My latest monthly column for the Publican magazine is here.
There’s going to be a lot of chat about cask ale round here in the next month! New Cask Report coming out on October 5th. If I can finish writing it in time…
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Me and microbrews on the telly
Was asked by More 4 News yesterday to appear on the news in a positive story about beer!
The new Good Beer Guide, published yesterday, reveals that 71 new Microbreweries opened in the last year. In the midst of both the shitstorm being faced by the beer and pub industry, and the usual negative coverage of beer by the media, it’s great news, even better that we got our two minutes worth on the telly.
Thanks to BLTP for working out how to bung it up on YouTube.
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Britain’s Best Beer: All is Revealed
Me, my worthy adversary Sabine von Reth, and presenter Matt Tebbutt
Thanks for the record number of comments when I asked you about the best British beer. Consensus is somewhere around Landlord, White Shield and London Pride, which I find hard to argue with.
But now I can reveal what it’s all about.
Market Kitchen, the food magazine programme on UKTV Food, is running a Beer World Cup to find out which country makes the best beer in the world – and has the best beer culture. Each week two countries face off in rounds then go through to semis in October, then the final. It’s all just a bit of fun of course.
I was honoured to be asked to represent the UK in the first game in the first round, and I drew Germany. We filmed it yesterday evening.
Now this was a tough gig. I was expecting Germany to bring a very good lager along – and I was right. And the thing is, the decision is made by a studio audience vote on a combined blind tasting of the beer with a heated studio debate. The audience is not sophisticated in its beer appreciation – it’s an audience of people who go along to the filming of a daytime cookery programme. Lots of men who drink lager, and lots of women who think they don’t like beer. A really good German lager – to this audience – would surely be more acceptable than a complex, intriguing, flavourful ale. I had to think clever on this one.
So thanks for all the suggestions, but thanks to Mike from Utobeer for the inspired tactical suggestion of Schiehallion – a British lager, cask conditioned, that last year won ‘best pilsner’ at the World Beer Awards. Not the beer that represents everything great about British brewing, but a beer that shows what Britain can do, a British take on a European style.
So how did we get on? Was this particular meeting a return to the glory of 1966 or a rerun of the agonising defeat on penalties in 1990? You’ll have to wait till 24th September and tune in to UKTV to find out…
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The best of British beer
Can I have your thoughts?
For reasons I’ll be able to reveal in a week or so, I need to choose one beer (bottled) to act as an ambassador for all that is great about the British brewing.
If we’re honest, that’s an impossible task, but nevertheless I need to do it – and make my decision in the next 24 hours. There’s so much diversity, so much quality. There are enduring classics, and exciting new tyros on the scene. But which one, above all others, symbolises why British beer is the best in the world? (This is not the place to argue whether or not British beer is the best on the world – for the purposes of this thing we have to assume that it is – for reasons I’ll explain later).
I already have a couple of ideas of my own, so I’m not just being lazy, but thought it would make an interesting debate!
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You’ve lost that Leuven feeling
Just got back from my first trip to Belgium for about three or four years, and my first time at the Brussels beer festival. Trying to sell a piece to the papers about the event itself so I may have to keep my powder dry on that for now, but one or two other observations cropped up on the side.
The first is my former love, Stella Artois. For new readers to this blog, Stella was my intro to the beer world – I worked on it in a marketing capacity ten years ago, when it was a hoppy, characterful pilsner lager with great advertising, a premium brand image, and only a small number of people referring to it as ‘wifebeater’. It’s responsible for my entire beer career. But times have changed, and about a year ago I was really laying into Stella about the compromises it’s made.
Back in the day, people used to insist that “proper Belgian Stella” was far superior to the UK version, brewed under licence by what was then Whitbread. UK Stella is still brewed in the UK, but both it and Belgian Stella are both owned by what is now AB-Inbev, the world’s largest brewing conglomerate. It breaks my heart that UK Stella has deteriorated so much, it’s joined the very short list of beers that I can’t actually drink. I’d have wine if it was the only beer available in a bar. So what about Belgian Stella?
Here’s what I wrote about it in Three Sheets to the Wind, on my first ever trip to Belgium in 2004, tasted in a cafe in Leuven, where it’s brewed:
I feel a little nervous, like meeting up with a former lover I haven’t seen for some time. The beer arrives in a curvaceous, tulip-shaped goblet. It has the most beautiful golden colour, served with a full inch of foamy head. It looks perfect. There’s a light aroma suggestive of summer fields, and the taste is perfectly balanced – satisfyingly malty and wonderfully bitter.
In 2009, Stella looks pale and watery, with very little head, which disappears instantly. There’s no discernible aroma whatsoever. It tastes thin. It tastes of corn syrup, with a nasty metallic alcohol tint. There is no discernible hop bitterness or character. It tastes like a beer that has been lagered for a mere day, rather than the four weeks it once was, or even the week that’s now standard among mass-market, industrially produced lagers. Most distressingly – for what used to be a premium brand – it tastes cheap. In other words, it’s no different now from UK Stella.
I don’t think it ever was different from UK Stella. In both countries, it used to be good, and has now been stripped, hollowed out.
What I find baffling about this is that AB-Inbev also brew Jupiler. I tried a glass of that and it had a thick, foamy head, a nice hop grassiness and a lovely smooth, creamy mouthfeel. In the UK, where you see Stella on the bar you’re likely to also see Becks Vier, because Ab-Inbev brew that too. There aren’t many occasions when I’d choose Becks Vier over other beers, but if you drink it side by side with Stella, this 4% lager has more beer character than Stella at 5%. Like all global brewers, AB-Inbev knows perfectly well how to brew great-tasting lagers. It simply chooses not to where Stella is concerned.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a wholesale degradation of a perfectly nice beer.
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OK, I am one to blow my own trumpet
People who say, “I’m not one to blow my own trumpet” always follow it with – well – blowing their own trumpet. So I’m not going to try to pretend.
The nice people at Wikio have been in touch again. A few months ago they gave me the exclusive preview of their gastronomy blog rankings, which rank UK blogs using a logarithm that works out how referenced they are – not just hits, but links to, etc.
Shortly after that they split off wine and beer blogs into a separate ranking. The new chart is published this week… and I’m number one! First time I’ve ever scaled such dizzy heights. I’m sure it can’t last, especially after my recent radio silence. Anyway, thanks so much to everyone who reads me and links to me. It’s made such a huge difference to my books sales as well as my ego so it really has had a tangible effect.
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And congratulations to Mark Dredge at Pencil and Spoon for soaring up the charts. Relatively new to beer blogging, Mark posts consistently and thoughtfully and does far more than just tasting notes. And he’s been nice about my books too.
I haven’t come across Pubology before but just had a peek and it looks really interesting – all about history and culture. Other bloggers and friends – Jeff Pickthall, Impy Malting and Boak and Bailey – are also showing strongly.
And I don’t normally go in for ‘beer is better than wine’ mudslinging, but beer definitely seems to be up in Blogworld at the expense of wine. Keep it up!
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Drink is evil. Again. Oh no it’s not. Again.
Been away researching what will hopefully be my next book – a non-beer book! And back in the hot seat to bullshit so familiar it’s almost reassuring.
I don’t want this to become an obsession, but maybe it already has. Our friends at the BBC are up to their usual tricks, using this familiar image today:
to illustrate “Courts get ‘booze ASBO’ powers” to cut down on the scourge of drunken behaviour.
So how did they illustrate the main drinks story this weekend – the new report from the BBPA which shows that alcohol consumption is down, and that Britons drink less alcohol per head than most other European countries. Um… they didn’t. They completely ignored it.
I not anticipating them being too interested either in this new study, which shows that moderate drinkers suffer less depression and anxiety and have better social skills than teetotallers.
If you see any mainstream media outlet covering either of these two positive stories about alcohol consumption, please let me know.
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Hops and Glory readings
Anyone who was planning on coming to Oxford to see me tonight – I got the date wrong! It’s actually tomorrow night, 14th August, Oxford Borders, 6pm.
Still adding new dates so check out the list to the right.
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Answering the neo prohibitionists, 5 of 10: “Alcohol related hospital admissions – and the cost of alcohol to the NHS – are soaring”
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Beer Cocktails. Only nice.
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Answering the neo-prohibitionists, 10 of 10: “Binge drinking has been made worse by 24 hour licensing”
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The slow death of a once wonderful brand
Beer From the Coast
If you’re anywhere near London over the next month, here’s a unique chance to get closer to – even own part of – one of the best beer ad campaigns of the last ten years.
In 2002 (I think) Adnams commissioned artist Chris Wormell to produce a series of hand-printed lino cut illustrations for a press and poster campaign, ‘Beer from the Coast’.
I loved this campaign. At the time it launched, ‘provenance’ was a big buzz word in beer advertising. We drink Fosters lager because it’s Australian, Stella because it’s, um, ‘European’, Corona because it’s from somewhere sunny, and so on. Every big ad agency I worked with believed you couldn’t ‘do’ English provenance effectively, because ours was a country that no one aspired to, that no one yearned for or wanted to be closer to.
Adnams proved that if you take it down to a regional level, that’s not true. This campaign captured a neverland, a timeless ideal of the English coast that spoke to the hearts of people who grew up here. Of course the coast isn’t like that in reality, but Adnams’ unique advantage was that where they’re based, in Southwold, the coast really is like that. These posters subtly brand the coast and claim it for Adnams, creating a powerful brand that has really helped this small regional brewer punch above its weight these past few years.
Now, The Illustration Cupboard is hosting an exhibition of the lino cuts – and they’re for sale! The exhibition runs 13th August to 12th September, perfectly capturing the sinking late summer sun. I’m gutted that I can’t make the opening event tomorrow – but I’ll be there the day after.
Become a patron. See more stuff!
