Author: PeteBrown

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Hangover on tour

Great launch event in Burton last night for Hops and Glory – going to put photos up tomorrow.

Meanwhile tonight sees my first reading and signing at The Hob, Dartmouth Road, Lewisham, organised by Lewisham Library.  If you’re close enough to beat the tube strike, come and join us!

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Finally recovered the use of my hands and head

Editor, author and international beer smuggler.  From l to r: Larry Nelson, editor of Brewers’ Guardian, Jeff Pickthall, beer blogger and smuggler, and me 

This seems a little trivial now in light of this morning’s news, but my book finally launched on Thursday night.
It was even better than I’d hoped – a fantastic party that made me feel very humble.  Lots of IPA was consumed.  Loads of my mates came.  Loads of beer writers and bloggers came.  Neil Morrissey and Richard Fox came.  
Beer blokes from off the telly.
The secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group came.  
Robert Humphreys of the Parliamentary Beer group – no, he’s NOT asking for a copy on expenses!
And Billy and Declan came.
Mrs Pete Brown’s Beer Blog with Declan (l) and Billy (r, with crutch after kickboxing accident.  He was kicking some boxes and hurt his foot.)
More about Billy and Dec later, but if you read Three Sheets to the Wind and thought I’d made them up, or exaggerated them, I didn’t.  They came from Galway to get drunk at my party.
Thanks to everyone who came.  Thanks to the people from Pan Macmillan for organising it and ALWAYS doing more for me and my books than they should by rights.
And thanks so much to Brew Wharf, which is where we held the party.  Since it opened, Brew Wharf, part of Vinopolis, never quite succeeded in being the beery mecca it so obviously should be.  It’s a great space, but it’s just round the corner from the Market Porter and the Rake, two of London’s best beer pubs, and has never given the impression that it celebrates beer as much as you think it should – the fact that they had more wines than beers on their drinks list – in a place called Brew Wharf – kind of said it all.  
But all that is now changing.  I was contacted a few months ago by Ben, the new manager, who is passionate about beer and was very keen to build new links with the beery world.  They’ve expanded the beer range (now more beers than wines!) guest bottles change, there’s a microbrewery on site which produces very palatable session beers, and I’m not sure if there’s any left after my party, but Meantime IPA was on draft along with a number of other great beers.  If you’ve visited before and left unimpressed, it’s time to give Brew Wharf another chance.  If you’ve never been before, now’s the time to go! It was the perfect venue for my party.

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Wicked Wikio!

Every month, Wikio compile rankings of UK blogs by subject, one of which is Gastronomy. Wikio explain that the position of a blog in the rankings is determined by the number and weight of incoming links from other blogs.  Then there’s some stuff about RSS feeds and algorithms which many of you probably understand but which to me is just a noise.  But the result is what they can authoritatively describe as the ‘most referenced’ blogs in a particular subject area.

I remember months ago Stonch was contacted by them to give an exclusive preview of that month’s rankings, because his blog featured in the top ten.  Of course, I had to have a look to see if I was in… and I crept in at number 48.  I was quite chuffed at having the 48th most referenced food and drink blog in the UK because it allowed me to make self-deprecating comments about my ‘success’, which are the only kind Mrs Pete Brown’s Beer Blog will tolerate.
Well, I can’t make them any more.  This month Wikio asked me to unveil the new figures, which I was very surprised by… then I saw I was up to number 6!
I’ll admit that when I saw I was only number 48 it did spur me to write a bit more frequently, but I’m blown away by this.  Thank you so much to everyone who links to my blog, for both your frequency and… um… weight.  Here’s the top twenty, due to be published tomorrow:
It’s great, considering that this is all food and drink, and that the top one belongs to The Guardian, that beer blogs feature so prominently. It shows that despite a tendency to moan in this medium, blogging has been a revelation for the beer community, and has allowed enthusiasts to gain a genuine influence in the world of not just beer, but broader food and drink coverage. I’ve only just broached the top twenty, probably due to Hops and Glory buzz, but Stonch and Tandleman are there every single month, hovering around the top ten.  When mainstream media continue to meet pitches from beer journalists with “I’m sorry, we just don’t cover beer, we don’t have room,” blogging reveals that there are talented writers, issues to be discussed, and an audience that wants to read them in the beer world.
And fair play to Wikio UK for categorising this area as ‘gastronomy’ – the US site follows the annoying trend that bookshops do and refers to ‘food and wine’, which always makes beer feel like a guest invited at the last minute to make up the numbers.  By accident or design, no beer blogs feature in the top 100.

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Er… what’s happening to the off-trade bottled ale revolution?

Bottled ales in supermarkets – brilliant!  OK, they have no idea whatsoever how to categorise and arrange beers, but they stock an incredibly diverse range at reasonable prices.  Or at least, they did.

I don’t actually go to supermarkets very much.  I’ve just got back from my nearest big Sainsburys at Angel, Islington, for the first time in a few months  I’ve always been impressed by the range of stuff they stock – a full range of Taste the Difference beers (brewed by Meantime), 750ml bottles of Meantime Porter and IPA, comprehensive ranges from the likes of Fuller’s and Marston’s, plus loads of micros.  As Angel is a pretty upmarket area, I’ve often used this store as an example of how affluent, curious people are clearly embracing ale.  
And now, they’ve refurbished it, approximately doubling the floorspace.  This could only be brilliant for beer, right? Right?
In a store that’s doubled in size, premium/speciality beers have been slashed from an entire aisle to two bays.  Premium bottled ale has been cut from three bays to one.  No Meantime.  No Micros.  No Taste the Difference.  In fact nothing that isn’t made by Marstons, Fullers, Innis & Gunn or Hall & Woodhouse, save the odd exception.
So I went next door.  One of the reasons for the refurb is that the old Woolies has now turned into a medium-sized Waitrose.  Now they’re the best supermarket chain for bottled beer.  They stock Deus and everything.  Um, not here they don’t.  The same ranges from the big regionals, plus one or two locals, and that’s it.
Nearer home, my corner shop has sold out and just reopened as a Sainsbury’s local.  The Turks who used to run it knew nothing about beer, but they stocked a fine and constantly changing range.  The new Sainsburys stocks three ales and about four lagers, in much greater quantities.
I’ve read that in most categories in grocery, supermarkets will only stock the top two or three brands – higher quantities, better terms for them, less hassle, less choice for the consumer.  But until now beer has always been different.  
Is this now changing or am I just unlucky with my choice of store? If this is typical of what’s happening across the country, it could be disastrous for smaller brewers, as supermarket chains don’t look at range and diversity, just who the top three or four brewers are, and maybe the odd concession to someone else local.  No disrespect to Marston’s, Fullers and H&W – I frequently buy their beers – but if they are going to be the only ones available outside specialist beer shops in future the whole category will be poorer for it.
Please tell me this is not happening in your local supermarkets too.

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Bank Holiday Pub Fun Part two: Pub du Vin


Been meaning to try Brighton’s Pub du Vin since it opened, and I’m very glad I finally got the chance.

They have a weird licence that mean s you can only order a drink if you have a seat, and this leads to a distinctly unpubby slew of ‘reserved’ signs on tables.  But we got there early – in fact we were the first customers.
Six hand pumps on the bar and a good range of bottles in the fridge.  Of the hand pumps, two were Harveys, two Dark Star and two guest micros.  I ordered a pint of Dark Star American Pale Ale and was very happy to see the barman carefully pull through the first pint and pour it away.  he talked knowledgeably about the beers when asked, and told me the range is constantly rotating, with local hero Harveys Best the only permanent fixture. 
To veer off the point a sec – the Dark Star pale ale was awesome, brimming with American hops but not too heady at a sessionable 4.7%.  And it was served in pewter tankards – a nice touch.
A chalkboard explains the concept – a pub from the award-winning Hotel du Vin chain – and that’s exactly what the vibe feels like – not a local, not a hotel bar, but a pub with its Sunday Best on.  “Beer is the new wine.  This is your new local.”  Finishes the manifesto.  So the only place they lose marks is when we ask to see the menu and are given a two page wine list, but no beer list.  This seems like such an easy own goal.  You wouldn’t expect to see a beer list if they hadn’t gone on about it, but with such a great range, and such a slogan, it’s mystifying that they don’t have one, and don’t make any beer matching recommendations on the menu – the food certainly begs for suggestions.
One thing I love about the menu is that it contains a range of bar food – single oysters, sausage rolls, pork pies, pickled eggs, cockles, bread and butter, all between £1 and £4.50.  It mystifies me that, as with wifi access, more pubs don’t offer this kind of thing.  We are seeing it a lot more now, but only in the poshest gastropubs, and yet it’s basic, down to earth, honest good pub snacks that were universal sixty or seventy years ago.  How many times have you been peckish in a pub, not wanted a full meal, but wanted more than yet another bag of crisps or nuts?  A higher spend and a longer dwell time guaranteed.
We had a full meal and it was beautifully served, excellent food.  It’s all locally sourced and while a bit fancier than average, it still feels like pub food rather than gastro – fish finger butties, bacon and egg baps, as well as stuff with chorizo and rocket – and you can hardly call a pub that serves cornish pasty and chips pretentious, though some would balk at the £8.50 price tag.
The toilets are worth a visit in their own right.  The tromp l’oeil mock-bare brick wallpaper is trying a little too hard.
We really were in there very early.  Half way though our meal, we were joined by a big family group at the ‘reserved’ table, who ordered a mixture of Pinot Grigio and pints of lager top to accompany their beer-battered fish and chips, smoked haddock fish cakes and steaks – aargh! That’s why you need a beer list!  And then a couple of elderly women sat down and started talking about the MPs’ expenses scandal. “When MPs were independently wealthy and did it part time we didn’t have to pay them. And back then we had the biggest empire the world has ever seen, and no expenses scandal.” Of course!  That’s it! Let’s simply roll back nearly two centuries of electoral reform and bring back colonialism!
So there you go – great food, great beer, pretty good surroundings, and moronic, ill-informed conversation conducted with great conviction.  Everything you could want from a pub.
And did I mention they stock one of my books in their little lounge? 

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Bank Holiday Pub Fun Part One

I’m working on a new book (my first that’s not directly beer-related!) which involved me visiting several seaside resorts last bank holiday weekend.

The good bit was that I finally got to sample Pub du Vin in Brighton, which I’ll review when I’m back home after the weekend cos I came away without my bleedin’ notebook.  Suffice to say they have a little library that has a copy of Man Walks into a Pub in it, so I was favourably disposed.
But two days later we found ourselves in Clacton-on-Sea.  Now I want you to picture this very carefully.  Close your eyes.  Ah – you’d better open them again or you won’t be able to read the rest of the post.  Imagine a Wetherspoon’s pub, with its curious mix of a good range of beers that are often well-kept, but with a less-than-savoury clientele featuring a large proportion of elderly shouting Irishmen.  Now, delete the wide range of beers and replace it with just one – Ruddles County.  And imagine what a handpull looks like when it has not been pulled or handled in a very long time.  Got that?  Good.  Now, delete the mad Irishmen and  replace them with forty or so families from Essex with screaming bored children.  It’s dark outside, three hours before sunset, which may have something to do with the bad weather warning that’s just flashed up on the plasma screen.
Yep, this is the worst Wetherspoon’s pub you have ever been in.
Not just a Wetherspoon’s pub.  But the worst.  Wetherspoon’s.  Ever.
And do you want to hear the most terrifying thing of all?  
It’s still the best pub in Clacton-on-Sea.  By a considerable margin.

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Hops and Glory: a week to go – or is it?

Very excited about the book coming out in just a week.  But I’m getting e-mails this morning from people who ordered their copies on Amazon that it’s shipping already!  

Copies of the book are dropping (heavily) on to doormats as we speak.
So if you can’t wait another seven days, order you copy on Amazon.co.uk now!

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An interesting thing about pub signs

Can’t help being struck by the new design scheme used on Shepherd Neame pubs.  I’ve been roaming around Kent and Sussex quite a lot recently and they definitely make an impression.
The branding of pub chains is a thorny issue – should you make them all look like part of chain, or should you allow pubs to retain their individuality?  This scheme does both.  The red and gold makes them look premium, and the black and white pic evokes tradition.  You can tell its a Shep’s pub a mile off, yet each pub still feels like its own master.
The first wag who leaves a comment along the lines of “Yes, but why would you want to drink in one of their pubs – their beers are boring” wins a prize of – well – nothing whatsoever.  The old saying “Never judge a book by its cover” doesn’t stop thousands of people doing just that when faced with an overwhelming choice.  And I’ll bet this signage is attracting a greater proportion of passing casual trade than the pub ever did before it was introduced.

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Bless

Just popped into All Bar One in my eternal quest for wifi access as I’m working a lot on the move at the moment.

Saw they stocked Worthington White Shield and asked for one.  The barman looked surprised. “It’s very rare we sell anything like that.  Have you had it before?  You know what it’s like, yeah?”
He was warning me about a beer.  I wondered if he was frightened by its complexity of flavour. But no, it seemed to be the fact that it’s bottle-conditioned that was troubling him.  “It’s got um… in the bottle… there’s…” he was struggling.
“I know – it’s bottle conditioned, which means it’s still fermenting and still has yeast in the bottle, so I should be careful with it.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he smiled, “I keep forgetting the right term… actually no.  The Duvel is similar but not quite the same.  Duvel is still conditioning in the bottle like White Shield is, but White Shield doesn’t have any yeast in the bottle, it’s just fermenting.”
I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad.  He was trying.  And he did manage to serve me the correct branded glass.  But we still have a long way to go.

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