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Blogging and writing

Crumbs from the Pork Scratchings Packet

we_ten_1984
This 1984 advert was part of a cross-industry campaign by family brewers which ran from the late sixties.

This is a lazy Sunday morning roundup of links to ‘long reads’, interesting nuggets in the blogoshire and other tasty crumbs of flavour-enhancer-coated pork rind.

Around the blogoshire and internet

Longreads

Other stuff

Categories
beer reviews Beer styles

Pointlessly Imported Wheat Beer

Hitachino's Nest wheat beer.

This wheat beer might be pretentious, it might be obscure, but you can’t say it was expensive. It is certainly, however, pointless.

We don’t get much opportunity to pick up exotic bottled beer these days but, at the National Brewery Centre in Burton the other week, we couldn’t resist raiding the ‘bin ends’ in the gift shop, and came away with a 720ml bottle of Japanese brewery Hitachino Nest’s 5.5.% German-style wheat beer, for a mere £2.50.

Just on its ‘best before’ date (we think), it fizzed on pouring, hissing and foaming itself to death, leaving us with glasses of something that looked like cloudy apple juice. Despite the lack of condition, it was a tasty enough beer, falling somewhere between the sticky-toffee-banana character of Schneider and the pineapple-pear drop character of Hopf. As we find is often the case with German-style wheat beers from anywhere other than Germany, there was also a touch of spiciness (from the yeast?) which suggested the coriander of the Belgian style.

So, it was fine, but… why bother? This beer makes sense in Japan, we’re sure, where it is a local version of something from the other side of the world, but what is the point of importing it to the UK? It’s been made with such reverence for the almighty style guidelines that there’s nothing distinctively Japanese or in any way ‘different’ about it; and, though better than Erdinger, isn’t worth buying over, say, Franziskaner.

Hitachino Nest owl mascot.We think it all comes down their mascot — a beautifully illustrated owl which deserves its own 8-bit computer game — and to the same impulse that leads what seems like 90 per cent of British men under the age of forty to dress head-to-toe in clothes from faux-Japanese brand Super Dry: that is, fashion, and a very understandable fascination with other cultures.

Categories
Blogging and writing

Book Review: IPA by Mitch Steele

India Pale Ale No. 1

This single-topic epic by Mitch Steele, ‘brewmaster’ at Stone Brewing Co. in California, contains more information about India pale ale (IPA) than most people will need or want to know, and only brewers will get full value from it. Detail junkies, however, will find plenty in which to wallow.

IPA-cover-197x315We don’t know Steele or anything about him and went into IPA: brewing techniques, recipes and the evolution of India pale ale expecting something, after the house style of his employers, ‘aggressive’ and ‘passionate’ in style. In fact, the tone is quietly scholarly, and reassuringly deferential to researchers and historians who have gone before, such as Mark Dorber, Ron Pattinson and Martyn Cornell. Nor is there any sense that this is a publicity opportunity for Stone: where they are mentioned, it is only where it might have seemed crazy to omit them.

The first half of the book is among the best attempts to synthesise the entire confusing history of IPA in the light of recent work by Pattinson, Cornell and others. Steele acknowledges that some old myths have been demolished without crowing about it, and negotiates the intricacies of the story (the sticking points, you might say) with care. East London and Burton upon Trent are given due attention and credit, before the focus switches, rightly, to America and the American influence elsewhere. All the history is thoroughly referenced, too, with footnotes on almost every page. (If you are put off by footnotes, go and watch Spongebob Squarepants or something and stop ruining books for everyone else.)

Our favourite nuggets: the story in the introduction about Anheuser-Busch’s abortive attempts to brew an IPA in the 2006; the slyly euphemistic admission that many American ‘double IPAs’ have levels of ‘hoppiness’ only possible using ‘alternative hop products’; and another excellent if unsuccessful attempt to pin down ‘black IPA’, which makes it sound like strong, hoppy dark mild.

Brewers and home brewers will be excited by the second half of the book which, thanks to Steele’s industry connections, contains recipes for a startling number of well-regarded recent IPAs, along with historical recipes from trusted sources. We were particularly fascinated to see a recipe for Thornbridge Jaipur, though a little bird at the brewery told us it had been tweaked in recent years and no longer contains Vienna malt as per Steele’s instructions. There are also some clever selections: J.W. Lees Harvest Ale is included as the best present-day equivalent of an ‘October Beer’ (the ancestor of IPA), and their Manchester Star as an example of an ‘East India Porter’, the original ‘black IPA’.

One of our favourite parts of the book is at the back: a short guide to interpreting historic brewing records. Ron Pattinson coached us through this St Austell recipe from 1912 but, from now on, IPA will act as a handy desk reference for attempts to decode the mysterious scribblings of long-dead brewers.

The obligatory last paragraph complaint before we sum up? Perhaps as a result of attempting to be diplomatic at every turn, Steele ends up lacking much in the way of a voice, and the book can be a touch dry at times, which made us wish this had been a straight-up collaboration with Pattinson and/or Cornell, both of whom can be trusted to put the boot in now and again. Overall, though, like For the Love of Hops, it is much more than a text book and well worth any beer geek adding to their library.

The book has 352 pages and was published by Brewers Publications in 2012. We bought our copy through Amazon for £10.44 but the US retail price is $24.95.

Categories
Beer history

Remembering the Early Days of Brewdog

2008 vintage Brewdog bottles.

We’re writing about the emergence of Brewdog for our book project at the moment and would really welcome your help in remembering how beer geeks felt about them in their first five years.

Nowadays, even people who still have a soft-spot for the (wealthy, successful, very businesslike) punks begin any statement about them with the words ‘Whatever you think of Brewdog…’ or ‘I don’t like their marketing but…’

Back in their early days, though, there was no such quibbling: Brewdog were, as far as most people were concerned, a thoroughly good thing. Here’s what we said when we’d barely been blogging a year:

Isn’t BrewDog’s marketing strategy just ace?  Cool-looking bottles that you’d happily give to non-beer-geek mates. Limited edition batches, like 90s indie singles. Lots of publicity in “taking on” the Portman group… you have to be impressed with that ambition.

Melissa Cole liked them enough to do this when the Portman Group were picking on them in 2008; and Zak Avery said this in 2009. Even Tandleman was impressed. Then things like this happened, and the love affair turned a little sour.

Because recent history is all a bit of a blur, we’d love to hear your recollections, or read old blog posts to which you can point us, either by email or in comments below. We’re especially interested if you:

  • ever described yourself as a Brewdog ‘fan’
  • started a blog mostly to write about Brewdog
  • got angry at people for criticising them
  • were on their side over Speedball
  • aimed to buy everything they released, even if it was expensive or hard to find.

What attracted you to Brewdog? And, if you’re now out of love with them, what was the turning point for you?

Categories
marketing

Dear Brewery on Social Media

Blue Rider will talk loud
By Fabio Penna, from Flickr under Creative Commons.

So you’ve joined Twitter to promote your beer? Very sensible. After all, it’s free, and the potential is enormous. But we’re not going to follow you, and here’s why.

1. Your company has a long and interesting history and is full of fascinating characters. Your brewery, to people who don’t work in one, is an intriguing and mysterious place. But what do you Tweet about? Nick sums it up pretty well here:

2. Every time someone mentions you, or shares a photo of one of your beers, however banal their commentary or the image, you Retweet it.

3. You nag: Like this on Facebook! Go here! Use this hashtag! As the playground saying went: ‘Askers don’t get.’

What you ought to be doing

Share information which, if we weren’t following you, we wouldn’t get to see. Dig in the archives, explore strange corners of the brewery, introduce us to the characters in your business, take us away from our ‘humdrum lives’ (© Jorvik Viking Centre, via Richard Herring) with intriguing images. Give us the inside scoop.

Interact with people at a level beyond naked self-promotion: don’t react only when you see your brand name mentioned, butting in with a boneheaded shout-out for your latest product.

And that’s it.