Categories
beer reviews Beer styles bottled beer

Maybe a Burton, but not a good one

McEwan's Champion -- a Burton or Scottish Ale

Both Martyn ‘Zythophile’ Cornell and Ron ‘No Internet Pseudonym’ Pattinson are enthusiastic drinkers and historians of Burton, a type of beer once popular, surviving examples of which are hard to find. Where it does survive, it’s usually under a name like Winter Warmer.

Largely through their repeated cheerleading, we’ve come to be mildly obsessed with Burton too. When, in a recent post, Zythophile described McEwan’s Champion as “a truly excellent Edinburgh Ale/Burton Ale”, we got a touch excited: a Burton available in supermarkets up and down the land? For not many pennies? Yes please!

The reason we’d never tried it before was an assumption that it would be ‘trampagne’ (© VIZ comic) — a strong, acrid, sugary beer whose 7.3% abv strength is its prime selling point. We can now report that it is not exactly that. It is an interesting beer and one we derived some enjoyment from drinking.

It is complex in the sense that there were flavours and aromas we struggled to identify. We liked smelling and tasting something like butter shortbread and the incredible, long-lasting bitterness. Unfortunately, not all of the associations were so pleasant. Was that a whiff of bottom-of-the-wheely-bin? Rotting orange peel? Drains? By the last dregs, with a cardboard dryness asserting itself, the phrase that sprang to mind was “souped up John Smith’s”.

But we will certainly try it again because we suspect our bottle was stale (and not in the sense that it had been carefully aged by a nineteenth century pub landlord or brewer).

Categories
homebrewing

A Big Shout Out for Yeast

Beer labels with tasting notes rarely mention yeast. They usually say “malty with a hoppy finish” or “hoppy with a malty finish” or some variation thereon. Stella Artois is apparently made without it. Is that because “yeasty” just sounds nasty to most people?

In our experience, though, the impact of yeast on beer is too big to ignore. The extent to which it devours sugars affects the body and mouthfeel of the beer; and the compounds it produces while doing so contribute aroma and flavour. A lot of aroma and flavour. Sometimes most of it, in fact, as in the case of banana-bubblegum Bavarian wheat beer. (The standard learning tool for aspiring beer geeks who want an obvious example of the influence of yeast.)

For a recent homebrewing session, we made a yeast starter using a simple wort of dried malt extract. We couldn’t resist tasting it, even though we suspected that, without hops, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Surprisingly, it didn’t taste terrible, and we were astounded to discover just how many of the flavours and aromas we’d put down to the hops were apparently coming from the yeast. Boring malt extract, no hops and good yeast made something drinkable.

We’ve also found in home brewing that the single biggest factor in giving a beer a specific character is the yeast. British malt and British hops with Czech yeast tastes pretty Czech. German malt and German hops with British yeast tastes British. And so on.

We’re certain disagreeable yeast is behind our antipathy to the entire product range of some breweries who others seem to love.

Now we’re seeing single-hop ranges from big brewers, maybe now it’s time for smaller breweries to move on to something else: ranges which showcase characterful yeasts in the same controlled way, as the only variable in a range of otherwise identical beers.

If you want another example of a big beast of a yeast, check out the one used at Fuller’s: their beers brown/amber beers all taste and smell of orange marmalade, regardless of the hops or malt used, because of their assertive yeast.

UPDATE: oh, and we meant to link to this — New Briggate Beer Blog’s post in praise of malt. UPDATE 2: and here’s Alan on water, the forgotten ingredient. Now, who wants to take on ‘in praise of gypsum’?

Categories
beer and food Beer history

Mrs Beeton on Table Beer

HODGE-PODGE

191. INGREDIENTS.–2 lbs. of shin beef, 3 quarts of water, 1 pint of table-beer, 2 onions, 2 carrots, 2 turnips, 1 head of celery ; pepper and salt to taste ; thickening of butter and flour.

Mode.–Put the meat, beer, and water in a stewpan ; simmer for a few minutes and skim carefully. Add the vegetables and seasoning ; stew gently, and skim carefully. Add the vegetables and seasoning ; stew gently until the meat is tender. Thicken with the butter and flour, and serve with turnips and carrots, or spinach and celery.

Time.–3 hours, or rather more. Average cost, 3d. per quart.

Seasonable at any time. Sufficient for 12 persons.

TABLE BEER.–This is nothing more than a weak ale, and is not made so much with a view to strength, as to transparency of colour and agreeable bitterness of taste. It is, or ought to be, manufactured by the London professional brewers, from the best pale malt, or amber and malt. Six barrels are usually drawn from one quart of malt, with which are mixed 4 or 5 lbs. of hops. As a beverage, it is agreeable when fresh ; but it is not adapted to keep long.

(From Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861; typos Mrs Beeton’s own.)

Categories
pubs real ale

The Brown Bitter Company

It’s in central London — let’s say Bloomsbury — and based in a renovated Victorian pub. It’s not very big and the fact that it’s entirely panelled in dark wood only makes it look smaller.

Over the door is a slogan: “They only taste the same to uneducated palates”. On the walls, further bits of propaganda: “If you want to drink tangerine-flavoured hop-juice, you’re in the wrong bar”; “Extreme beer? Bloody rude beer, more like”; and “If a pint of bitter was good enough for your granddad, it’s good enough for you.”

On the bar are twenty handpumps serving different cask bitters from around the country. They are all in impeccable condition, cool but not cold, served with our without sparkler depending on the customer’s preference, in straight pint glasses. The vast wall of fridges behind the bar are stocked with more than 200 bottled bitters, some bottle-conditioned, others not. The one thing these beers have in common: they are brown.

There are several hefty leatherbound volumes filled with detailed tasting notes by an eminent British beer writer, aimed at helping customers detect the subtle differences between the vast range of ostensibly similar beers.

There is also a very small import section featuring American and European interpretations of bitter. For the handful of lager drinkers, there are a few bottled German dunkels on offer.

Does that sound like a nightmare, a dream or something in between? Is there fun to be had in exploring nuances and learning to appreciate subtlety? Or is variety the only path to enlightenment?

We’re not the first people to imagine a bar by a long chalk, by the way. Here are a few of Leigh’s.

Categories
Blogging and writing marketing

Public Relations Outreach Strategy

Apologies to people who aren’t interested in this kind of behind-the-scenes nonsense. Normal beery service will resume tomorrow.

We updated our permanent “Hey, PR people!” page today with the intention of making it more helpful and a bit less bad-tempered. (It’s still slightly grumpy.)

We get quite a lot of emails from marketing agencies and, when we email them back to explain why we’re not acting on their press release or whatever, we often end up having some interesting conversations with intelligent, pleasant people.

That’s what makes it all the more frustrating that so many of them are wasting time and money on activities that will never lead us to write about their product. They could get our attention without spending much at all, with just a bit more thought, and a better understanding of how beer bloggers operate.

For the next bit of our PR-outreach strategy, we’re going to to try to “segment the audience”: beer blogs are not the same as, say, cake blogs; and not all beer blogs are the same. We’ve spotted the following types so far, sometimes in combination.

  1. Send me a bottle, I’ll review it.
  2. I’m a proper writer/journalist, blogging is a sideline.
  3. I’d like to be a writer/journalist: this is my pitch.
  4. I’m a brewer/salesperson/landlord and want to promote my business.
  5. I’m a brewer/salesperson/landlord and want to set these amateurs straight.
  6. I’m blogging for conversation and to express myself.
  7. I’ve got an obsessive-compulsive tendency and want to record every pub I visit/beer I drink.

Each of those probably requires different handling for effective engagement from PR people who want them to bite.