Jam Jar

When I was a kid my brother and I had a guinea pig that we called Reginald (to be honest it might as well have been Regina, we had no idea what gender it was). Its hutch was in a greenhouse and during the winter I would fill a jam jar with hot water, wrap it in a bit of old blanket and hope that it would work as a sort of hot water bottle to keep him warm. It seemed to work as Reg survived this particularly cold winter but it does feel a bit daft when I look back at it now.

I thought of Reg for the first time in years when enjoying a glass or two of Lagunitas IPA in the Hops and Glory in Islington. It’s an amiable and easy-going kind of pub, named after a certain book that anyone with any interest in beer should read and majoring in (let’s not beat around the bush) craft beers. So there I was with my first pint of Lagunitas’ IPA and decided that I needed another to get to the heart of what the beer was all about. Another please, the bar man nodded, would I like it one of Lagunitas’ branded ‘jam jars’. He showed me it and yes it looked like a jam jar. Does it hold a pint I asked? It did. I’ve drank from some curious glasses (if I order a glass of Kwak in my local there are always people who have never seen the test-tube-in-a-wooden-bracket glass before and it seems to cause a minor sensation but then we live in the countryside and we still turn out in droves to watch the air ambulance land on the football field) and once at Boston airport I rather enjoyed a glass of Sam Adams from that peculiar glass that the brewery developed with the aim of enhancing the flavour and aroma of the beer (I thought it worked even though the glass’s shape reminded me of that bloke’s face in The Scream).

Back to the jam jar. As I write I’m still trying to work out my feelings about it — yes it was simple and utilitarian, easy to hold, and the perfect alternative to the handled dimpled hipster’s choice mug (the sort of glass you’d imagine Ukip members drink from), but I’m still not sure whether it’s a bit of a gimmick. What does it say about the beer in the glass? That it’s ordinary and down-to-earth? That nobody really cares how it’s served. That it’s quirky (as in Timmy Mallet rather than Dali)? On the other hand why shouldn’t an IPA become as John Doe as PBR or Bud? It’s a lovely beer, being spicy, peppery, hoppy, fruity, dry and bitter over several layers, a beer that given time I would have studied for the rest of the evening. Yet, the jam jar haunts me, I wonder why?

Hops and Glory

People mill about, chatter rises to the rafters like smoke from a fire; have a beer says someone to someone else; have another says another. White Shield or Sierra Nevada says a nice woman behind the table. On the wall, photos of the sea, ships and brewing following each other with clockwork precision — a lazy drift of snapshots like a punt ambling upstream. Who’s that over there? Oh it’s Neil Morrissey and Richard Fox. I’m pissed says someone from the Publican. I’m not says the Chairman of the British Guild of Beer Writers, but I will be. A pile of books, the brickwork of a life in writing, rise from a table. Hops And Glory: the name of the book. The launch. Back in 2007 beer writer Pete Brown went on a journey with a barrel of beer and I thought him mad, while also admiring the inspiration that motivated such a journey. Beer writing is about journeys, but usually from brewery to brewery, from country to country, cocooned in the company of PRs and fellow writers — not with a bloody great barrel in tow. Yet Pete — by barge, by rail, by cruise ship, by sailing ship, by banana boat — went further than any other beer writer, in more ways than one. Forget about press trips to Polish or Czech breweries, smooth train journeys to welcoming English micros and barmy Belgians or even long winded drives around the hidden breweries of the biére de garde area — I have done them all, but I would never have had the courage or fortitude to do what Pete did. As the people come and go in the confines of the BrewWharf, the question to ask: was it all worth it? Reading the book, reeling at the cost, the logistical nightmares, the emotional toil and trouble, the single minded obsession, the energy and motivation to continue when all seemed lost, I think the answer is yes. Yes, as Molly Bloom said at the end of Ulysses (there I’ve given the ending away), the most positive word in the English language, yes it was worth it. The book is funny — Pete (and I speak as someone who has enjoyed many a drink with him) is a funny man with a fine sense of the absurdities of life; he’s the sort of writer who can make mockery of the moment he fell in the Burton-Rugby canal; is he having a laugh? Of course he is. Alongside the humour there’s also a well-observed sense of poignancy at the decline of the brewing industry in Burton; there’s much new information on the development of IPA and even if the history bits occasionally owe a lot to the John O’Farrell/Stuart Maconie school of historicism (ie historical characters seemingly straight out of the pages of Loaded or Nuts), the fascination that Pete has with the Raj and its roisterers and way that IPA became the drink of choice shines out through these pages. Then there is the sense of tension that ripples through the pages when he is writing about waiting for a replacement cask before boarding the boat that will take him across the Atlantic and up to India for the end of the journey. In an age where I have thought that there is nothing new to be written about beer, Hops And Glory comes along and refreshes the genre (see pages 234-235 for a new take of keg beer), while also managing to shed new light on a beer whose mythology we have taken for granted for too long. So back in the BrewWharf. As the people come and go the question to ask: was it all worth it? One word. Yes.