Punk’s not dead

On some long ago day, a long ago sunny day sometime in 1978, or maybe it was 1979 (something to do with the identikit punk haircuts and gear that I remember exploded into public view after 1977 — oh look there’s Sid Vicious and Paul Cook, while I suspect that the skinheads have been revived from the dead of the early 70s by the emergence of Sham 69), the locals of this Oxford pub came outside to be snapped, a pub community, an alternative pub community, a vibrant, brash and robust community — the pub after all was known for its music then. Lord only knows what the beer was like — was this a place where lager or Long Life or Strongbow held sway at the bar, while the punks pogo-ed and the skins did their peculiar dance that involved stomping up and down in their DMs and tugging on their braces? I can’t remember for the life of me what beers Ind Cooper produced, but here in this pub on this long ago summer’s day I suspect what beer was drunk would have been secondary to the crack and the celebration that a band on stage would have bought. Now this pub is called the Angel & Greyhound and Ind Coope has vanished into the annals of history and rugby is shown on match days and there is food and it is a Young’s pub (complete with the sort of signage the brewery had when they were still brewing). How did it become a Young’s pub I wonder? Meanwhile this marvellous photograph covers the wall opposite the bar (was this where the stage was?) and I sit in a comfortable chair and think about that long ago day and the people who were there and what on earth happened to them. Punk’s not dead you see. 

BrewDog: diacetyl machine and all

Cardinals

There’s a machine for testing diacetyl, snug and secure in the cabin-sized, glass fronted laboratory that looks out onto the cavernous, cathedral-like (vast and open as in the starkness of a great northern European space for worship rather than one in the south, Malaga for instance) brewing hall with its steel ribs reaching out and holding up the sky (and keeping out the sky); there’s a machine for blasting more hops into the FVs, silvery, towering cylinders sitting out in the grey, chilly morning that is the colour of mud-streaked chalk, a hop cannon says Martin Dickie; who wants to climb to the top asks James Watt and a couple of hardy souls clamber up the steel ladders. Back inside the cathedral of a brewing floor there are miles of metal pipes through which beer flows; there is the hum of machines and there is the clang of metal and there is the voices of brewers as they get on with their day’s work.

Then there is the clinking, chinking, ice-and-a-slice-in-a-glass-of-G&T music of bottles of Jack Hammer as long lines twirl their way around the bottling line (Peter West really should be here). The bottles slow down, gather together, like wildebeest on one of their great treks, or a crowd being funnelled into the turnstiles when Saturday comes, crowding together for comfort and then they are bedded down, 24 bottles intimate in a cardboard box, no street drinkers these.

The brewing floor of BrewDog is noisy and purposeful, a vast conclave of stainless steel cardinals gathering together to elect the next beer pope. The noise is reminiscent of the 1980s band Collapsing New Buildings and thoroughly melodic in the effect it has on the brain. Come inside a container says BrewDog’s James Watt, quietly spoken, slightly shy it seems to me, nothing like the reprehensible, irresponsible that some have suggested, come inside where we leave Sink The Bismarck; there’s a wreath of cold air, it’s -25˚c inside here, gone in 30 seconds.

I’ve always liked BrewDog, I’ve always liked the swagger, the up yours and even the wind-up gramophone of slight hysteria, but in recent years they seemed to have slipped off my radar: the punk aesthetic was becoming tiresome (after all punks grow up, or in my case grow their hair a little longer). Hardcore is my favourite beer of theirs and I’ve always enjoyed visiting the bars in Camden and Bristol; I pick up Punk when I see it and Dead Pony is rather special. But…I have felt divorced from them, felt that they were doing lots of different beers, crowd sourcing and collaborations amongst them (didn’t enjoy the Flying Dog one for instance, which I felt disappointed with in a bar in Rimini), dude-ing it up, and there was nothing substantial for me to think or drink about. There’s also the revivalist nature of the fans. I’m always suspicious of evangelical movements, whatever the nature. It is just beer after all.

But…when the invitation came to fly up north to Aberdeen and spend a day in their company, drink their beers, see the new (13 months old) brewery, hear about their plans, visit their bar and eat at Musa, I said yes, even though there remained a cynical part of me that asked my inner ethicalist (a rarely awaken kraken-like segment of me that is usually asleep in an Arcadian grove where everything is jolly nice): would it be a stunt? Would we (there were 10 of us, from the UK, Norway, Finland and France) be met by a man in a gorilla’s suit on a bicycle with 10 seats? Would we discover that the brewery didn’t exist and that it was a cosmic joke on those of us who dare to approach the unstoppable and bewildering bewitchment of beer with the same seriousness that other writers treat rock culture? On the other hand, this wouldn’t be your typical corporate brewery trip where the PR type, eyes gleaming with a messianic beam of righteousness, would blab on forever why this brewery (or maybe it’s that brewery or the brewery over there even) had finally understood craft — here have a glass of our craft beer (re-badged and reborn and re-jigged with its own Grizzly Adams beard and aslant Tibetan prayer flat cap).

In the tasting room we go past friendly people doing the sort of jobs that all breweries require their people to do, whether craft, kreft or completely unaware of what point of the compass they should proceed; in the tasting room we gather, beer bottles popped, caps rattle-trapping on the table, glasses hustled by the quicksilver approach of beer. James Watt had sidled in earlier on, before our expedition onto the brewery floor, quiet, seemingly shy, introducing himself (well what was I expecting, Loki?), thanking us for coming in a voice that was mid-Atlantic Scots, and gradually warming to his theme: we make the beer we like to drink. Then Martin followed, a thicker Scottish brogue, slow and stately, deep, a ponytail in his wake.

And after the brewery tour we began tasting beer.

Punk IPA has its trademark pungent and arousing nose, peach and apricot skin (ripe and luscious after time spent in the sun); lychees, papaya, mangos trip off the tongue, while I pick up a gentle touch on the elbow of white pepper in the dry and grainy finish. Jack Hammer is a bigger beast, with the bitterness clanging away like an alarm bell announcing that the Vikings have just landed and all must fight or die. Dead Metaphors is the colour of a moonless night, smoky, coffeeish, chocolaty, both lean and creamy-smooth in the mouth, a counterpoint between the dark, dark, dark into which we all go and the soothing milk stout flurry of benevolent violins (for this we thank Richard Taylor and Rob Derbyshire).

This is something new says James Watt, AB15, an imperial stout with salt caramel and popcorn in the mix, a beer that has ruminated and contemplated time in both rum and bourbon casks before being blended together. It’s vanilla, woody, velvety, rich and spirituous, sweet, caramel-like and a sly shoulder-barge-when-the-ref-isn’t-looking of saltiness manifesting itself on the back of the tongue; there’s an opulent, silk sheets kind of sweetness, before there’s a knock on the door of the five-star bedroom that the beer has become, announcing that dinner will be served, but do continue to linger with the beer; it’s a multi-layered and complex-flavoured beer where flavour notes crash all over the palate like neutrons in a particle accelerator before coming together in a steady stream of all that vanilla, caramel, berry fruit, smoke, coffee and complete pleasure.

Later on James and a couple of others drive us to the original brewery in Fraserburgh, cold and closer to the sea than I would like to be, robust and rugged, experimental (white IPA, mango Berliner Weiss), friendly brewing staff. And it’s then that you begin to realise how small and near the knuckle things were for BrewDog in the early years. Two men and a dog (the latter sadly dead — James Watt and I shared a few quiet moments talking about dogs), equipment cobbled together, tight-fisted banks, so perhaps you can see why they felt the need to act the way they did in those early years (there are things we wouldn’t do now said James Watt). It got up the noses of the brewing industry, pissing off some pretty decent brewing people, but that’s the past. 

As we got into Aberdeen and drank beer at the BrewDog bar and then great beer and food matches at Musa I made up my mind: BrewDog are a force for good, they might not always get it right (my glass of Fake Lager had seemingly escaped the diacetyl machine but the next one hadn’t so this was that great issue that effects all beer: dispensation), they are not in it for the short term (for god’s sake they’re still in their early 30s), the beer often reaches heights that Buzz Aldrin would envy (though there have been lows that Dante Alighieri would have known about) and there’s a force of nature about them that suggests they might sometimes get it wrong but more often or not they will get it right.

Do I really have to spell out disclosure? I got flown out there, got my accommodation and beer and food paid for, but that’s my job. As it is with travel, if you expect journalists to pay their own way then you get people with private incomes doing the gigs — I’m independent but this trip came as a beautiful surprise.

Highbury in the late 1980s when we won the title after a 18-year drought, how times change…

No thanks becomes yes thanks

Sahti. I read about this kind of beer in Michael Jackson’s books at the end of the 1990s and also in his What’s Brewing column — to be honest it was not a kind of beer I really wanted to try. Juniper berries — I only used them in cooking with venison; various cereals, no or few hops, baker’s yeast, little carbonation. No thanks. Times have changed and nowadays I love Gose, lambic and gueuze and the only Grodziskie I have had so far was also rather pleasing. So when Sharp’s Stuart Howe told me he was going to Finland and did I want anything bringing back I suggested a Sahti, which he duly returned with and here is Finlandia Sahti Strong. It’s cloudy in the glass, hazy, misty, a scene from The Fog though maroon red in colour. There’s a sweet banana nose, a yeastiness which is reminiscent of a strong bottle-conditioned Belgian brune or maybe it’s a sticky cherry-flavoured dessert wine. The palate is a multi-layered mixture of rye bread, some spiciness (all-spice or even a hint of cinnamon), cough sweets, stewed bananas, and a cherry brandy-like stickiness; as I take more swigs I’m going to suggest an alcoholic cough mixture that’s been filtered through a machine that adds a vinous character; meanwhile it’s a very fast finish that leaves a skin of stickiness on the tongue. The carbonation is low and slow. It’s a very rough-edged beer, a wiry, badly behaved terrier of a beer, though not without appeal. It is not a polished beer and the fact that it’s in a plastic bottle suggests a homespun or home brew character perhaps. It’s interesting and irrational in its appeal and yes I would drink this again. No thanks becomes yes thanks. 

My girlfriend bought the voucher for me

A conversation with a former Young’s brewer the other day found me reminiscing about the time when I hosted several beer tastings there for an events company; this would have been 2000/01 and it was great fun (I also did Batemans a couple of times and I still remember the shiver of anticipation as I embarked at the station with the windmill in my sight line). We would tour the brewery, have something to eat and then I would take everyone through eight Young’s beers. There would be about 12-15 people there and they would have been bought the vouchers as gifts or just got them themselves alone; they enjoyed beer but weren’t that obsessed by it — for me it was a fun way of earning money and drinking beer, I’ve never been one for the beer writer as educator (and especially evangelist) schtick.

After my conversation ended the other day I recalled one particular tasting. We were at the end of the beers and had finished with Young’s Old Nick, their sadly defunct barley wine. Someone didn’t like it and passed it onto someone who did and he dived uproariously into the second bottle (500ml). We were all chatting, even the woman who had complained that her boss had sent her on the event because he couldn’t come; oh she didn’t like beer either and alone amongst everyone she’d not noted any chocolate notes on Young’s Double Chocolate Stout. A couple of blokes, mates, were joshing away, had seemingly enjoyed it, though one of them I seem to recall kept vanishing to the end of the room to talk on his mobile while I was explaining what honey did to beer (maybe I would have done the same thing). Meanwhile the guy with the second bottle of barley wine had turned maudlin.

‘My girlfriend bought the voucher for me,’ he said in between great heroic gulps of beer, ‘that was six months ago.’ He paused and took another gulp. ‘We’ve split up now.’ He started to weep, very slowly and slightly and looked down at his lap. The group of people went quiet. ‘Yeah, we’ve had the vouchers for a while,’ chirruped one of the brace of mates breaking the ever so English sense of embarrassment, ‘got them about six months ago.’ He paused; he didn’t have a drink to suck on. He pointed at his mate; for some reason I noticed that he was looking a bit strained. ‘We had to wait though because he was inside.’ Another pause, the room’s silence continued apart from the flutter of quiet sobs. The bloke carried on oblivious to everything. ‘Nothing serious though.’ His mate’s face was a still centre of an approaching storm you knew would break outside. Meanwhile the silent sobs of the barley wine man who’d been deserted continued.

These days I quite enjoy interruptions and spontaneity and even hostility but these were early days and such moments got me mixing up my malting with my mashing.

A heady stroll on a blustery clifftop

First bottled beer from Burning Sky is a beautiful beer, a ramped up version of the brewery’s saison, called Saison à la Provision, which is then aged in white wine barrels, now that’s the kind of thing I like, something that’s a bit different, something that’s not mild and bitter or stout and porter or a lot of hops chucked into a boil because they’ve travelled a long way across the oceans or the introspection of crystal that makes whatever beer that’s newly launched different apparently (not that I dislike those kinds of beers, apart from the ones where crystal keens its deep mellow moan, but I just want something different something that takes my palate out for a heady stroll on a blustery clifftop where the wind booms and the sea churns), and yes this was sent to me, for the purpose of entry in a book out later in the year and thankfully it’s a beautiful beer, did I mention that already, and I drank it at the weekend, pleased as the proverbial punch with its juicy, voluptuous, Seville cathedral-like mouthfeel, as if the beer was taking up every corner and every angle and every space of my palate, spreading its acidity, its citrus fruit, its restrained sweetness, its quenching character, its moussec-like carbonation, its gentle not-up-the-nose carbonation, and if I really want to split hairs about it, I would say that this for me is closer to a gueuze than a lean and austere saison, maybe the wine barrels have added that body I associate with a gueuze, but it’s still a beautiful beer, the memory of which is still haunting me several days after I drank it.

Brewers’ gripes

You always hear it when a small brewery wins Champion Beer at GBBF, murmurings from those at larger breweries who wonder how such a tiny outfit is going to supply the demand that winning will inevitably bring. When Kelham Island won with Pale Rider they dealt with this enviable problem by contracting out part of the brewing to Ridley’s. I think it’s happened with other small breweries. I was reminded of this issue when I came across this paragraph in the course of research I am doing on the International Brewing Competition. 

‘Brewers are ultra-conservative… and they object to comparing their wares against each other; besides beer is not an article which admits of competitive exhibition, its value depending so much on individual tastes; furthermore our large brewers object to bring their beers into competition with small brewings (brewers), which however excellent as samples cannot possibly be produced on a manufacturing scale for the prices at which they have been quoted.’

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Except that this comes from the Brewers’ Guardian October 14, 1879, embedded in an item on the forthcoming National Beer Exhibition and Market to be held at the Agricultural Hall, Islington (ironically, 129 years later Beer Exposed was to be held at the same site). Nothing really changes does it?

Drink

Drink.

Drink.

Drink because you enjoy it, drink because you want to be with friends; drink with travellers who turn up in your pub, eager to know what the local beer tastes like; drink because you accept and enjoy the song of nature, the watery sky of January, the clear piping sound of bird song in January, the placid waters of life’s quiet moments, the end of the busy day; drink because Phlebas the Phoenician has been a fortnight dead; drink because you thought that death had not undone so many; drink because all’s well that ends well, because in the morning the school of well-being will open its doors, and when it rains you can forget about the rain and carry on drinking; drink on the idle of hill of summer, warm and drowsy, ready to range the world, drink for god’s sake; drink for the wintery haw is burning out of season and you must drink; drink, imbibe, swallow, but all the time enjoy.

Drink: not because people tell you to but drink because you want to.