Categories
Blogging and writing

Five years, a thousand posts

So, there you go, we’ve kept this up for five years. Blimey, eh?

Of the thousand posts we’ve written, these are some of our favourites; and you can find an index of our Memorable Beers posts below.

Thanks to everyone who’s encouraged us and especially to those who’ve commented over the years.

Now we’re going to have  celebratory cup of tea and take May a little easier than we did April.

#1 Goose Island IPA
#2 Berliner Weisse
#3 Cotleigh Near a Shipwreck
#4 New Cross Lock-in
#5 Hasselbacher Pils
#6 Guinness FES
#7 Like, really cheap and really strong!
#8 World Cup 2006
#9 First Decent Homebrew
#10 A Sobering Pint
#11 Pale Ale for POWs
#12 Birthday Sophistication
#13 And Back to Lager
#14 Guinness With Nick

Categories
Beer styles

What Does IPA Mean?

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In his latest post, Ron Pattinson rails against those who deride Greene King IPA as “not a proper India Pale Ale” while they blindly accept Guinness’s right to call itself a stout. IPA, Ron points out, was not always strong, even in the nineteenth century; and, anyway, British beer styles evolve over time: an 1850 IPA would bear little resemblance to one brewed in, say, 1946.

The fact is, though, that GK do seem out of step with the current usage of the term IPA.

On the one hand, more traditional ale brewers in the UK tend to give the name to the beer in their range which, compared to their standard bitter, is lighter in colour (often orange-hued) and more evidently hoppy.

On the other, “new wave” British brewers tend to make IPAs in the US manner — strong, deep amber, and with heavy, piney, citrusy hopping.

Not many breweries (in fact, only GK?) produce an “IPA” which is deep brown and lightly-hopped.

So, although of course GK aren’t doing anything wrong, it’s easy to see why some people might be puzzled or disappointed if they’re used to other breweries’ IPAs. (Although feeling almost physically angry is a little over-zealous.)

Of course, for all that, there are lots of people who like GK IPA and couldn’t give a flying one whether it’s a “proper IPA” by either historical or beer geek standards. In fact, the only IPA they know is GK’s so perhaps, in twenty years time, IPA will come to mean brown, lightly hopped beer, just as Guinness now defines stout for most drinkers.

 

Categories
marketing

No Nonsense is Nonsense

John Smith’s have a carefully worked out ‘brand identity’: everything is written in the voice of a “no nonsense” Yorkshireman.

Screenshot of marketing copy from John Smith's.

But the funny thing is this: the idea that they can’t be doing with all that ponced up marketing bullshit… is marketing bullshit. There probably are some “no nonsense” businesses that employ marketing agencies, but we can’t think of any off the top of our heads.

Of course, big food producers (including breweries) have very good reasons to suggest that taking an interest in the taste, ingredients and process of manufacture is pretentious: we, the punters, ought to know our place, viz. buying and consuming without question.

When we asked for information on the ingredients in John Smith’s Extra Smooth (we’ll explain why another time) Heineken customer care (ee, by ‘eck, etc.) told us that it uses “premium malts”. There is definitely a tiny bit of nonsense in that phrase.

While we’re at it, here’s another example of ‘no nonsense’ as a brand value, this time from Newcastle Brown.

Categories
beer in fiction / tv Blogging and writing london

Updates, Notes and Responses

Oh, by the way — this post absolutely counts towards our 1000 by Wednesday, so there.

Categories
homebrewing marketing

In Our Dream World

Homebrew beer bottles with Pivovary PZ labels.

We’ve found it much easier to tell what’s what in our homebrew stash if we create distinctive labels. We’ve also decided that, if we have to design labels, we might as well use them to sell our beer to ourselves and to those we foist them upon, so, we try to make them look reasonably polished, but also let our imaginations run a little.

Epingwalder Bürgerbräu

This is the brand name for our German-inspired beers. We used to live on the edge of Epping Forest which, of course, is the Epingwald. If it were real, EB would be the kind of company where people knock-off early on Friday and head to the excellent beer garden across the road from the brewery; they’d probably use more-or-less the same label designs they’ve had since 1985; the head brewer would rarely smile and have an enormous moustache.

Pivovary PZ

Our Czech-style beers bear this brand. PZ, in case you haven’t guessed, is what locals call Penzance, and the code painted on the local fishing boats. We like it because it represents 20 per cent of the letters, including one that scores highly in Scrabble, in “Plzeň”. The picture above shows the state-of-the art bottling line that’s just been installed. (Our kitchen table.) We’re now wondering whether Penzaňsky Prazdroj might not be even better…

Boak & Bailey

Obvious, really, but the name of the blog does seem to fit old-fashioned English beers. If our grandfathers had been fusty Victorian brewers, this is what would have been painted on the brick wall of their imposing East London brewery before Whitbread took them over in the 1960s. We’ve got a B&B export stout maturing at the moment, with a label based on some from the 1940s.

For our next brew, we’re planning to make a big US-inspired IPA. Coming up with a suitably bold, in-your-face brand for that is going to be fun.

We print all of our labels on a standard inkjet printer; fix them with cheap hairspray; and attach them to the bottle with milk. The ink doesn’t run, the labels slip off in warm water, and we get to reuse our bottles time and time again.