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beer reviews bottled beer breweries buying beer pubs

Boak & Bailey’s Golden Pints 2014

Prompted by Andy Mogg at Beer Reviews, here are our nominations for the best bevvies, bars, book and blogs in the world of beer in 2014.

Bearing in mind that we live a long way from where the action is and haven’t been abroad, our choices are perhaps a bit parochial and conservative. In general, though we try to keep a bit of distance and remain objective, you might also want to cross-reference this lot against our disclosure page. And who knows how this list might have looked if we’d written it yesterday, or tomorrow.

Best UK Cask Beer: St Austell Proper Job

Proper Job pump clip.After much over-thinking, we decided that we wanted to recognise a beer from one of our local breweries, of which we have drunk several pints every week, usually at the Yacht Inn in Penzance, and which consistently delighted us — that is, made us say ‘Ooh!’ and ‘Ah!’ The peachy, pithy, juicy aroma gets us every time, laid over a clean, fresh-tasting beer with no rough-edges at all. Through compromise rather than design, it’s been an American-style IPA at session strength for some years, which is now apparently all the rage. We expect to drink lots more of it in 2015.

Best UK Keg Beer: Brew By Numbers Cucumber & Juniper Saison

Brew by Numbers Cucumber and Juniper Saison.At first, we struggled to think of any keg beers we’d drunk often enough to form a strong opinion — we dabbled with a lot of one-off glasses in Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol and London, but didn’t go back for seconds of many or any. Then we recalled this beer which we enjoyed back in June and liked enough to seek out for a second session. A gimmicky beer from a brewery whose beers we don’t find universally brilliant, it nonetheless knocked us for six — the beer equivalent of a classic ‘fruit cup’. (We have also found it good in bottles, but not as good as from the keg.)

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer: Thornbridge Tzara

Thornbridge beer bottle caps.The most convincing Kölsch you’ll taste outside Cologne and, debates over style and stylistic sub-divisions aside, one of the best lager beers around. The most impressive thing about it is the malt character — solid enough to chew on. Not flashy but classy, and a real demonstration of brewing skill. (Here’s what we said back in February.)

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News

News, Nuggets & Longreads 13/12/2014

Here are some links to enjoy with your breakfast, or perhaps when you’re sat in a pub this afternoon surrounded by shopping bags, shaking and pale, vowing never to leave your Christmas shopping this late again.

Joe Stange’s survey of Bamberg’s breweries and pubs for All About Beer is an evocative piece of travel writing and a useful practical guide for first-time visitors. One to save for future reference.

→ In case you missed it, the Wetherspoon chain and Heineken are having a falling out, ostensibly over supply to a pub in growing JDW’s Irish estate. (Commentary from Tandleman here.)

Categories
breweries Generalisations about beer culture pubs

Bars That Brew, Brewers With Bars

When we were in the research phase of Brew Britannia during 2013 we thought we observed a nascent trend: the cutting out of middle men.

A few years ago, there was a fairly cosy relationship between brewers, bar owners and distributors serving a nascent  ‘craft beer’ (definition 2) market, each taking a slice of the cost of a third of IPA.

But brewers seem often to feel frustrated at the fact that their reputation so often relies on the care with which their product is presented by third parties — assuming, of course, that they can even get any pubs or bars to stock their beer. The building of a tap room or the acquisition of a tied pub is an obvious solution to these problems.

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Blogging and writing

Top Beer Tweets of 2014

For the second year in a row, here’s a list of some Tweets that tickled us in the past 12 months.

Because they told us something we didn’t know, expressed an idea efficiently, or simply made us laugh, we favourited, re-Tweeted, or included them in one of our weekly round-ups.

1. The Beer Nut observes an amusing juxtaposition in Bamberg.

2. There’s a lot of history encapsulated in this one photo.

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Generalisations about beer culture opinion

Hipster School of Thought, No?

When BrewDog’s Sarah Warman asked the question above in relation to hype, it got us thinking, because the hipster school of thought (insofar as it really exists) is a slippery beast.

The term ‘hipster’ was invented in the 1940s but has really gained popularity in the last decade as it has come to encapsulate a certain attitude to culture and fashion, as expressed in this example of the ‘hipster barista’ internet meme:

Hipsters to change a lightbulb barista meme.