Next week is the second cask ale week. After a cautious, modest success last year, this year’s event should see pubs and brewers promoting cask ale with a little more confidence, and getting great beer a rare outing in mainstream media.
Tag: beer evangelism
Why it’s fruitless to try to paint beer as the new wine
Last year we were having the kitchen done and the house was a building site. The year before that I’d just got back from Kolkata. The year before that we left it too late, and the year before that our mad neighbours scared off a lot of the people we wanted to talk to. Jesus – thinking about it, we hadn’t had one of our traditional Christmas drinks parties since 2005.
Charting new reserves of willpower

- Zatec lager – a lager that tastes like lager, an uncompromised expression of a true pilsner
- Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted – the same colour as the Zatec, but much more body and aroma despite being 4.2% to Zatec’s 5%, to get them thinking about the difference between ale and lager
- Worthington White Shield – to talk about bottle conditioning, and because it is one of the five greatest beers in the world
- Goose Island IPA – to talk about hops, and because it’s also one of the five greatest beers in the world
- Dogfish Head Midas touch – to talk about the history and evolution of beer, and broaden the parameters of what it might be
- Brooklyn Dark Chocolate Stout – to talk about malt, and to open up a hint of ‘extreme’ beer (even though it’s not that extreme by most aficionado’s standards, it’s pretty out there for your average drinker)
- Harviestoun Ola Dubh 40 Year Old – to show the innovation that’s happening and to leave conventional notions of what beer is and tastes like as a dwindling speck in the rear view mirror
- Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus – to fuck with their heads and make them cry
What it’s really all about
I had a moment the other night that made me realise the single thing I love the most about this whole beer lark.
I was out with a journalist from Time Out Mumbai who had written a feature on my IPA voyage, (it’s credited to me, but it was one of those ‘as told to’ jobs) and is now in London for a couple of weeks, and asked me to show him around a few pubs. He knew his beer and his been in London before, as his ability to teach me the rule sof bar billiards (a shameful gap in my knowledge) testified.
We confirmed together that the Dog and Duck in Soho serves the best-kept point of Timothy Taylor Landlord to be found in the south of England. Then we moved on to a Sam Smith’s pub. He deferred to me on the ordering.
“Do you like Guinness?” I asked.
He nodded.
“OK, let’s try a bottle of Oatmeal Stout.”
The look on his face was one I see often in this situation. It’s the look of having nailed it. His eyes bulged, his knees bent slightly, his mouth puckered, then stretched into a massive grin. “My god,” he said, “That is amazing! I’m never going to drink anything else ever again!”
That this was Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout isn’t really the point. It’s a great beer, but I’ve also had this same reaction to Goose Island IPA, Brooklyn Lager, Orkney’s Dark Island Reserve, and Franziskaner Weissbier. Maybe you think none of these are the absolute immortals of the beer world, but they’re all beers that, to someone who doesn’t know craft beer, completely change their very perception of what beer can be. Their palate becomes recalibrated, the doors of perception are opened. And to be the person who gets to facilitate that, who gets to introduce someone to the sheer sensory pleasure of a great beer for the first time, is both a privilege and a great high all of its own.