These are all the blog posts and articles about beer and pubs that have particularly caught our eye in the last week, from double IPA to German craft beer.
April has seen us drowning in double IPA. If you enjoy this style of strong, super hopped IPA then you’ve been spoiled for choice in the past few weeks. I’ve seen and heard a lot of beer nerds talking about which of them is ‘the best DIPA’. Of course this is what beer lovers are into – discussion and friendly argument about beer. But I am surprised that people are still talking about this in terms of absolutes, as if one beer has to be awarded the title of ‘The Best’ and all the others must therefore be ‘less good’ beers. As if there isn’t a place for variation of expression within a style; as if context is irrelevant.
Today and tomorrow we’re on the road visiting some pubs and interviewing some people for research purposes so there won’t be a News, Nuggets & Longreads links round-up tomorrow.
If you’re desperate for a Saturday morning fix keep an eye on our Twitter timeline tomorrow — we’ll share a few things there instead of here.
And, as they say at the BBC, other links round ups are available, e.g. Stan Hieronymus’s regular Monday morning post which, this week, had some particularly juicy stuff.
(The title of this non-post is a reference to a quirk of UK licencing law that we wrote about here, by the way.)
Here’s all the reading about beer and pubs that’s made us sit up and take notice in the last week, from sheep dung beer to brewery takeovers.
→ It’s easy to scoff at the silly things silly craft beer sillies but in their silly beer but what if the novelty ingredients have a connection to regional traditional, like salted cod or malt smoked with sheep droppings? Knut Albert reports from Iceland and (spoiler alert) says, ‘the shit does not give any pronounced flavor’.
→ Food 52 has an interview with Rome-based food and drinks writer Katie Parla in which she reflects on why Italian craft beer is so expensive, and so exciting: ‘It’s one of the few facets of food or drinks culture here that is, by definition, creative.’ (And there’s a brief companion piece by Parla herself here.)
Here are the blog posts, articles and news stories we’ve found most interesting in the last week, from the revitalisation of CAMRA to the difficulty of describing lager.
→ This week’s big news is that the Campaign for Real Ale has launched a project to review its purpose. We’d suggest ignoring the melodrama which was only ever intended to generate press interest — CAMRA is not going to disappear and is extremely unlikely to change its name — but do take some time to respond to the consultation which is open to both members and non-members. We’re going to mull this over and write something on the blog next week; in the meantime, you could do worse than whizz through Brew Britannia, especially chapter six, by way of background, and there’s also a chunk on CAMRA’s navel-gazing in our massive blog post from last summer.
When I moved to Thornbridge, I hadn’t really had any real experience of producing cask beer. I came from a brewing background of mainly Germanic styles, which were filtered, carbonated and packaged in keg or bottle format. I naively thought that producing cask beer would be a doddle compared with the challenges of filtration, or the trials and tribulations of running a bottling line day in day out.
Manchester is home to so many breweries these days, but it can be fairly difficult to know where to get hold of their wares. Many of the city centre’s other beer bars focus more on options from far and wide which, in my view, isn’t a bad thing but it’s always nice to drink local and I think this would appeal to visitors to the city in particular.
SOURCE: Alec Latham’s blog.
→ Alec Latham at Mostly About Beer reflects at length upon the ghost pubs of St John’s Wood, London, with lots of lovely photos:
The rate of pub closure in the area was made clear to me when, in summer last year in the nearby Church Street Estate, I happened to see the contents of what used to be a pub called The Perseverance (I know – the irony) being sold on the street outside… Around the same time, a pub just around the corner called The Globe closed but re-opened as a fully qualified modern craft beer bar. It seems that either the business adapts quickly or disappears. The greatest tragedy is when the building is transformed into something it was never meant to be like the estate agents. You know that as a place where people dwell and drink together, it’s gone forever.
[There’s] an awful lot that is troubling me… The first thing that I come across time and again is inconsistency. Whether it be from cask or bottle I know that I’m certainly not alone in wanting the same taste that I remember from the last time I had the beer… I’ve been embarrassingly caught out more than once introducing friends to a beer after extolling its virtues only to find it a shadow of the previous pint.
→ There’s reassuring evidence from Jeff Alworth that having his blog sponsored by Guinness isn’t going to stop him being interesting, even when he’s writing in part about that very same brewery:
You learn a lot when you visit a country. One of the things you learn is what beer people actually drink. In Ireland, for example, we imagine that basically everyone drinks stout, the majority of it Guinness. Nope. Just like everywhere else, lager is king, with as much as (statistics vary) 74% of total volume to something just over 50%. Heineken, not Guinness, appears to be the best-selling beer in Ireland.
The complexity of a barrel-aged imperial stout means that tasting notes write themselves. Drinking one, there’s so much going on that you hardly have time to jot down one thought before another hits you. Lager is comparatively simple – this is a large part of its appeal, but it doesn’t make for great writing.
“Swanky was a brew of sugar, hops, ginger, wheat, malt, and yeast. It had to be allowed to work for three days in the bottles before the corks were tied down with string.”
Here’s all the good stuff about beer and pubs we came across in the last week, from beery bike rides to cask ale in Chicago.
→ Liz Dodd’s account of cycling from ‘London to Holland via Beer’ for It Comes in Pints is great fun:
A race along the seafront through Folkestone brought us to the suburbs of Dover and the foot of the White Cliffs, where I took a wrong turn then insisted we climb a strange iron staircase to the start of a 300ft trail up the cliffside… Friends, I will gloss over this part, except to say that I had gone so totally insane by the time I had dragged my 40kg of bicycle and equipment slipping and sliding to the top of that fucking cliff in the rain and the dark that I survived only by singing “you are my lucky, lucky star” over and over again like Ripley in Alien.
Depending on a compound’s concentration, the sensory perception of that compound can change. Less can be more, which is why thiols at low levels result in pleasant fruity aromas, but at higher levels are perceived as catty.
Synergy and masking play a major role in perception. Synergy occurs when two or more compounds interact to create something different. Masking occurs when one compound suppresses the perception of another.
→ It turns out beer from the wood is so hot right now:
“All of their focus is on America and what American craft beer is doing,” [Tyler] Jackson says. “So craft beer in the UK is defined by the focus on American hops and American ingredients. Even in the home of cask beer, where we are looking to for inspiration and the standards, it’s kind of a dying art there. It’s shocking that even there it’s dwindling and not as popular.”
To sum up my feelings simply, I will echo the rude man who just wouldn’t shut up on Friday morning: Yes, you’ve been fighting for real ale for forty years, and do you know what mate? You’ve won! Just look at all the superb beers available from myriad small, medium and larger breweries. In fact you won years ago and it’s now time to move forward. Of course there will always be a place for real ale, the centre piece, the jewel in the crown, but there’s room for something else, something more modern.
As far as I know the recipe and the strength have remained unchanged, but to me today’s White Shield is a far less complex beer than the one I remember drinking back in the 70s and 80s. The White Shield from 40 years ago had a distinctive “nutty” taste which, although still present in today’s version is far less pronounced. The modern version is still a very good beer, but it is not quite the same.
Nick Pembroke, licensee of The Gatsby, Berkhamstead, claimed the venue is “wiping the floor” with nearby pubs… “Because they’re a shop they can sell it way cheaper than me, it’s ruining the pubs around here.”… Pembroke has spoken to other licensees in the area who said they’re struggling against the competition, and trade is at risk of being ‘destroyed’.
→ And, finally, from Matthew Sedacca for Eater, a longish read (1,700 words) asking, ‘Are Big Beer Brands Making Craft Festivals Square?’ Square’s an interesting word to use and, though this article focuses on the US, Craft Beer Rising sprang to mind, and also the ever-present corporate stands from Greene King et al at the Great British Beer Festival. (We think the answer to this question might be ‘Yes’.)
