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Beer styles Blogging and writing Generalisations about beer culture

The Stale Language of Beer

Two glasses of beer.

This guest post on Sophie Atherton’s blog is interesting for several reasons. First, because Ms. Woolgar, not being a fully-fledged beer geek, seems to have been able to react honestly to the beers she tasted without the fog of hype clouding her vision. Secondly, because of some of the language she uses to describe flavour and aroma:

  • a hint of Maltesers
  • a fresh, zesty lemon mousse aroma
  • a slight toasted cumin flavour
  • mustard and cress
  • blue cheese.

That refreshingly original vocabulary, apparently based on gut feeling, is a pleasure to read.

A lot of people, us included, write about beer using words and terms largely informed by Michael ‘Beer Hunter’ Jackson, Roger Protz, and others in that lineage. People will describe ‘horse blanket’ when they really mean ‘that thing you get in that other beer that Michael Jackson said had a horse blanket character’. Who, apart from Adrian Tierney-Jones, has actually smelled a horse blanket? Seriously?

The same goes for ‘styles’. The established style framework has its uses, we think, but Alan is right to ask why there aren’t any/many alternatives. New ways of cutting the deck can be revealing, even if they ultimately fail. For example, we’ve been enjoying and pondering upon Tandleman’s distinction between beers for ‘supping’ and those for ‘sipping’. An entire classification system could be worked up from that — one that reflects the question of ‘sessionability’ while recognising that carbonation, bitterness, balance, and intensity of flavour are arguably as important as alcoholic strength.

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Generalisations about beer culture

Gut reactions and associations

Beers on a pub table.
Well? If you’re so clever, YOU find a picture to illustrate emotional gut reactions!

If you were sat next to us in a pub and overheard us talking to each other about the beer we’re drinking, you might notice a few of the following statements, before we’ve translated our reactions into la-di-dah blogger speak.

      • We’ve brewed better — a serious criticism: professional brewers ought to make better beer than us (for now, at least).
      • (Face pull) Had worse in Belgium — weird, rough around the edges by British standards, but not necessarily terrible. Interesting.
      • Erm… a bit farty — ‘sulphurous’ in posh beer tasting speak — not necessarily bad!
      • Bad home brew — a harsher criticism than ‘we’ve brewed better’ — it’s reminded us of that first, foul kit we made in a plastic bucket in the garage.
      • It’s got that [Brewery X] thing — with reference to one of two or three breweries whose beers we generally don’t like.
      • Sorry, I can’t drink that — it’s not ‘off’, just so unpleasant it’s no fun to consume. Gets abandoned.
      • By ‘eck, it’s on good form tonight — cask ale, however consistently well made, varies from pub to pub, cask to cask, day to day.
      • Ooh, zingy! — you know — zingy.
      • Mmm, Germany… (sigh) — beer with a certain type of hoppiness that reminds us of drinking very fresh lager in a German beer garden. (Not said only of lager.)
      • Ah, Sheffield… (sigh) — a high accolade bestowed upon the most satisfying very pale, hoppy session ales.
      • Actually, that’s not so bad — getting to like a ‘meh’ pint about halfway down.
      • Actually, I’m not so sure — realising that, once the first pleasant waft of hops have drifted on the wind, the underlying beer is a bit nasty.
      • Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…. that’s hit the spot (tummy rub) — said of any beer at the end of a long coastal walk, when it is impossible to judge beer quality.
      • (Sulk, harrumph.) Want to swap? — we’re each drinking different beers and one of them is ‘meh’.
      • Better than Guinness/John Smith’s/Peroni — faint praise of a fairly bland ‘real ale’/’craft beer’/Category D Beverage.

We liked the inclusion of ’emotional’ in these tasting notes by Bee; but we’re less impressed by a persistent tendency of beerier-than-thou types to assume that other people’s reactions to beer are faked, insincere or otherwise ‘stupid’.

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Beer history

An official definition of craft beer?

In his New Beer Guide (1988), Brian Glover recounts the story of Mike Reynolds and the Paradise Brewery, just down the road from us in Hayle:

[The brewery] was installed in 1981 in outbuildings which already had planning permission for craft use. Mike Reynolds considered small-scale brewing a craft and went ahead. Penwith District Council considered brewing an industry and objected. Eventually the case (with a little help from CAMRA) went on appeal to the Department of the Environment — which is where Michael Heseltine leapt in as Secretary of State, ruling in favour of the brewery.

In 1988, that was a nice little story but, twenty five years on, has it take on a new importance? (To beer geeks, at least…) Did the Government, with this intervention, establish a precedent for what does and doesn’t count as ‘craft’ brewing in the UK? They did so for ‘draught beer’ and ‘cask ale’, so it is possible.

We can’t find any contemporary newspaper coverage but, when we get the chance, we’ll do some digging in the Cornwall county archives. We’d also love to read contemporary paperwork from the DoE. In the meantime, if anyone else can point us to more information, or remembers this case, please comment below.

Bonus: Mike Reynolds sounds like an amazing bloke: amongst other achievements,  he also invented the Milky Bar kid!

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opinion

Is ‘clean’ useful for discussing beer?

Representing clean beer, Kraftwerk; dirty beer, Albert Steptoe.
Kraftwerk are clean boys; Albert Steptoe is a dirty old man.

We’ve used the word clean to describe beer in the past without necessarily giving a lot of thought to precisely what we meant by it; and Tandleman has been demanding clean flavours for some years. Then, this week, Mark ‘Pencil and Spoon’ Dredge announced his conversion to the cause of cleanness and tried to unpack what it really means. As this all makes a pleasant change from trying to define ‘craft beer’, here are some thoughts from us.

Does clean always sound positive? To some, it might at first imply industrial, roboticised precision — even sterility. It might suggest ‘dry’, as in Asahi Super Dry — something with no obtrusive yeast character and no lingering flavour. A synonym for bland. (But isn’t Sharp’s Doom Bar somehow both muddy and bland…?)

There’s such a thing as ‘too clean’. In recorded music, people spend a lot of money on gadgets and processes to stop things sounding shiny and digital — ‘warming them up’. Instagram and the like are all about ‘de-digitalising’ photographs by imbuing them with pleasing flaws.

What’s the opposite of clean? It might be dirty, but we’re not so sure. How about organic (small O), funky or natural? (Scrumpy cider is sometimes known as ‘natch’.) To describe a piece of funk music as ‘nasty’ is a high compliment. ‘Grunge’ was the musical buzzword of our teenage years.

The important word in Mark’s post, from our point of view, is ‘muddiness’. We’ve had some beers this year which were presumably created with the intention of complexity — lots of different varieties of hop, many types of malt, complex yeasts, a touch of this spice or that, and flavourings. But, when you mix all the colours in the paint set, you end up with a murky brown.

How does this look? (Ten minutes work, and subject to change as we continue to ponder…)

Spectrum of beer from muddy to bland, via funky and clean.

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Uncategorized

Designer beer, session beer and Chimay

Chimay beer in a glass.

Here are some bits and pieces we spotted around and about in the last few days.

1. We think we’ve worked out when Trappist beer first landed in the UK. A chain of off-licences called Arthur Rackham began importing Chimay (probably Rouge) in 1974, perhaps in the wake of the 1974 World Beer Festival at Olympia in London. It first showed up at the CAMRA Great British Beer Festival in 1979. Anyone know otherwise?

2. Here’s another definition of session beer for you to chew on, from Tim Webb and Joris Pattyn’s 10o Belgian Beers to Try Before You Die:

Surprisingly, it makes a great session beer. Just as you think its bitterness will be too much, it proves it can tempt you to one more.

Beer you want to drink a lot of rather than beer it’s easy to drink in quantity… that’s a thought.

3. We’d forgotten the term ‘designer beer‘ until we came across a 1991 Daily Mirror article on the then hot trend in ‘boozy fashion accessories’. Typical designer beers, it suggests, are Brahma (favoured by Andrew Ridgeley of Wham!), Dos Equis (David Bowie), Sapporo (Jason Donovan) and Peroni (Tina Turner). Chimay Blue also gets a mention, alongside a peach beer from Belgium which was supposed to have aphrodisiac qualities.