In which the British Guild of Beer Writers organise a bliss-up in a brewery

Beer seminar? Booze-up more like it, went the refrain when I mentioned down the pub that I was off to Thornbridge for a Barley Wine seminar, which I had organised on behalf of the British Guild of Beerwriters with the brewery. (Now, if I had said a wine discussion would there have been the same response? Probably not, but I’m getting a bit bored with the whole wine vs beer game these days). These seminars have a long (ish) and honourable history within the Guild going back to the early 1990s when ones on old ale, porter and — most memorably — IPA were held at the White Horse in Parsons Green (I reckon that the last one went some way to help foster an interest in IPAs amongst British brewers). So it was entirely fitting that the former landlord of the pub, Mark Dorber, opened up the proceedings yesterday. He was the advance of a thoroughly good line-up — Fuller’s John Keeling, White Shield’s Steve Wellington and Sierra Nevada’s Steve Grossman got their memory sticks out (well Steve used his memory), while shorter performances came from former Guild president and journalist Barrie Pepper, Durham Brewery’s Steve Gibbs, Lovibonds’ Jeff Rosenmeier and Pete Brown (We also had Mark, John and Thornbridge’s Kelly doing a barley wine and cheese tasting). And what happens at a barley wine seminar, you might ask if you’ve not been to one. A beer style or ingredient or phenomenon is discussed, dissected and highlighted (we’ve had yeast, wood-aged beer, lager and the Durden Beer Circle in the last 10 years) and then beer is drank (well the denizens of my local got that one right). Yesterday we had: St Austell’s Smugglers (one version aged in wood, the other not), Sierra Nevada Bigfoot in a whisky cask, plus 2004 and 2007’s versions, a 31 month old pin of Alliance, Moonraker, Golden Pride, Vintage 1999, Lovibonds Wheat Wine, Stingo, Benedictus, Headcracker, Barley Gold, and Harvey’s Elizabethan Ale. A hefty line-up of ales, all tempting the 50+ people present who had to wait until the half time break for a swig (and given some of the pot-valiants there I made sure there were only half pint glasses available).

Barley wine is a subject that deserves to be discussed, it’s not rocket fuel, it’s on a par with wine (though PB made an interesting point about one of the beers there — lovely beer but nut-job name, guess the beer?), while for me one of the great moments of the afternoon was when Steve Wellington, who confessed he’d been thinking about knocking Bass No 1 on the head, exclaimed that he didn’t really know that there was so much interest in the style. ‘Now I will have to go and brew some and it will be ready in a year,’ he said, which is the sort of reaction you need. As the weather gets colder beer drinkers like myself do want stronger beers, beers to sit and contemplate and sip — barley wine might sit on the shelf of shame in many pubs, if at all, (ie Gold Label, too fizzy and syrupy last time I tried), but it’s a beer that deserves to be considered more than just rocket fuel. As Pete Brown said (and I nicked for the title for the seminar): Barley Wine, the beer that thinks it’s a wine.
The smart looking chap in the pic (not the scuff sitting down) is James McCrorie, founder of the Craft Brewing Association (and Guild member); this was taken at the 2007 seminar on wood aged beers, while the one-legged man is chairman Tim Hampson.

Why Orval is the best beer in the world at a certain moment in one’s life

I’m in a restaurant in Wallonia, not a beer restaurant, just the sort of well-run place that caters both for visitors like myself and locals who fancy something different. As it happens I am the only one in there that night, having dashed in from a long rain shower and — shaking myself like a terrier who has been just been hauled out of an Exmoor river — I explain in my kindergarten French that the tourist board has reserved a table for me. I am offered the run of the house, were would I like to sit? Remembering that Wild Bill Hickock met his fate because he sat at a table that faced away from the door, I choose one that faces the door. Would I like wine I am asked by a young lad with spiky hair? No thanks a beer please, this is saison country after all. Carlsberg comes the reply. Even here in Tournai, it’s depressing that I am being offered a beer that I would be offered throughout most of Western Europe whatever the beer culture. No thanks, any Belgium beer I say, dreading Leffe, whose Tripel was a mainstay on a southwest France holiday in 2005, but whose blonde I find a Demerera-sugared irritation. He comes back with a tray on which sit bottles of Orval (ideal shapes for West Country skittles), Chimay Bleu, Stella and possibly Leffe, but as soon as I saw Orval my mind was made up. Orval it was — I love that beer, a beer that has the influence of Brett, a beer that is both so satisfyingly complex, moreish, creamy, bittersweet, palate refreshingly citrusy and as this restaurant shows quite commonplace. I am served turbot in a creamy shrimp sauce which is bossed over by the Orval, bringing out the creamy and citrusy notes of the beer and also cutting through the cream of the sauce. It is delicious. I remember that this is not haute cuisine, biere cuisine or even good gastro-pub stuff, it’s just ordinary for this part of the world. I sat there wondering where in the UK in an ordinary restaurant, you know the small town high street gaff with French cuisine pretensions, would you get such a wonderful and complex beer. In the UK some might have the local ale, a bitter or a golden ale, pasteurised to high heaven, but this is the local ale. No one else comes into the restaurant while I eat, which is fine — and besides I wouldn’t have noticed, so engrossed was I in contemplating and considering the Orval. Another thing that occurred to me, later on, in another bar, with more people about, well-fed and well-watered, as I enjoyed the rich orange liqueur-like character of Triple Karmeliet, was that there is no such thing as the best beer in the world — just the best beer at the right moment and in this case Orval in a touristy restaurant in the town of Tournay fitted that bill as snug as a bug in a very snug rug.

77

Even in this little rural outpost of Exmoor, we get beer: at 5.15pm this afternoon I received an email from Kenny at the Bridge. ‘Brew Dog 77 Lager on now...’ It’s a five minute walk down the road, right next to the River Barle, which eventually meets its destiny with the Exe about two miles away. At 5.30pm, having decided that my saison opening for an American magazine was coming along nicely, I was on my way. It’s the best beer on tap this weekend in Dulverton, and I say this having also thoroughly enjoyed several pristine fragrantly hopped pints of Tribute at my other local Woods afterwards. The countryside and fantastic beer, what a combination. This is not one of those Sodom and Gomorrah rants about the Moloch of the city, I love cities, but I don’t want to live in them and I glad to get home here after a day or so in London, Sheffield, Prague, New York, whatever So take a bow Kenny at the Bridge and Paddy at Woods. Hwyl fawr.
The picture is of a tree (obviously) in the centre of Hawkridge, a village four miles or so out on the moor, which has no pub but is exquisitely isolated.

In which the Sex Pistols make me think about the pros and cons of the Industrial Revolution as regards beer

Watching a reunited Sex Pistols concert in a Belgian hotel room (me that is not them), I am reminded about the need for consistency in beer; it’s an appalling concert, polished, cynical, well-played and attempting to be of its time 1977, but really belonging to now. They might as well have been an act on the X Factor. BrewDog say that their beer is for punks, but I wouldn’t have thought that they would want this bunch of pogoing, face-gurning nostalgists (both band and audience) drinking the stuff. Apply this sort of revivalism to beer and you have the mindset that uses visions of a golden age to sell its products — or even more depressing the dreary parocialism of a letter writer in the current What’s Brewing who lambasts CAMRA and Protzy for picking a ‘quite hoppy and bitter’ mild for its champion beer, ‘When I started drinking in England 50 years ago, the mild tasted mild and the bitter tasted bitter. Now we have an award-winning mild that tastes bitter. Can Camra still be taken seriously’. I mean, the words ‘too much time on his hands’ spring to mind.

I say all of this after five months of editing 1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die (out next spring, be the first to disagree with the choice!), in whose pages there will be a goodly amount of fantastic IPAs and Porters, beers with a long history that, however, I would rather drink now than 150 years ago. I would far rather a beer where the brewer knew what to do with Brett than some beer in the 19th century when it varied from week to week and this variation wasn’t controlled — but then that is part of a larger conversation about beer, which occurred to me at a cider seminar in Spain in June.

Beer, thanks to the Industrial Revolution, is expected to be the same consistency brew after brew, while wine and cider have seasonal allowances programmed in. Of course, there are beers that follow that seasonal path but all of us expect our ales to taste the same year upon year — are we missing something here? It’s a wild dream to expect beer to go back to some sort of hit and miss character, but it might make things interesting (and the technology and foresight is there to make it all drinkable). I remember one landlord I know telling me that when he took over an Adnams pub in Walberswick that some of the locals (perhaps trying to put him in his place) used to say that they could tell when the Adnams Bitter had the new harvest of hops and barley as opposed to when they were drinking it a few months later. Beer has pretty much flattened out the variations, even though the idea of vintages is pretty hot stuff. But what if your pint of London Pride, Landlord or Tribute had different nuances from season to season? How on earth would it be sold to us beer drinkers who have been bred to expect consistency — consistency is only expected because the alternative is rubbish, but what about a mindset that expected an Adnams Bitter (I’m just choosing it because it’s a favourite) to be different in October and then in January and then in July — would this raise beer to the cachet of wine as much as the whole Vintage bottle thing? Imagine it: Tesco’s bring you BrewDog IPA October 09. I suppose I’m talking anarchy in the UK when it comes to brewing, but the sad fact is that we (including myself) want our pint of cask beer to taste the same every night otherwise we might have nightmares (the stuff of which for me after watching that concert would involve a geriatric John Lydon doing a duet with Mick Jagger).

I’ll meet you at the sign of the Red Barrel (not)

You see this hanging from a wall in the Wallonian town of Tournai and you look around to see if the Tardis is lurking about. Never drunk the stuff myself (was on lemonade and Robinson’s Crush in its heyday) but the legends linger — was it really as bad as everyone says? Was it the spam (the meat not the offers of millions of quid from some dodgy individual) of beer? How we laughed about it in school, though didn’t know why and when it was time to step up to the plate of heroic drinking Red Barrel had vanished in a puff of smoke, like a baddie in a fairy tale. Which makes it all the more intriguing to see this sign in this beautiful town in the centre of saison county (discovered a new favourite, Tournay Noire from Cazeau, who also produce an elderflower-infused saison — at a speciality beer bar populated by Goths and metallers…).

Is Watney’s Red Barrel still available and if so could it spark off the same retro-beer movement that over in the US has drinkers, the sort you would normally expect to linger over their craft beers, ordering the corn-fed Pabst Blue Ribbon as a sort of act of rebellion or defiance against the accepted order of things?

Alloa, Alloa

I like Williams Bros Ceilidh. They call it a lager. Now I don’t know whether it has been lagered and if so for how long, but it certainly tastes and feels more like a Munchen Pilsner than any member of that oxymoron of British craft brewing cask-conditioned lager. It’s the colour of Welsh gold — I hold my wedding ring up to it and the colours match. The nose is sweet and fragrant, gently toasted bread with a slight scent of elderflower and lemon in the background — the beer equivalent of that old Victorian standard Come into the garden Maud; sweetish and soft on the palate, then it becomes lemony midway through the palate; it has a gorgeous rounded mouthfeel before its dry, tantalisingly grainy finish. This is a very good approximation of a Munich Pils (too forthright to be a Helles and not floral enough to be Bohemian) — how wonderful it is to see another British brewer take on lager and produce something creditable. The label says ‘brewed in Alloa’, which if I seem to remember correctly was often seen as a Scottish equivalent of Burton-on-Trent; it was also a place noted for its lagers, so hence the legend on the label.

Dog

Just had one of the worst beers I have ever had: BrewDog’s Dogma (named after the crap film perhaps). But it’s not as easy as that. To confound matters it was followed by their Hardcore IPA, which is a wonderful interpretation of a DIPA and the hop bombs keep carpet-bombing my palate as if directed by Bomber Harris, but am thoroughly shocked by Dogma; it’s horrible. It’s like a piercing whistle of a beer with its high shrill notes of powdery guarana (I should know as I take the stuff when I Iay off the coffee) making it utterly unpalatable (in music terms Lydia Lunch springs to mind, no-noise New York rubbish from the late 1970s or free form jazz even). There is honey in it as well apparently, but if bees are vanishing I am not surprised if they are starting to produce this sort of honey. I suspect it’s a gag, a situationist, MacLarenist sort of jape that takes us all for mugs. However, I bought this at Sainsbury’s, and it is one of their beers that has got through to the supermarket’s beer finals. It can’t have been this severe to get through — or who on earth were the judges? On the other hand, maybe it’s a wry comment from BrewDog that whatever they produce it will be lionised. Clever and cynical — art school rock lives.