Tag Archives: thornbridge

More Visuals: Beer Family Trees?

Extract from the Thornbridge Family Tree

Detail from the Thornbridge Family Tree (PDF link below)

After the more theoretical graphs and charts of the last couple of days (which required all our reserves of bullshit to navigate), today’s experiment is in an altogether woolier mode.

Pete Frame is rightly revered for his Rock Family Trees — vast, sprawling, beautifully hand-scripted charts showing the movement of bass, keytar and Moog players from one band to another, or within particular ‘movements’. This approach doesn’t just work for bands, though — Frame also used it to map the Monty Python crew, hangers on and chums.

Inspired by his approach, we’ve come up with a chart showing the comings and goings of brewers at Thornbridge (PDF, 76kb) and its place in British craft brewing in the last seven years. Is it helpful? Does it help makes sense of the connections between breweries? We think it does, actually — it highlights Italian and Antipodean connections; and not entirely surprising links between Meantime Brewing, Marble, Dark Star, Brewdog and Thornbridge.

But now we’d really like to see an even bigger version covering more breweries. (Narrated by the late John Peel.)

Notes

  1. We chose Thornbridge because they seem to have a revolving door, with people coming and going as often as members of Morrissey’s backing band and
  2. because they’re fairly open about who’s arrived and who’s leaving.
  3. With only their blog, press releases and Wikipedia for reference, we’ve probably made some mistakes — sorry in advance! We’re happy to fix them, but it’s the approach we’re really testing here.
  4. If you work at any of the breweries pictured, you’re probably feeling weirded out right now. Sorry. If it’s any comfort, at least you know how Peter Hook felt when he saw this.
  5. Updates: 09:45, 03/05/2012 — added James Kemp; changed David Pickering qualifications to mention Heriot-Watt; corrected spelling of ‘Heriot-Watt’.

Second honeymoon

A page from Michael Jackson's 500 beers book.

IPA was one of our first loves. As many people just getting into beer seem to find, the bold, obvious hop flavour and aroma provided an entrance point and, in the most visceral way, excited us. In the Great Beer Guide by Michael Jackson (our Bible back then) it was always the IPAs which looked most alluring — pictured in stemmed glasses, pale at the bottom, glowing amber at the top, the aroma almost lifting off the page. The fact that they played hard to get didn’t hurt, either: finding a strong hoppy IPA in London in 2007 involved research and usually one or more changes of public transport.

In the last year or two, however, we’ve drifted away from this style, partly because (at its worst) IPA can be a one-trick pony, and partly because the novelty wore off. (Colin Valentine was right — once they were everywhere, we got bored and moved on.)

This Christmas, however, we had the opportunity to stop thinking too hard and just enjoy several now easy-to-find IPAs.

St Austell Proper Job (5.5%, bottle)

Back in November, visiting Bridgwater, we were tipped off that Mole Valley Farmers were selling off out-of-date stock of Proper Job and Admiral’s Ale. We bought everything they had at 60p a bottle, knowing that, being bottle-conditioned, it was unlikely to have ‘gone off’. Sure enough, what we actually got in the Proper Job was a beautifully mellowed, rounded, aged IPA, without the slightly astringent hoppiness and thinnish body of the fresh cask version. Always a great beer, but one that doesn’t mind a bit of time to mature, it turns out.

Fuller’s Bengal Lancer (5.3%, bottle)

Is this getting better? The early batches were delicious but, here and there, had a hint of stewed tea about them. The bottles we drank over Christmas not only resembled cask ale more closely than any other bottled beer we’ve tried (skillful use of the microscope?) but also seemed brighter, cleaner and somehow less… English. Worth having in by the case, if you’re that way inclined.

Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference IPA (Marston’s) (5.9%, bottle)

This was the real surprise. We picked it up as an emergency backup — you don’t want to run out of beer on boxing day, do you? — but had a moment of eye-popping joy on tasting it. It reminded us, for some reason we can’t quite pin down, of those heady first days of exploring beer with a Michael Jackson book in our rucksack and absolutely no idea what we were talking about. (Reader: Nothing’s changed, then?) Could it be the upfront cascade hops, once the darlings of the brewing scene, now a bit old hat? At any rate, Marston’s are now somewhat redeemed in our eyes. Worst tasting notes ever, though: malt and hops, apparently.

Thornbridge Jaipur (5.9%, cask)

We approached this with some trepidation. Tandleman and others whose tastebuds we have no reason to doubt have not been impressed with it lately. Fortunately, on this occasion, we found it as as glorious as ever. Compared to the three bottled IPAs, it seemed to have more toffee and certainly had a weightier body. A deep beer, yes, but also a very drinkable one, which slipped down and caused us (literally) to smack our lips.

Maybe, as we approach our fifth year of blogging about beer, it’s time to return to dig out Michael Jackson and get back to where we once belonged?

Golden Pints 2011

This is our contribution to The Golden Pints 2011, run by Beer Reviews and Mark Dredge.

Best UK Draught (Cask or Keg) Beer: Penzance Brewing Company Potion 9 (4%)
From our nearest brewery and, in fact, probably the last brewery in the country. (Everything down here claims to be the last, most southerly or most westerly one in the country.) Best consumed where it is brewed, at the Star Inn in Crowlas.

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer: Fuller’s Past Masters XX Strong Ale (7.4%)
We liked the idea and liked the beer; and, as we’ve worked through a case, it’s slowly become one of our absolute favourites.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: none
We haven’t had a foreign draft beer which has really blown us away. They often seem a little stale by the time they reach the UK and (boo hoo) we haven’t been to Germany, the Czech Republic or Belgium this year.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer: Westmalle Tripel
A new beer from an up-and-coming little brewery you might have heard of…

Best UK Brewery: Thornbridge
When we go into a strange pub and see a Thornbridge pumpclip, we get excited. Variety, consistent quality (at least in our experience) and style.

Pub/Bar of the Year: The Sheffield Tap
A great idea, great premises and great beer, and still going strong after a couple of years. We look forward to a Tap in every city. (Bristol next, please!)

Beer Festival of the Year: CAMRA Kernow, Falmouth
The only one we’ve been to this year. We had a great time.

Supermarket of the Year: Marks and Spencer
Their own range is varied and interesting and the quality keeps improving. Top marks for labelling, too.

Online Retailer of the Year: Beermerchants
We’ve found them reliable, friendly and they have the beer we want (Belgian, mostly) at the right price.

Best Beer Book or Magazine: CAMRA’s quarterly BEER Magazine
Where What’s Brewing is still the preserve of the man-in-blazer photograph and moldy old Keg Buster strip, BEER feels like a 21st century publication with an inclusive attitude and articles from many of our favourite beer writers.

Best Beer Blog or Website: it’s complicated
Any blog we’ve linked to in a post this year is one we like and/or find interesting. If pushed, though… The Beer Nut does make us laugh, and write beer reviews like nobody else.

Awkward second date

Detail from the label of St Petersburg Stout (via Thornbridge website)

Do you ever avoid a special beer you’ve really enjoyed in the past because you have a feeling it just won’t excite you the same way second time around?

We have wondered why we haven’t got round to having a second bottle of Thornbridge’s St Petersburg Imperial Russian Stout and perhaps that was the reason, as we really did enjoy it last time, back when Thornbridge were up-and-coming and causing a buzz.

Fortunately, it didn’t disappoint, although we detected a more pronounced, pleasantly funky brettanomyces and tobacco character this time, reminding us of Harvey’s or even that 1983 Courage we enjoyed in Antwerp. Complex yet comforting, a perfect, slow-sipping Christmas beer, despite it’s tasteful label and reindeer-pun-free name.

Mid-morning crowds at the bar

It was 11:45 in the morning at the Sheffield Tap and we couldn’t get served.

Two harassed bar staff — one of whom was a woman with a moustache (Movember) — were trying to deal with a four-deep crowd of football fans and beer geeks at the bar. One bloke wanted to taste a few things. The bar staff were patient about it but the punters behind him weren’t. A couple of low-key rows broke out: “Don’t let that bloke push in front of you! You were there first!”; “No I wasn’t, you nobhead. Shut up!”

Eventually, squeezed into a corner with our Thornbridge Pivni (“Possibly the best breakfast beer in the world” — Reluctant Scooper), we wondered whether, when this pub first opened a couple of years ago, anyone ever expected it to be this busy at any time, let alone before midday.

The market for craft beer bars isn’t saturated yet. If there’d been another one a few doors down, we reckon that would have been full, too.

Tasting notes (all Thornbridge): Pivni (3.7%3.2%) was delicious — how we falsely remember Summer Lightning tasting; Black Harry (3.9%) was one of those milds that’s coy about it, pleasant enough, but lacking oomph; Sequoia (4.5%) was our favourite, light-bodied and exotic-tasting — what Ewoks would drink; and Versa (5%) was a Schneider-alike with big banana aromas and lots of toffee flavour.

CAMRA Kernow Festival, Falmouth

Detail from the logo of CAMRA Kernow

Having moved to Penzance proper from a village a few weeks ago, we suddenly find ourselves much better connected by public transport, and so getting up to Falmouth for the CAMRA Kernow beer festival on Saturday was a doddle.

Even as we approached the venue from the station, we could tell it was going to be good: the streets were crowded much like the approach to a football ground on match day. The venue itself was busy — almost chaotic — but the startled looking volunteers were nonetheless fast and efficient and had us inside, pints in hand, within five minute of hitting the door. Impressive.

Now, there was plenty of Cornish and other West Country beer on offer but, frankly, we can get that any day of the week so we made a beeline for what we’ve been missing the most since the move: proper northern beer.

We knew Steel City Brewing’s Escafeld would be hoppy and weren’t disappointed: it smelled of mown grass, and tasted something like a good, sharp gooseberry jam. Kelham Island’s Now That’s What I Call Bitter was exactly the kind of flinty, crisp, pale and hoppy beer we’d been dreaming of. It took us right back to Sheffield in an instant. And we couldn’t resist an old favourite — Thornbridge Kipling. Can you believe we’ve gone more than six months without a pint of anything from Thornbridge? Weird.

We didn’t just drink beers from up north, though, and also dug into the very decent selection from Oakham, reminding ourselves that this brewery (whose products we don’t see enough of) are up there with Dark Star, Crouch Vale and other favourites of ours. Black Hole Porter was the standout.

Not for the first time, we’ve been very impressed by a regional festival in a way that we aren’t generally by the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF). Why? Perhaps because there’s less overwhelming choice; a different crowd — locals, students, passing hippies; and a cosier venue? We’ll keep pondering this.

Of course, the real  buzz was about the toilets: many of the women in attendance were gleeful at a turning of the tables which saw them walking straight in while the gents queued for a urinal. “I wouldn’t use the sink in the disabled toilet if I were you.” Eeew.

Quite a change

“It’s quite a change”, commented a bewildered local outside the newly refurbished Jolly Butchers in Stoke Newington, North London, as we were on our way in.

Following Pete’s enthusiastic review, we scooted across to Stokey to check it out. We were excited to hear about this new arrival because we’ve long thought that Stoke Newington is exactly the sort of place you’d expect to find a good pub with decent food. As previous scouting trips have shown, however, to date, there have been lots of places masquerading as good boozers but actually displaying the worst tendencies of the pretentious would-be gastropub: crap beer and overpriced food.

It was pretty busy, which bodes well, but we managed to nab a table. As reported by Pete, the beer range is pretty cool – Dark Star, Thornbridge, and Schlenkerla rauchbier on tap. Nice to see an emphasis on the local, too, with brews from Brodie’s (Leyton, further east) and Tottenham, further north. The food really was quite satisfying — posh pub grub and convincing (that is, very processed) bratwurst for those who yearn for the beer gardens of Germany.

The beer condition was a little disappointing. We found the ales slightly warm and served with zero head (thanks again for that ‘take it to the top’ campaign, CAMRA) but it is only their first week and that will hopefully improve.

All in all, if we lived in the area, we’d be seriously chuffed, and its immediate success, and that of CASK in Pimlico, suggests that London can support a few more really decent pubs yet.

Thornbridge Raven: we like it

It seems we’re the last to the party on this so-called ‘Black IPA’, having already seen posts by:

We finally tracked it down at Cask in Pimlico last night. We liked it but, at 6.6%, and with an almost harsh bitterness and rich, mouth-coating hops, it was one to enjoy by the half and at a leisurely pace.

The oxymoron in the name is a bit irritating — black and pale..? — although we can see what they’re getting at. We’d probably call it a flowery porter.

The rough with the smooth

There are some breweries whose rise to prominence are a source of irritation (Innis and Gunn, anyone?) but we really wouldn’t mind if every pub in the country was selling Thornbridge. That’s just as well, because it seems to be getting that way.

In recent weeks, we’ve had the opportunity to try a whole lot of Thornbridge’s beers. In this post, though, we’re going to highlight one that works briliantly and one that really doesn’t.

First up, the success story. Exposed is a stout brewed with pink peppercorns and strawberry. It sounds gorgeous even just from the description on the bright red and pink pump clip. For starters, it’s a good solid stout. With nothing else done to it, it would be a winner. The subtle addition of exotic flavours, however, makes it something really special. If we hadn’t known, we wouldn’t have been able to name those additives, but they were certainly there providing beguiling, tantalising hints of their presence in a tingle on the tongue here and a raspberry/cider sourness there. This reminded us of a Belgian beer, only Thornbridge have got the recipe bang on, first try, rather than needing 200 years of experimentation to get the spicing sorted.

Then, sadly, on to a beer which didn’t work as well. Halcyon is a 7.7% strong IPA made with green hops. Sounds exciting, right? It certainly smelled incredible — exactly like sticking your nose into a foil packet of hops when home brewing. Sadly, it tasted like sugar syrup laced with hop tea, astringent and overbearing.

We guess the latter is the price you pay for successful experiments like the former.

Pump creep

The owners of Cask, our current favourite London pub, have obviously decided to pull out all the stops on the beer front. They’ve just expanded from five cask ale pumps to eight, including two from Dark Star and three from Thornbridge.  Moravka Lager has also appeared.

The keg beer has got better too — out go Guinness and Fosters to be replaced by Keesman Herren Pils, Brugse Zot (blonde and brown), Rothaus Pils and Weizen, Mort Subite Kriek, and Kuepper’s Koelsch. The range of bottles from small german breweries continues to impress with some real obscurities sitting in the fridges.

A great pub just got even better.

We’re also delighted to see that our local has added an extra pump for cask ale.