Beer is the lifeblood

I don’t often agree with Simon Heffer, but I wholeheartedly lift my metaphorical hat off to him in this column in tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph.

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. 

Is it time to take holy orders?

Last week Orval, this week a Trappist dinner at the White Horse. Is something telling me I should take holy orders? A tasting of beers from the seven Trappist breweries with a Chimay-accompanied meal was a chance to reengage with this most contemplative branch of brewing. Rochefort, Chimay, Westmalle, Orval, Achel, Westvleteren and Dutch uncle La Trappe: all served and dissected with care and attention by Belgian beer sommelier and Beerpassie Magazine editor Ben Vinken. Biggest surprise of the night? A bottle of La Trappe’s Dubbel, as complex as advanced algebra and a lot more fun, a beer my nose had been perpetually turned up at for as long as I can remember. A beer burdened with being bought and owned by Bavaria, purveyors of orange skirted Dutch lovelies to the world; a beer whose bottle had as much style as a sunburnt, lobster-red, cargo-panted Englishman on Dover beach, scowling at France. I stand corrected. My nose was caressed and cuddled by sweetish caramel-toffee notes with a background of banana, the sort of ripe banana where dark bruises are starting to show, making for a sweet treat. The palate was sweet fruit, plums, roastiness balancing the sweetness; in the background a hop-derived pepperiness, alcohol and an almond-marzipan dryness, while the dry and bitter finish had dark plummy notes, a soft cloistered toiling of the bell, calling all to compline. I picked my jaw up off the table and carried on. And the finale to this most excellent of tastings, a glass of a 1998 and 1988 Chimay Grande Reserve, side by side; the younger brother, earthy, alcoholic, vinous, Madeira-like at first and then Calvados sprung to mind (the bocage of Normandy, tilled soil after the first rains of autumn), minus the fieriness. And then the eldest of the lot, the head of the family (or should that be chapter?) — I probably had my first Chimay around 1988 but I should have held onto it and it would have turned out like this: chocolate and Cognac, still some carbonation, imagine a cold, alcoholic stewed fruit compote with a touch of brandy and then turned into a beer, the ideal beer to accompany a wild and windy night in the depth of winter with Dickens on your lap (one of the author’s books that is). Or if you are lucky to get hold of one in the summer, pour some on a scoop of good vanilla ice cream and drink the rest. Perfect.  

A rubbish bottle opener fails to stop IPA heaven

I’m sorry Shepherd Neame. I like your beers but your bottle openers suck. Late night in a small hotel room in Bayswater, after an evening visiting several hostelries. Glyn from the  Rake had given me a bottle of Kernel’s IPA earlier and I fancied it. I had one of Sheps’ beer openers because I was on my way to Orval the next day and having learnt from Chuck Cook in Baltimore that the nearest bar was closed, it was suggested that some cheese and Orval be brought from the souvenir shop and consumed al fresco. So I packed a Spitfire bottle opener, an item I have had problems with before. So in my room I opened or tried to open the IPA and the neck of the bottle opener broke. I got a micro-second of tinny martial music and loads of IPA went over my legs. Thanks Sheps. Hold on a minute though, let’s have a taste of Kernal IPA. Hello, I thought, is this Chicago or Portland rather than Borough where the brewery is based? It’s a thumper of a hop driven IPA with grapefruit and pine notes, and a big thick appetising bitterness that yomps all over the palate, Bergen and all. Great beer guys. Not so great bottle-opener Sheps.

Orval’s rock star

I have a new brewing hero, or maybe that should be: I have had a new brewing hero added to my own personal pantheon. He’s a smallish guy, in his early 60s, possessed of a twinkle in the eye, only makes one beer, engages fulsomely with Brett and shuffles about his kingdom with the calm pace of a monk, which is just as well as his bosses are Cistercian monks (who answer to a higher authority). My new hero is Jean-Marie Rock, the man who for the past 25 years has been head of brewing at Orval, the Trappist beer that has enthralled and enriched my life since I first picked up a bottle from Oddbins in the 1980s. So there I was, along with Sharp’s head brewer Stuart Howe (a man from whom the description headstrong was surely created), walking across the loading bay at Orval. A couple of guys loading crates stared at a couple of poncy Brits in suits striding across their yard. ‘We’re here to see Jean-Marie,’ said Stuart in his cockney-accented French. Then behind us, through the glass doors, a beatific smile on his face, came Jean-Marie. ‘Get up you fool,’ I whispered to Stuart, all but down on one knee. There then followed the sort of intimate concourse with a brewer that makes beer-writing with all its faults and foilables worth the game. In the course of two hours, which concluded with several glasses of draught Orval (I’ve never had it this way before), Rock led us on a journey through the world of Orval. Myths were corrected — it’s only one yeast strain, not five as has been written elsewhere — while stuff that I didn’t know before was also imparted. Jean-Marie was patient, quietly and dryly humorous and everything the company of great brewers can be. ‘I love him’ said Stuart as we left. I know what he means.

Bittersweet symphony

I wish for a Wrasslers XXXX I tell myself. I wish for this bittersweet symphony of a dark Irish beer, a creamy yet cutting concoction that knocked the spots off Guinness the last time I had it at the Porterhouse in Covent Garden. A pint of that if you please I say, amidst the copper tubing, the constant beats and the wash and froth of voices. Sit in a corridor of sorts, a wall of bottles to my left, Berliner Kindl jumps out and says hello — does it know that it is the snow leopard of beer styles. A couple in a booth ahead of me. She has her back to me, cherry red top; he faces me, though hidden by her, a suit, that’s all. All are voices. 

The beer is dark with an amber cast. It’s bitter, but it’s also sour, ripe dark plums when the Lucozade-orange flesh gives way like sodden tissue. Should it be like this? Creamy mouth feel, espresso coffee bitterness with a sprinkle of black pepper, rather appetising. 

‘We have to be on the same wavelength.’ He says. Her back to me. Second rate psychology derived from a bastard child problem page after GQ has had its brutal way with Closer. She’s drinking juice through a straw. ‘You’re right,’ he continues, ‘any relationship…’ It’s like tuning in and out of a radio station before digital promised us the world. 

On the beer there’s a sourness on the nose that won’t go away, it’s there in the flavour, briefly, a dog barking in the night, but chased away by the dark malts. Has it been too long there?

Her red jacket is caramel red, not too dark, not too bright, hair is layered. He’s got full hands, all the better in the past — he’s getting on after all — to grab a rugby ball. All around the hubbub of music and voices. 

The beer remains sour on the nose. Someone got disappointed tonight, I’ll leave you to guess who.

I-Spy for grown ups

I’ve got another book out, it’s called Real Ale Record Book. A bit cheaper than 1001 and nowhere as heavy. You can even put it into your pocket when you’re out and about. If you remember the I-Spy books of a glorious youth before less wholesome activities set in, then this might just be your thing. When the publishers (the same people who do Martyn Cornell’s Amber, Gold & Black) asked me to do it, I-Spy for grown ups was the pitch, which makes sense given its pocket-book status. It’s got over 150 beers in it with 50+ word tasting notes for each (and yes I have drunk them all). I think you’re supposed to go round the country ticking them off (not put them in plastic bottles and drink them in a shed). And why not? As the book title suggests it’s about cask beer, but I’ve got a couple of Brew Doggers in and a Meantime, but sadly no Lovibond’s, West, or Freedom. Despite these calamitous exclusions I’m quite pleased with it. If you buy it do let me know what I’ve missed out of it (there are also a few pubs mentioned in it, favourites of mine where the heart always quickens when the sign comes in sight, the Anchor Walberswick, Woods, Dulverton, Royal Oak, Borough etc etc). Oh and if you’re a wild swimmer I’ve also got a similar book out with the same publishers as well, it’s called the the Wild Swimming Record Book.