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News, Nuggets & Longreads 26 March 2016: Casks, Bikes & White Shield

North London pub: Fine Ales & Stout on green tiles.

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.

(Part I | Part II)

Macro image: 'Hops' with illustration of hop cones, 1970s.

→ Craft Beer and Brewing has a wonderful long read on hop oils and aroma compounds from Stan Hieronymus in which he does a masterful job of translating the science into as near plain English as it can be coaxed:

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:

→ No, really:

→ Or maybe it’s cask in general? Stephanie Byce’s profile for Good Beer Hunting of a Chicago brewery specialising in English style cask ales is fascinating, not least because of the light it shines back on the UK:

“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.”

→ Meanwhile, the Campaign for Real Ale is putting into practice its policy of permitting key kegs at its festivals, and Richard Coldwell gives an account from the front line having manned the key-keg bar at a festival in Leeds last week:

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.

Worthington White Shield and Spring Shield.

→ Paul Bailey (no relation) had a bottle of Worthington White Shield and took the opportunity to reflect on the history, quality and status of this historic beer:

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.

→ Are bottle shops a threat to pubs? Oli Gross reports for the Morning Advertiser on a view among some publicans that shops offering on-site drinking offer unfair competition to pubs:

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’.)

Categories
london News

News, Nuggets & Longreads 19 March 2016

Tables and chairs at The Star Inn, Crowlas.

Here’s the best of what we’ve read about beer and pubs around the internet in the last week, from London to Lisbon.

→ Des de Moor has published a free update to his book The CAMRA Guide to London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars accompanied by some state-of-the-nation commentary on London’s beer scene:

London breweries continue to expand whatever their size, with Moncada and Redemption among those in the midst of long-needed upgrades. The startup rate has definitely slowed, though, and the brewery total in my latest update is down to 75 from 78 last July: a handful of closures include the last remnant of the 1970s Big Seven in London at the Stag, Mortlake, and a number of would-be brewpubs that evidently found it easier to sell other people’s beer.

→ For the Midlands Beer Blog Collective Bob Maxfield and Dave Hopkins interviewed the people behind Birmingham’s craft beer and pinball bar, Tilt, eliciting a great case study of what’s been going on in British beer in the last decade or so:

I fell out of love with CAMRA when, some years later, while following a Ramstein tour, we decided to visit the Brewdog Bars we had been reading about. I then found Stirchley Wines who did a half decent selection at the time and had a bit of Great Divide and some Mikeller. They had all the Brewdog stuff and it was at that point that I started to get really excited, and begun to get more involved with Beer Advocate again, and started trading beers with others.

Continue reading “News, Nuggets & Longreads 19 March 2016”
Categories
homebrewing News

News, Nuggets & Longreads 12 March 2016

Koelsch glasses on a table in Cologne.

Here’s the most noteworthy beer- and pub-writing of the last week, from home-brewing to the March blues for brewers.

→ For Vice‘s ‘Munchies’ section Chloe Scott-Moncrieff reports on ‘London’s Secret Homebrewing Club’:

Around the long table, I meet Tom Burrows, a 28-year-old physicist… “I think you can find lots of scientists in homebrewing,” he admits. “Although I know an accountant who doesn’t stick to recipes and while he has some misses, he’s created some brilliant beers.” He sounds slightly envious.

(Via @totalcurtis.)

→ Frank Curtis works with the malting industry in the US and has written an insider’s-view guest post for the London-based blog run by his son, Matt. The bit that really caught our attention was the idea of ‘craft’ malt:

Troubadour Malt, is located in Fort Collins, Colorado and I’ve followed their development with interest from the very first ideas to the consistent delivery of product – all produced from locally grown barley. Troubadour Malt is owned by Steve Clark (the engineer and scientist who designed the plant) and Chris Schooley (the artist and craftsman who kilns and roasts the malt to a wide set of specifications).

→ Dave Bailey at Hardknott provides a customarily frank account of the struggles of running a brewery in the post-Christmas doldrums:

It is my feeling that this year the post Christmas beer sales slump have been worse than ever. Dry-January seems to be getting ever more popular. Yes, I’m sure you, the reader, has decided for whatever reason that you are right to take part. You help us out every other month of the year shouldn’t feel any guilt. Perhaps you are right, but it still puts a great big hole in our cash-flow and our yeast maintenance alike. Not to mention the problem of managing stock.

(If we were managing his PR we would advise him against posting this kind of thing; as nosy bastards keen to know what’s going on behind the scenes, we’re very glad he does.)

→ Blogger Glenn Johnson keeps a close eye on the Micropub movement (we quoted him as an authority in our big state-of-the-nation piece last summer) and this week provided an update on two new entrants to the club in the Midlands.

The Tremenheere, the Wetherspoons in Penzance.

→ Wetherspoon’s watch: the pub chain’s headline-grabbing abandonment of Sunday roasts, the raising of prices, and the handing-off of several London pubs last year have raised questions about whether JDW might be struggling; but with their latest profit report they insist it’s all fine. (All links to The Morning Advertiser.) J.D. Wetherspoon also makes a cameo appearance in obituaries for Bristol reggae DJ Derek Serpell-Morris: he visited all of their pubs and collected receipts to prove it. (Via @fly_redwing.)

→ BrewDog watch: the Scottish brewery featured in an episode of the BBC’s Who’s the Boss (iPlayer) which no doubt raised awareness of BrewDog without necessarily improving its reputation. Mitch Adams sticks up for James Watt here; and there’s some (thin) commentary and a round-up of Twitter reactions from The Drum here. Meanwhile, the brewery’s Islington hot-dogs-and-beer bar has closed but Keith Flett doesn’t think there’s any cause for concern.

→ Andreas Krenmair has been home-brewing Berliner Weisse to historic spec, without a boil.

→ And, finally, a vital question has been answered: yes, you can use apps to swap faces with beer packaging.

https://twitter.com/BeerLibraryTQ9/status/707616538254295040

Categories
News pubs

News, Nuggets & Longreads 5 March 2016

05.03.2016 -- pint glasses hanging behind the bar of a pub.

Here’s all the stuff that’s most amused, entertained or educated us in the last week, from BrewDogeian capitalism to pub tat.

→ Journalist Paul Mason took a provocative stance on BrewDog’s decision to give away an e-book of their beer recipes under the headline ‘BrewDog’s open-source revolution is at the vanguard of postcapitalism’. We think we know what he’s getting at — BrewDog and similar companies ‘do’ capitalism in a way which would probably seem insane to business people of a century ago — but there was lots of kickback, and not only from within the world of beer. For example…

https://twitter.com/owenhatherley/status/704646740004179968

→ Brewery takeover news: It’s not a brewery but UK online beer retailer Beer Hawk has been taken over by (sorry — has ‘teamed up with’) global booze giant AB-InBev. (Fed up with re-iterating his stance every time a similar Big v. Indie takeover occurs Dave S has written a ‘Generic Response to a Brewery Selling Out’ that we reckon gets it about right.)

→ For The Deserter ‘The Dulwich Raider’ gives an account of a pub crawl through Peckham, South London, reflecting on change and gentrification:

Don’t worry about what the estate agents say, it’s not Hampstead or Chelsea and nor will it be any time soon. And unlike a Hampstead or a Chelsea, Peckham will still startle a yokel, which, let’s face it, is what it’s all about.

Crackers, bread and sunflower seeds -- malt-type flavours.

→ Adrian Tierney-Jones has shared 5000 words of a work in progress about Proust and biscuits and beer and… Well, just read it. There’s a reason he’s appeared in ‘Pseud’s Corner’ in Private Eye more than once and you either like his style or you don’t, but it’s something different and at least it has style.

→ For The Brewers’ Journal editor Tim Sheahan provides an in-depth look at hop supply in the UK: ‘More than 80% of Citra in the ground today has already been sold through to 2019.’ (It’s frustratingly spread across six individual pages to maximise ad views with no single-page or print view option but probably still worth the effort.)

→ Alec Latham continues his pondering of what makes the perfect pub focusing this time on ‘tat’:

Archaeology is literally the unearthing of rubbish; archaeologists in the field sift through whatever the bygone peoples hoarded, left behind or threw away. If Britain had suffered its own Vesuvius, digging up a pub would be the pay dirt. It would house the accretion of years of cultural obsoletes and disposables revealing not just a snapshot, but whole passages from history in need of an archive.

→ As haze and/or murkiness in beer continues to be a battleground the Rook & Gaskill pub in York has decided to hold a mini-festival where drinkers can try both fined and unfined versions of the same beers. (Ad-laden local news website – sorry; via @Maria__Aurora.)

→ Mark Johnson continues his exploration of the role of mental health in his own relationship with pubs and alcohol… Or is it the role of alcohol and pubs in his mental health? His most recent piece is about the positive effects of becoming a pub regular:

It means that I drink more than I used to as one activity becomes the other. As alcohol is a depressant there are inherent risks with this. Yet it never has this affect on me; it is out weighed by the calming effect the pub atmosphere gives me. Though I’m not always cheery and that is to be expected, sometimes I’m better in there than at home. I don’t need to be there all the time, but it’s knowing there’s an escape. Often just knowing it’s there is enough.

→ And, finally, there’s this monstrosity.

Categories
homebrewing News

News, Nuggets & Longreads 27/02/2016

Gas lamp fittings at the Tinner's Arms, Zennor, Cornwall.

Here’s all the beer- and pub-related writing we’ve found most interesting in the last week, from Vietnam to mince pie stout.

→ For the Wall Street Journal Emma Hurt has been exploring Vietnam’s nascent craft beer scene:

“When they first tried our beer, people would say, ‘This doesn’t taste like beer,’ ” says Alex Violette, the brewmaster at Saigon’s Pasteur Street Brewing Company. “I would respond, ‘No, what you’ve been drinking doesn’t taste like beer. It tastes like water. This is beer.’ ”

(Via Joe Stange.)

→ Ed has been ageing porter with Brettanomyces and his experiments lead him to a pleasing conclusion: ‘Those old brewers knew what they were doing when they aged porter for a year.’

Continue reading “News, Nuggets & Longreads 27/02/2016”