Budapest

A tram passes by with a sound like a half-hearted roar from a bored lion; the Danube seethes and swells with the rhythm of a massively erratic heart; a family sit on the steps below me, drinking pink champagne as if toasting the progress of this mighty river. 

Would you like a beer, I ask myself. Yes, comes the reply, as if it from the malevolent dummy that toyed with Anthony Hopkins in Magic, though my inner voice has a little more benevolence. Gellért Hill rises across the river, a big cheese in Buda, and I reach it across the Liberty Bridge, which looks like it was made with a Meccano set. 

I’d been told of a cellar, its name simple: Keg. I found it on Orlay Street, a brick-lined space with a long bar (and yes there were Edison lights) and a digital display of the beers on tap; 33 taps btw. What did I like? Well, I couldn’t resist Mad Scientist’s Liquid Cocaine, which was an energetic DIPA packed with hop synergy and a resiny dry finish (a little bit of Budapest that was forever Portland perhaps?). 

I wondered what the Portman Group would make of the name. 

I also enjoyed the softness and calmness of Fóti Pils (a brewery that Evan Rail wrote about in the last edition of 1001 Beers) and then I stepped out back into the heat and sun of a Budapest June and just around the corner noticed the Hotel Gellért Gyogyszallo, which with its balconies, turrets and towers looked like it had been carved out of the hillside. 

Later on, like many a beer tourist I went to Élesztő, a potent ruin pub in an old yard, with a cracked glass roof, bare brick walls, wooden tables and chairs, a worn concrete floor, a tree growing in its middle and there was yet another glass of Liquid Cocaine. I like this beer. 

Craft, craft or craft?

Christ I am so sick of people trying to work out whether a beer is craft or not, whether the beer that they might enjoy in their glass is made by one man in a bathtub or created beneath the whip of an evil, moustachioed corporate type (and who doesn’t probably pay their fair share of tax either). Good beer is good beer, though if you are the sort to boycott a company because what they do offends your view of the world then good luck (I must admit to a small chuckle when I saw that someone had written that they thought ‘we’ are boycotting Amazon when it came to discuss buying a certain beer book — who’s ‘we’ when they are at home?).

My mock outrage is fuelled by the furore (smallish I suspect in the context of the worldview of beer) over a press release issued by the Brewers Association the other day. It is entitled Craft Vs Crafty and goes on to state (or maybe restate) what a craft brewery is, making specific connections to breweries that are owned by big corporations.

This is the part of the press release that jumped out at me and bit my nose: ‘Witnessing both the tremendous success and growth of craft brewers and the fact that many beer lovers are turning away from mass-produced light lagers, the large brewers have been seeking entry into the craft beer marketplace. Many started producing their own craft-imitating beers, while some purchased (or are attempting to purchase) large or full stakes in small and independent breweries.

‘While this is certainly a nod to the innovation and ingenuity of today's small and independent brewers, it's important to remember that if a large brewer has a controlling share of a smaller producing brewery, the brewer is, by definition, not craft.’

I was sent the press release and my first thoughts were of the UK regional breweries that are using the word craft and crafty for beers produced on both their big kits and pilot micros. Greene King ‘craft’ their beers, while others like Brains, St Austell and Wadworth have small ‘craft breweries’ to produce excellent beers such as Brains’ series of IPAs, St Austell’s incredible array of one-offs for their beer festival and Waddies’ Beer Kitchen range. And the other day I enjoyed Thwaites’ Crafty Dan, a 6% American-style Pale Ale produced on a micro kit. Are these beers craft? I don’t give a monkeys. I enjoy Crafty Dan and Shepherd Neame’s Double Stout as much as I have recently loved Arbor’s Dr Rudi’s IPA, Otley’s Oxymoron and anything by Wild Beer.

It’s up to the BA to say what they like and I suspect that there might still be a vestige of David vs Goliath in their mental make-up, something which you could probably apply to the mind-set of some within a beer group closer to home. Goose Island are owned by the Evil Empire, but I still love their IPA, Matilda and Bourbon County amongst others, so I couldn’t give a flying fig whether it was classified as craft or not. I don’t care very much for the effluent of Pabst Blue Ribbon (is it still a hipster’s ironic choice?) but on the other hand I have also been under whelmed by some US (and UK) self-proclaimed craft breweries.

Craft, craft or craft? Who knows, who cares?

The pub used to be a gastro

The pub used to be a gastro I am told, which makes complete sense when I look around the décor: stripped down oak floorboards the colour of sand, Farrow and Ball style paint scheme on the wall (lamp room grey perhaps?), lots of light coming in through the large latticed collection of glass panes, an ironic mix of old school pub tables with metal clawed feet, seaside fish and chip restaurant red banquettes and a couple of stools and their accompanying tables that might have been made in the workshop at the local tech. The music at the moment is In The Midnight Hour, not Wilson Pickett but more of a Commitments’ version perhaps? Outside London passes by, buses, mopeds defecating their shrill sound of two-stroke hell, off-white van man, Boris bikes and Londoners going about their way, large, tall, fat, thin, small and in-between. The bar is L-shaped, and I hazard a guess that before it was a gastro it was a traditional boozer, the place where the racing might have been on all day, the beer dispensed with a minimum of fuss and food limited to whatever the licensee could forage in the local cash and carry. Outside the Grand Union canal stills itself, a long dark green rippled skin of water larging itself through this part of west London. The beer? I’ve just had a glass of Redemption Pale Ale, and spent what felt like an eon (but was probably only a couple of minutes) evalutating the ‘fruity’ nose. In the end I think of sensual ripe apricot skin with wisps of berry (raspberry) floating into the action as well. The malty sweetness is caramel influenced and I also pick out an edgy spike of spiciness reminiscent of rye; the finish is a dusty and grainy dryness that turns the mouth into an agreeable sort of Sahara. For 3.8%, this is a beer that really makes me want another. But there’s a lot of choice so (while watching a man spear his salad into his mouth with the sort of lust that I imagine only happened on some medieval killing field) I have a glass of Kernel’s Centennial Columbus IPA — I can smell it across the bar as it is poured. We are looking at a fragrance that I can only imagine as a cross between a hop field where all the hop devils are hard at work night and day and the early morning descent I once took, windows open, gentle breeze off the Med, after a night crossing the Maritime Alps, into the town of Grasse. Oh and I’m in the Union Tavern, Fuller’s tremendous take on a craft beer bar. Love it.