Dissonance

Dissonance. It sometimes works in music. Chords bumping into each; a rhythmic disturbance that somehow works; slow, fast, slow, fast, C# Minor and G Major played at the same time perhaps, though given that one chord contains C and the other C# it might be stretching things a bit too far. However, I’m also thinking of John Coltrane, whose work I don’t know much beyond a Love Supreme, but I remember enjoying it years ago. The Jesus & Mary Chain could do a nice riff in dissonance as well — the Beach Boys (or the Monkees) filtered through Lou Reed Metal Machine Music perhaps? Even in Elgar’s transcription of JS Bach’s Fantasia in C minor there’s a nice line in creative dissonance when it seems like the orchestra is starting to slow down and fall apart but something happens to keep it all together and the music moves to new heights of beauty.

And what this has to do with beer? The other night I opened the bottle of Meantime’s Cali-Belgian IPA that I had been sent. Described as a golden Californian-style IPA given a Belgian twist, I found it an intriguingly dissonant beer with the Belgian yeast giving it a bright and spicy character, while the IPA side of things brought forward a concentration of grapefruit, orange peel and fresh mango, though it wasn’t an easy-going fruitiness. It was a fascinating beer and one that really deserved to have some time spent with it. It made me think and with each sip I loved the beer more. And as I drank it I thought that if Californian-style IPA was rock, then Cali-Belgian IPA was most definitely jazz and that is when I started thinking about dissonance.

There’s a wildness, a flutter of different harmonies, an itch developed to explore more, a feeling that such a beer is not an easy conquest, but something to be contemplated, not instantly understood. And it was then that I thought about jazz, a form of music that I’ve never been too fond of though what I’ve heard from Coltrane and Miles Davis has always intrigued me. That’s the same thing with this beer — it intrigues me, it makes me think and best of all it revives what I sometimes worry is a palate being jaded by too many IPAs, that everyone and their mother nowadays makes. I loved it but if you want some best be quick as it’s part of the Brewers’ Collection, a monthly beer from Meantime. Next time around there’s an Imperial Pilsner , which I really hope I can try. That won’t be dissonant — contrapuntal perhaps?

Books

Books books books. Having worked in journalism and publishing for more years than I care to remember I know that autumn is a key time for getting books out. Christmas is around the corner, but we’re not caught in its headlights yet so there’s plenty of time to get people prepared to buy books throughout the next three months. So this autumn, there seems to be a torrent of beer (and cider) books coming out: we’ve had Roger Protz’s 300 More Beers, and now there’s Ben McFarland’s Boutique Beer, while Jane Peyton has been really busy with School of Booze and Beer O’Clock; having seen some PDFs of the pages back in the summer I’m also looking forward to Pete Brown’s World’s Best Cider, written in conjunction with Somerset Levels snapper Bill Bradshaw; there’s also Stephen Beaumont and Tim Webb’s Pocket Beer Book, a conscious echo of Michael Jackson’s similar publications during the 1990s and beyond perhaps? 

I’ve probably forgotten someone, but it’s time I blew my own trumpet. My first update of 1001 Beers is also out and it features 90 new beers that have been written by Tim Hampson, Evan Rail, Greg Barbera, Martyn Cornell, Pete Brown, Zak Avery and Joe Stange. The beers include ones from Kernel, Tiny Rebel, Beavertown, Brewfist, 8-Wired, Jack’s Abby (a particular favourite of mine), Buxton, Oakham, Vivat, Ska, Heavy Seas, Sierra Nevada (Narwhal), Evil Twin, Oskar Blues, Matuska, Nomad and Keserü. I’m really pleased with the selection and wish it could have been double or even triple — which says how much the beer world has changed in the last three years. While I’m on the podium can I also bring to your attention to Tim Hampson’s World Beer, into which I was drafted as an author along with Stan Hieronymous and Sylvia Kopp earlier on in the year. 

And further more can I bring your by now lack of attention to the beer tasting and extemporisation I shall be doing at the Three Tuns during the wonderful Bristol Beer Week on Monday October 7, followed by a Rake bar event with Hardknott Brewery on Wednesday October 9; then it’s Hook Norton on Friday October 18 and finally there’s something planned with Meantime in November — it’s like being in a band again, though the furthest we got from Cambridge was Peterborough.

Greenwich goes to Bamberg

One of the biggest gaps in my beer travel experience is Bamberg. Hate to say it, but I have yet to visit there. It will happen, but I don’t know when. But last night for the moment I felt as if I could see Bamberg just on the horizon, far away, shadowy, but still there, a beery version of Coleridge’s Xanadu briefly glimpsed. The occasion was an informal tasting of the Meantime collaboration with Bamberg’s mighty maltings Weyermann, whose bags I have seen in breweries across Europe and in the UK. In the opinion of Meantime brewer Rod Jones, who taking me through the beer, Weyermann is perhaps one of the most innovative maltsters in the world, offering dozens and dozens of malts to brewers. The beer we were drinking and talking about was called London Porter Bamberg style and had been brewed at Weyermann’s (like the Hop Institute in Zatec they have their own pilot brewery). ‘It’s a classic London style with a twist,’ said Jones as I dissected the darkness within the glass. Pale malt, Munich malt and Abbey malt made up the majority of the grist, while two dark malts (one caramelised, the other a huskless black malt) and beechwood smoked malt were also added. The hopping rate with East Kent Goldings was just enough to balance the sweetness and an ale yeast was used. The beer slept the sleep of the just for three months and was well attenuated. As for what it tasted like — it was smooth, creamy, bittersweet, faintly smoky, toasty, raisiny and chocolaty on the palate, an assembly of colours and notes that just about enabled me to glimpse those fabled towers and roofs in the distance before the night fell and they vanished back into the drenched trench of my imagination. It was rather noble and magnificent and at 8% was remarkably easy to drink. For me it was a reminder that beer isn’t just about hops, malt is more than just a workhorse, it can be the rainbow that lights up a wet day, the burst of colour and chaos that defines a symphonic movement from Shostakovich, it is, as is oft said and written, but seemingly forgotten, the soul of beer.

So if you’re in the vicinity of the Greenwich Union today it will be on draught, but be quick as Rod reckons it’ll be gone by the time Friday seques into Saturday. 

Get a beer style and riff on it

Ahead of me, brewing Valhalla: the gleam of light, rosy red, cold spotlights of white at the centre of the glow. Copper highlights, triple decked (a trinity of brewing kettle, fermentation and maturation vessels); the soft bready note on the nose of the Helles in my hand. Soon to come, Oktoberfest, a gorgeously elegant interplay of malt and hops, Arsenal stroking the ball around on the field delivered into the glass. The British Guild of Beerwriters’ annual seminar has just been held at Meantime’s fabulous Old Brewhouse in Greenwich. Beer styles, the nature of, whom, what and why, are being debated, discussed and dissected; commerciality, the customer, light and dark, mild and bitter? Over 100 beer styles now, we are told, chime and charm at the Great American Beer Festival; if this goes on there will soon be a style for every day of the year. Then the three speakers start. Meantime’s founder and brewmaster Alastair Hook charts his journey through the beerlands of Europe and the wider world; the Beer Academy’s George Philliskirk ponders on the relevance of beer styles to the drinker, while Steve Williams scratches his head over the pointlessness of three categories of low alcohol beer. Others make pointed points, but there’s no definite answer, though scepticism seems rife on the GABF ‘more is less’ mentality. Though for me there’s one word that rings through the night: evolution. This makes perfect sense — a beer style evolves and should evolve over time, what’s the point in standing still? Mild with black pepper, lager with Maris Otter, bring it on. To my mind you have a beer style and then it’s up to brewers to riff on it — Black IPA, why not? We’ve got Black Lager and wasn’t there something called Pale Stout once upon a time? And besides, as others have written elsewhere, dwelling too much on beer styles can make you go mad (or at least take up Rate Beer), maybe it’s the equivalent of the medieval debate on the amount of angels you can get on the head of a pin. At the bar afterwards, one of de Gaulle’s numerous quotes parades its words on the wall of my brain: ‘How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?’ Cheese has a multitude of varieties but nobody (as far I can see) gets aggravated about this in the way the classification of beer styles seem to get some normally sensible folks’ blood boiling (unless I suppose someone plonks those cut-price commodity lagers of the cheese world Canadian Cheddar or Baby Bell on your plate). I think I’ll have a drink: now where’s that triple-hopped, wheat wine/bitter hybrid lager beer?

Metallic KO

Stainless steel is sexy. Or that’s what a brewer once said to me. Whatever, I thought at the time, each to their own. However, after a brief visit and tour of Meantime’s new brewery, which is due to go on stream in four weeks or so, I think I can understand the brewer’s fetishistic urges (as long as it’s consensual of course). It’s German kit, coming from the same company (Rolec) that built Stone’s, a mighty assembly of stainless steel (oooh…), but amongst these towering tuns and kettles, on a platform where the brewer can survey their work, stands what looks like an altar (stainless steel of course), with two taps, a place where the wort can be checked and sampled. ‘It’s old fashioned, I know,’ said Meantime maven Alastair Hook, ‘but I like it.’ And so do I, so do I. 

London gets another great beer venue with The Old Brewery

A gleaming Italian-built micro brewery stands at one end of the high-ceilinged room and the warm smell of the mash pervades the air. On the walls a time line encircles the room and notes significant dates in beer and brewing. The bar stands, a host of taps waiting to issue beers from Meantime — welcome to the Old Brewery at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Meantime’s latest enterprise, a brewpub that will serve great beer. A couple of weeks ago I had lunch here with Meantime’s founder and inspirational brewmaster Alastair Hook to talk about lager for a feature I  was writing. I also got a brief tour of the Old Brewery, but promised not to write about it until the launch, which was today. From what I saw this is a thoroughly modern space and a great showcase for Hook’s marvellous beers. It will also be wonderful for food: I had Herdwick mutton and potatoes with anchovy juice, accompanied by a crisp and clean glass of Meantime Helles, which cut through the unctuousness of the mutton and cleansed the mouth. Afterwards we went to the cellar, where Hook told me about the Meantime Kellerbier which will be stored in a polythene bag in a tank; the tank will be pressurised to aid the dispensation of the beer, but no extraneous CO2 will touch the beer, so it’s real ale I was told. I like Alastair and I like the beers he makes. He’s a pioneer — he was doing filtered and unpasteurized lager beers years ago while ask him about dark lager and he will point out that he brewed Franconian Dark Lager in 2002, several years before BrewDog claimed that the first one was Zeigeist. It’s easy to forget that Meantime has been around for 10 years and having proved a point with lager his IPA and London Porter showed that he wasn’t a one-yeast pony. He can sometimes come across as an abrasive chap, but I find him inspirational to talk beer with (just as I do with John Keeling and the Thornbridge guys) and totally lacking in bull. I asked him if he had mellowed and he replied ‘I’ve always walked the walk,’ which I took as a no. So if you have a chance I would recommend a trip down to Greenwich and the Old Brewery as London gets another good beer venue.

A Proustian pint for me and my friend

Nostalgia sells beer — doesn’t it? Stella Artois harkened back to pre-World War I rural France (and last year summoned up the ghosts of Sixties Cannes as Jean-Paul Belmondo once again pulled a good-looking bird); various IPAs evoke the Victorian age; porter sometimes goes back further — while post-modernist pranksters BrewDog look to punk and an 1980s art school aesthetic (Zeitgiest was a word a lot of us toyed with back then, and who knows maybe we’ll have Bauhaus one day — hopefully not, once was enough for that sorry band). They all look back, even though the packaging can be contemporary (‘with a twist’ is a word flayed and featured over and over again in gastro-publand and sometimes in beer).
Can beer escape its past or is it irrevocably linked to yesteryear? And why? Does it matter if it tastes good and takes us to another place.
I asked several brewers and commentators the question. Here’s Meantime’s Alastair Hook, with more to follow — what do you think?
Alastair Hook
"Beer is as irrevocably linked to yesteryear as organized society is….Humans look back if they want to learn, and consumers like the validation of history. Contemporary twists, cutting edge production methods, or modern presentation are the human manifestations of the desire to change and improve, and that is what separates Man from Beast. At Meantime we have the epic shadow of the history of brewing in London checking our every move, but we recognize a consumer, who typical in any modern urban metropolis demands more. They want vision and creativity, and what life has taught us all is that you can have neither without a conscious or sub-conscious respect for the past. Anarchy is ugly in beer, whereas in more complex life forms such as Music, or Art, anarchy can find a home. Beer is after all the nation’s favorite drink and is at the end of the day not a comfortable home for radical revolutionaries. Its simplicity is its beauty and its strength. So I am afraid your nostalgia factor with a contemporary twist is a hard one to escape from!"