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Wikio Rankings for April 2010 – and a call to action

Yes, it’s time once again to start arguing about what constitutes ‘influential’, ask each other what algorithms are, show off if you do know what algorithms are, and wonder aloud why anyone is reading Stonch’s blog months after he stopped posting – last month’s Wikio rankings are in, and they go live tomorrow.

And just look at this table.  It might look a bit familiar.  Now look at it again, paying particular attention to the movers and shakers – or lack of them:

1 Pete Brown’s Blog (=)
2 Pencil & Spoon (=)
3 Brew Dog Blog (=)
4 Tandleman’s Beer Blog (=)
5 The Beer Nut (=)
6 The Pub Curmudgeon (=)
7 Woolpack Dave’s beer and stuff blog (=)
8 Boak and Bailey’s Beer Blog (=)
9 The Bitten Bullet (=)
10 `It’s just the beer talking` ? Jeff Pickthall’s Blog (=)
11 Called to the bar (=)
12 Spittoon (=)
13 The Wine Conversation (=)
14 Brew Wales (=)
15 Zythophile (=)
16 Real Ale Reviews (=)
17 Beer Reviews (=)
18 Jamie goode’s wine blog (=)
19 Reluctant Scooper (=)
20 Travels With Beer (=)

Ranking by Wikio

How weird is that?  Every single one of the top twenty blogs in the same spot it was in last month.

Let’s deal with the most obvious and popular suggestion first – it means something has gone wrong inside the big algorithm machine.

Well, I double-checked this with Wikio before I posted and they assure me it’s correct.  Certainly unusual, but definitely correct.

If it really is correct, it means that no beer or wine blog is any more or less influential than it was a month ago.

And the problem is, I can sort of believe that.

It might just be me, but the beer blogging world seems to have stagnated of late. Are people getting bored?  Busier?  Is everyone too preoccupied with the election or something?

Because I confess that I’ve started to find beer blogs a bit… boring.  Obviously mine isn’t.  Mine’s really interesting.  And if you’re reading this wondering if I’m talking about you, then I’m not talking about your blog either, honest – whoever you are.

That last paragraph was tongue in cheek, by the way.

But collectively, our online beer conversation does seem to have settled into a complacent rut.  It’s not any one person, but taken as a whole we all seem to be writing about what awesome beers we’ve had recently, how extreme they are, how rare they are, how hoppy or how aged they are.  Beer blogs have become an online beer geek diary, a hi-tec glorified form of ticking.

I brewed this beer.  I bought this beer.  I drank this beer.  In this pub.

Too many conversations form decaying orbits around brewing technicalities or beer definitions.

Could it be that the lack of action in the rankings reflects a lack of action – or at least a lack of momentum – in the blogs themselves?

This is not me sitting at number one slagging everyone else off.  I include myself in everything I’m saying here.  And I hardly posted in April.  Lots of other people posted less frequently than they normally do.  I have my individual reasons and I’m sure you do too.  But have we run out of interesting stuff to write about beer? We analyse beers so closely, have we done it to death?

I don’t think so.

So why don’t we try to shake it all up in May?

The lazy way to do this would be to start a fight (*looks uncomfortably at today’s earlier post*) but there are other ways too.  Try to wind someone up if you must – try to wind me up if you want, so long as you’re constructing an intelligent argument and not simply hurling abuse.  But also think about writing something heretical.  Write something that scares you.  Write something very personal.  Write something you don’t think any other beer blogger would or could write.  Turn that last pub visit into more a story with characters and themes and twists and gags.  Write something you’re not sure you agree with but just write it anyway, post and be damned – you can always write another post tomorrow saying you’ve changed your mind.

Think I’m out of order for saying this?  Think I’m being patronising or unfair or superior, or missing the point of what beer bogs are all about?  Think I should have a word with myself before challenging anyone else?  Excellent! Post an argument on your blog explaining why!

Of course, tomorrow Wikio may well reveal that, having checked, there was something wrong in the big machine after all.  If so I apologise for offending anyone.  But I still think we should try and rearrange the beer blogging furniture a little bit.

After these last two posts, the only thing I need to do now for my next post is meet my own challenge in a way that’s not slagging anyone off.  I will do this, I promise. In the interests of balance, I’m going to write a really positive post related in some way to the awesome achievements CAMRA as a body have made over the last 39 years.  Just as soon as I can think of an original and interesting way to do that…

UPDATE HALF AN HOUR LATER…
Just heard there may indeed be a problem with the algorithm monster!  I’ll publish updates on this as they come through, and a revised table if necessary, but whatever the outcome I still think my challenge stands. 😉

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CAMRA’s noxious culture of entitlement

Long ranty post alert – apologies in advance, but this all needs saying…

One of my character flaws (I promise you I only have two, maybe three max) is that I can sometimes come across as arrogant. I never feel arrogant on the inside, but things I say or do can sometimes make it look as though I am.

When it happens, it’s not because I think I am superior – quite the opposite. It’s because I feel insecure and need reassurance. I over-compensate. Curiously enough, as I’ve become more successful as a beer writer, my ‘arrogance’ has declined as my inner confidence has grown.

The same is probably true of many other people who come across as arrogant. I guess it’s a kinder explanation than thinking that these people truly do believe they’re God’s gift.

But sometimes, I’m not so sure.

This is something that’s been tickling my brain since the scheme of pub discounts for CAMRA members was announced. It’s become quite controversial. Tandleman, as ever, gives a very reasonable argument in defence of CAMRA. (If only more of its prominent members were like him, there would be far fewer rucks like the one I’m about to prompt.) He claims that any organization is free to negotiate discounts for its members. If they put the effort in, and they succeed, fair play to them.

I can’t possibly disagree with that argument – I’ve worked in offices before now where HR have negotiated a staff discount in local shops – so why is it that the CAMRA discount winds up so many?

It’s this.

I was in the Sheffield Tap a few weeks ago, nursing a half of Thornbridge St Petersburg at the bar. In came two middle-aged guys with – and I swear I’m not making this up – plastic carrier bags full of VHS videos of locomotives, which they were swapping with each other. They went to the bar, ordered a couple of beers, and said, loudly enough for all the pub to hear, “We should get a discount in here!”

“Why’s that?” asked the barman.

“Because I’m a CAMRA member! And we spread the word about places like this!”

Now. Solipsistic as I am, I can only judge this by my own actions and experience. I’m Beer Writer of the Year. It seems that what I say carries a certain measure of influence in some misguided corners of the world. Sometimes in the Sheffield Tap the staff recognize me and insist on buying me a drink or giving me one on the house. If they do, I thank them as graciously as I can (being a Yorkshireman it’s hard, but I try) and accept.

I hope it’s not too arrogant of me to suggest that I “spread the word” about pubs more widely than Mr Deltics 1975-82 on VHS.  But I have never – in my life – walked into any pub and either demanded or expected a free or discounted drink because of who I am, or what I do. If I did, I would expect and deserve to be called a complete and utter fucking twat by anyone who witnessed it.

But with some CAMRA members there’s this sense of entitlement. It has nothing to do with head office having negotiated a commercial discount; it’s about this or that individual believing they deserve special treatment simply because they are a CAMRA member.

They know that a local branch can choose to make or break a pub over some perceived slight that has nothing to do with the quality of the real ale on offer. Similarly, CAMRA’s brewery liaison officers know they carry a great deal of influence. I’m sure many branches and many BLOs do their jobs conscientiously and responsibly. But I hear regular stories of others who let the power go to their heads.

When the bloke in the Sheffield Tap said his piece, he said it with a threatening tone. “We spread the word about places like this” was delivered with the protection racketeer’s implicit threat that ‘the word’ could just as easily be bad as good if his demands weren’t met. The Tap needn’t worry – no word this pathetic little man could spread would have anything like the power of the positive buzz coming from the vast majority of decent, sensible people – CAMRA members and non-members alike – who are raving about the pub.

So all this was buzzing around my head when we sat down to a free dinner in the National Brewery Centre last week. Master Brewer Steve Wellington had chosen a beer to go with each of the three courses we were served, and he stood up to introduce and explain each match.

Every time he took the microphone, the specially invited CAMRA members on my table heckled him, bellowing “P2 stout! Give us some P2 stout!” Now, this is a remarkable beer. But it wasn’t available. The first time they demanded it, Steve explained that there was none available because it hasn’t been brewed for a while. This didn’t put them off.  The first time it could be excused as good-humoured banter.  As the evening wore on, it just became fucking rude.

The final course was served with Kasteel Cru Rose. Like most beer geeks, it’s not a beer I care for that much, but Steve had his reasons for matching it with the dessert. Not a single one of the CAMRA guys would even touch it. They were disgusted, insulted, seemingly forgetting that this was not a CAMRA dinner, and that CAMRA has not financed the £700,000 reopening of the brewery centre. A private leisure company had, and Molson Coors – license owners of Kasteel Cru – had.

The demands for P2 stout grew louder. Finally, Steve went out into the driving rain, ran across to his office and found five bottles from his personal stash. He placed them on our table, and the CAMRA members, without a word of thanks to Steve, proceeded to divide these bottles among themselves, not offering to share them with anyone else. The guy sitting next to me told me that I could have some of his if I could get the bottle opened. Why he felt he was in a position to decide whether I was entitled to drink some of Steve Wellington’s beer speaks volumes.

When I opened the bottle and poured it for him, he grunted, “This had better be bottle-conditioned.”

While we were enjoying a dinner that had probably cost the NBC in the region of eighty quid a head, for CAMRA members to show such visible and audible disgust at the beer choice of a brewer they and everyone else has huge respect for, to barrack and heckle in such a way, and to display such a sense of entitlement when they got what they had so rudely demanded, was not just grossly disrespectful; it was the behaviour of sugar-rushed ten year-olds at a birthday party.

I hope that every decent CAMRA member reading this is appalled by the behaviour of people who were there in their name, representing them. These were not some junior local branch hangers-on; they were senior members with significant responsibility for pursuing the aims and objectives of the organization.  But they acted just as obnoxiously as the inadequate trainspotter in the Sheffield Tap.

From their point of view, there had been a perceived slight in the speeches when CAMRA had not been thanked adequately for their role in the brewery centre being reopened. Personally I don’t think there was any such slight. But even if there had been, it didn’t excuse this behaviour. And the perceiving of a slight in the first place is yet another manifestation of what I’m talking about. (As soon as the reopening of the centre was announced, CAMRA members were phoning up demanding free/discounted entry.)

This culture of entitlement is – as far as I can see it – arrogance in its truest form, a genuine belief that simply by being a CAMRA member you are somehow superior, more deserving than other paying customers.

Of course, not everyone who is a CAMRA member behaves this way (I’m not even suggesting every CAMRA member at the dinner behaved this way). 
But everyone who does behave this way is a CAMRA member.

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You wait ages for locally based beer phenomena and then two come along at once

I’m starting to think there might be something in this beer lark.

Just a week after the Jolly Butchers reinvents itself as one of London’s top five beer pubs, The Alma on Newington Green is having a bank holiday weekend real ale festival.

The Alma is a pretty pub in a great location, on the border between N1 and N16.  Bobby Gillespie out of Primal Scream lives just around the corner, and he blew his entire wad of Indie Rock credibility a few years ago when he complained to the council about the noise from the pub.

It’s a gastropub – one of the best in the area – really nice food, freshly prepared, nice wine list, lovely staff, great atmosphere.  But up to now the beer selection has been nothing to write home about.

This weekend landlady Kirsty Valentine changes all that with a festival celebrating the extraordinary renaissance of London brewing in recent years.  There’s a full list of about twelve ales, all from Sambrooks, Brodie’s, Twickenham and Redemption, none of which existed six years ago (Twickenham is the oldest, having opened in September 2004).

And the nice thing about the mix, given that they’re drawn from four local breweries, is that there’s a really interesting array of beer styles in there – a few golden ales, a few session beers, and some stronger, darker stuff.

Some of the brewers will be turning up at various points throughout the weekend, and I’m going down there tomorrow (Saturday) hopefully to meet the nice man from Tottenham’s Redemption Brewery.

It’s three quid a pint (10% off for CAMRA members, not that they deserve it – sorry, Tandy etc – I’m grouchy about appalling behaviour by some stereotypes who were at the National Brewery Centre launch last night) and there’s a live band on Sunday.  It kicks off Saturday at noon and runs until chucking out time on Bank Holiday Monday.

See you there!

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Do we need another brewing competition? Dunno, but I think we need this one…

The Brewing Industry International Awards are back. They were last held in 2005, but are happening again on 9th – 11th February 2011 in Burton on Trent, hopefully in the new National Brewing Centre (grand opening tonight – I’ll be there!).

These awards are notable in that brewers are judged only by their peers – other brewers.  Pundits and hacks like me don’t get a look in.  (This led to a fantastically entertaining meltdown by a certain beer writing legend when the Guild of Beer Writers discussed at the first AGM I ever went to.  As I said at the time, it was worth the price of joining the Guild on its own.) 
Anyway, there’s lots of stuff here about categories, judging and all that.  In the gap since these awards were last held, the World Beer Cup has become pre-eminent in this field.  The BIIA are joining to give them a run for their money once more from now on. 
But what interests me most is not yet official news, but was revealed yesterday by Ruth Evans, CEO of BFBi, which runs the BIIA (OK, that’s enough acronyms for one blog post), at a conference we were both speaking at.  Ruth said that at the end of the competition, there are approximately 10,000 pints of beer left.  Wouldn’t it be a good idea if, instead of pouring this beer down the drain, they had an international beer festival?  As Ruth points out, it wouldn’t be like a CAMRA beer festival – it would incorporate the best beers from around the world, of all styles, and there would be plenty of brewers on hand to talk about them.  And if this festival were held in the National Brewery Centre… well, talk about putting Burton back on the beer map.
Ruth stressed that nothing is definite yet – discussions are ongoing.  But if this came of, it would fill the gap left by the extremely premature demise of Beer Exposed after just one fantastic event in 2008.  It would be a phenomenal event for everyone involved in the global beer industry, and could be the start of something much bigger, giving Burton a new role on the global beer stage.      
I urge everyone connected with the National Brewing Centre to play nicely on this, and any potential sponsor or media partner to jump in.  Let’s make this happen. 

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The Jolly Butchers: my manor gets its own serious beer pub

I write for lots of different reasons, some of which go very deep. I’ve wanted to be a writer – of some kind – since I was nine years old. But among all the complex psychology, creativity and ego needs, there are a few more pragmatic reasons why I’ve wanted to write specifically about beer over the last ten years or so.
One of these is that I really love drinking well-made, tasty craft beers, be they American hop bombs, beautifully balanced real ales or perfectly made pilsners.
The trouble is, until a few years ago not many pubs served them. I much prefer drinking in pubs to drinking at home, and nine times out of ten I would have to settle for something deeply average.
So purely selfishly, I figured that if I wrote about beer, and I was really good at it, I might in some small way encourage the spread and appreciation of great beer, and that would make it more common in pubs, and that would mean I could enjoy better beer when I’m out. You might think I do it to turn other people on to great beer, but my ultimate motive is entirely selfish.
And it’s kind of working. I’m not claiming any measure of direct credit for the spread in good quality beer, the huge rise in imports and the critical and commercial revitalisation of cask ale, but I am part of a big wave of enthusiasm that’s pushing the spread of great beer.
My local, the White Hart, used to have one dusty Spitfire pump in the corner of the bar. Now it has three well-kept cask ales – Doom Bar and Tribute on permanent, and a rotating guest.
And as of today, up the road, opposite the bus stop, we have the Jolly Butchers.
Previously, the Jolly Butchers was a Stoke Newington institution – in more than one sense of the word. It was also known as Stokie’s Bar and Father Ted’s, each rebrand not replacing the previous name but adding fresh layers to to it, like the coats of grime on the windows.
It was populated exclusively by old men wearing what the late Pete McCarthy dubbed ‘Irish drinking suits’, those once smart, now shiny and stained dark jackets and trousers that are the uniform of a certain type of veteran drinker. They’d huddle together in a vast, derelict space to watch an endless diet of horse racing on the pub’s many TVs, pumping the change from their pints of Foster’s into a bank of gaming machines.

The pub had a certain notoriety in Stoke Newington’s broader population thanks to its 3am licence, but whatever business this brought in it clearly wasn’t enough: rumour has it the pub was losing thousands of pounds a week when it finally closed earlier this year. Twitter briefly flurried with comments along the lines of “Where are we going to go to have a late night fight with an Irishman now?” and then fell silent.

Two days ago I was invited for a sneak peak at the new Jolly Butcher’s.

The Victorian wrought ironwork and stained glass above the windows, previously boarded over, has been exposed. The walls have been stripped back to the brickwork and left unfinished, stylishly shabby, apart from one wall covered in trendy Fornasetti wallpaper.
The central bar that once dominated the centre of the room has been moved to the side, and an open kitchen has been built in the corner. And as for that bar, well…

There are ten handpumps, combining beers from London’s late-to-the-party but finally emerging range of craft brewers, plus regular beers from Thornbridge and Dark Star, real cider from Gwatkin’s and a perry.

Apart from the ales, there’s smoked beer Schlenkerla on draught, as well as De Koninck, Bruges Zot, Mort Subite Kriek, Vedett, Erdinger and Meantime Helles. Yes, all on draught. Then there’s a lot of Chimay in bottles, some more Meantime and a few others. The bottle range does need beefing up, but landlord Martin wanted to focus on getting the draught range right first.
I used to have to get on a train for two hours to drink Jaipur on draught. Now I have to walk five minutes to the end of my street. My plan has worked.
I can’t claim any credit at all for the Jolly Butchers though – Martin had never heard of me until he started placing orders for beers. But when he did, people kept telling him I lived locally and he should get in touch with me. I’m so glad he followed their advice.
The other day I chipped in a few comments about the beers as the staff were taken through a tutored tasting of them by Martin (behind the bar, above). Some of the Irish drinking suits were hanging around outside, curious, proprietorial. They’re still welcome if they’re happy with no racing, no bandits and Meantime Helles instead of Foster’s.
Martin knows what he’s doing – he also runs the Rose and Crown in N16 and the Wrestlers in Highgate. Both those pubs are tied, but the Jolly Butchers is a freehouse. As such, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on it and turn it into a beer shrine. Why? Martin is a beer fan, but not a beer geek. He enjoys a decent pint, but talking to him you realise first and foremost he’s a businessman. He’s reinvented the Jolly Butchers, taking it from one extreme of the pub spectrum to the other, purely because he believes he’ll make a lot of money by doing so.
“If this doesn’t work, that means I don’t understand pubs. And the thing is, I do understand pubs – I’ve worked in them all my life,” he says.
It’s striking that he had to wait until he could get a freehold to do this – that PubCos simply wouldn’t allow him to create this dream. When the Jolly Butchers makes more money than Martin’s other pubs, than other Enterprise and Punch pubs, it will prove what readers of this blog understand but PubCos, global brewers and mainstream media still do not – craft beer is thriving, and when forty pubs a week are closing, catering to craft beer is a sure fire route to profit.
See you there tonight.

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The “culture of binge drinking” and the credulous academics

The latest piece of binge drinking research would be funny it if had been written by a comedian. The fact that it is apparently serious is profoundly depressing.
The BBC today reports that a culture of binge drinking is ‘well-established’ in north-west England. Liverpool’s John Moore university discovered this by going out around town centres on Friday and Saturday nights and interviewing people who they thought looked drunk.
They were horrified to discover that these people were indeed drunk, and that they intended to carry on drinking.
This is, apparently, newsworthy.
Among the shock insights uncovered by this crack team of researchers are:
  • “drinking at home before a night out and drinking later into the night may be associated with higher levels of drunkenness in city centres”
and
  • “drinkers who planned to stay out due to extended opening hours were the ones intending to drink the most”
So far, so many bears defecating in forests. But the bit I find astonishing, given that this report is coming from a supposedly reputable academic institution which presumably applies a certain amount of rigour to its research methodology, is “one in 10 (15% of men and 4% of women) believing their total alcohol intake would be more than 40 units before going to sleep”.
This gave Sky its headline for its coverage of the story, and prompted Alcohol Concern chief Don Shenker to comment “That some people are drinking over these amounts in a single evening is cause for real concern.”
So let’s get this straight: you went up to a bunch of pissed people on a Saturday night, interrupted their evening to ask them questions about their drinking, and when they told you they intended to drink the equivalent of 20 pints of beer, four and a half bottles of wine or 27 gin and tonics… you believed them?!
Did you also believe them when the lads told you they all had 12 inch knobs and had shagged all the most attractive girls in town?
Either Don Shenker and John Moore University are simpletons who have no understanding whatsoever of how people behave when they’ve been drinking, or they’ve knowingly bought in to a study which any serious researcher would laugh out of the room for its deeply flawed methodology, and cynically presented it as fact when they know it can only be taken at best with a huge pinch of salt.
And as the final link with reality is severed, what picture does the BBC choose to illustrate these supposed 40-units-a-night drinkers?
Go on, have a guess.
Correct!
Twenty pints of real ale please. We’re all going out to get bollocksed out of our minds on J W Lees Bitter.

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“An innovation set to revolutionise the beer category”

Press releases. I get sent an increasing number of them.
Some of them are genuinely useful. Many others are completely irrelevant (when have I ever done anything that suggests a professional interest in female sanitary products?) Often they confuse what a press release should do – supply a writer with news, information, quotes and angles for potential stories – with a really crappy attempt at writing the story itself that would insult the intelligence and credulity of a three year-old.
I was thinking of sharing the most outstanding examples with you instead of simply binning them – perhaps introducing a ‘press release of the week’ feature – and then, I received one this morning that changes everything, redefining the entire genre.
The headline on the email from Zoo Communications crashed through my hangover and pulled me to attention – this was a prize scoop and no mistake: “Anheuser-Busch InBev UK launches Budweiser Brew No. ‘66’ – an innovation set to revolutionise the beer category”.
Wow! They weren’t mincing their words! Words like:
Innovation: defined by Dictionary.com as “something new or different”.
and
Revolutionise: “to effect a radical change”
Bud 66 eh? What could it be, this new or different thing that’s going to bring about radical change in the beer, um, “category”?
Because beer is going through a very exciting time at the moment, with plenty of innovation going on: we’ve got style mash-ups like ‘Belgian IPAs’, explorations in wood ageing beers, ingredients like strawberries or spices being added to beer, an endless search for new hop flavours from around the world, and regular smashings of the ‘world’s strongest beer’ record. What could AB-Inbev possibly be up to that could top that?
With shaking hands I clicked open the press release. Boy, Zoo Communications are good. Usually a press release gives you what you need to know, if not in the headline, then in the first line of copy. Not this one. More like a Steven King novel than a press release, it just continued to build the suspense.
AB-Inbev president Stuart Macfarlane declared Bud 66 “our most important business action in 2010”.
This is the world’s biggest brewer we’re talking about. Their ‘most important business action’?This really was serious.
But why were they embarking on such a radical, revolutionary departure? Why? Because according to Stuart, you, the drinker, demand it: “Consumers, and in particular consumers in their early twenties are looking for something new and different – and it’s up to us to continue providing compelling product offers that reflect their needs and tastes.”
Not just “new or different” but “new AND different”? Oh I’m almost pissing myself with excitement here, PLEASE Stuart, tell us what it is!
Halfway down the page, he finally gives in: Bud 66 is “A lightly carbonated lager brewed with a touch of sweetness for a smooth, easy taste at 4% abv.”
I’m sorry? A what!?
“A lightly carbonated lager brewed with a touch of sweetness for a smooth, easy taste at 4% abv.”
Hang on a minute, that sounds a little bit familiar. Why might that be? Ah, the press release goes on to tell us: “Over the past few years, AB InBev UK has catered to the premiumisation trend with the launch of Beck’s Vier and Stella Artois 4%.”
Oh. Right. So a 4% lager still counts as ‘innovation’ if you’ve done it twice before in recent years then?
In fact hang on, it’s not that dissimilar to Bud Silver, the 4.1% beer launched by Anheuser Busch in 2006 which was discontinued a couple of years later.

So, apart from a few caveats:
a) it’s just a 4% bottled lager, which isn’t new to the beer market by any conceivable logical definition
b) it’s not new to A-B Inbev
c) it’s not even new to the Budweiser brand
d) it’s going to taste stale because it’ll be lightstruck, thanks to being in a clear bottle (unlike other Bud beers, to be fair)
e) no one wanted it last time something very, very similar was launched,
this truly is an innovation that’s going to revolutionise the beer market!
Well done, A-B Inbev! Well done, Zoo Communications!
Let’s have more where this came from!
“Hello, I’m Stuart Macfarlane, and this is a bottle of 4% lager. I swear to you I have never before – in my entire life – seen anything remotely like this. And neither have you.”

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Beer Porn

Beers of Europe is my favourite mail order beer shop.

And you can believe me when I say that because I’ve asked them in the past about discounts when I buy beer for tastings and events and they’ve ignored me, and yet I’m still saying how much I like them.

They asked me to feature this video on my blog. I think they asked a lot of people and they did it months ago. I’m just catching up.

So here’s some beer porn. I kept waiting for a punchline or something which never arrives, but the one thing it does very well is convey the sheers epic scale of the range.

Enjoy.

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Why Beer Matters – Second place runner up

People seemed to enjoy reading John Bidwell’s piece, (and it’s gratifying to see the competition topic still being discussed on beer blogs) so I now present the entry that narrowly beat him.

Shea Luke is a young woman who really enjoys drinking real ale. That shouldn’t be extraordinary, but some people seem to think it is, and in the piece below Shea tells us how she deals with that.
What the judges liked about this one was its energy and freshness. There are a few women writing about beer, some with a great deal of success, but it would always be helpful to have some more if we want to convince women (and men) that there is no inherent reason why women can’t drink beer too. We liked the attitude here and hope to see more of it!
WHY BEER MATTERS
The most common reactions I get when people find out about my geekily keen beer passion are “How do you stay so slim?” and “What’s it like hanging around with loads of bearded old men?” Granted, it’s unusual to find a 26 year old, female girl about town, who has drunk around 1200, and continually counting, different British beers since records began. These are only my records, of course, in four consecutive Good Beer Guides, but my obsessive carrying around of these near sacred tomes, and the subsequent broken handbag straps and scarred shoulders, will surely convince you of their trustworthiness. By the way, just in case you are a particularly curious type, this number does not include the hundreds of foreign beers I’ve supped; I have to draw the ticking and record keeping line somewhere, people. This achievement, whilst undoubtedly nerdy for such a groovy gal, which I assure you I am in most other aspects of life, is a fact I am always quick to point out to the handful of ‘bearded old men’ who still advise me to stick to something weak or fruity. You see, these 1200 odd brews are not just evidence of a deep love of beer, but an (admittedly thus far relatively short) lifelong quest to sample and delight in our country’s beers. Beers from both ends of the strength spectrum, beers from all corners of the nation, beers that represent a long heritage and history, beers that began as an enthusiast’s home brew, beers that use local produce, beers that help keep vital community pubs alive, beers that bring likeminded people together, beers that push boundaries with unusual and exciting ingredients, beers that simply make your day that bit better, beers that just taste darn good. Let it be known that I am willing to stand my ground to fight for these beers, even if I have to argue with an outdated girlphobe to get my hands on them. Hands which, for your information, are not so small and delicate as to require a special mini, stemmed girly glass, and while we are at it, no I wouldn’t prefer a vodka, yes I do know that there are more stouts than Guinness, and no, it really doesn’t need to be fizzy for me to enjoy it. But, as a fellow curly haired revolutionary said, the times they are a- changing, and it really is just a teeny handful of fuddy-duddies who persist in derogatory ‘you are a girl, you don’t know anything about beer’ comments. I now have a faithful collection of bearded (and clean shaven) pals who are interested in my beer related opinions. Young people who are equally proud of their ale geekdom, people from other beer minority drinking groups (like my pensioner friend form the Caribbean who claims we are two of a kind, fighting the corner of underrepresented ale lovers), and a London based brewer who might be producing a special for my wedding (you don’t get that from Smirnoff). But none of them look as good as me in a Dark Star Brewing Co. T-shirt. Or pint glass shaped earrings. Beer matters. It matters to all those people. It matters to all the pub landlords in the cities and towns around the UK that my Good Beer Guide led holidays take me to. It matters to the microbrewers in manky derelict farm buildings that have left jobs in the city to pursue their passion and to help nourish ours. It matters to the retirees whose social calendar revolves around manning the beer mat flooded tombola. It now matters to the Spanish girls in their twenties that I met at a recent beer festival who asked for something like San Miguel but left drinking porter. I’m not a brewer, I’m not bearded, I’m not retired, and I am absolutely not a bloke, but, do you know what? Beer definitely matters to me.

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