Tag: Beer

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A bit of an update

I’d like to apologise to anyone out there who actually reads this blog for pleasure – if you exist, I’ve been letting you down of late, with whole months passing between posts.

Thing is, I’ve been massively busy with stuff, including a lot of other writing – the old-fashioned kind that (just about) pays the mortgage.  At one point a few weeks ago I did my To Do list on Monday morning and realised I had thirteen deadlines all theoretically due that week.

Anyway, I’ve cleared them all now, so I thought I might do a catch-up post to fill in any remaining readers on the bits of busy-ness you might be interested in.

SHAKESPEARE

My new book, Shakespeare’s Local, is all done bar the shouting.  It’s coming out on 8th November as a selfless, humanitarian gesture to help you or those close to you make some tricky Christmas gift decisions much easier.  With a hardback cover featuring a silver embossed design it certainly looks like a proper present.  I’ve been trying out a few readings from it at the Latitude and Port Eliot festivals, and I’ll be working this into an audio-visual one hour talk that I’ll be doing at the Ilkley Literary festival on October 9th, and then a residency at the George Inn in Southwark, with one event a week from launch date till Christmas.  Hopefully there will be many more events around the country too – several are currently in the planning stages.

FOOD…

I wrote here a few weeks ago about how I’ve been judging beer and cider in broader food and drink competitions, where it sits alongside everything else and is evaluated by people from across the spectrum of food and drink rather than just beer people.

I think there is room for both kinds of competitions – you want to be judged by your peers to establish and reward technical excellence and superior brewing craftsmanship, but these broader competitions allow beer to play on a wider stage and be recognised more broadly.

First up were the Great Taste Awards, which had categories for both bottled beer and bottled cider.  Great Taste was set up as an antidote to supermarket ‘Finest’ and ‘Taste the Difference’ ranges, as an independent hallmark of great quality.  Some great beers were recognised in these awards – so much so that the Great Taste people invited me and food writer (and ardent beer fan) Charles Campion to put together a showcase menu at London’s swanky Cadogan Hotel. The info on this website is in imminent need of updating, but on Tuesday 14th August our menu using an award-winning beer in every course, created with chef Oliver Lesnik, goes live for a media launch.  I’ve matched beers with each dish, and there’s also going to be a beer and cheese matching menu in the afternoons.  The menu will run in the Cadogan’s restaurant, at a very reasonable £28 for three courses, for a couple of months.  I’ll write about how the press launch goes – if it goes well…  

… AND FARMING
Next up is the BBC Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards.  I’ve been asked to judge the drinks category along with wine writer Victoria Moore.  The Beeb want to inject a bit of drama this year by pitching beer and cider against wine.  Interestingly, a brewery has won the drinks category for the last two years, but this year English wine has finally started getting the international recognition it deserves – is it time for wine to strike back?  I’ve seen the first lot of nominations and the brewers are certainly the most enthusiastic again – if there’s a drinks maker of any description you’d like to see entered, find out more at the link above.  But hurry – nominations close on 12th August.  

APPLES AND PAIRS

One of Bill’s best cider images

I’ve been hinting at various adventures in cider over the last year or so, and things have finally come to fruition (sorry) on that score.  The whole Magner’s thing has led to revived interest in quality cider, and craft cider around the world at the moment is in a similar place to craft beer twenty years ago.  I’m working on cider with Bill Bradshaw – ace photographer and cider fanatic.  His beautifully shot cider blog is here.  Together, Bill and I are currently hard at work on the Guide to Welsh Perry and Cider, for the Welsh Perry and Cider Society.  This guidebook is going to be published in spring 2013 and maps for the first time the unsung hero of British cider (after Somerset and Herefordshire).  It is ridiculously good fun to research.

Mad Asturian bloke ‘throwing’ cider

At the same time, we’ve just signed the deal on the first ever world guide to cider – provisionally entitled World’s Best Ciders.  Hugh Johnson did it for wine, then Michel Jackson did it for beer.  We’re enormously proud to be doing a smilar job for cider, from the established classic regions like Somerset and Normandy, to the explosion that’s now happening in the US, to the ice wines of Canada, the eccentricity and tradition in Asturiàs, northern Spain, and emerging scenes such as Australia and Japan.  Sadly budget doesn’t allow us to travel to every single country, but we’ve already had various adventures, some of which will be in the book, some of which will emerge elsewhere.

CASK
Quite a few people have asked me if there’s going to be another Cask Report this year.  The answer is yes, sort of, but not quite.  We’re doing something called ‘Cask Matters’ instead this year, which is a monthly section in the Publican’s Morning Advertiser aiming to give more practical hands-on advice to publicans, and allow the flexibility to be topical.  There have been three so far, that can all be downloaded as PDFs from the PMA’s website:

We will also be producing a much shorter annual summary report which will detail how cask is doing, who’s drinking it, why you should stock it and so on.  This will be launched to coincide with Cask Ale Week at the end of September.

WORDS
I’ve also been writing tons of columns and a few pieces for national press.  You can see my regular Publican’s Morning Advertiser columns here; my stuff for London Loves Business here, and my stuff for Just Drinks (you  may need a password) here.  And here is a nice piece I got to do for Shortlist Magazine about the rise of craft beer.

Sorry this is such a busy, listy post – I’ve been meaning to write properly about all these things individually and ended up with a huge pile-up, which this post has now hopefully cleared.  From now on I’ll try to post a bit more regularly again.  On top of all the above I’ve been doing loads of travelling, and have some great stories about getting drunk in Ukraine, visiting hop farms in Slovenia, learning more about lager in Ceske Budejovice, and stacks more, so there’s so much to write about if I can find the time!

Thanks for reading.
  

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Beer is not as fattening as you think – and that’s official

No, the number of calories in a pint has not somehow miraculously fallen, or found to be overstated.  But new research carried out by the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) has found that a significant majority of people in Britain believe there are more calories in beer than there really are.

When asked, 60 per cent of men overestimated the calories in a pint, and a whopping 74% of women did the same.

The fact that three out of four women believe beer is more calorific than it really is is surely a significant factor in the very low proportion of women who drink beer, and one that is easily remedied – hey, brewers, you could simply do an information campaign informing people of the truth rather than spending million on a patronising clear ‘beer’ in a bottle with pretty flowers on.

Revealing details of the research, the BBPA included some handy stats which you may want to share with weight-conscious friends down the pub:

  • A half pint (284ml) of 2.8% ABV bitter is 80 calories
  • A half pint (284ml) of 4% ABV lager is 96 calories
  • A 175ml glass of 12.5% red wine is 119 calories
  • A 175ml glass of 12.5% white wine is 131 calories

Yes, a pint is more than a glass of wine.  But at 220 calories for a pint of premium cask ale, that’s really not too many (and the point is, it still remains much lower than most people think).  I once did WeightWatchers, and a pint of ale has the same points value as a naked baked potato with no filling, no butter, nothing.

I’m not sure there are many people who would describe a baked potato as fattening.  So why do people who drink beer get fat (because yes, some of them – me as a case in point – do)? Well, you wouldn’t have a nice dinner and then go out afterwards and eat five or six baked potatoes, would you? 

It’s all about moderation – the beer itself is not fattening, but eat or drink too much of anything and over time it will start to show.

And of course, the industry sanctioned lined – which also happens to be true – is that a bag of crisps almost doubles the calorific value of a round, while a packet of peanuts contains twice as many calories as a pint of beer.

On another note, you might have spotted the comparison above with a 2.8% pint of beer.  That’s because the research (carried out by ComRes with a sample of over 2000 adults nationwide) also asked people if they would consider drinking a 2.8% beer as a refresher on a hot day.  This follows the new tax break that came in last year for beers of 2.8% or below as an effort to get people to moderate their alcohol consumption.   (Something we could all have welcomed if it wasn’t being paid for by a tax hike on beers of over 7%, which hammers the craft beer industry and displays a total lack of understanding of the beer market).

A lot of drinkers – myself included – are sceptical about whether a beer can deliver flavour at 2.8%, and wonder why the limit wasn’t set at 3.4% – not a huge difference in alcohol, but a massive one in terms of what a brewer can do.  (Trinity from Redemption Brewery at 3% ABV is a beer that some people drink because it’s low ABV, but most drink in spite of its ABV – it’s simply a wonderful beer; forget the alcohol.)  But the research shows that about a third of people – more women than men – are happy to give 2.8% a go.

That figure would surely have been higher if the limit had been a little more realistic, but that’s what we’re stuck with and many brewers are now rising to the challenge of making beer at 2.8% that’s still worth drinking.  I’ll be doing a blind tasting of a wide range of low ABV beers very soon, damning the bad and praising any we find that are worth a go.  I know craft beer is playing in high ABVs just now, but when you drink as much beer as I do, it’s very nice indeed to have a low strength alternative.

And if it’s lower in calories too, well, that does us no harm at all.

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Guinness for You – A Warning From History

We’re in a hip East End Record Shop – a fitting venue for the headfuck that is about to follow.

It’s the launch of this excellent Double DVD from the BFI:

This is a collection old promotional films for pubs made between the 1940s and 1980s, and I’ll be writing more about the amazing collection of moving, educational and sometimes hilariously bad films in the Publican’s Morning Advertiser soon.  (There was a good if over-pessimistic review in the Guardian this week.)

On launch night, Robin Turner, author of this excellent book and the DVD sleeve notes, tells us we’re about to get ‘a ghostly view of what pubs used to be like’, does a reading, and then shows us a heartwarming film of pub life in 1945 that was made for troops fighting abroad, to show them what they were fighting for.  It brings a tear to the eye.  Luckily the lights are down.

After a short break for another beer (Sambrooks is sponsoring the event) one of the chaps from the Pub History Society introduces the next film.  It’s a short, experimental piece made in the early seventies for Guinness, basically looking at the production process, the care and attention that goes into a glass of Guinness, and was designed to be shown in cinemas.  Guinness has an unrivalled pedigree of TV advertising over the decades, but this is another story – the film is fifteen minutes long.  I’m suddenly very interested, never having come across it on any historical showreels in my time in advertising.  The Pub History Man keeps repeating the word ‘experimental’.  

“If any of you have tabs of acid, now is the time to take them,” he suggests.

There’s no need.

The next fifteen minutes shows what happens if you take the typical ‘making of beer’ film that every brewery has as part of its brewery tour, and you process it through a 1960s lysergic filter then broadcast it on Mars.  It’s a film about how a beer is made, but it’s more interested in colour, shape and texture than narrative. Guinness has never made – and never will make – anything as bold, daring, experimental and pure batshit crazy as this short film ever again.  And on balance, we should be thankful for that.

Bottles resemble aliens, the production line a spaceship.  The popping of a cork is like watching Martians fucking.  The printing of labels resembles insects eating.  The manufacture of bottle tops a plague of crickets having an orgy.  

Shit, we haven’t even got to the beer itself yet.

The bottling line is an Orwellian stew of rutting dead objects, filing to their doom as Arthur Guinness gazes on.

And then we’re onto barley growing, and it’s growing in a scary way, nature transmuted into a sinister force.  Your instincts tell you that you must never go near that awful field.  A combine harvester appears and turns the field into a concentration camp, a charnel house, the grassy final solution.  

There’s brief respite when we get to the hop farms, where the jagged electronic soundtrack is replaced by a wonderful, soaring cor anglais over peaceful images of hop bines and oast houses.  But hang on, what’s happening?  Now the hop bines are dancing like tripping triffids, and the cor anglais mutates into squawking, mewling modern jazz.

Water is something creepy and dangerous. Barley malt is a plague of locusts, the malting process the work of these countless billions of insects.  

Sparging offers us another brief interlude of beautiful visual poetry, but the results of the mash are landscapes devastated by nuclear war. As we prepare for the addition of the hops the music creates rising tension and fear, and then the boil is accompanied by a noise so terrifying this DVD should not have a PG certificate.

I can’t even bear to describe the timelapse imagery of yeast fermenting inside padlocked storage vats.  Let’s just say I won’t be able to sleep for about a week.

These scenes are intercut with a glass of Guinness being poured, the familiar anticipation as the drink makes its way to you.  Each time we cut to the glass we get monks chanting like they do on the Omen films just before someone gets cut in half or skewered by a spike.  By the time you see a human hand raising the glass, you want to cry “Nooooooooo! Don’t drink that, it’ll turn you into Swamp Thing!”

We never see the drinker.  But the film ends with multiple sighs of enjoyment that are cut artificially short – proof that this has actually happened.

Shaken, I turn to the sleeve notes.  The film was written and directed by Eric Marquis and the music was by ‘experimental British composer’ Tristram Cary, who also did music for Dr Who and for Hammer Horror films.  This makes a lot of sense.

Cary is no longer with us, but Marquis is, and fair play to the BFI, they not only track him down but publish the full details of their exchange with him.  He begins by saying he has ‘little memory of it’, and describes it as ‘twenty minutes or so of clever-dicky images’.

The BFI then sends Marquis a copy of the film to refresh his memory, and he replies, “My first reaction has been reinforced (and multiplied). If you do not wish this disc returned I will cheerfully burn it and wish that all other copies extant could also be destroyed!  I can only say that I am deeply ashamed of having had anything to do with the making of it.  And you can quote me if you like.”

What better endorsement could there be?

Hats off to the BFI for pulling this collection together. Buy it now. Just make sure there’s no one of a nervous disposition in the room when this particular film comes on.

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Dave Wickett, Beer Legend, RIP

Dave Wickett died. Bastard cancer.

This award-winning, iconic Sheffield pub would not have existed without Wickett

Wickett gave cancer more than it bargained for.  When cancer said, “You’ve got six months,” Wickett replied, “Fuck you,” and went off and planned and opened a new brewery, and carried on living life to the full for another two years.

Dave Wickett died, aged 64, on 16th May 2012.

He’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer in January 2010.

How’s that for six months?

The much-loved 2004 Champion Beer of Britain would not have existed without Wickett

Beer is a tight-knit community.  If you’re reading this blog, you may well have met Dave Wickett.  If you didn’t, you probably know someone who did. And if you don’t think you did, I promise you you’re more closely connected then you might think. You’re probably no more than two – at a maximum, three – degrees of separation away from one of beer’s singular heroes.

I knew Wickett (everyone just called him Wickett) pretty well.  Not as well as his close friends and colleagues, but pretty well, because I was supposed to be ghosting his autobiography.  To my shame I didn’t get as far with that as I wanted to before he died – not by a long way.  I hope it will eventually reach fruition, but that discussion is for some time later.

Wickett grew up on the outskirts of London in the swinging sixties. He saw England win the World Cup at Wembley in 1966 (football was his great passion before beer ever was), and off the back of that, in a somewhat unlikely fashion (the story of his life) ended up in Sheffield – a city he much preferred to the UK’s capital. That, in itself, is a big clue – here was a man who saw things differently.

You’re probably familiar with the story of how CAMRA came to the rescue of British cask ale in the 1970s.  You may be less familiar with what Wickett did.  He never threw himself into committees and mock funerals for closing breweries.  He had little interest in the politics of the organisation.  But he read and absorbed, and used the fledgling Good Beer Guide like a bible. But as a Polytechnic Economics lecturer, he also balanced passion for real ale with objective business nous – which brought him to the same place as his passion.  So he bought a run-down freehouse pub in a derelict area of Sheffield, named it the Fat Cat, and set out a stall consisting of a decent real ale selection and a food menu that always had a veggie option, winning heaps of awards over the next 30 years.

This brewery would probably never have happened without Wickett

In order to make the pub work as he wanted it to, Wickett challenged the declining 1970s real ale brewers to change the way they did business. They had to, if they wanted to supply him – and this new business arrangement would change the fortunes of countless other pubs.

In his lectures, he used real ale as a case study to prove how big business was distorting the ‘principles’ of the free market by using anti-competitive measures to deny choice to the consumer – something even Margaret Thatcher would have objected to – and when the Tories did object, and created a guest beer rule that freed pubs from a 100% brewery tie, Wickett opened his own brewery, Kelham Island in Sheffield. Kelham Island Pale Rider was Champion Beer of Britain in 2004, an early example of the golden ale that has now come to dominate Britain’s cask ale revival.

He’d been busy in the day job too, and had taken on responsibility for an innovative student exchange/placement programme that saw some of his Sheffield business students going to Rochester, New York, to run the first proper English pub in the US – the Old Toad, which helped pioneer cask ale in America.

The brewer on the left was hired for his first job in brewing by Dave Wickett

Wickett was never in it to make a high pile of cash.  He wanted to live a comfortable life doing what he loved.  He often compared himself to J D Wetherspoons’ Tim Martin, who opened his first pub in the same year Wickett did.  Wickett sometimes pondered if he should have gone down a more aggressive, chain-building route, and was often asked why he didn’t do that.  But he was always happy with his choices – he preferred running what he had, and taking on new challenges as and when they interested him.

So while Wetherspoons expanded with a fixed format across hundreds of branches, Wickett decided to open Champs, a sports bar in Sheffield.  Then he decided to invest in and guide the development of a tiny new brewery called Thornbridge.  He hired the two young brewers – one of them being Martin Dickie, who would later go on to co-found Brew Dog. But when Thornbridge wanted to grow at a greater rate, Wickett pulled out amicably, wished them well, and looked for new projects.

Sheffield is the real ale capital of the world thanks to Dave Wickett

After he was diagnosed with cancer, he opened another new brewery, Welbeck Abbey, as part of the School of Artisan Food.  It’s still in its infancy, but as part of a brilliant set-up that teaches people about great food and drink across the board, offering lessons in disciplines such as baking and butchery, with the makers of Stichelton cheese also included as part of the set-up, it’s another innovative operation that will help take serious beer appreciation onto a broader foodie stage.

Meanwhile, back in Sheffield, the ripples of Wickett’s actions were extraordinary.  Wickett wasn’t always an easy taskmaster, and over the years various brewers fell out with him, felt frustrated with his direction, or weren’t good enough to keep their jobs.  The extraordinary thing is that just about everyone who quit or was fired from Kelham Island went on to start a brewery of their own, often less than a couple of miles away.  Kelham is now at the centre of a dense cloud of microbreweries, and Sheffield has more cask ales on tap at any one time than any other city in the world.

Dave Wickett leaves an extraordinary legacy to the beer world.  Not just from his own actions, but from the people he inspired and who have imitated him.  The ripples of his brilliant life and career will continue to influence the beer world for years to come.

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Beer? Books? Classic Albums? Perfect Pubs? GIN?! It can only be Stokeylitfest

If you’re in North London, or fancy making the journey, you should wear your clever drinking boots on Jubilee Weekend.

The Stoke Newington Literary Festival is organised every year by my wife, and it takes place this year on 1st to 3rd June, and between stocking bars, introducing acts on stage, running to CostCo and directing volunteers, I’ll be doing a couple of events you might be interested in.

On Saturday 2nd June I’m teaming up with Robin Turner to talk perfect London pubs.  Robin is one of the co-authors of this excellent book, which you should definitely read, and not just because I’m in it:

I’ve often spoken about my huge admiration for The Moon Under Water by George Orwell, the best thing anyone has ever written about pubs.  Robin and his co-writer Paul Moody, who together run the excellent Caught by the River, travelled the country trying to find Orwell’s vision.  Yes, they looked in Wetherspoons, and they looked in many other places as well, including London.  As my new book is about a legendary London pub, the George in Southwark:

we thought we’d get together and chat about some Perfect London Pubs, and what makes them so.  We’ll be doing that over a beer upstairs in the White Hart (one of my perfect London pubs) on Saturday 2nd at 1pm.

The following day, I’ll be back in the same place for a beer and music matching event.  Last year I did beer and book matching and it went down pretty well, so I’ve moved it on this year.  I wrote ages ago about how scientists have proved that listening to particular styles of music can actually change the taste of what you’re drinking.  It’s called Cognitive Priming Theory, and means that particular combinations can create a greater overall sensory experience.  I’ve been mulling this over for a while, and in February I put it to the test with a feature in WORD magazine where I matched up ten beers with ten classic albums.

Duvel, for example, poured from the bottle into its tulip glass, is so feisty it tries to climb up the walls off the glass as if it’s trying to get out and claw your face off.  This is exactly the same experience as the opening chords of Debaser by the Pixies.  Put the two together and it’s wildly exhilarating.

Hopback Summer Lightning is too mellow to go with the Pixies and would jar slightly, but put it with Higher than the Sun of Slip Inside This House from Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, and you create a woozy, sun-kissed tip that takes you half way to Ibiza.  Brew Dog Abstrakt 08 with Public Enemy? Thornbridge Jaipur with the Stone Roses?  The possibilities are endless.  I’ll be choosing six at 1pm in the White Hart.

The link back to books from that one may be tenuous, but Stokeylitfest has always had a strong musical bent too, and this year we’ve also got Wilko Johnson, a retrospective on the NME with some of its most illustrious former hacks, a review of indie music, and loads more.  Check out the website for full details.

And that’s not the end of the booze.  Refreshed after my event (some beers will be included in the admission price) you may want to toddle along to the talk being hosted by festival sponsors Hendrick’s Gin.

They’re going to take us on a tour through the history of gin, and some of the legendary writers and characters it has inspired, with some free samples throughout.

With a unique festival beer brewed by Redemption, and other bar sponsors including Aspall’s and Budvar, we’ll be showing how brain food and booze are the perfect combination.

See you there.

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Why I’ve finally joined CAMRA

Well there we are.  I’ve set up the direct debit and got my membership number.

This is in some ways a ‘hell freezes over’ moment for me, and there are traces of discomfort around the edges of my decision.  But it was the right thing to do.

What’s the big deal?  Many of my readers (and friends) simply assume I’m a CAMRA member already, given what I do.

A few words of explanation for people who may have started following me more recently:

Back in the day, when I wrote my first book, Man Walks into a Pub, I earned a bit of notoriety by attacking CAMRA in its pages.  I have carried on attacking them – albeit with declining frequency – ever since.  With hundreds of beer blogs now, many written by younger, craft beer fans, there’s nothing unusual these days about seeing CAMRA slagged for being out of touch, blinkered, too set in its ways etc.  But at the time I wrote MWIAP, in ye olde pre-beer blogging, pre-social media days, you didn’t do that.  I was unable to find anything else in print at the time about CAMRA that deviated from the line that cask beer was facing extinction until they came along, and then they arrived, and saved the world.

I was a big real ale fan, but I also drank mainstream lager (there wasn’t much else between them back then.)  When I went to CAMRA beer festivals I felt alienated.  It came across as a clique – one that I really didn’t want to be part of.  There was a sneering, condescending attitude towards people who drank lager – and as I keep saying, calling someone an idiot has never been a great strategy for persuading them round to your point of view.  There was that social stereotype of the socially inadequate, visibly outlandish beer nerd, with his big belly, beard, opaque glasses, black socks and sandals, and leather tankard on his belt.  I didn’t want anyone to think that just because I was writing about beer, I was one of those people.  (Distressingly, in the last ten years I’ve grown to look more similar to this stereotype than I would like.  But beards are trendy now.  As for the belly, well, I need to so something about that.  The rest of it, mercifully, remains at a distance.)

I wanted no part of a world view that denied there was any such thing as good beer that wasn’t real ale.  It rankled when lager was unfailingly dismissed as ‘industrial yellow fizz’.  I gnashed my teeth whenever I picked up a book with a title like ‘Beers of Britain’, and brands like Carling weren’t even in the index.  OK, you might not like big mainstream brands, but saying you were writing about British beer and then pretending 70% of the market simply didn’t exist was childish.  Include them and dismiss them as crap in one line if you must, but really… I’d come away from events such as the Great British Beer Festival (not the ‘Great British Real Ale Festival’, note) feeling genuinely angry at the distorted picture it gave of British beer, and the contradictions that riddled CAMRA’s stance on “We’re the campaign for real ale, that’s our name, we can’t support anything else (oh, except if we feel like campaigning for cider, oh and Budvar.)”

I shared many of CAMRA’s beliefs.  But I felt I couldn’t sign my name to an organisation that believed real ale was the only beer worth drinking.  The emphasis on format and container rankled whenever I thought about it.

So what’s changed?  Is this a sell out, a kind of tiny scale inversion of Bob Dylan going electric?

Well, the nerds are still there, and I’m still uncomfortable about people at parties thinking I’m one of them when I tell them what I do.  And some of those issues I objected to are arguably more prevalent than ever, now craft beer has expanded beyond real ale to incorporate quality drinks of all shapes, sizes, formats and containers (jeez, even canned beer is good nowadays).  And CAMRA still refuses to change its stance on campaigning for real ale, and only real ale (unless they feel like bending the rules for cider, Budvar, etc.)  I still have fundamental disagreements with them on major policy directions.  I still think they often present an image that’s by turns cheesy, out of date and out of touch, and sometimes pompous and arrogant.

But many things are different now.

I could talk about how CAMRA’s membership has doubled since I started writing about beer, but the number of outlandish nerds hasn’t, about how CAMRA’s membership is broader, younger, more female, more inclusive now.

I could talk about how key figures such as CEO Mike Benner and magazine editor Tom Stainer talk nothing but good sense whenever they open their mouths, or how branch chairmen like Tandleman present a moderate view that, even if I sometimes disagree with, I can see the point of, and how these are all great people to enjoy a beer with.

I could reflect on the fact that 140,000 people represents a very broad church and a huge spread of opinions, that there is no monolithic ‘CAMRA’ to rail against, and that every time I criticise aspects of CAMRA there are many members who agree with me.

I could point out that there is a new rhetoric coming from a senior level, along the lines that a Campaign FOR Real Ale does not mean a Campaign AGAINST Other Beers, that even if CAMRA does not act for other great types of beer, it doesn’t (or rather, shouldn’t) act against them, and that while there are still some dinosaurs with positions of influence within the organisation who don’t reflect this official stance, I am as ‘for’ real ale as I am ‘for’ any other type of craft beer (because real ale is one type of craft beer – of course it is).

I could admit that for the last four or five years I’ve really, really enjoyed the Great British Beer Festival, despite its Gordian knots of logic and bureaucracy.

And I could argue that, as a writer who likes to campaign for great beer when it is being attacked or derided, when pubs are being hammered by successive governments and beer is still, for the most part, either ignored or scapegoated by the press, it’s important to stop playing Judean People’s Popular Front and recognise that what unites us is more important than what divides us.  This is what I’ve been preaching at industry conferences and in the trade press for a while now, and my own anti-CAMRA stance is increasingly at odds with what I’m saying.

I could promise to campaign from within, and try to justify my decision by saying that I’ll continue my criticism at conferences and AGMs, where it might have more effect. (But I’m not sure I have the time or the will for that.)

I could say all these things to justify my about-face.

But while I’m not saying any of that is untrue, or not a factor, the real reason I’m joining CAMRA is that being a member is the only bleeedin’ way I can get hold of BEER magazine, which now goes out to members only, and is the only consumer-oriented beer publication in the UK, and pretty much the only publication on beer of any description that I always read cover to cover when I can scrounge a copy from Tom.  I give in.  I surrender.  OK, I’ll join your bloody organisation.  Just send me the magazine.

Please?

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Someone (formerly?) at Diageo is probably having trouble sitting down at the moment…

It’s the drinks PR omnishambles that makes George Osborne look like a competent chancellor.

Brew Dog have long been known for their spectacular PR stunts, but the storm that broke on Twitter today seemed breathtaking even by their standards.

In this sensational statement, Brew Dog claimed that at the Scottish BII Awards last weekend, Brew Dog were voted clear winners of the Bar Operator of the Year Award.  They knew this because the judges were sitting at their table and told them so.  So everyone was surprised when another company’s name was read out, with judges saying, ‘That’s not possible.’

The plot thickened when the ‘winners’ took the stage and refused to accept the trophy because it had Brew Dog’s name engraved on it!

Later, according to Brew Dog, the BII phoned and said this had happened because Diageo, the main sponsors of the award, had threatened BII officials, warning them that any future sponsorships would be cancelled if the award was presented to Brew Dog.

Another stunt?

Well… no.  Brew Dog are famous for stunts, but this would be suicide if it were not true.  And this was all about the bars – say what you like about the sensationalism of the head honchos, love or hate the brand, but as I’ve said repeatedly, the bars are about nothing but genuine passion and hard work.  Could this really be spin and exaggeration?

No, it couldn’t.

I asked Diageo for a statement, and here it is:

“There was a serious misjudgement by Diageo staff at the awards dinner on Sunday evening in relation to the Bar Operator of the Year Award, which does not reflect in anyway Diageo’s corporate values and behaviour.

“We would like to apologise unreservedly to BrewDog and to the British Institute of Innkeeping for this error of judgement and we will be contacting both organisations imminently to express our regret for this unfortunate incident.”
I’ve got more to say about the increasingly shameless bullying and anticompetitive tactics employed by some (but not all) big brewers, but this one really takes the biscuit.  Diageo, having been caught red handed, had no option but to blame it on a rogue element, and we must take them at their word.  But does this reveal something deeper about the attitudes of some global brewing corporations?

Brew Dog’s facility with social media means that the hashtag, #andthewinnerisnot, was trending globally by early afternoon.  Would Diageo have rushed out this grovelling apology before the advent of social media?  I’m not sure they would.  We may well look back on this as the start of the tables turning in how different types of brands manage their media.  We live in a very transparent and interconnected world these days – interesting times, as the Chinese would say…

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The Session no.63: May the fourth be with you!

The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community which was started by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. On the first Friday of each month, all participating bloggers write about a predetermined topic. Each month a different blog is chosen to host The Session, choose the topic, and post a roundup of all the responses received. For more info on The Session, check out the Brookston Beer Bulletin’s nice archive page.


At long last, I’ve got round to hosting a session.  It’s my turn to come up with a topic that will inspire beer bloggers around the world to write on the same day about the same subject.

But what should that topic be?

There’s always a danger with something like this that you become navel gazing or self-congratulatory, that you might sit round in a big mutual circle jerk and say, ‘Look at all us beer bloggers.  Aren’t we marvellous?  Aren’t we important?’

And then there’s the danger that you might take something that’s of passing interest in beer and magnify it to a far greater degree of importance than it should have.  That we might start to debate the finer points of differences between beer styles or discuss at length the virtues of a particular hop.  When I first encountered the beer world, I found such discussions crashingly dull.  I often have to remind myself that I still do.

Or worse, we might write about beer blogging instead of beer.  I’ve been guilty of that many times in the past.  Occasionally it has its place.  But every time, I’m brought up short by the real world, and I realise just how few people ‘out there’ ever read beer blogs, apart from other beer bloggers, I suspect this is why.

My approach to beer writing is by no means the only approach, but I write to try to encourage other people to share the simple joy of beer as much as I do, to switch on people who drink beer but don’t particularly care about it that much, to suggest to them that there’s so much more they might enjoy.  No one says you have to do it this way, and no one ever made me the spokesperson for beer.  It’s just how I decided to write, in the same way others decided to write in an opinionated way about what they love, and what they hate.

So in that spirit, my choice of topic – with 62 topics already covered – is this: simply, the Beer Moment.

What is it?

Well, what is it to you?  What does that phrase evoke for you?

That’s the most important thing here.  Switch off and float downstream, what comes to mind?  Don’t analyse it – what are the feelings, the emotions?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot recently, because I’ve been talking about it to various people who are working hard to try to improve the image of beer in the UK.  Because whether we articulate it or not, whether we drink vile, sunstruck Corona or barrel aged imperial stout brewed with weasel shit, it’s about the moment far more than the liquid itself.  The only people who disagree with me on this are people I wouldn’t want to share a beer with.

The moment – for me – is relaxation, reward, release, relief and refreshment.  It’s a moment to savour, a moment of mateship, potential, fulfilment, anticipation, satisfaction, and sheer bliss.

It’s different from the moment you drink wine or spirits – it’s more egalitarian, more sociable.  It’s not just about the flavour, nor the alcohol.  It’s about the centuries of tradition and ritual, the counterpoint to an increasingly stressful life, and the commonality, the fact that it means the same thing to so many.

At least – I think it does.  What does it mean to you?

This session takes place on Friday 4th May (giving me the prefect excuse to use the tired but still irresistible headline above.)  You don’t have to take part.  But if you want to, have a think, and write on Friday 4th about whatever comes to mind when you see the words ‘The Beer Moment’.

If you do it as a blog post, please send me a link, and afterwards I’ll do a round-up of who said what.  Or if you prefer, just leave a comment below.

Cheers.

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In search of a Black Country Legend

“So you like beer then.”

“Yes.”

“What’s your favourite?”

“I don’t really have one.”

“Have you tried Bathams?”

“No.”

“Ah.  Well then.”

Some beers go beyond rationale analysis and objective evaluation, and attain mythic status.  The affection people have for them is not based simply on a hoppy aroma and firm malty base; it doesn’t have much to do with ingredients or flavour.  It transcends the liquid itself -or perhaps, that liquid becomes something divine and attracts all the clothing of religious devotion.

Westverleteren has it, though it’s carefully stage-managed by the Belgian monks who take pains to control its scarcity.  Timothy Taylor Landlord has it – a beer which excites old ale drinkers and new crafty beer drinkers alike, which elicits simple sighs from beer writers who have used up all the words they have in trying to describe its perfection.

These beers are revered.  I knew of them within about five minutes of entering the beer world.

But I happily published two books, made my mark with this blog, and gained at least one column in the pub trade press before I’d ever heard of Bathams.

I was doing some freelance advertising work with a bloke from Birmingham when I first had the conversation above.  I’ve since the same conversation about six times, each time with a native of Birmingham or the West Midlands.  Each time, my ‘no’ got a little less “No?” in that tone that goes up at the end as if to say, “Should I have?”, and a bit more “Nooooooo…” swooping down like a Messerschmitt in flames, defensive and frustrated and increasingly certain I was missing something special, fearing I was a lesser man, never mind a lesser beer writer, for not only having never drunk this beer, but for not having even seen any evidence of its existence apart from the word of an increasing number of Brummies who didn’t know each other, and therefore could not have been winding me up.

But I never see Bathams at festivals.  I never see anyone writing about it.  I don’t see it in shops.

Its acolytes try to describe its power to me.  It’s a session beer, they say.  But that doesn’t do it justice.  It’s more than that, it’s… oh, you just have to taste it, they say, and then, every time, they say, “Of course, there are only about five pubs in the world that sell it.  And they’re all in Birmingham and the West Midlands.”

The last person I had this conversation with was Charles Campion, food and drink writing legend and one of the most decent men on the planet.  And because Charles really is one of the most decent men on the planet, he resolved to put me out of my misery.  So a few weeks ago, nursing a brewers’ conference sized hangover, I found myself in the back of a car while Charles directed the Beer Widow to the Vine (or, if you’re in the know, the Bull and Bladder), the Batham’s brewery tap in the West Midlands.

It’s a cracking pub, one of those places that has withstood every single trend, technological development and interior design fad of the last thirty years.  It has carpets.  And separate rooms.  Aged banquettes that create a barrier between groups but still allow those groups to eye each other up.  A hierarchy so clear that as you walk in for the first time, you immediately know which rooms are open to you as a stranger, and which are not.  And a random collection of brilliant and nonsensical stuff on the walls that could keep you gawking for hours.

I was quite nervous when I got my first pint of Batham’s.  It’s made with Fuggles and Goldings hops, and contains invert sugar for a bit of extra sweetness.  It tastes quite sweet. And very nice.

I’ve noticed in some great session beers that the balance between malt and hops is not just about sensible balance, neither one being too extreme.  It’s about the combination, the mix of malt sweetness and hop fruitiness that combine to create a kind of glowing, floral perfume that hovers just above your palate.  This may sound horrible, cloying, sickly and effeminate, but is actually the opposite of all those things.  And Bathams does this very well.

But detailed analysis of the flavour is beside the point – that’s not what this beer is about.  It’s a beer that can be drunk easily and yet is satisfying, and it’s a beer that brings a smile to your face.  It doesn’t overwhelm you – you don’t have the first sip and go, “My God, that’s awesome!”  But the more you like it, the more you drink.  And the more you drink, the more you like it.

It also comes in bottles:

and I got to bring a few home with me.

This is not to be taken for granted.  Because over the weekend that followed this Friday night session, the stories began to come out.

You can’t find many places that sell these bottles, they say.  We visited one pub that does, but allegedly you have to take your empties back if you want some more, meaning it’s very difficult to get onto the Bathams ladder in the first place.

On cask, demand always outstrips supply, they say.  There are only certain pubs that get it, and these are known to serious drinkers.  Stocking Bathams wins a landlord instant admiration.  Some of these pubs have been known to order an extra cask, and then sell it on at a profit, on the thriving Bathams black market that exists in the West Midlands.

Weeks later, when I opened my final bottle at home, I wrote, ‘When you drink Bathams, it just make you feel NICE.’

That might sound like the most facile thing a beer writer has ever written.  But I believe there is truth and beauty in its simplicity.

I’m hanging on to the empties.

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