Categories
Generalisations about beer culture opinion

The Corrections

Boak: This has a really nice malt flavour — that grainy, chewy breadiness

Nearby Bloke: Err… correction! It’s obvious this is made from only pale malt which contributes exactly zero flavour to a beer.

Boak: Well, I’m thinking of the malt flavour you might get in a good lager like–

Nearby Bloke: That’s hops! If there’s flavour in a pale beer, it’s hops. (Face reddening) PALE MALT DOESN’T ADD FLAVOUR!

Boak: (Realising she can’t win, hoping he’ll go away) Uh-huh.

Nearby Bloke: (Sensing that he’s being humoured) No, seriously, and I should know. I’m a beer expert myself.

We sometimes move in geeky circles, it can’t be denied, and we geeks occasionally struggle with some elements of human interaction. Aggressively correcting people is one of the worst habits of the hardened geek.

Nearby Bloke could have started the above conversation with: “Excuse me, I was interested in what you were saying there, because I’ve always understood that pale malt contributes little flavour to a beer….”

Even if you are one hundred per cent sure you’re right, what is to be gained from entering a conversation with a bullish cry of WRONG! and a hectoring tone? It leaves you nowhere to go but redder, shriller and weirder.

PS. Another bad habit of geeks: referring to large groups of people as ‘sheep’ or ‘idiots’.

Categories
Beer history

Imaginary Pub: Living Museum of London Brewing

Victorian or Edwardian pub livery

Just like the Brown Bitter Company, the following pub does not exist.

Within walking distance of the Museum of London is a cavernous Victorian pub building which, with the help of a culture fund grant and sponsorship from London breweries, has been renovated and refitted as it would have looked in the 1890s.

This isn’t a static museum to be viewed from behind glass, however — it is a working pub, of sorts, specialising in selling beers created from historic recipes.

Bottles from various breweries are behind the bar, with appropriately vintage labels designs. On the bar, three handpumps for mild, porter and bitter, brewed to various historic recipes especially for the pub.

In the back room, open during the day, and curated by the Museum of London, a small but well formed exhibition on the history of London brewing.

This isn’t a place for rowdy boozing, and is therefore completely inauthentic in that respect. It is usually filled with studious types reading and scribbling in their notebooks, as well as parties of beer tourists.

A particular draw for geeks? The endangered beer guest brew programme.

Question for historical types: does this imaginary pub have the right beers on the bar?

Categories
homebrewing

Why We Brew

Why did we start brewing? Because we thought it would be diverting and entertaining. (It turned out to be frustrating and difficult.)

Why did we stick with it? Because, from day one, it helped us understand beer better. When we spoke about malt and hops, we were no longer thinking in abstract terms, but had handled the raw materials. We began to understand what effect they had, and could suddenly detect them in the beer we were drinking in the pub. We learned how hard it is to brew great beer and gained a new appreciation for the brewer’s art.

Why are we brewing more now than ever? Like the man says, it’s “a reaction… to what is otherwise available in the marketplace”. We simply can’t get the kind of beer we want to drink in Penzance for a price we can afford. We love cask ale in the pub but, sometimes, we want Belgian, American or German-style beers. Sure, we can order bottles online, with a hefty delivery charge, and do so as an occasional treat; but, now we’ve more-or-less got the hang of it, brewing at home is far, far cheaper, and has finally become as much fun as we’d hoped it would be.

Categories
homebrewing opinion

No Room for It’ll Do

Be careful!

All the homebrewing and bottling we’ve been doing recently has reminded us that ‘it’ll be fine’, ‘ah, sod it’, ‘near enough’ and other slogans of corner-cutting have no place in the process.

Should we just check that tap is off one more time? Yes! Can we remember if we cleaned and sanitised that pipe? Pretty sure we did. It’ll probably be fine. No! Do it again. How much sugar did we use for priming with the last batch? Do we really have to turn a laptop on to check the calculation? Groan. (Stop moaning — it’ll only take two minutes and it’s absolutely worth it.)

Funnily enough, the more careful we are, the more consistent and drinkable our beers have become. Who knew?

Some bad experiences with commercial beer recently suggest that the same principle is not always applied even by the pros — dodgy quality assurance, careless recipe formulation and slapdash bottling practices evidently abound (often driven by cashflow pressures rather than laziness, to be fair).

Even the big boys who pride themselves on consistency and precision have their ‘sod it’ moments, such as deciding that clear glass bottles aren’t ideal but, meh, they’ll do, if that’s what marketing wants.

Variation and inspiration are fine; sloppiness never is.

Picture by Samout3 from Flickr Creative Commons.

Categories
Belgium homebrewing

On a Tripel Tip

The itch to brew a Belgian-style tripel has been with us for a while but, after a bad experience with Belgian yeast a few years ago, we’ve repeatedly chickened out.

Re-reading Brew Like a Monk and 100 Belgian Beers to Try Before You Die for the umpteenth time, however, we finally cracked and, on a whim, ordered the necessary ingredients from the Malt Miller. A liquid yeast derived from Westmalle’s and some Saaz hops arrived no more than 24 hours later.

With advice from Dominic Driscoll of Thornbridge (who has a red flashing light over his desk to alert him when homebrewers are about to attempt to make Belgian-style beers) we got a big yeast starter going several days ahead of the brew. (We’ve been surprised to learn that the amount of viable yeast you pitch into the cooled wort is a variable that makes a huge difference.)

The next important step in brewing a new beer style is to drink several, so we spent the second half of that week working our way through some in the stash. Achel Blonde, we decided, may be even better than Westmalle’s effort, as long as you have a high tolerance for banana aromas.

The brew itself was a messy, hectic few hours which left our kitchen floor coated in sugar (it’s still sticky, three mops later) and smelling of assorted secret ingredients. Within hours of hitting the bottom of the fermentor, it had spat out its airlock and was spewing the most delicious smelling yeast all over the place.

So far, a week on, there are no nasty lighter-fuel aromas — just a kind of spicy fruitiness we’d like someone to turn into a jellybean flavour. This might (fingers crossed) turn out to be drinkable. We’ll let you know.

As in this case, we increasingly find that saving money is part of the appeal of homebrewing — not so much on the beer itself, because Belgian beer remains good value, but on mail order shipping charges.