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Why Guess if it’s Craft?

BoakandBaileyTech Craftometer

If you follow us on Twitter, you might have seen this before. If so, think of this as one of thos US sitcom episodes which just turns out to be edited from the previous 75, intercut with clips of characters saying: “Hey, and remember the time when…?”

Categories
pubs

Victims of their own success

Sardines by Ofer Deshe

It has occurred to us that there are certain pubs and bars we don’t like because they’re often too busy. Unfair, really, but if they’re not nice to be in, they’re not nice to be in.

Is there anything management can do about this? One-in-one-out would be to officious a response.

Or do we need to make like the Spanish and accept that being squashed together and spending fifteen minutes getting served is what makes a good atmosphere?

How busy is too busy? We think a pub where you have to wait ten minutes for a table has just the right level of buzz.

Picture by Ofer Deshe from Flickr Creative Commons.

Categories
Beer styles Franconia opinion

What Gives a Beer Value?

A chart showing relative values we place on beers.

This is another attempt to ‘graph our relationship with beer‘. This time, it’s about capturing the various qualities that give a particular beer value in our eyes.

  • Sentiment: homesickness, happy memories, family connections.
  • Taste: how nice is it?
  • Complexity: and how deep?
  • Tradition: does it connect us with history and a particular culture? (Cask ale does this.)
  • Value: i.e. value for money.
  • Rarity: how likely are we to find this beer again any time soon?
  • Novelty: Schlenkerla’s smoked maerzen scores highly here.
  • Sessionability: we like beers we can drink a few of.
  • Refreshment: sometimes, we want beer to quench our thirst and cool us down.

For example, we know, objectively speaking, that Butcombe’s cask bitter isn’t the world’s best beer but, nonetheless, we value it more highly than almost as highly as Duvel. That sounds nuts, right? But we’re not saying it’s as great a a better beer, only that, for us, a pint of Butcombe Bitter is tied up with happy times in Somerset pubs with Bailey’s parents (sentiment); and, especially when we lived in London, it had a certain rarity value.

Even we were surprised to see that St Austell’s Black Prince Mild has the highest value of any beer on the chart, but then again, it is remarkably rare; gives us a powerful sense of engaging with brewing tradition; taps into all the sentimental associations we make with mild-loving grandparents; and is a wonderful session beer.

Schlenkerla Maerzen scores highly because, not only does smoked beer have novelty value, and a taste we happen to like, but even the merest whiff of it transports us back to Bamberg.

We could record marks for every beer we drink against this system. It might be interesting to see, after a year or two, which ends up having the most ‘value’, and whether we would also consider it our favourite beer.

Categories
Beer history breweries

Kelham Island Family Tree (beta)

Snapshot of the Kelham Island Brewery Family Tree

DOWNLOAD THE PDF OF DAVE WICKETT AND KELHAM ISLAND (beta) HERE.

When we put together our Thornbridge Brewery ‘Rock Family Tree’ a while ago, several people responded with suggestions that we do the same for Kelham Island. Then, last month, we heard the sad news of the death of Kelham Island’s founder, Dave Wickett (and read tributes from Simon ‘Reluctant Scooper’ Johnson, Melissa Cole, Adrian Tierney-Jones and Pete Brown).

That spurred us on and, with help from Stuart Ross, a former head brewer at Kelham Island, now working his magic at, er, Magic Rock, we’ve put together a first cut. We also referred to some old Kelham Island newsletters and Linkedin, which is great source of information on brewers’ CVs. (Though it makes you feel like a stalker.)

Our first thoughts: this format doesn’t quite capture all that Dave Wickett did for beer and brewing. He’s there in the first box as the first head brewer at Kelham Island, but his role as owner was more than just ‘money man’. The consulting, advising and encouraging he did is also not recorded.

Nonetheless, it shows how many brewers passed through Kelham Island and, when put side by side with the Thornbridge chart, the strands connecting Britain’s breweries do become more obvious.

Corrections and suggestions welcome! Off you go.

Categories
Beer styles Belgium Germany

Mock Imports

Wild River beer promotional material from Fuller's.

Importing beer is expensive and inconvenient, and, from the perspective of British breweries, every bottle of Belgian, German or American beer represents a lost opportunity.

Recently, we’ve seen Shepherd Neame launch a licensed, UK-brewed version of Sam Adams Boston Lager; Fuller’s launch a US-style IPA, Wild River, complete with Americana branding; and smaller (for now) breweries are launching saisons, dubbels, tripels, pilsners, weizens, wits and imperial double black bacon IPAs left, right and centre.

Generally speaking, we’d really rather drink a fresher, British-brewed imitation of a foreign beer than a stale, authentic, imported one.

However… the first report we’ve read, from Rabid Bar Fly, suggests that, the Shepherd Neame brewed Sam Adams Lager is fine, but an entirely different beer than the original. We haven’t seen the ‘point-of-sale’ material but our concern remains that most punters will think they’re drinking an imported beer and pay more for the privilege. If it doesn’t have BREWED IN THE UK in big letters, it’s a swizz.

Fuller’s approach is interesting. We’re taking Wild River’s branding as an attempt to convey a sense of the inspiration behind the beer and to give the consumer an idea of what to expect in their glass, rather than an attempt to con anyone: the branding merely evokes America and bears a prominent Fuller’s logo.

The smaller breweries are generally proud of where they’re based and there is little room for confusion in the packaging, as far as we can see. The problem here is that, sometimes, regrettably, the beer is half as good and yet twice as expensive as the real thing.

These wrinkles will iron out. A couple of years back, Meantime’s own lagers were put to shame by the imported beers from Schoenram on sale alongside them at the Greenwich Union; but, on our last visit, Meantime’s beers had improved immeasurably and, yes, were better and cheaper than their imported cousins.