We’re going to be away for two weeks, gadding about Germany and France with our Bradshaw and a fistful of Baedekers.
We probably won’t be posting anything here, but we’ll try to keep up our Tweeting and maybe do a little Facebooking.
In the meantime, here are some nuggets to chew on.
- We’re going to ‘go long‘ again on 30 November. What we write will probably have a Christmas theme. Once again, we’d be delighted if you joined us, like this lot did last week.
- As people digest the news that Greene King are (inevitably) launching a crafty sub-brand, we’ve been reading (courtesy of Don Burgess once again) about the nineteen-nineties speciality/’guest beer’ bandwagon. Here’s a passage from SIBA’s Grist magazine c.1994:
Indeed as the big brewers launch ‘badged’ beers to try to create the impression of ‘guests’ and attempt to steal the micros’ clothes with limited edition ales (Whitbread should learn to brew one beer properly before they try to brew a Classic Series reckons Don), competition is not just within the sector, but for the sector.
- The various accounts of the Great British Beer Festival and London Craft Beer Festival which have appeared in the blogoshire of late add up to an interesting composite picture, and are all well worth reading together: Zythophile | The Beer Diary | The Evening Brews | Jordan St. John (again).
- This post about London breweries by Barm is an excellent read, reminiscent of recent efforts by the Evening Brews team, and particularly notable for the well-observed description of a new style: ‘London Murky’.
- On our return, we’ll be speaking at the Eden Project’s food and drink festival, this time on the subject of historical beer styles and their influence on what’s available on the market right now. We’re writing the script on our hols, so that’s all we know for the moment, except that we’re hoping to use St Austell Proper Job and 1913 Stout in the tasting.
- And, finally, if you’ve ever wondered what the HELL we look like, you might want to keep an eye on Enormous Face, where a ‘guest post’ is imminent.
2 replies on “See You on the Other Side”
Have a great trip! I’d be curious, if you are minded, whether you find a marked sulfur-like note (spoiled egg, lit match) smell and taste in much of the lager there. Not all to be sure, e.g. I never noticed it in Urquell, or Bernard, but in numerous reputed brands. I think it’s a settled part of the palate of much helles and pils – not dissimilar actually to the Burton sulfurous taste.
Viz. murky: if by that cloudy is meant, three years ago I had a number of cask beers mid-town (London) that were like that. Young’s Special Bitter was one, but there were others, mostly from fairly new breweries. I don’t think The Kernel started it, it is surely a spin-off of American practice. Not a great idea IMO, but it seems to have settled in there too now..
That was very interesting about Greene King and it points up a difference in terminology that is occurring on either side of the pond. In England, craft beer means, beer that is cloudy or piney or grapefruit-like or flavoured (coffee, chocolate, spices) or perhaps in an old Belgian sour tradition. To me in Canada, Greene King’s existing cask line-up is craft beer 100%! It already is, you can’t make it more crafty than it is! One doesn’t have to love Abbott, say, to recognize that it is a full-tasted, naturally made and served beer, the kind of model that kick-started the craft thing here to begin with. Hence the oddity of reading that a cask beer specialist (I realize they do make other kinds of beer but that’s okay) is crafty. Because the term craft really wasn’t apt for England, it has (IMO) taken on a different meaning there than here, which is fine of course.
Gary
Whitbread’s early ’90s Porter was rather good, as I recall. Although I remember a chocolate mild that was less so. Ahead of its time, maybe.