We missed a few days in February because of the pressures of real life — family, flu, work — but still managed to knock out a few decent posts from beer reviews to Belgian bars.
We warmed up for the month by reviewing a bottled beer from Vibrant Forest, the stars of last year’s Great British Beer Festival for us: ‘Once we’d accepted that there was to be no grapefruit festival as advertised, we enjoyed it for what it was…’
More for the record than anything we rounded up responses to a Guardian article suggesting that Brexit might already be stamping on the toes of UK craft brewers and added a few thoughts of our own:
At the root of the Buy British school of thought it seems to us there are a couple of wrongheaded thoughts. First, we think some people believe the popularity of pale, hoppy American-influenced beers threatens the very existence of traditional English bitter — that they are the thin end of a wedge which will inevitably lead to total domination… but who can seriously say they struggle to get a pint of something brown and old-school in Britain in 2017?
For the 120th edition of The Session (which takes it to ten years, by the way) we let Joe Tindall’s wide-open choice of topic, brown beer, inspire a bit of whimsy:
Some people will tell you brown isn’t a flavour, but it is. It’s why you sear meat, and about 50 per cent of the meaning of toast. (N.B. black is also a flavour.)
Joe’s round up of all the contributions is here.