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American beers News pubs

News, Nuggets & Longreads 14 July 2018: Cain’s, Keptinis, Craeft

Here’s all the reading about beer and pubs that inspired us to hit the BOOKMARK button in the past week, from pubs to hazy IPAs.

But let’s start with some items of news.


Illustration: intimidating pub.

For Original Gravity Emma Inch has written about the feeling of being on edge in pubs, even if nothing concrete happens, because of a sense that people are just a little too aware of “what makes you different”:

Throughout my drinking life I’ve been asked to leave a pub on the grounds that it’s a ‘family friendly venue’; I’ve witnessed a friend being ejected for giving his male partner a dry peck on the cheek; I’ve had a fellow customer shout homophobic abuse in my ear whilst the bartender calmly continued to ask me to pay for my pint… Once, I had to shield my face from flying glass as the pub windows were kicked in by bigots outside, and I still remember the sharp, breathless fear in the days following the Admiral Duncan pub bombing, not knowing if it was all over, or who and where would be targeted next.

Categories
beer reviews london

Fourpure Pils

Fourpure Pils -- can and glass.

As lager lovers, we’re always keen to try British brewers’ attempts, especially when we’ve heard good things about them from fellow beer geeks.

Bermondsey Beer Mile brewery Fourpure’s Pils has generated plenty of attention, partly because it comes in that most contentious of containers, a 330ml can.

Trusting our peers, rather than dabbling with one or two, we included half a dozen (@ £1.95 each, plus P&P) in our last order from Beer Merchants, placed at the height of the recent heat wave when we were craving things cold and refreshing.

At first, we were a little disappointed: compared to the cans of St Austell Korev we had picked up from the local CO-OP (@ about £1.10 each) Fourpure Pils seemed rather rough-edged. Last night, however, having emptied the last two cans and crushed them against our foreheads with a roar (obviously not) we concluded that it was good stuff after all.

It is, for one thing, far from bland: by the standards of most beers calling themselves Pils, it has a pronounced wild-flower, blackcurrant, stinging nettle hop aroma, back up by a robust, parching bitterness.

The hint of roughness remained in evidence, however — somewhere in the brewing and packaging process, we’d guess there is oxygen where there shouldn’t be, leading to a persistent stale, papery note in the background. It’s much, much cleaner than our home-brewed lager (plastic bucket, no temperature control) but there are similarities.

Depending on your tastes, though, this might read as that much-desired quality — ‘character’.

We couldn’t resist one final experiment — would it taste different necked straight from the can? Side-by-side with a serving in a fancy stemmed tasting glass, we noted to our surprise that despite this practical issue…

…the aroma was actually far better, concentrated through the tiny aperture into a needle of bright hoppiness right up the nostrils. From a glass, though still punchy, aroma, flavour and bitterness all seemed generally gentler.

In conclusion, we’d buy Fourpure Pils again, and look forward to trying it on tap when we get the chance.