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Let’s be nice month is over

Danger! This much beer is ‘hazardous’!

Ah, New Year, a time for reflection, refocus, resolution. A time for getting fit, a time for… the neo-prohibitionists to go completely fucking apeshit, pouncing on the moment when many moderate drinkers prove they don’t have a drink problem by taking a few weeks off the sauce, and use it to ram fear and alarm down the nations throats as never before.

Binge drinking on New Year’s Eve alone could cost the NHS £23 million. New Years Eve itself saw our cities burn to the ground in a drink-fuelled orgy of violence and people falling over on the snowy pavements. The rising cost of treating drinkers could cripple the NHS. And most worryingly of all, one in four Brits are now consuming alcohol at ‘hazardous levels’. That last one must be true: it says so in the Observer, and is sourced from a NHS report.
Let’s just take that last one, as it’s the most worrying. Check out the NHS report for their justification of this claim, and it refers you to a separate appendix. Here, the source of this claim is given as the National Audit Office Report, Reducing Alcohol Harm. This is actually a well-written and researched report for the most part, but it tells us that the definition of ‘hazardous’ is from the World Health Organisation, who define ‘hazardous’ as ‘exceeding government recommended limits’ in the country in question, whatever those limits might be, even though they vary from country to country.
To get to the figure of 25%, the NAO report has used the recommended safe daily guidelines – expressed as units – to get to their definition of what constitutes ‘government recommended limits’.
Let’s not even get started on the fact that these units are completely arbitrary. It’s the old trick: the government unit recommendations are guidelines for drinking safely. They have been interpreted as limits, over which drinking is hazardous. According to the OED, a guideline is a ‘general rule or principle’. A limit, in this context, is ‘a restriction on the size or amount of something permissible or possible’. They mean entirely different things – but they are wilfully conflated whenever people talk about alcohol. If you think they mean the same thing, consider this example.
I got my calculator out again. You calculate a ‘unit’ of alcohol by multiplying the volume of liquid (in ml) by its ABV, and dividing by 1000. The ‘guideline’ alcohol consumption for men is no more than four units per day.
Take Kronenbourg. 1 pint = 568ml x 5%/1000 = 2.84 units
1.5 pints = 852ml x 5%/1000 = 4.26 units
The guideline for women is 3 units per day. 1 x 175 ml glass of 12% wine is 2.1 units. 1 x 150ml glass is – quite conveniently – 3 units.
If you drink a pint and a half of Kronenbourg in one day – even if that’s half a pint with lunch and one pint in the evening – you are a ‘hazardous’ drinker. If you drink one large glass of wine that is stronger than 12%, you are a ‘hazardous’ drinker. According to the latest NHS report, you’re no different from an alky downing a bottle of cheap vodka every day.
Furthermore, the way this data is collected, the actual question is along the lines of ‘did you drink this much on one day during the last week’. If you say yes, you’re included in the figure. So you could have drunk alcohol on only one out of seven days and you still count as a hazardous drinker.
A large glass of 13% abv wine, a pint and a half of lager – or two pints of real ale – in one day, with six days abstinence? Congratulations, you’re still a hazardous drinker.
This is what the whole of the UK national media have accepted without question.
Be scared.

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Pubs and who they let in – a quick poll

Happy New Year!

Had a very pleasant New Year’s Day in The Spaniards, Hampstead – the pub I discovered in September at the Flying Dog event, and subsequently named in The Guardian as my perfect Boxing Day pub (which it subsequently was – we had a fantastic meal, great Christmas beers, and Richard and Judy were in there, with Judy wearing a huge pair of sunglasses, and even putting on reading glasses over the top of them to read the menu).

So we went back, and got there early to get a table, and enjoyed a very fine afternoon.
The sheer demand for tables meant there was a deal of tension in the air, with people repeatedly asking us how long we were going to be and attempting to nick a chair every time someone went to the loo.
But what made it really irritating was the constant screaming of bored kids, and the fact that a woman behind me repeatedly rammed my chair with a pushchair containing a fractious baby.
Now, I don’t have children – but I do have a dog. And one of the Spaniard’s many, many qualities in my eyes is that it’s the most dog-friendly pub I’ve ever been to. So I have a big personal bias: I regard a pub as being a bit stuck-up if they don’t allow dogs in – especially those who claim it’s against health and safety regulations or even against the law, which it just isn’t – it’s your decision who and what you let in your own pub and I respect that, but don’t lie to me – just have the balls to say you don’t want dogs in.
But I get irritated by kids in pubs. Or more accurately, by the parents of kids in pubs: parents who think it’s OK to wheel in a double-width push chair and leave it in the aisle. Parents who ignore their children and let them run around screaming, and smile at you when the kid runs past your table and spills your drink as if to say “Aren’t they adorable?” No, they’re really irritating. And parents who keep kids in the pub long after their bedtime, so they get grizzly and fractious – not fair on the kids, nor the rest of us. Living in a borough with a very high concentration of young kids, the joy of the pub is in part for me that it is an adult environment. That it should feel like a kindergarten is just wrong.
So my perfect pub would allow dogs, and ban kids.
But Orwell argued that kids should be allowed in pubs because pubs should be wholesome, universal centres of the community, and banning kids helps turn them into male-only drinking dens – his experience of such places was that if the bloke is in the pub, the woman has to stay at home looking after the kids. I see his point, and would agree with his view were it not for personal experience.
And anyone who saw Captain pissing territorially on the 17th century pillar in the front bar of the Spaniard’s yesterday would be well within their rights to argue that dogs are unhygienic and should be barred from any eating and drinking space. (He doesn’t normally do it, but there were lots of other dogs around, and some were cuter than him, which he hates. It makes him feel insecure.)
So am I just swayed by my personal circumstances?
Should the ideal pub bar children, dogs, or both? Or should it be as inclusive as possible and allow both?
I’ve set up a little poll over there—-> and would love to hear your views. If you leave a comment about this, please say if you have kids and/or dogs of your own, so we can see if our own situation dictates our views.

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Stone to brew in Europe?

One of the US’s finest craft breweries has announced in the last few minutes that they are looking to launch a brewery in Europe.

Stone – whose beers include Arrogant Bastard and Ruination IPA – are constantly receiving requests to get more of their beers sold in Europe, and have decided the best way to do this – to ensure delivery of fresh, quality beer – is to open a brewery on this side of the pond.
Where, with whom and how is not yet clear. In a video announcement, the brewery’s Greg Koch explains that they’re floating it as an idea to see what response it has. If a brewer approaches them and says “here’s a brewery we no longer want – you can have it” that would make things very easy. But they haven’t yet decided what country to brew in, let alone what kind of site.
The whole thing is a tease – this announcement is a toe in the water to see what the response is. Clearly, they can’t just come here and build a brewery from scratch on their own.
I hope and believe that there will be a deluge of interested potential investors, partners, landlords – and I’ll certainly be at the front of the queue of loyal customers.
So if you fancy being part of what could be some of the best brewing news of the next couple of years – Greg wants to hear from you

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Elk in the Woods in the passage

London was positively Dickensian yesterday. The Beer Widow and I a couple of friends spent the afternoon in the Elk in the Woods, a Swedish restaurant in Camden Passage, Islington. We were sitting near the window by the Christmas tree watching the snow come down and it was just perfect.

Lunch itself was very fine. Just one problem though – the menu at Elk lists wines, cocktails, soft and hot drinks, but there’s no mention at all of beer. When you ask, they’ll admit to stocking Kronenbourg, a Swedish lager whose name I didn’t catch, and a perfectly serviceable keg Theakstons Old Peculier, plus a range of bottles that don’t exactly push the frontiers of beer appreciation but do create a more interesting range of drinks than you’d find in an average boozer.
Why?
It always irks me when cafes and bars don’t put beer on the menu – they’re saying it’s “just beer” – not even worth listing, less interesting than whether they stock Coke or Pepsi. Usually in places like this when you do ask you’re given a choice of Bud, Becks or Stella. But still, why? And why stock some more interesting beers and then not tell your customers about them?
Anyone know?

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2009: What the blazes was all THAT about? (Part Two)

OK, after getting most of the political and industry stuff out of the way yesterday, let’s get on with celebrating the best of beer and pubs. Remember, this is totally subjective and based on my experiences, and isn’t trying to be any kind of definitive guide.(Note: because this is a review of the whole of 2009, Let’s Be Nice on Pete Brown’s Beer Blog Month is suspended for this post.)
BREWER OF THE YEAR Winner: John Keeling at Fuller’s Because in an industry that’s riven with divisions, he sets an example that every brewer, large or small, should aspire to. To large breweries, he shows that being part of a PLC whose fortunes rely on TV-advertised brands doesn’t have to stifle experimentation and innovation. He’s leading the way with learning about how ageing affects beer. He refuses to call this innovation – he prefers ‘rediscovery’. Also, he’s the model head brewer as brand ambassador, touring the country with informative and entertaining tastings and jokes so old they were first told over a pint of Egyptian bouza. And to micro/craft brewers, he’s an example of professionalism and rigour, who wholeheartedly supports a micro scene that keeps him on his toes. Fuller’s has a perfect core range of beers – a malty premium ale in Pride, an often-overlooked hoppier session ale in Chiswick, a glorious finisher in ESB, a summer ale, and a stable of seasonals, plus the legendary vintage ale, and much more. All this, and he’s a Fall fan. (We’ll let him off being a Man United supporter.) If your name is Stuart Ross, please look away now…
BREWER OF THE YEAR Runner-up: Stuart Ross, Crown Brewery, Sheffield Stuart works alone with a three-barrel plant in a cellar beneath a pub. He does everything single-handed, from cask washing, to bottling, to designing labels and pump clips. And the beers he turns out in his understated fashion are too good to be overlooked any longer. He saw a load of chillies being sold off cheap in Morrisons so he bought them on impulse and created Ring of Fire, a 10% chilli beer that has a subtle taste of chilli pepper before the heat gradually builds. He does a nice range of session beers, and a variety of fully-hopped IPAs. His Smoked Oktoberfest is the best beer I’ve ever tasted with Indian food. And the Damson Porter he created with Zak Avery is divine. I could go on. Stuart just brews what he feels like brewing, constantly experimenting. I don’t think he knows how good a brewer he is. I’m scared how big his head will grow when he does realise, so I just hope I don’t help create a monster by giving him the recognition he deserves. So no one tell him what I just said. OK Stuart, you can come back now.
BEER OF THE YEAR Winner: Wye Valley HPA (Hereford Pale Ale)

Because a recent post by ImpyMalting made me realise that, along with many beer bloggers, when it comes to beer appreciation I’m getting seduced down a cul-de-sac of the extreme, eclectic and experimental, whereas in reality most of my drinking consists of session pints. Because HPA is a very good session pint, quenching and citrusy and refreshing and satisfying. Because it’s very smartly branded and presented and makes ale look cool. Because when my father-in-law was dying in February, Liz and I shuttled between the hospital and the Angel Hotel in Abergavenny and the perfectly served HPA kept us going, a quiet moment of relaxation and contemplation in the middle of the stress and grief, an escape, a tonic. Because after the funeral, we and our friends held a wake for Eddie in the Angel, and we drank HPA until we could drink no more. Because when you ask someone what was the best beer they ever had, they tell you all about the context of it, not the flavour or the ingredients, and this beer reminded me of that in 2009. Great beer isn’t about what’s in the glass; it’s about so much more.
BEER OF THE YEARRunner-up: Crown Brewery HPA (Hillsborough Pale Ale) special 13% version You couldn’t get two more different beers, and the fact they’re both called HPA is a rather weird coincidence. Hillsborough Pale Ale is a 3.8% session beer. One day, CrownBrewerStu decided to see what would happen if he brewed a 13% version of it, which he did in a home brew bucket. When I first tasted it, my jaw hit the floor. This is a stunning barley wine, rich in caramel sweetness, rounded and not too harsh, a hint of sherry. I’ve no idea how he got the balance and depth and smoothness of it at this strength. If Brew Dog released this beer it would – rightly – be celebrated around the world. I made Stu give me the last of it for our Christmas party last week. Hopefully this post will force him to make some more and sell it at a premium price in 750ml cork and wire finished bottles. And hopefully he’ll get someone in to do a really gorgeous label.
PUB OF THE YEAR Winner: The Sheffield Tap, Sheffield Train Station I’ve only been once. It’s only been open a couple of weeks. But it’s not very often a pub takes your breath away. If only more big pub operators had Thornbridge’s vision, thoughtfulness and bravery. If only more small operators had their scope and access to investment capital.

The Sheffield tap: before…

… and after. (“Barnsley Skins” graffiti not pictured)
PUB OF THE YEAR Runner-up: The White Hart, London N16 It’s my local, and this is my review so I’m allowed to choose whomever I like. But this perfect boozer in Stoke Newington is a microcosm of what’s happening in beer. It’s always had great atmosphere, decent, reasonably priced food (though being the chef there seems to be like being the drummer in Spinal Tap), a fantastic beer garden, and is easily the best pub I know to watch a match on the big screen. You can tell it’s a great place to work because many bar staff have been there for years. But until recently there was one lonely Spitfire handpump in the corner that almost seemed to have cobwebs on it. Andy thought cask ale was only drunk by old men, and was of no interest to his hip, young clientele. Now, he has an slowly rotating range of three cask ales, sells bucketloads of them to N16’s hipsters, and is a born-again drinker of St Austell Trubute. He told me last night he’s applied for Cask Marque accreditation. And he’s planning on replacing Stella with Peroni. Kind of sums up the best of 2009!
PUB OF THE YEAR Honourable Mention: The Hillsborough Hotel, Sheffield For the beers, for the welcome, for the bacon sandwiches, for the quiz, for Pie Night, and for offering the best value accommodation in Sheffield. Eventually, I’ll get used to the trams and won’t be woken up by them before dawn.
BEER BLOGGER OF THE YEAR Winner: By a country mile – and he’s really going to hate this – Cooking Lager! No one knows who he is. Someone thought he might be me, which I was flattered by. But is he a beer geek playing a role, venting frustration? Or could he be for real? Every now and again he slips up and reveals that he knows more about beer than he lets on, but mostly, he ruthlessly skewers the pretentions of beer geeks and reminds us that, at the end of the day, it’s just beer. I depend on his tirades against pongy ales, odes to Lout and tales of his eternal struggle to stay on the right side of the Ladysqueeze to keep me grounded. And his review of my books, where he compared the relative merits of Man Walks into a Pub and Three Sheets to the Wind not on the merits of language, or insight, or research, but on their ability to prop up his wobbly sofa, is something I’ll always treasure. If it’s an invention, it’s a genius one. If he’s for real… I don’t know whether to admire him or fear him.
BEER BLOGGER OF THE YEAR Runner-up: Boak and Bailey I picked this not on who is the most prolific, or who uses the medium of blogging to its best advantage (that would be Young Dredge). As this is subjective, I’ve chosen it purely on what blogs I find myself clicking on most often from my blog roll, who I enjoy reading most. Boak and Bailey clearly know their stuff but write with a beautiful simplicity and understatedness, and a constant sense of exploration and discovery, across a refreshingly broad range of beers and topics. If you haven’t read them before, start with this brilliant discussion on pubs and class.
BEER BLOGGER OF THE YEAR Honourable mentions: Runner-up spot was a tough call: the other blogs I habitually click through to whenever I see there’s a new post include Pencil & Spoon of course, Woolpack Dave, Tandleman, and the thoughtful, beautifully written, lyrical ImpyMalting. Pump Clip Parade for a laugh, and ATJ is doing some lovely stuff too. We’ve got such diversity and richness now! Oh yes – and the Beer Widow of course. God help me if I don’t give ‘er indoors a richly deserved mention for sticking a long-suffering toe into the blogging waters.
SLOPBUCKET OF THE YEAR Winner: Easy – the Daily Mail. Look, why don’t you just fuck off?
SLOPBUCKET OF THE YEAR Runner-up: The BBC We expect it of the Mail. They’re the pantomime villain in the war against neo-Prohibitionism. But the Beeb website is just as guilty of demonizing alcohol, and beer in particular, as anyone else. This post from yesterday is typical – if you read to the end, expert testimony from Ian Gilmore – hardly a friend to the alcohol industry – explicitly contradicts the assertion in the headline. But as Jay Brooks points out, most people only read the headline and first para, meaning the truth gets buried. Mostly I’m with Stephen Fry – I love the BBC. It’s one of the reasons I love Britain, one of the best things about our culture. But we expect and deserve much, much better than this continued, willful distortion of the truth about our national drink from an organisation that’s largely trusted for its balance and impartiality. Shame on you.
SLOPBUCKET OF THE YEAR Honourable mentions The rest of the British news media. As I said in a recent Publican piece, when you’ve got everyone from the Mail to the Guardian saying the same thing about you, you know you’ve replaced tobacco, hoodies, staffordshire bull terriers and Swine Flu as the moral panic of the day.

So that’s my take on the year. I’d love to hear yours. Thank you for reading me in 2009. Thank you for your kind comments when I get it right, and thank you also for picking me up when I get something wrong. 2010 is going to be a great year for beer. I’m going to make an effort to remember why I started writing about it in the first place. I’m going to continue to learn more about beer, from brewers and drinkers and other writers. I’m going to do everything I can to evangelise beer outside our cloistered, beer geeky world, to carry on the war against media shite and neo-prohibitionism, to call out foolish behaviour in the industry and to celebrate beer as it continues to emerge and prosper as the most exciting drink around. Merry Christmas!

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Reasons to buy newspapers – or at least link to them

Tomorrow The Guardian travel section is running a selection of perfect pubs to visit between Christmas and New Year, that slow, out-of-time, strange week when you have no idea what day it is and can just sit by a pub fire with a book and the dog all day if you want to. They asked me for my suggestion, and it’s this pub below – check the newspaper tomorrow (Saturday) to find out where it is, and I’ll see you there lunch time on Boxing Day.

Also, today the Daily Express has a round-up of best drinks books of the year, in which they refer to Hops & Glory as “one of the drink books of the year” funnily enough. The value of those remaining copies continues to rise…

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2009: What the blazes was all THAT about? (Part One)

Yes, it’s that time of year again – my personal round-up of the last twelve months. And it is personal – utterly subjective, just a bit of fun. My highs and lows will not be the same as yours, nor would I expect them to be. Part two comes tomorrow.
OVERVIEW
It’s been an incredible year for me personally, and a fascinating year for beer and pubs. There’s obviously been a lot to worry and moan about – pub closures, industry in-fighting, media shite etc – but looking back over the year I feel way more optimistic than I did twelve months ago.
Britain’s craft beer revolution really did happen this year. Brew Dog dominated the headlines, and however much you agree or disagree with them, they’re the only craft brewery my 63 year-old Mum can name (apart for Thornbridge, which she’s been to, and Acorn, which is just down the road).
We also got the first Brew Dog backlash, with even some of their fiercest advocates turning against them. I think we’ll see an older, wiser Brew Dog in 2010. They won’t stop making waves though, and I don’t think they should.
Brew Dog’s achievements have perhaps overshadowed a growth in craft brewing elsewhere. Thornbridge opened a new brewery that is breathtakingly ambitious. Dark Star and Otley, both brewers of outstanding, US-influenced craft beers, are expanding, and many other brewers are too.

Brooklyn Brewery’s Garret Oliver opens Thornbridge’s new brewery in August.

There’s more to say – but let’s say it in my utterly arbitrary and totally totalitarian category awards.

(Note: As this is a review of the whole of 2009, the rules of Let’s Be Nice on Pete Brown’s Beer Blog Month are suspended for this post.)

BEST THING THAT HAPPENED IN BEER THIS YEAR

Winner: Cask ale’s return to volume growth.Writing The Cask Report, we never could have hoped that this difficult year would be the one where cask ale returned to growth – but ahead of expectations, it did. I’m predicting – once SIBA brewers’ volume has been factored back into BBPA figures – that cask will show 2-3% volume growth to the end of 2009. This remarkable in the current climate, a total turnaround in a mere three or four years. And if you’re not a big cask fan, take heart – it’s irrefutable evidence of the wider growth of interest in flavourful beers, and this can only improve as we come out of recession.
BEST THING THAT HAPPENED IN BEER THIS YEARRunner-up: The online beer community comes of age.I don’t want this to sound self-serving and insular, so apologies, but this will prove very beneficial for beer in the long run. Blogging has become a true medium in its own right, and with the addition of Twitter, online and social media have created a spontaneous beery community that swaps ideas, views – even physical beers. I know some people have been blogging about beer for years, but this is the first time I started to perceive a real community with legs in the outside world. There was a palpable sense of excitement at the Great British Beer Festival this year when many online friends met up – or twet up? – for the first time. The industry is now looking online for its ideas – and when brewers and other organisations ask my advice, I tell them that’s the best thing they can do. Brew Dog had already built their brand through this medium before most of us old timers had really woken up to what was going on. They’re going to have some stiff competition in this regard next year. (Come back tomorrow for my blogger of the year).
BEST THING THAT HAPPENED IN BEER THIS YEARHonourable mentions:I’d hoped to include cask ale week here – I can’t, because it wasn’t quite good enough. But it was the first one and it will be happening again, and will hopefully get even better – from what I’ve seen so far it definitely will.The Great British Beer Festival was the best I’ve been to, but the usual wranglings around cask ale festivals and lager, filtered and pasteurised craft beers etc show the need for a different kind of beer festival to run alongside CAMRA-organised events. Beer Exposed promised to be that in 2008, but the organizers decided not to do a second year. That’s a crying shame.
WORST THING THAT HAPPENED IN BEER THIS YEARWinner: The beer and pub industry’s increasingly childish infighting

The British beer and pub industry, 2009 – aka the People’s Popular Front of Judea Suicide Squad.It almost made me want to give all this up. Yes, everyone has different agendas, yes sometimes the aims of different groups conflict. But the broader issues facing the industry will cause for more damage to beer and pubs if we don’t put less significant quarrels to one side and take them on.Just a couple of weeks ago, CAMRA declined to support the BBPA’s manifesto for the survival of the pub, promising to bring out their own instead. AAAARGGHHH!!!!!!! What is the POINT of that? Why duplicate valuable time and resources? Why DELIBERATELY create the impression of a fragmented, bickering industry among the people you’re trying to win over to your point of view? I’m not singling CAMRA out – they’re merely the latest in a long line of breweries and industry bodies indulging in cretinous behaviour that does a disservice to their members.I get so passionate about this issue because history tells us this is what screws people over: whether it’s the American drinks industry in the run-up to Prohibition, communists and anarchists in the face of fascism in the Spanish Civil War, or left wing parties generally and the Life of Brian sketch that satirized them, precedent proves that when you can win a struggle, internal bickering snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.The childish behaviour has to stop.
WORST THING THAT HAPPENED IN BEER THIS YEARRunner-up: Tax, Tax, Tax. Again.
The Axe The Beer Tax campaign just might have worked.
It was a useful illustration of what can happen when the industry stops fighting and works together. It led to one of the most widely supported Early Day Motions in Parliamentary history, saw the brewing industry attempt to use social media for the first time, and helped highlight the issue of pub closures to a general public that may support the media’s anti-binge drink line, but soon becomes sympathetic when they realise they might lose their beloved local.
But the campaign did not receive widespread support among the industry it sought to save. That, and the fact that Alastair Darling is a complete fucking wanker, a Thunderbird puppet lookalike and I’m not just talking about the stupid fucking eyebrows but also the fact that he walks like he’s on fucking strings and talks like someone fucked and bombed on Quaaludes, the fact that he’s so fucking shit at his job he’s actually manage to reduce the government’s revenue from beer by putting up tax, when his only stated aim was to increase revenue, and yet he still thinks putting tax up yet more will somehow have the desired effect – I mean, this man is educationally subnormal – all this meant that tax on beer went up again in the budget.It’ll go up again when VAT goes back up in January and he leaves in place 2008’s nasty, pernicious additional tax rise which was purely to ensure that beer and pubs were the only sectors of the economy not to benefit from a VAT reduction. This clueless gimp is going to throw more people out of work, decrease government beer tax revenue still further, and close even more pubs when he puts up beer tax above inflation yet again in the 2010 budget.
MY PERSONAL BEERY HIGHLIGHT OF THE YEARWinner: Well, it’s got to be winning Beer Writer of the Year.No need to go on about it much more than I already have. To many, beer writing is a hobby – which is not meant as disrespect or trivialization. But to me it is now how I pay my bills, having all but given up my former day job as a freelance ad man in 2009. If I’m going to make a living from it, this is going to help no end.

MY PERSONAL BEERY HIGHLIGHT OF THE YEARRunner-up: The launch of Hops & Glory…and particularly the ensuing tour.

A bookshop in Steyning, Sussex. They knew I was coming.
Rather than being another exercise in self-congratulation it turned into a rather wonderful summer of going to places I’ve never been before and meeting new people. While pushing my book about India, I fell in love with Britain all over again. And yes, there were lots of new beers to try.
MY PERSONAL BEERY LOW POINT OF THE YEAR Winner: My ever-increasing beer belly. Yeah, I know beer isn’t fattening. But anything with calories is fattening when you consume enough of it, and I’ve put on another stone this year. The one and only downside of my increasing profile is that I get a lot more beer given to me, and a lot more invites to events, tastings, judging sessions etc. Each and every one of these is wonderful in its own right, but the sheer volume of them means it’s now a simple choice between my health and accepting every kind invite when it comes. It’s a high quality problem I guess! But seriously. I need to fit back into my clothes and give my liver a rest.
MY PERSONAL BEERY LOW POINT OF THE YEARRunner-up: The Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Awards This is going to sound like sour grapes and there’s no way around that, but it’s a reminder that despite beer’s increasing profile and the vibrancy of the blogging world, there’s still a lot of work to do. The prestigious Andre Simon awards give out an annual gong for best drinks book. With its strong sales, good critical reaction and success at the Beer Writers Guild Awards, I thought Hops and Glory stood a good chance. Then, I saw the criteria the judges were specifically looking for this year: new primary research, educational value, writing that was engaging and interesting, and a book that looked great, and I thought they’d basically described Hops and Glory. I submitted it. It didn’t even make the shortlist. Every single book on the shortlist is a book about wine. In 31 years a wine book has won this award 24 times. A beer book has won once. I didn’t expect to win, but I did hope to make the shortlist. It’s the swings and roundabouts of awards I guess, but when the awards website uses the words ‘drinks books’ and ‘wine books’ interchangeably, I can’t help thinking that the broader perception of beer’s inferiority to wine might still have something to do with it.
Don’t miss Part Two tomorrow – with my nods for Brewer of the Year, Beer of the Year, Beer Blogger of the Year, and the dreaded (but quite predictable) Slop Bucket of the Year! And if I have time, some predictions for 2010.

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The last drop of Calcutta

The world through a White Shield glass – what a lovely world it is. Thanks to BLTP for the photos.
Last Thursday, above the Rake, I finally reached the end of the road with Hops & Glory. A final reading, a few last book signings (sorry to everyone who just got ‘Cheers, Pete Brown’ – the well of inspiration has truly run dry) and a few very special beers.
The event was also unique in that Steve Wellington, brewer of my Calcutta IPA as well as the incomparable Worthington White Shield, and other rarer, even more wonderful beers, left off his eternal battle with his bloody bottling line and came all the way to London to share his perspective on our adventure and on IPAs generally – carrying with him the last ever pin of Calcutta IPA.
Me, Steve Wellington, and Jo Miller of Different World Drinks – who kindly lent us Steve for the evening.

We kicked off with the White Shield and Steve told us about the ageing of it, and how it develops over the years. Hot on the heels of John Keeling talking about this at the tenth anniversary of the Fuller’s Fine Ale Club the other week, it impressed upon me that ageing – not wood ageing/whisky ageing necessarily, but just letting beers get older – is a new (or rather rediscovered) frontier in making great beer, and it’s exciting to see master brewers exploring something that’s new even to them.

We moved on to Seaforth from Thornbridge. This is an all-English ingredients version of Jaipur, the most awarded beer at British beer festivals over the past few years. Seaforth is more of an authentic IPA than the very, very nice new-world influenced Jaipur. It’s darker and slightly maltier, balanced, but still with a definite hop kick. It’s is a limited edition beer, and my link to it is that Thornbridge very kindly asked me to come up with the name for it.
After reading out a bit more of the book, we moved on to Sheffield’s Hillsborough Hotel Crown Brewery IPA. CrownBrewerStu has built his profile in the online beer world quite significantly this year, and from a base of Sheffield’s hardcore tickers his beers are acquiring a deserved wider cult following. After reading Hops & Glory Stu invited me to brew a 7% traditional IPA with him. It was a hop monster – five kilos of Crown, Target and Chinook hops in a three barrel brew. Stu then stored the beer in a garage which hits temperatures of thirty degrees through the summer. When we tasted the new brew it was almost unbearably hoppy – I said almost. The four months ageing has already taken off the bitter edge but the resiny aroma is still present. It’s a beer for IPA lovers, reminiscent of what our next beer was like when first brewed.
Purists might argue that those Chinook hops prevent us from being able to call Crown IPA authentic. But in the 1870s, when IPA was at its peak, we had to import hops from North America, so to suggest that North American IPAs are different from traditional English ones is not necessarily true.
Finally, we moved onto the Calcutta. I didn’t know what to expect – the beer is now almost two and a half years old. Beers that didn’t go on the long sea voyage would be cellar-aged before being sold, and in the book I’d already postulated that the effects of cellar ageing on the beer were similar to the sea voyage – it just takes longer. The beer I had in India tasted different from beer from the same batch drunk in London at the same time.
Well, the stay-at-home beer has now surpassed the voyage beer in terms of changes to its character. It had a funky nose, a hint of spirit. On the palate it was quite flat. The hop character has gone, replaced by something that’s almost winey – the beer is sharp, fruity and a little dusty, with an edge of Lambic sourness around the sides. As we tasted it, the Raj’s descriptions of this as a ‘wine of malt’, and the accusation from one of my audience in Calcutta that this was “wine, not beer”, made perfect sense. It doesn’t taste like beer. For a few seconds, you’re not sure whether you like it or not. And then, suddenly, you adore it.
A few days after the event, I found out that Hops & Glory had sold out. This is an adventure that began exactly three years ago, in December 2006, and now, finally, I feel like it’s over. The book won me the top gong in my field and exceeded expectations in sales terms. It cost me thousands and put me in therapy for a year. And in therapy speak, in that room above the Rake, I got closure on it. It was a great night – a perfect end to the adventure. Thanks to everyone who came.
Thanks also to Glyn at the Rake and Melissa at LoveBeerAtBorough, who organised and staged the event, to all the above brewers for kindly donating their beers, and most of all to Steve for coming all the way to join me for the party, and for brewing this amazing beer.

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Hops & Glory sells out!

The perfect Christmas gift – if you can find it.
I’d like to urge you all to go to Amazon and buy Hops and Glory for Christmas. I’d like to urge you to do that, but I can’t. Because there are no copies left at Amazon. And I’ve just discovered there are no copies left at the publisher’s warehouse either.
Hops and Glory has sold out. Macmillan have sold 4550 copies, and there are no more left.
Of course, you might ask why they don’t simply do a reprint? The thing is, with the set-up costs for this, you’d have to print about 2000 to make it worthwhile. And with the paperback edition coming out in June 2010, bookshops simply would not take enough stock of the hardback to make such a reprint economically viable.
One the one hand I’m upset because we underestimated how many we needed, and are now forfeiting sales as a result – and some beer fans are going to be less happy on Christmas Day than they otherwise would be. On the other, this has happened because the book totally exceeded publisher’s expectations, which I’m delighted by.
There are still copies floating around – check out your local Waterstones or indie bookshop, and have a look on the new and used section at Amazon. I have a few copies left, which I’ll be using for competitions.
The paperback will be out in June – and that will be the edition that gets reprinted as long as there is demand for it.
Thanks to everyone who’s bought a copy! As it’s Be Nice Month, I’m choosing to revel in the positive side of this rather than wail and grind my teeth at the negative.

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