fatigued 2018 palette.</p>
<p>Subsequent beers I've had from Burnt Mill - their lighter pale ales, Pintle and Steel Cut, and their full-blooded DIPA, Solar Light - have all brought the haze, though. Maybe there is something in all this after all?</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-36985925697956895272018-05-22T05:52:00.000-07:002018-05-22T05:52:39.301-07:00100 Words: Yeast<p>The fanfare in craft brewing often seems to be around new hops, exotic malts and experimental adjuncts, but for me yeast is where the real magic lies. Everything else is additive, linear and predictable - add strawberries, get strawberry flavour - but yeast is transformative.</p>
<p>I often joke that you can divide homebrewers into cooks and DIY-enthusiasts, but when it comes to yeast-driven styles, they have to become football managers. You don’t just pick your players, you have to coax and cajole them, controlling their environment, understanding their quirks and knowing exactly how to push them to get the results you want.</p>
<p><em>(Thanks to <a href="https://boakandbailey.com/">Boak and Bailey</a> for suggesting the 100 words format - it was fun to write and other bloggers should try it too!)</em></p>
<p><em>(Another thing that other bloggers should try is writing a piece about "farmhouse brewing" for the next issue of <a href="http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/the-sessions/">The Session</a>, which <a href="https://brewinabedsit.blogspot.co.uk/2018/05/session-136-announcement-farmhouse.html">I'm hosting</a> on June the 1st.)</em></p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-90476030347970129022018-05-20T09:01:00.001-07:002018-05-20T09:02:16.979-07:00Session #136 Announcement: Farmhouse Brewing<blockquote>The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic. Each month, a different beer blogger hosts the Session, chooses a topic and creates a round-up listing all of the participants, along with a short pithy critique of each entry. (You can find more information on The Session on <a href="http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/the-sessions/">Brookston Beer Bulletin</a>).</blockquote>
<p>Whether it's about the success of modern craft breweries like Jester King and Burning Sky, the worldwide spread of saison or the revival of international interest in Northern European traditions, farmhouse brewing is an recurring theme in the beer world. It's a very resonant idea but also one that invites many perspectives, so it seems like an ideal topic for the collective conversation that is The Session.</p>
<p>I'd invite people to approach the topic however they like - the more creative the better - but here are some ideas to get you started.</p>
<p>You could talk about how the word "farmhouse" is used in modern craft breweries, or about historic brewing traditions. You might want to think about how, if at all, the two are related.</p>
<p>If you think that farmhouse brewing or farmhouse beer refers to something meaningful and relevant in modern beer, you could write something touching on what it means to you. What's its defining element? Is it about style, ingredients, location or something else? Would you call a crisp, clean pilsner or a hoppy IPA a farmhouse beer if it was brewed from local ingredients in a medieval barn? What about a mixed fermentation barrel-aged saison brewed in a light industrial unit in a suburb of Manchester? Why does any of this matter?</p>
<p>If you want to get specific, maybe talk about one or more beers or breweries that you think embody some aspect of the idea of farmhouse brewing. Or if you're a homebrewer, you could talk about ways that your own beer has been influenced by it.</p>
<p>Conversely, if you think that the modern idea of a farmhouse brewery is largely just about marketing and aesthetics then you could have a go at dissecting and deconstructing it. Where did it originate and what are its roots? Who popularized it? How is it constructed and signalled? Most importantly, why are people so keen to buy into it?</p>
<p>The date for this Session is Friday the 1st of June - add a comment to this page on the day (or as soon as possible afterwards) with a link to your contribution. I'll probably write a roundup post over that weekend.</p>
<p>Cheers!</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-8082039221058133002018-03-20T16:12:00.000-07:002018-03-20T16:12:06.121-07:00Revitalisation Again<p>There's been a bit more talk recently about the CAMRA Revitalisation Project and the Special Resolutions that have been proposed for this year's AGM off the back of it. Phil at Oh Good Ale gives a <a href="https://ohgoodale.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/all-or-nothing/">really good summary of the changes</a> that the Special Resolutions would make to the Articles of Association, although, as will become apparent, I don't entirely agree with his interpretation of them. Tandleman has also had a <a href="http://tandlemanbeerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/to-be-or-not-to-be.html">crack at the subject,</a> and makes some good points.</p>
<p>For me, the proposed changes reflect two underlying needs.</p>
<p>The first is the need for a call to arms with some sense of urgency. While real ale arguably isn't out of the woods yet, it doesn't feel like it's under immediate threat in the way that it was when CAMRA were founded, and it's that sense of immediate danger that activates volunteers. On the other hand, you don't have to look very far these days to find people - not necessarily stereotypical CAMRA types - protesting against the closure of an apparently cherished local pub, and whatever you think of the merits of these campaigns, they undeniably generate strong feelings. By putting a bit more focus on the general defense of pubs and of drinking, the RP is presumably hoping to rekindle some of the old crusading spirit and get more members active.</p>
<p>The second is the need to remain a respected and authoritative voice in the wider world of beer. This has become an awkward double bind for CAMRA - on the one hand, talking up real ale won't achieve much if drinkers don't respect them as a credible source of information while on the other hand, with more beer drinkers at least dipping their toes into the accessible end of craft keg, talking up cask while ignoring or disparaging all other forms of beer will make them look increasingly blinkered and untrustworthy. Despite my previous rants about wording, the RP proposals seem like a reasonable stab at finding a way out of that, by letting them present real ale as a special and important high point in a broader landscape of Quality Beer.</p>
<p>How well all this will actually work - and whether the proposals will even get past the membership at the AGM - remains to be seen. But I'll be voting for them.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-90804281625507731052018-02-22T04:55:00.001-08:002018-02-22T05:54:21.695-08:00When Do Breweries Sell Up?<p>So yeah, the Fullers buyout of Dark Star.</p>
<p>It's hard not to suspect that there will be more of this sort of thing to come, and <a href="https://boakandbailey.com/2018/02/bit-fullers-dark-star-plus-links/">Boak and Bailey</a> have been pondering what you might want to look out for if you fancy playing "the prediction game." One of their conclusions is that <q>breweries rarely seem to sell up in the heady hype-phase — it’s during the come down that they’re vulnerable.</q></p>
<p>In fact, I'd say that there's something else interesting here from that angle. A couple of years ago, at the height of the US craft acquisition fever, I noticed that a lot of the breweries being bought out were founded at about the same time. And that in fact, that there seemed to be a fairly standard age for selling up - a few years either side of 20 - and that this applied to a lot of British real ale breweries, too: Bath Ales, for instance, and Sharps. Since Dark Star (founded 1994) seem to fit reasonably well into that pattern, I thought I'd actually get some data and see if it stacks up.</p>
<p>Methodology: this is clearly a selective list, but it's selective based on what I can remember / have heard of - I haven't consciously picked and chosen examples to fit my theory. I've stuck to full acquisitions, or at least controlling stakes, rather than including partial things. The only example that I've deliberately excluded as a special case was the Brooklyn / Carlsberg takeover of London Fields. I've also ignored breweries that I wouldn't consider "newish" - Courage, for instance, or Hardy and Hansons, because I don't think it'd add much to the data. I generally haven't been particularly careful about how I define founding dates, having mostly gone with the first thing that I found on the web.</p>
<p>So here are the numbers:
<table>
<th>Brewery</th><th>Years Independent</th><th>Age When Sold</th>
<tr><td>Camden</td><td> 2010 - 2015</td><td> 5</td></tr>
<tr><td>Wicked Weed</td><td> 2012 - 2017</td><td> 5</td></tr>
<tr><td>10 Barrel</td><td> 2006 - 2014</td><td> 8</td></tr>
<tr><td>Meantime</td><td> 2000 - 2015</td><td> 15</td></tr>
<tr><td>Sharps</td><td> 1994 - 2011</td><td> 17</td></tr>
<tr><td>Wychwood</td><td> 1983 - 2002</td><td> 19</td></tr>
<tr><td>Ballast Point</td><td> 1996 - 2015</td><td> 19</td></tr>
<tr><td>Elysian</td><td> 1996 - 2015</td><td> 19</td></tr>
<tr><td>Firestone Walker</td><td> 1996 - 2015</td><td> 19</td></tr>
<tr><td>Bath Ales</td><td>1995 - 2016</td><td> 21</td></tr>
<tr><td>Lagunitas</td><td> 1993 - 2015</td><td> 22</td></tr>
<tr><td>Goose Island</td><td> 1988 - 2011</td><td> 23</td></tr>
<tr><td>Dark Star</td><td> 1994 - 2018</td><td> 24</td></tr>
<tr><td>Boulevard</td><td> 1989 - 2013</td><td> 24</td></tr>
<tr><td>Achouffe</td><td> 1982 - 2006</td><td> 24</td></tr>
<tr><td>Ringwood</td><td> 1978 - 2007</td><td> 29</td></tr>
</table></p>
<p>Make of that what you will.</p>
<p>Update: okay, here's one interpretation. With a few exceptions, people don't generally open breweries to get rich, they do it because it's fun and interesting. For the ones that are lucky enough to create a large and successful business the fun and interesting element keeps going for a while, but fifteen years down the line it starts to get samey. At this point "would you like to exchange personal control for a large amount of money (and maybe the opportunity to focus more on the parts of the business that you find interesting while we pay for some suits to handle the boring stuff)" seems like a more attractive offer than it did before.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-52750899797967994532018-02-15T04:54:00.002-08:002018-02-15T04:56:50.481-08:00Getting what you pay for<p>It's good to see some talk about class and price in craft beer coming up again. For all that pricing issues generate endless bickering, it's a subject that shouldn't be ignored. How many people are put off by the cost of craft beer? Is it socially responsible to create a culture that has a financial barrier to entry? Should craft brewers be more concerned with making beer that's more widely affordable - affordable as a regular night-out drink, not just for one reverentially sipped half a month?</p>
<p>The focus in this last suggestion is often on ingredients. Picking and choosing high-grade malt adds to a brewer's costs. So does using large quantities of the currently fashionable hop varieties. So does picking fancy extra flavouring ingredients - single estate coffee or Madagascan vanilla pods. Could a craft brewer use less expensive raw materials, maybe just for one beer, to produce something that's still great, still representative of modern beer, but is affordable to a much wider market?</p>
<p>The problem with this is that ingredient costs aren't the whole story - in fact, they're sometimes a relatively small part of the whole story. Breweries are also spending money on, among other things, rent, wages, capital, utilities and transport costs and small breweries are generally going to be less efficient and less able to save money on those costs than a larger operation, even if they're brewing an identical beer. They won't have spent the effort ruthlessly optimising their process, their equipment and their business to keep overheads as low as possible.</p>
<p>In short, when you pay "craft prices" for a pint in a pub, you could actually be paying for quite a lot of things:
<ul>
<li>You might be paying to support a bar that's designed for comfort rather than capacity.</li>
<li>You might be paying to support a pub that doesn't compromise its character by doubling up as a coffee shop or a family restaurant.</li>
<li>You might be paying for beer that's been kept in chilled storage and sold fresh rather than being kept at ambient temperature for months on end.</li>
<li>You might be paying to support one of a number of a small, independent business rather than a larger and more efficient industrial operation.</li>
<li>Or you might be paying for more hops and higher quality malt.</li>
</ul></p>
<p>I don't really have a simple pronouncement to make on what's right and wrong here. In practice, I suspect that a lot of different approaches can co-exist, from Punk IPA in Wetherspoons to the priciest teku of nanobrewed barrel-aged stout in a modernist craft-temple. But I do think that when we ask for beer to be cheaper, we need to think about what we'd actually be willing to compromise on to get it there, because just using unfashionable hops won't do it on its own.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-9457780801948984322018-01-22T07:07:00.003-08:002018-01-22T07:15:02.238-08:00Pinnacles and Paternalism<p>So, the <a href="https://revitalisationdecision.camra.org.uk/about/proposed-changes/">long-awaited report from the CAMRA Revitalisation Project</a> has finally arrived and is already attracting <a href="http://edsbeer.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/revitalisation-or-revisionism.html">some</a> <a href="https://boakandbailey.com/2018/01/news-nuggets-longreads-20-january-2018-listening-little-pubs-lemp/">attention.</a></p>
<p>From a quick skim through - there's quite a lot in there - a lot of it seems to be sensible, pragmatic stuff. It did make me grind my teeth in places, though.</p>
<p>For instance, the proposals include the following:
<ul>
<li>CAMRA should promote the virtues of well-produced, well-kept, cask conditioned beer as the pinnacle of the brewer’s craft.</li>
</ul>
It also proposes that CAMRA should:
<ul>
<li>Permit the stocking of British beers that do not meet the definition of real ale at CAMRA beer festivals.</li>
</ul>
Hooray! However, while doing so, they should also:
<ul>
<li>Ensure the layout of festivals and literature associated with them reinforces CAMRA’s belief in the superiority of cask-conditioned ale.</li>
<li>Inform and educate members, other consumers and the trade about good beers of all types, while highlighting the comparative excellence of real ale.</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>
This talk of "pinnacles" and "superiority" is, essentially, bollocks, and exemplifies the problem that a lot of people have with CAMRA. An individual drinker might reasonably prefer a perfectly kept pint of Harveys Sussex Best to the freshest American IPA or the richest and most complex Belgian abbey beer, but for an organisation to imply that it's an objective fact that breweries from Cantillon to Augustiner to Hill Farmstead are falling short of "the pinnacle of their craft" because they don't cask condition comes across as fundamentally parochial and bigoted. This essentially tells brewers - who may have taken considerable care to choose the most suitable dispense for a particular beer - that they don't know what they're doing and that CAMRA know better than them.
</p>
<p>
Real Ale is absolutely worth campaigning for - it's a wonderful, unique, special thing that could easily be wiped out by the economic imperative to simplify and homogenise. I fully support the idea that it should retain a special place at the heart of CAMRA's strategy, and I could probably even accept a proposal that it should remain CAMRA's single central concern. But I'm not going to pretend that it's inherently and objectively better than anything else.
</p>
<p>
Honestly, I hope that this is a deliberate compromise aimed at sweet-talking the more hardcore dinosaurs into accepting some real progress. I hope that in practice, the sensible concrete step that non-real British beer can be served CAMRA festivals speaks louder than the condescendingly paternalistic way that it's officially talked about. I still see CAMRA as a force for good in general, I'm still a member, and I'll probably vote to support these proposals. But still...
</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-7315629384636261662018-01-16T05:55:00.002-08:002018-01-16T05:57:09.300-08:00Predictions: cynical and naive<p>I guess it's a bit late for a New Year crystal-ball-gazing post, but I've come up with a nice format so I'm going to use it. To whit: two jaded, cynical predictions about how nice things that everyone's looking forward to probably won't happen, and two naively credulous ones about different nice things that I'm hoping will.</p>
<h4>Cynicism</h4>
<p>Craft lager won't be massive. At least not in the way that some people seem to hope. As much as people like to go on about the wonders of a crisp, balanced Bavarian Helles, for the majority of drinkers, the added value of microbrewed lager over decent-ish import or domestic stuff isn't enough for them to be willing to pay a super-premium craft price on a regular basis. What we might see more of is traditional regional brewers and multinationals knocking out large quantities of poor-to-middling quality pilsners and calling them "craft lagers", because you can write craft on anything these days. The margins here are a lot bigger.</p>
<p>Farmhouse style sours - spontaneously fermented, barrel aged and blended - will be a tough sell, too. It's price, again, and consistency. An aged and blended sour like a gueuze is fundamentally quite expensive to produce. The consequently high prices are pretty offputting to British punters even when the producer has decades of history and makes reliably fantastic beer; for newer brewers who are basically learning on the job and trying to build a rep, it's going to be a very hard sell indeed. I'd expect to see a lot of "farmhouse brewers" leaning heavily on traditional pale ales to cover the rent.</p>
<h4>Optimism</h4>
<p>On the optimistic side, I think we're going to see more Belgian-influenced session beers - things like Wylam's DH Table Beer, De La Senne's Taras Boulba, Lost and Grounded's Hop Hand Fallacy. We're talking light, fresh, fun beers with a balance of hops, yeast and malt character, and maybe some subtle spicing. This sort of beer is distinctive but drinkable and fun to brew, allowing the brewer to exercise both delicacy and creativity. They're also relatively economical to produce, and interesting enough for the geeks but not too extreme for the wider market, so provided someone can think of a way of labelling them as a variety of IPA, we could really be in business.</p>
<p>Secondly, I'm hoping that freshness will come to be more of a selling point in the land of Serious Craft. We're sort of seeing this already with the cult of just-off-the-canning-line NEIPA, but as the UK craft landscape gets increasingly competitive and everyone and his dog has twenty lines of trendy beers from exciting local craft brewers, would it be too much to hope that those that can will also start to sell on freshness? I don't think we're far from the point where a bar that guarantees that hoppy beers were all kegged in the last two months and have been kept in coldstore throughout distribution and cellaring is more of a draw than the one that has ten extra lines of stuff that might have been sat in a warm warehouse for six months. This would be a rather good thing for those of us that don't want to spend top dollar on a fancy IPA unless we're pretty sure that it'll taste of hops rather than wet grass.</p>DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587803708798736658.post-59610313299314474262018-01-06T09:17:00.001-08:002018-01-06T09:17:53.073-08:00The Session #131 - Three Things In 2018<p>For an emergency <a href="http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/the-sessions/">session</a> topic, Jay Brooks has asked us <a href="http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/new-session-three-things-2018/">three questions for the coming year.</a> Thus:</p>
<h4>1) What one word, or phrase, do you think should be used to describe beer that you’d like to drink?</h4>
<p>Erm, I can't help much on this one. I'd struggle to think of a single defining characteristic of beer that I'd like to drink beyond the fact that I'd like to drink it, so I'm not sure that there's anything that a word or phrase could helpfully encapsulate. Sorry!</p>
<h4>2) What two breweries do you think are very underrated?</h4>
<p>Underrated is always a tough one - do people have to actively dislike them? Or can they be a solidly respected brewery who just aren't currently at the absolute peak of hype?</p>
<p>In any case, I'm going to stop overthinking it and pick De Ranke and Buxton. Both at the "respected but not currently hyped" end of the spectrum, they're excellent breweries who are too easy to take for granted because "continuing to make great beers" isn't really news.</p>
<h4>3) Name three kinds of beer you’d like to see more of.</h4>
<p>i) Classic US IPA. This seems like an odd one in the Age of IPA, but the real West Coast deal - strong (6% and up), clean, bitter and loaded with pine and citrus hop aroma - is a surprisingly rare beast in our neck of the woods, so more of those, please. Fresh, too, if you don't mind - let's see some kegged-on dates!</p>
<p>ii) Imperial Stout. Proper ones, not cloyingly sweet or barrel aged with a vanilla and cocoa nibs or laden with novelty flavorings, but serious and forbidding, with wave after wave of chocolate, coffee, dried fruits, liquorish and treacle flavors coming in like a Merzbow album for your tastebuds. Like US IPA, this is the kind of thing that I'd like to see become more entrenched in the UK beer scene, not an occasional thing, but a standard offer that you expect to find at least one really solid example of wherever beer geeks gather.</p>
<p>iii) Belgian session beer. Not a style as such, but every now and then I get a beer like Lost and Grounded's Hop Hand Fallacy or De La Senne's Taras Boulba - balanced, refreshing, drinkable beers with a bit of upfront yeast character - and wonder why this isn't more of a thing. Let's make it one!</p>
DaveShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14030589043526494438noreply@blogger.com1