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opinion

What is balance in beer?

A man balancing on a bicycle.

‘Balanced’, like ‘clean‘, is one of those words all beer geeks learn from their first primer (usually a book by Michael Jackson, Roger Protz or someone similar) — but what, exactly, does it mean? A bit of argy-bargy on the subject on Twitter got us thinking.

We’ve promised ourselves not to quote every nugget of wisdom from For the Love of Hops because it wouldn’t fair to Stan, but we can’t resist this new addition to the Tao of Keeling:

To have balance in the beer does not mean simply to go to the middle, bland flavours.

So, ‘balanced’ needn’t mean restrained, as long as its unrestrained in every direction at once? The yellow platform shoes will look better if complemented with a feather boa? That kind of thing?

The reason balance has a bad reputation in some quarters is, as Mr Keeling suggests, because some brewers of bland beer use it as a defence mechanism, implying that their critics have no taste.

And, as for the assumption that balance is best… well, yes, usually, it probably is. Most of the time, even if we want to drink an intensely-flavoured beer, we want it to present a Wall of Taste — a cohesive blend. Every now and then, though, a really sweet, bitter, sour, one note beer can be quite fun.

Is balance prized, at least in part, because unbalanced beers are the equivalent of an air horn, while balance requires virtuoso skill? That’s especially true of extreme balancing.

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opinion

Book Review: For the Love of Hops

Malt and hops only advertisement.

It would be a shame if any beer lovers were to miss out on Stan Hieronymus’s latest book, For the Love of Hops, because it resembles a technical manual for brewers.

We have another book in the series, on the subject of yeast, which we’ve found a little heavy going. FORTLOH (yes, that’s what we’re going to call it), though it certainly has all the details on, say, 4-mercapto-4-methylpentan-2-one you might expect, is quite the opposite. In fact, it’s almost a page turner, as the hard facts are woven into vivid reportage from hop fields around the world, laced with Van Klompesque profundities from brewers, and peppered with revelatory statements that bring the pint in your hand into sharper focus.

And ‘the love hops’, in this case, doesn’t necessarily mean that Randallizing, chest-bumping, BRING ON THE BURN!!! fanboy tendency: there is plenty of talk of balance and much insight into ‘classical’ European brewing techniques. The much-maligned ‘boring old’ Fuggle — too English for its own good — is given plenty of attention, and put into context as a kind of ‘stud’ from which many hipper hop varieties are descended.

For the Love of Hops front cover.

If you do brew, however, you will no doubt finish the book resolved to make changes in your technique. Where other brewing guides make assertions based on ‘thirty years’ experience’ or ‘common sense’, Hieronymus has dug out the results of industry experiments, so that he can suggest, with some confidence, that a mixture of post-boil hopping and dry-hopping will give the most bang for your buck in terms of aroma. Some mind-bending conclusions about how we perceive bitterness and ‘hoppiness’ are reached.

Throughout, there are reassuring references to trusted names (Martyn Cornell, Evan Rail), and a care with words which means, as far as we can see, that nothing is stated with more certainty than it deserves.

We like to include a balancing ‘on the downside’ paragraph but it’s an effort in this case. Perhaps the process of growing hops is a touch mysticised — the rustic Hop People with their queer ways, oneness with the plant, green-fingers and folk wisdom, and so on — but that’s arguably balanced by the demystification of other parts of the process.

So, in conclusion… how do those ratings systems work? ‘Five thumbs up’, or whatever. Buy it.

Categories
opinion

What is beer innovation?

Tomorrow's World on TV.

Dave ‘Hardknott’ Bailey recently wrote a blog post asking the question ‘What is beer innovation?’ It’s a subject that’s interested us for a while, partly because we find the suggestion that ‘it’s all been done before’ a bit depressing, so we thought we’d indulge in some pondering on the subject.

1. Innovation has to mean more than ‘doing something mad’. As Alan has said before, a beer 23 times more salt than malt would be completely new, but would also (probably) be horrible. Sellotaping a toaster to the bonnet is not innovation in car design. Having said that, in any field, you probably have to produce a lot of stinkers on the road to a modern classic.

2. Innovation doesn’t need to be noisy and obnoxious. Golden ale, which emerged as an identifiable niche in the UK market in the late nineteen-eighties and early nineties, seems like a no-brainer with hindsight, but, until then, British beers that were anything other than black or brown were rare.

3. Doing something ‘old hat’ in a new time, place or context, can seem innovative. Hoegaarden, first brewed in the sixties, was an attempt to recreate the beer of Pierre Celis’s youth, but, when it hit Britain twenty years later, it blew people’s minds. What’s that phrase you see in secondhand shops? ‘New to you.’ Attempts to recreate Devon White Ale or Grätzer might yield similar results, especially once they’ve been tweaked for a modern palate and production methods.

4. Small mutations make something new. The crime novel has been with us for a long time and yet, somehow, small tweaks to the formula keep it going strong. In beer, a new hop variety or tiny development in technique can create something that’s new enough to keep the drinker (or, at least, the beer geek) interested.

5. True innovation defies categorisation, for a while at least. If you can create a beer which gets itself listed under ‘other’, which breaks the classification system at your local beer retailer, and which is the only one of its type, then you might have done something innovative.

6. Innovation will probably be greeted with anger and/or utter disdain. To some, with a particular idea of classical perfection, what is new will always seem wrong — discordant, ugly or perverse. Or even just silly. But your kids are gonna love it.

7. If we could tell you what the next innovation in brewing would be, we’d be millionaires. Or not, but you take our point.

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opinion

Demanding to be loved doesn’t work

Buy British Tea poster.

The difficult economic climate of the last few years has led to a tendency that makes us, as consumers, groan: businesses demanding to be loved.

‘We need you more in January than any other month,’ say pubs and restaurants. ‘Buy British beer!’ and ‘Don’t buy big brands,’ say breweries. ‘Shop local, boo to supermarkets,’ says nearly everyone. There is even, now, a campaign urging brewers to use more British hops, and consumers to appreciate them. The rallying cry of this kind of campaigning is ‘Use it or lose it!’

We’re broadly sympathetic to all of those causes, but find the constant nagging (yes, that’s how it feels) rather exhausting.

The needs of business people aren’t the only thing we take into account when we’re deciding what to buy or where to shop: sometimes we’re skint; sometimes we, don’t get chance to go shopping until everything but Tesco is shut; sometimes, the small-producer, local version of a particular product simply isn’t good enough. And isn’t going to the pub supposed to be fun? When it becomes a duty, like going to church, then count us out.

Like whining at someone who isn’t responding to your romantic overtures, begging for custom, rather than demonstrating why you deserve it, is actually rather a turn-off.

Categories
opinion pubs

How far has the idea of craft beer spread?

Beer bottle: Harbour Porter No 6

In this post, we’re using ‘craft beer’ to refer to breweries who define themselves or some of their products using that term.

As people ponder the contrast between beer consumption and brewery numbers, two views are emerging at extremes of the spectrum of opinion:

1. Beer has begun its inevitable and long-awaited ascendancy — soon every pub will stock a vast range of interesting beer, there’s no reason the number of breweries should ever stop rising, and everyone will be drinking it. Just look at London. Soon, everywhere will be London! Endless London! Rejoice!

2. Beer is doomed — craft beer is a pathetic little bubble — an idea with no appeal to anyone but geeks. You can’t judge anything by what’s going on in that London. Look at downward overall beer consumption and pub numbers and repent, crafterati! Repent!

From our vantage point up here on the fence, we’ve seen some evidence that craft beer is an idea that is breaking out, if not, perhaps, ‘sweeping the country’, and has some distance left to run.

Our recent trip to Falmouth left us rather astounded as we realised that, in a town with a population of 20,000, there are at least four pubs/bars selling bottled and kegged craft beer (e.g. Five Degrees West, Beerwolf, The Front, Hand Bar) and apparently doing well at it. Self-consciously ‘craft’ local breweries like Rebel of Penryn and Harbour seem to be gaining a foothold in an increasing number of outlets, and the ‘craftier’ end of Sharp’s output is getting easier to find. There’s even a posh off-licence which stocks Mikkeller — one of the horsemen of the craftpocalypse?

Let’s move the goalposts, though, before someone else does: Falmouth is a university town, and full of middle class yachting types, so it doesn’t paint a true picture. What about the real world, Lord and Lady Fauntleroy?

Dammit. Banged to rights. In ‘working towns’ in Cornwall (definition on demand), we’ve seen less evidence of craft beer in the wild. Oddly, it is Molson-Coors-owned Sharp’s that are perhaps having the most impact: it’s a shock to walk in to a bog standard pub and find beers such as Stuart Howe’s Triple A — a cask ale fermented with Belgian yeast — or Hayle Bay Honey IPA, alongside Doom Bar, the ultimate sweetly bland ‘Cornish ale’. The grizzled fellers propping up the bar might find his experiments a bit ‘weird’, but these beers do seem to sell, perhaps because they’re strong.

Otherwise, though, it’s cafes, restaurants and gourmet burger joints where craft beer pops up most often, but, even then, it’s likely to be alongside bottles of execrable contract brewed but nicely branded ‘gift shop beer’, or skunked Corona-aping ‘Cornish lager’: there’s not much indication that local restaurateurs are really engaged with beer in the same way they are with, say, beef, or bread.

If, in six month’s time, there is a craft beer bar in Truro (not a ‘pop up’), and a pub in Penzance which regularly stocks Harbour or Rebel, then we’ll feel comfortable saying that ‘craft beer’ has gone at least a little bit mainstream. Until then, it remains a noisy niche.