Stone Brewing Co To Lengthen "Enjoy By" Dates

It's been a big week for beer. Not only has Lagunitas made that announcement, but over at Stone Brewing Co, Greg Koch announced that he is to step down as CEO of the company (link here, with a hat tip to Stan), but just today I received this email from the UK importer of Stone's beers:

"We also can confirm that Stone have agreed to extend their dates on their beer from their original 90 days to 270 days! They’re incredibly happy with how the beer is performing over time and with our refrigerated shipping, and now have the confidence to extend this into an export market that needs slightly more shelf-life."

Which is great news, as it means that we can now enjoy Stone's beers fresher for longer, right?

I mean, it's not like anyone took any notice of the dates, is it?

Or should this comment now haunt us forever?

A Night Less Ordinary with @friendsofham

So, who would turn down the opportunity to host two consecutive nights of beer and charcuterie at one of Leeds' most iconic buildings, the Corn Exchange? No, me neither. Thanks to Friends of Ham, 40-odd people (or 40 odd people, depending on who you sat next to) got to taste some unusual charcuterie paired with unusual beers.

The opener, ventrecina del Vastese was paired with a reception beer, Wild and Fyne's Cool as a Cucumber. To be fair, most people had finished the beer before the meat arrived - first beer of the night, glug and it's gone - but the fiery poke of the cured pork was gently soothed with the cucumber and mint session saison.

The air-dried mutton was lucky enough to be paired with Kernel London Sour. While the mutton was pretty lean and clean, that tell-tale note of lanolin that hangs around mutton was washed clean and crisp against the Berliner weisse styling of this beer.

When you agree to host an evening of "challenging" food and beer, you have to accept that not everything is going to be to everyone's tastes. The smoked lardo from Black Hand in Hackney had a good depth of flavour, but the short cure meant that it perhaps tasted and felt a little too much like what it was. Happily, Williams Bros/Heather Ale Alba Scots Pine Ale did a good job of restoring balance, giving a bold sluicing of sweet, piney goodness to challenged palates.

Do you like black pudding? Do you like chorizo? Then you'll love Black Chorizo! It's as simple as that, a perfect cross between two perfect types of sausage. Only challenging really if you're a bit squeamish about eating blood, although having typed that, it seems a perfectly reasonable thing to be squeamish about. This was paired with Fantome de Saison, which differed hugely from bottles I've had in the past by not smelling like a pair of dirty goats copulating in an abandoned dairy. It was soft, redolent of strawberries and mangoes, and quite ethereal. Not challenging, but certainly less ordinary.

Magret of duck, cured and smoked over beechwood, was very easy to like, and my favourite charcuterie of the night. Happily, it was paired with Siren Americano, a beer which I don't have the full story behind, but could quite happily be described as an American MilDIPA. The nutty malt and coffee wove beautifully into the fatty, unctuous duck before oodles of hops show up to kick the shit out of you.

Guanciale is whole cured pigs cheek. Being a lover of this particular cut when you buy it prepared from a butcher, I was excited by this, but the reality was a bit much even for me, the whole cheek being a lot more fatty and challenging than the little nugget of muscle that most carnivores think of when they see the word "cheek" on a menu. The cure was good, but hadn't really masked the fact that pigs cheeks spend a lot of time being buried in the soil, rooting through all manner of things that you don't want to think about. I can see it working in a carbonara though, as knowledgeable host Cat from FoH explained that it was this cut, not pancetta, that was the classic carbonara ingredient. But that's sort of the point of these events, to be pushed outside of your comfort zone a bit. Happily, judicious application of Duysters Tuverbol, an unlikely blend of a triple and lambic from Drie Fonteinen, acted as cleansing balm to this. The picture here shows two guests modelling the guanciale - apparently, you do this to warm it up and improve the texture.

Just to show I'm not a total wuss, the final charcuterie was my favourite. Salamella al fegato is a sausage of heart and liver cured with orange peel, fennel and vino cotto (boiled wine must). It's the sort of thing that I happily spread on toast for breakfast when I'm in Spain, much to the disgust of my family. It's a bit haggis-y, and so what better accompaniment than a spirit, albeit a freeze-distilled one: Watt Dickie from BrewDog was the logical conclusion to a challenging evening, and actually a pretty decent foil to the ofally nice salamella del fegato.

Props go to the whole Friends of Ham posse for conceiving of the night, finding an amazing venue, and getting me to host it. And special thanks to everyone who came and ate, drank, and was merry.

Dangerously Foreign Practices.

I really tried hard to bite my lip about this whole thing.

I said nothing when I first read it, because I've managed over the years to stop going off the deep end when I read something on the internet that irritates me. The truth is, if you look hard enough, you can find someone saying something ridiculous at any point on the web.

I said nothing when everyone went mental on Twitter about it - I even ignored this tweet from BrewDogBarJonny, sticking the boot into CAMRA (Wandsworth Beer Festival isn't a CAMRA festival). But that's not my battle to fight - if you look long enough on the web, you'll find all manner of lunacy going on. You might even find members of BrewDog's band of merry pirates saying things like "we took the recipe and BrewDogged it". Fine, I think I understand that, and jolly good luck to you. Hope it all works out.

I didn't say anything when the debate took a craft keg dimension over at Hardknott Dave's blog. I've softened my slightly rabid line on the term "craft beer", even occasionally dropping it into conversation in industry company, and watching to see if anyone flinches, or says "AHA! WAIT! YOU SAID CRAFT BEER!". I understand why people get all passionate and aerated about the debate, and sometimes think that if all that passion was channelled into the business of making great beer, and all of the tedious detail that goes along with it like proper cleaning schedules and quality control checks, the beer world would be a more reliable playground (please note: this isn't directed at anyone in particular, just a general observation based on frequently buying - and being being sent - an apparently endless parade of faulty, poorly-conceived or badly made beers, both in bottle and on draught).

But I've finally cracked. This post over at the ever-excellent Boak & Bailey actually had me LOLing and almost ROFLing. This is a great example of what happens when you take too seriously something that is obviously a ludicrous outpouring of ill-informed nonsense from someone with an ill-formed agenda. If I get this right, the thrust of the argument being taken seriously here is that bland beers are being disguised by giving them flavour. This is clearly buffoonery of the highest order. It's like moaning that some cultures disguise fundamentally bland food - chicken, say - by adding garlic, chilli, cumin and ginger to make something that is a betrayal of its source. That argument is, frankly, bollocks.

I'm starting to think that the idea of "good beer" is fundamentally flawed. There is beer that is well made, and beer that is badly made. And there is beer that I like, and beer I don't like. I tend to like well-made beer across a variety of styles. I can tell if a beer is poorly-conceived but well-made. And I can tell a badly-made beer a mile off (with the exception of the output of Cantillon, where I understand that I am in such a minority that my view is probably fundamentally wrong). But I can tell if the spices in a curry are there to disguise poor quality ingredients, or a lack of skill in the kitchen.

The lack of skill rarely resides in the quality of ingredients, but it can be glaringly obvious in how those ingredients are deployed to produce an end result.

The Golden Pints 2012

And so without further, or indeed any, ado, let's kick off with the first category, Best UK Draught Beer.

The winner of this category impressed the judge with its fusion of British pale golden ale and utterly bonkers new world hop overload. It is a beer that is so compellingly drinkable that the judge was compelled to drink several pints of it after a perfectly nice day out at the National Winter Ales Festival, falling asleep on the train home and having to get a £40 taxi from York back to Leeds. Bonus points go to the brewer of this beer for turning up at the Friends of Ham Smoked Porker / Quantum Tap Takeover and just drinking halves of it all night, ignoring everything else on offer. Yes, the Best UK Draught Beer 2012 is Magic Rock High Wire (cask version). Runner up is, well, pretty much everything else compared to High Wire to be honest.

As someone wholeheartedly committed to the death of the on-trade by running a successful bottle-wholesaling and retailing operation, the Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer is, of course, a category close to my heart. Unlike the previous category, competition here has been hard fought. Honourable mentions go to Oakham Green Devil, The Kernel Table Beer, Red Willow Ageless and, er, Magic Rock High Wire. Sadly, one beer has pummelled all of these into submission, just like Chuck Norris, an icon of uncompromising uncompromisingness held dear to the brewer of the winning beer. Yes, I'm talking #carnagenoir, James Kemp and Buxton Imperial Black India Pale Ale. Not only redefining "ruinously drinkable", but delivering a karate chop to the windpipe while it's at it.

The award of Best Overseas Draught Beer goes to a single pint of Ska Brewing Modus Hoperandi that I shared with Andy Taylor (@tabamatu) on the Leeds Open It night out. You can read a summary of that night here, but really, it's all summed up in this tweet.  Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer would have to be Southern Tier Iniquity, an imperial black ale that I bought to sell to people, and then ended up buying back from various shops at full retail value when I realised it's sheer brilliance.

I've no idea what Best Overall Beer means, but out of the beers above, I honestly couldn't choose between High Wire and Imperial Black, so over the Christmas holiday I intend to make some sort of imperial black 'n' tan out of them to see what happens.

Equally hard for me to make sense of is the Best Pumpclip or Label category. Red Willow, Moor Beer Co., and Bristol Beer Factory all look great on the bar or on the shelf, as do Marble. While it's easy to pick out a favourite beer, picking out the Best UK Brewery is a much harder task. So hard, in fact, that I'm not going to even try. The bar is set too high to split between them. And best - best at what? Making beer? No, no, I won't have it, this category is a NONSENSE! That said, the beers that I tried at Brodie's a couple of weeks ago (coupled with the odd bottle over the course of the year) were a real eye-opener - a brewery making great beers across a variety of styles, international collaborations (Mikkeller AND Three Floyds). I've not tried enough of their beers to claim them as a 2012 favourite, nor are they the best of 2012, but favourite new (to me) brewery, for sure. I'm rambling now, sorry. Argh, similarly, Best Overseas Brewery. At Borefts Beer Festival, I was blown away by Mikkeller and Jester King, so pick one, settle down, and shall we move on?

I don't get out much, so I'm not one to judge Pub/Bar of the Year. Seeing North Bar turn 15 this year was brilliant, and seeing Friends of Ham emerge blinking into the sunlight like an ickle faun was also a beautiful moment. No such qualms, however, about Beer Festival of the Year - hands down it was Indy Man Beer Con, which in my humble opinion was a world-class event. Or maybe it was Borefts Beer Festival. Hmm, I thought I had it nailed there. Oh well.

Voting for Supermarket of the Year is like voting for Best Cultural Apocalypse - whenever I buy beer there, I can feel the ghost of Hilaire Belloc tugging at my collar, whispering "From the towns all Inns have been driven: from the villages most.... Change your hearts or you will lose your Inns and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England". Supermarkets are great for picking up decent beers at knock-down prices, and while I'm always disappointed to see brewers getting locked into volume production contracts and then bleating about how there's no money it, but they have to continue at that scale otherwise they won't be able to do anything, ever, I have to congratulate Morrisons for managing to have Worthington White Shield on sale at £1.40 for ages - congratu-fucking-lations to everyone concerned for devaluing an icon of British brewing. Still tasted great though.

Both Independent Retailer of the Year and Online Retailer of the Year are a bit hard to call, not least because of my vested interests in each, so what the hell, I'll say Beer-Ritz in Headingley and BeerRitz.co.uk, just because I co-own them. And also because brilliant people who really give a shit and love beer work at the shop. That's a good enough reason, right?

As anyone who has seen me doing my "jazz-hands are the hops, clog-stomping is the malt" interpretive beer dance, writing about beer is like, er, dancing about beer. This year I've read a lot of Stan Hieronymus, so I'm nominating Brewing with Wheat as my Best Beer Book or Magazine. His prose is always elegant and concise, with enough information to provoke further thoughtful investigation rather than give definitive answers. He's sort of Yin to Garrett Oliver's Yang.

Much as I'm loving the new eBuzzing nonsense algorithms (so much more random than Wikio!), I still read through almost everything posted in my blog roll (drop me an email if you'd like to be included). Mainly for providing as constant stream of literate and engaging beer notes, tempered hugely by being great company at Borefts, and insisting that 9pm on Saturday night was "doppelbock o'clock", award for Best Beer Blog or Website award goes to The Beer Nut. Best Beer Twitterer doesn't make any sense - it's like best brewery - best at what? Favourite? What is this, a popularity contest?

Popularity is what Best Online Brewery Presence is all about. Or is it an unpopularity contest? Either way, BrewDog manage to butt into my week fairly regularly, and at least a quarter of the time I have to remind myself to step away from the computer and put all that swearing back in the cupboard at the latest piece of countercultural froth they've managed to concoct.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year was at the launch of Melissa Cole and Outlaw Brew Co's Mad Hatter Jasmine IPA, mainly because the beer was great and the food was ONLY THE BEST PORK PIE I'VE EVER EATEN!!! Quality always shines through.

In 2013 I’d most like to... get out a bit more.


DISCLOSURE - I buy and sell beer for a living, and work with almost all of the breweries mentioned above. I'm pretty sure my integrity is intact, your opinion may differ.

What The HELL Is Craft Beer?

Scoop front left, scallopcheeks dead centre

As questions go, it's an interesting starting point, but I'm not sure that anyone seriously expected the panel discussion at Indy Man Beer Con to yield any definitive conclusions.

John Clarke and Tandleman (Peter to his friends) both gave a viewpoint that was perhaps informed by many years as CAMRA stalwarts, with John perhaps having a slightly broader view of the global scene, and Peter taking more of a pubs-man approach. Both broadly agreed that anything that was good for beer had also to be good for the culture of beer, with Peter striking a surprisingly conciliatory approach born of a desire to keep pub culture alive - "there's a beer for everyone" was a quote I was surprised (but not disappointed) to hear coming from him.

What of people involved in the industry? BrewDog kingpin James Watt put on a virtuoso performance showboating against the calumnious claims of big brewers making faux craft beer, with a tirade against Blue Moon that produce applause and rolled eyes in equal measure. Big brewers don't make craft beer, small brewers make craft beer - that was the message, and indeed that sort of resonates with most accepted definitions of craft beer, although of course there is no guarantee of quality in that. Ever one for a spot of devilish advocacy, I asked James at what point in their growth BrewDog would cease to be a craft brewery, to an "ooooh, handbags!"-style response from the crowd.

There was an impassioned interjection from the floor about how craft brewing was about the willingness to experiment, and the willingness to get things wrong occasionally. My response - "By all means experiment, but if it goes wrong please don't dry hop it and call it a special" - might have been seen as an attack on the person raising that point (I think it was Jan from Marble), or on any other brewer that I waved an impassioned finger at as I said that (god knows there were plenty in the hall that I've had "polite words" with over the years). It wasn't an attack on anyone in particular, but more of general appeal not to sacrifice quality and consistency for restless, needless, or pointless experimentation.

You would imagine Toby McKenzie of Red Willow brewery to have a viewpoint, and indeed he did. He brews the beer he likes, and if people like it, that's a bonus. His most impassioned plea, though, was for everyone to stop taking everything so seriously, which I completely failed to do with my analysis.

I think craft beer is about identity politics. I think that whether you're a brewer or a drinker, it's about defining yourself as much by what you are not as by what you are. I think it's about a willingness to experiment, both as a brewer and as a drinker. It's the forerunner of something that's going to get bigger, in the same way that styles of music go from being underground cool to mass-produced products. And that's not to belittle mass-production - Sierra Nevada are an example of a brewery that has grown without ever compromising its core ideas, but who are now really turning it out in volume.

Is craft beer more a state of mind, for the brewer and the drinker, than anything else?

Brand Building in the 21st Century

Marketing has a long and chequered history. From the 1950s heyday of the Madison Avenue whizzkids (as epitomised by 'Mad Men' - as essential as 'The Wire' in terms of TV crack), where advertising was unsophisticated lying, to the 1980s and sophisticated lying, to the 21st century, where advertising at its best means being sold something without realising you're being sold something. I'm not sure it's a question of style over substance any more, it's more a question of form over function. So powerful is the Kernel brewery's no-design aesthetic that even people who have never heard of them see the bottles, pick them up and say 'ohhh, yessss'. Plain brown paper with a minimalist design aesthetic (form) communicates a legal minimum of information (function) in a way that demonstrates brand values of self-assurance, integrity and modesty - in short, everything you would want from an artisan producer of anything. It helps that the beers are kick-ass too. BrewDog's latest video, set up to plug the launch of the uncharacteristically dour beerleaks.org website, is another example of marketing trying not to be marketing. Unusually for 21st century media communication, it very explicitly gives a message, rather than simply giving a few carefully researched cues from you draw a conclusion that appears to be your own. Whereas a meta-analysis of the Kernel's branding leads to believe in the brand via it's no-brand identity, BrewDog hit you in the face so hard that it almost backfires. Surely they can't think I need the message spelled out this obviously? While everyone currently puts the a peculiarly British boot into BrewDog for being a success story (sure, it's annoying that they can't make enough beer, but you didn't ever really believe that whole 'Beer For Punks' schtick, did you?), I'm saddened that they feel the need to big themselves up by doing others down. Their beers are great enough to speak for themselves, and to try and further their aims by picking on Fosters, Stella and Carlsberg seems a bit like the school brainiac trying to outwit the rugby team by calculating differential equations out loud. We get it, but it's just a bit annoying. Which brings us to Wells and Youngs' campaign for Bombardier, which I will never forget hearing pronounced as 'Bombar-dee-yay' by a host at a drinks industry awards ceremony, no doubt to (as then was) Charles Wells' immense annoyance. While this may not be the most sophisticated bit of brand-building (indeed, it's only 21st century by virtue of it having been made in 2011), it pushes all the right buttons. Fading actor - check. Schoolboy innuendo - check. Common catchphrase appropriated for advertising purposes - bang on, err, I mean check. By an incredible coincidence, just as I'm writing this the ad has popped up on TV, and I have to say that it plays a lot better on telly than it does via the web. Sure, the tittersome reference to the 'Bush & Fiddle' is brain-numbingly tedious, evoking a genuine moment of 'no, did they really do that?' (and not in a good way) but the moment where the Bombardier heads the first cannonball is priceless. Sadly, they lose my attention again at the end where the Bombardier whips a bottle out of his trousers. That's (a) unappealing and (b) unlikely to be anything close to an appropriate serving temperature. .

Playing With The Big Boys

I'm not going to pretend that this post will be any good, but it might have some interesting news.

I'm posting at an unusually late hour because I've just got in from a night out with the Dandy BrewPunks of Fraserburgh. It's been a lot of fun, and has encompassed a whole range of beers - Fernandes Barge [Something] - very tasty low abv blonde ale, and then things heated up. A bottle of BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge - very tasty, just what it should be. Flying Dog Wild Dog - complex and drinkable. Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron - complex, but foghorn-like. Great Divide Double IPA - a little tired, although tasty. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA - again, tired but tasty.

But the main purpose of their visit was to look at some locations for the next BrewDog bar. It seems that Leeds is next on their radar, with some very targetted visits from James and Martin, along with bar manager Bruce from BrewDog Aberdeen.

Nothing is signed, the shop window is still strictly for browsing, but it seems likely that BrewDog will open a bar in Leeds at some point this year.

Raise your hand if you think that's good news.

*raises hand*

.

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge - The Launch

When BrewDog's James Watt asked me, Pete Brown and Mark Dredge if we'd be interested in hosting a beer dinner at Musa in Aberdeen, and then brewing a beer the next day, the answer was an easy yes. Of course, the bigger discussion was: Who gets their name first on the label?

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge is an homage to the beers and brewing traditions that have rocked our world. Classic traditional Saaz hops married to continual hopping. The old and new brought together to try and make a statement about where beer has come from, and where it should be heading. A beer born of blood, sweat and tears. Well, that was the idea. In the end, we were so partied-out from the beer dinner the night before that no amount of lifting malt and digging out mash tuns could shift the sense that we'd had a chance for greatness, but blown it by overindulging.

But wait, what beer from yonder fridge breaks? It is the Hotpoint, and Avery Brown Dredge is the sun. The sample I have in front of me is a pre-release taster, before the dry-hopping was carried out. It's a big, malty beast of a beer, initially bready, but with a familiar slightly antiseptic snap of Saaz hops. In the mouth, the hops kick hard against the pale malt sweetness. Dry-hopping will up the aroma. What have we created? It is only a matter of time before hopfen-helles-bock becomes a globally adopted and celebrated beer style. Or is it, as the label suggests, an imperious pilsner? Come along, try some, and decide for yourself.

Kill your heroes. Make your own idols. Whatever. Just drink our beer.

7.30pm, Leeds, North Bar. Or London at The Rake and The Jolly Butchers.

.

Blood, Sweat and Beers: 36 Hours with the Dandy BrewPunks of Fraserburgh

As I struggled to pick up a knife and fork the next morning, I realised that I'd had quite an action packed 36 hours in BrewDog's company. The final straw was attempting to dig out 1400kg of wet grain from the mash tun. Well, it was 1400kg dry, who knows what it was after a mash and sparge - a couple of tonnes? No wonder spearing a button mushroom with a fork was suddenly such an ordeal.

I was in town with Pete Brown and Mark Dredge to brew a beer and host a sell-out beer dinner at Musa, BrewDog's restaurant in Aberdeen. You can have a look at the menu here. I won't wax lyrical about what a great job we did of the beer and food matching (we did), but what I will say is that the cooking there was of an exceptionally high calibre - great quality, expertly executed, with not a foot wrong the whole night. The chef there, Dave More, is a serious talent. We ate and drank into the small hours, and drank some more at BrewDog Aberdeen for good measure.

All of which would explain why team Avery Brown Dredge (as the beer will be called) was such a shambles the following morning. As we babbled our way to the brewery, it quickly became apparent that rather than arrive with a recipe and a plan, we'd arrived with a concept - a noble-hopped strong lager. It turns out that concepts are all very well, but they don't get beers brewed. Sensing that what we needed was a bit of mild bullying, Martin took us out to the hop store and with a cruel-to-be-kind mantra of 'Do what you want, it's your beer', frightened us into formulating a recipe.

1330kg of lager malt. 70kg of malted wheat. 50kg of Saaz hops. 5000 litres of water. Mashing in via an auger with a hopper on the floor, heaving sacks of malt into it, the previous night's cobwebs start to lift. Standing over the mash tun making sure the mash is smooth by pummelling it with a shovel blows away a few more. Head brewer Stewart Bowman supervising our efforts to a soundtrack of obscure German punk ensures that everything goes smoothly. A lunch of fried fish, cooked in a wok of boiling oil heated on their new nanobrew plant, and then we retire to the office for the really hard work - writing the label text.

If ever you want a demonstration of the acute short-term effects of alcoholic overindulgence, put three hungover award-winning beer writers in a room and ask them for 120 word of text to go on the back label of a beer. There must have been a point where, witnessing the dazzling creative power of (and I quote) "the very finest beer writers this side of the Atlantic and rockstars of the craft brewing movement" stumbling over words - no, not even being able to start putting words together - James and Martin must have been considering throwing the lever on the mash tun, throwing us out, and pretending the whole thing had never happened. I nearly fainted digging out the mash tun, but that was easier than coaxing words out of Brown and Dredge.

Of course, the beer isn't even half made yet. After the fermentation, there's a month of lagering and dry hopping to come. We're hoping it's going to be a special beer. It's a homage to beers that we like, brewers that have made a difference to our lives and to our writing, and traditions that need to be worshipped and then smashed to pieces.

BrewDog have come a very long way in a very short time. They've made a lot of friends, and rubbed plenty of people up the wrong way. But the great thing about spending a day in the chaos of their stuffed-to-overflowing brewery that you get a feel for their passion and their playfulness, and also the way that James and Martin can inspire those things in others. The great beer is a fantastic bonus.

Now Drinking: Birra del Borgo Castagnale

There's not much to add to this video, to be honest. Unusually for me, I sort of stay on message, cover all the points, and say what I set out to say. Maybe the only other thing to add from a tasting point of view is that the beer has a nice classic English hop character that comes through in late the finish. I was too busy wagging my tongue to pick it up while making the video.

Founder of Birra del Borgo Leonardo Di Vincenzo popped into the shop last week, along with Brooks Carretta, who is currently brewing at Birra del Borgo, but will shortly be heading off to oversee the brewing operations at the New York outpost of the Eataly group. It was a bit of a surprise to see them, to say the least. Obviously, they hadn't just got on a train to come and see me - they were in Leeds visiting Vertical Drinks, the UK importer of Birra del Borgo, Le Baladin and Gradisca beers.

I always get a bit overawed meeting brewers whose beers I like. I feel compelled to pump them for technical information about their beers, which is a crappy conversational technique because (a) the information is interesting to me, but perhaps useless outside of the context of my brain, and (b) I'm sure they'd rather talk about something other than work.

In the course of a conversation lubricated by Marble Tawny and BrewDog-Mikkeller Devine Rebel Mortlach Reserve, we chatted about the recent collaborative brew between Leonardo, Teo Musso and Sam Calagione (a shade too much wild thyme, apparently), techniques for making easy drinking session ales (if you're going for something low %abv and delicate, you can think about missing out the first hop addition all together) and late hopping techniques (I asked if they added hops after 'flame out' - 'sure, to the whirlpool. About a ton' was Brooks' laconic reply).

Anyway, Brooks and Leonardo were in the UK to do a brew of Castagnale (4.2%abv) at Everards. It will feature as part of the JD Wetherspoon's winter ale festival (website here), which has an interesting line-up of beers - plenty of trad, and a decent smattering of one-offs. And it will be coming to pub near you (if you live in the UK).

Now Drinking: BrewDog Chaos Theory

I've just completed my revision for my talk at the Hay Ale and Literature Festival. Not that I'm much of a one for cramming, but I did think it was at least worth looking up a few hop varieties and brewery locations of the beers I will be talking about. Hey, none of us are born with knowledge - did you think I absorbed it by osmosis from the beer?

I was one of those annoying university students who paid attention in lectures, and so revision was just that - looking over my notes and saying 'ah yes, I know that already'. Whether I manage to retain the same composure in front of a group of real ale fans tomorrow as I rhapsodise about Vienna lager, black lager, extra IPA, trappist ale and weizen doppelbock is another thing. Oh well,they can but boo and throw beer over me - that hasn't happened since a particularly disastrous gig at Salisbury Arts Centre in about 1991.

I should really be in bed by now, but I just received an exciting beer-related invite that, should it actually happen, should be a few days of extreme fun. Sorry to be annoying and go "ooh, I can't tell you what it is yet", but ooh, I can't tell you what it is yet. And like anyone who is reading this blog, I decided to celebrate exciting news with a glass of beer.

BrewDog's Chaos Theory (7.1%abv) is back by popular demand. It was inexplicably delisted about 18 months ago, for who knows what reason. My guess is that Nelson Sauvin became too fashionable to piss away on an everyday beer, not that there is anything dreary or mundane about Chaos Theory. It's their single hop Nelson Sauvin IPA, and it's a great glass of beer. I really like beers that suggest things without actually forming a committee and going on a march with a banner that says "LOOK AT ME! I'M STUFFED FULL OF INGREDIENTS!" and despite it's strength, Chaos Theory manages to do that. It's just beery enough to appeal to regular beer drinkers, but has enough subtle hop-derived fruitiness to be appealing.

Grab some while you can.

Mikkeller-BrewDog I Hardcore You

Here's how you get the best out of Mikkeller-BrewDog's I Hardcore You:

1. Buy a case (or any number of bottles, but after tasting it, you're going to wish you'd bought a case)

2. Go into the garden and dig a really deep hole. Make it as deep as you can be bothered to dig, and then dig a couple of feet more. This step is very important.

3. Take two bottles of I Hardcore You from your case, then put the rest in the bottom of the hole you've just dug and fill it in.

4. Open a bottle of I Hardcore You, and drink it, marvelling at the toasted red-amber colour, the nose so redolent of sweet toffeeish malt and pungent, almost mentholated hops that it takes your breath away. Be washed away on the crescendo of caramel and pine needles in the finish. Find yourself at the end of it all too quickly.

5. Repeat step 4

6. Attempt to repeat step 4, but realise you have buried the rest of the I Hardcore You a little deeper than you can normally be bothered to dig. Concede that, given the ruinously drinkable nature of I Hardcore You, it's probably for the best that you can't access the rest of the case.

Seriously, this blend of Hardcore IPA and Mikkeller I Beat You, despite being 9.5%abv, is one of the most compellingly drinkable beers I've had in a long time. As ever, there is a bit of hype that goes along with it - BrewDog claim on their blog that "As far as we are aware this is the first collaboration of this type anywhere in the world. The first time a collaboration beer has been made by blending beers from the respective brewers together". Without even thinking too hard about it, I thought of De Struise-De Molen 'Black Damnation' and Birra del Borgo-Cantillon 'Duchessic' (OK, the second one is a bit obscure). I'm sure you can think of others.

But even without the hype, this is one seriously exciting beer. Resistance is useless.

TRANSPARENCY STATEMENT: BrewDog sent me four bottles of this, and a T-shirt. The T-shirt is quite fly, although wearing it, I do feel like a 40 year old man in a 25 year-old's clothes.

Castle Rock Harvest Pale Ale

One of the more unusual things about this year's Champion Beer of Britain, crowned at the CAMRA-organised Great British Beer Festival in London this week, is that it's available at my local supermarket. Not just that, but it's on special offer - four bottles for £5.50, a bargain for any decent beer, let alone a Champion Beer of Britain.

I've sampled a few bottles over the last couple of days, and it's a perfectly decent beer. In bottle, I have to say that it's not wildly exciting. I didn't get to try any at the GBBF, and haven't tried it on cask anywhere else, but as we all know, there can be considerable disparity between cask and bottle versions of the same beer. One of the beauties of English cask ale is drinkability - no other style of beer packs so much flavour into such a low %abv beer.

They day after Harvest Pale was announced as CBOB, there was a a tweet from James Watt at BrewDog noting that it only rated a 3.02 on Ratebeer.com - you can see some of the tweets that were exchanged here. As Mitchel Adams suggests, that was a bit of a mean tweet, but that was James' opinion, and he's entitled to express it. But equally, it sort of misses the point. That's also the rating for the bottled version - as you can see from one of the tweets there, that cask version merits a 3.35. But please don't take my bandying these scores around as my endorsement of any rating system - please read on.

CAMRA have a set of objectives and an agenda to their judging, which is totally different to Ratebeer.com. Perhaps oddly, the CBOB doesn't even have to be the best beer at the festival - the way beers make their way to the final is by being nominated by regional CAMRA groups, so it's perfectly possible that there will be good beers at the festival that haven't even been put forward for the CBOB competition. For what it's worth, I thought Fyne Ales' Jarl (4%abv) was a cracking pint (well, a cracking third in my place), but it wasn't in the running. Equally, a lot of the highest-rated beers on Ratebeer.com are of a particular style - in fact, 17 of the top 20 are imperial stouts. Great, awesome, mighty beers, but unlikely candidates for a CBOB award.

The point that I'm labouring here, I guess, is that we probably do need all of the different competitions and ratings sites that are available. As long as you understand the system behind the rating, then it's useful to have all that information available to you. If you truly believe that there is only one way to rate a beer, then good for you, but personally, I don't. It can be sessionable, it can be mighty, it can be ephemeral, but it can't be (and doesn't need to be) all three to be good. If you want to see how many people have rated a beer as "the best beer in the world, ever", head over to the Oxford Bottled Beer Database and use the search term 'bbitwe' in the search box on the homepage. I've had quite a lot of the beers on that list, and on the right day, with a bit of goodwill, they are pretty decent. Well, maybe not Bavaria 8.6, but I do have a soft spot for Amstel, fresh-brewed in it's home country and served on a hot day.

So, Castle Rock Harvest Pale Ale rocked CAMRA's world this year. My ale of the GBBF was Fyne Ales Jarl. And the bottle of BrewDog/Mikkeller I Hardcore You I've just drunk has to be one of the best IPAs I've tried in a long time.

The beauty of being a beer-lover is that all of the above can be true.

BrewDog Are Dead: Long Live BrewDog!

I shouldn't really be writing about BrewDog, and here's why.

When the whole thing around Tokyo* blew up, after a complaint was made to the Portman Group about the phrase "intergalactic fantastic" hinting at the use of hallucinogens, James Watt (MD of BrewDog, or Emperor Penguin, as he prefers to be known) asked if I'd like to write a defence of their 18.2%abv beer. I did so, and was pleased that it made a lot of online and print media. My take on it was that very strong beer is responsible for drunkenness in the same way that Michelin-starred restaurants are responsible for obesity. I still think that's true, and rather vainly, I still think it's a rather neat analogy.

Of course, when it came out that it was James himself who had complained to the Portman Group about the wording on the label, I was furious. I'd been made a pawn in their publicity machine, and vowed never to write anything about them again. Looking back, I still think it was a pathetic stunt, and when I explained to a friend what had happened, his response was "Christ, what a douche". Yes, my friend is American, but he's also right.

What I love about James (and BrewDog) is their total self-belief. It's not enough for them just to brew great beers - they want to be the coolest kids on the block too. I love their sense of "if you're not down with BrewDog, then it's because you don't get it, you square" mentality. I'm not saying I agree with it, I just admire their cussed enthusiasm for that marketing technique. For them, it's not enough to just like their beers - you've got to buy into the lifestyle as well. Again, a great marketing technique - it served James Lavelle well when he launched Mo Wax records, and made him rich and successful, and this same approach is going to work for BrewDog.They're not just selling beer - they're selling a lifestyle, an attitude, and if you don't get it, the you're part problem.

Now, with The End of History, BrewDog have installed themselves as the Turner Prize of the beer world. They know that as long as they can create a bit of controversy, they can make the front pages. It's the Sex Pistols crossed with Damien Hirst. It's Pete Doherty Lite. It's Sigue Sigue Sputnik for the 21st Century.

There are many reasons to be irritated BrewDog generally, and James in particular, not least his response to some of his critics (responded to here and in full here). My main beef with them is that they are so busy arseing around with 55%abv quintuple freeze-hopped eisbocks that they can't brew their other beers fast enough to keep up with demand. And make no mistake, the demand for their beers is immense. Even when I was furious with them, I still drank their beers, because their beers are great. Well, maybe I left off them for a few weeks, but as is always the case with BrewDog, resistance is useless.

I can see that many people find beer in a stuffed animal is a bit distasteful. No-one, surely, believes BrewDog's assertion that they did it to honour the animal - they did it for publicity, and not for the squirrel or the stoat, but for themselves. Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of taxidermy - one of my prize possessions is an albino mole that my grandfather caught when he was working as a gardener. It's a family heirloom, but I don't feel the need to sew a bottle of beer into it. It's sort of distasteful, sort of ironic, sort of postmodern.

It's not about beer, it's not about art, it's not about irony. It's about BrewDog.

BrewDog's Next Beer: Ahab's Undoing

"Ahab's Undoing is a Polydimensional meta-rauchbock, sealed in a Brazilian Rosewood kilderkin and implanted into the abdomen of a live sperm whale, named Billie Joe in honour of Punk pioneers Green Day. The whale then roams the seven seas for 50 years, monitored by satellite and armed with nukes to keep the sushi-eaters at bay, before being lured into an arena at Deep Sea World (Inverkeithing, Firth of Forth) where the beer is "tapped" with a harpoon gun and "poured" via the animal's blowhole, into sequin-encrusted replicas of Duchamp's urinal (customed-made by Damien Hirst, using telekinesis) which are then presented to a select gathering of truly open-minded beer lovers.

"In an attempt to subvert the capitalist structures propping up the ossified cadaver of the bland booze mainstream, we will not be charging money for the opportunity to sample beer history in the making - instead, interested parties will be required to hand over their firstborn offspring, to be used as fermentable material in our next opus-in-waiting, which is tentatively titled Brave New World.

"The beer itself is infused with an innovative mixture of protozoan zooplankton from the South Pacific and top-quality bespoke dogfood (reflecting the life-cycle of the whale), and is brewed to an unprecedented -50%abv. This singularly unique and uncommonly individualistic barnstorming tour de force of antialcoholic exclusivity will induce such a profound state of sobriety in the discerning rebel iconoclast that he or she will never think of anything the same way twice for the rest of their taboo-busting and preconception-immolating livespan.

It's a truly insurrectionary brew, the beer equivalent of the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. Don yer sowesters, friends - thar she fuckin' blows!"

[Emailed to me by Dan Payne, Beer-Ritz employee extraordinaire, demon cinematic projectionist, and DJ of rare talent. Thanks Dan]

Drinking the Unobtainable

Much as I love getting sent beer that is both (a) free and (b) unobtainable by normal means, I do wonder what to do with it. Of course, the obvious answer is "drink it, you fool", and so I have. And to justify drinking it, I'm also going to tell you what I think.

I'm not sure that anyone, anywhere is indulging in the sort of heroic folly that is Stuart Howe's '52 Brews' project. Not only is he running an ever-expanding commercial brewery, he is pushing the limits of what one brewer can achieve in a year. So far, everything I've tried from this project has been great; in the last couple of weeks, Winter Berry Strong and ESB Barley Champagne been impressive, with their traditional-ale-on-steroids character, big but beautifully balanced.

So far, what I've enjoyed most has been the 50 Hop IPA. Not only does it sound cool, it tastes great too, with layers of different hop character unfolding in the glass and across the palate. Totally brilliant, and endlessly drinkable. Well, I say endlessly - I'd like to be given the opportunity to put that to the test. The whole project oozes the sort of unhinged brilliance that you'd expect from a chap who not only routinely wears cufflinks, but also knows who Angerfist is.

At the other end of the country, displaying a similar sort of inventiveness (only with less cufflinks), the Dandy BrewPunks of Fraserburgh have released a tiny amount of their latest test brew, Prototype 27. In the assumption that you can never have too much of a good thing, they're taken their World Beer Cup gold medal-winning Hardcore IPA and aged it in a 1982 Caol Ila cask with 50kg of Scottish raspberries.

Like a lot of their more off-the-wall beers, this has left me not really knowing what to think - yes, it's a complex and tasty beverage, but I'm not totally convinced that it's a complex and tasty beer. The raspberry character sits alongside the pithy hops quite happily in the aroma, although the Islay phenolics distract somewhat. On the palate, the dry raspberry character comes to the fore, masking the thrilling, hoppy drinkability of the original, and then more phenolic smoke comes creeping in. On their blog, they describe it as "almost like a little bonfire inside a giant raspberry bouncy castle". I'd agree with that, although whether that is a positive or a negative description, I'll leave to your imagination.

Rooster's Brewery Retain Gold at World Beer Cup

I don't really 'do' news. I'm not sure why - maybe others do it better and more consistently, or maybe just because I'm lazy and prefer to talk about myself. Whatever, sometimes you just have to get off the couch, put Jeremy Kyle* on live pause and pick up the phone to speak to a brewer.

I did just that earlier today, and gladly, because the brewer I was calling was Sean Franklin, MD of Rooster's Brewery, near Harrogate in North Yorkshire. They've had a run of luck at the World Beer Cup (WBC), and by luck I mean a deserved recognition for their years of hard graft and commitment to producing iconic pale beers with stunningly bright hop character. Not only did they take gold in their category (English Style Summer Ale, whatever that's supposed to mean) with Leghorn (4.3%abv), but they also took silver in the same category with Yorkshire Pale Ale (4.3%abv). As if this isn't remarkable enough, this is the third consecutive World Beer Cup at which they've taken gold in that category. If that's not cause enough for celebration, I don't know what is. I'm particularly pleased for them as not only are their beers great, but they're a lovely bunch of people. I chose Sean to help me with the judging at last year's awards for the British Guild of Beer Writers, and his thoughtful input was very valuable. Not only does he know his beer, he knows his writers too.

How will I celebrate their achievement? Well, Rooster's don't usually bottle their beers for commercial release, but had to do so to enter the WBC. Fortunately for me, they were also good enough to give me a few bottles of a couple of their private brews - two double IPAs, one hopped with Nelson Sauvin, the other with Chinook and Amarillo. They are bottle-conditioned and sealed with crown caps that contain a little plastic liner. This is the same closure that the latest crop of Italian imports from Birra del Borgo and Baladin are sporting. Clearly if a three-times World Beer Cup winner is using this unusual closure, as well as a couple of well-respected Italian breweries, then it must have something going for it.

Did I take my eye off the ball there and geek out, talking about closures rather than beer? Yes! Am I looking forward to opening one of those double IPAs tonight? You betcha! Are you going to join me in congratulating Sean and his team at Rooster's? You'd better!

Congratulations too to Thornbridge, Shepherd Neame, and BrewDog, who also brought home some silverware for the cabinet.



*for overseas readers: Jeremy Kyle is a cross between a TV shock jock and a relationship counsellor. He counsels the sort of people who think it's a good idea to go on TV to resolve their issues. It's the televisual equivalent of bear-baiting in a 19th century lunatic asylum.

Right Here, Right Now

Beer geeks (and I include myself in that non-derogatory term) will be delighted by the news that Vertical Drinks (their Facebook group is here) have just become UK importers for Delaware-based Dogfish Head, producers of many celebrated beers including their 90 Minute IPA, one of the classics of the Double IPA style.

Flying Dog also seem to be on a roll at the moment, with some of their more unusual offerings landing in Europe yesterday, including Raging Bitch (terrible name, great beer). Stone are musing about opening a brewery in Europe. BrewDog are building a reputation (and a deservedly successful business) on unashamedly bold, American-inspired ales.

This is great, but I wonder, does it take some of the magic out of beer geekery? Mark Dredge is talking about his forthcoming beer trip, and in fact it's something that I am (or rather, was) hoping to do next summer. To me, it makes sense going to the source and drinking these beers in their natural habitat. But having them easily available in the UK? Doesn't having these beers dropped in your lap take some of the shine out of it? Do these beers speak of a place and an ethos if you can mail-order them to your door, or go and buy them in Tescos?

Worst Beer in the World Created in Belgian Brewery

One of the worst beers ever brewed has apparently been created in a small Belgian brewery.

Proprietor of De Spoofbrouwerij, Piers ran dom Shite, says that he wanted to do something to "really put our little brewery on the map".

"We used every technique we could think of - extreme continuous hopping, freeze and boil distillation, smashing the malt with the little toffee hammers, everything. At one point, we even fired hops out of a cannon straight into the boiling copper" explained Mr ran dom Shite. "We used many different strains of yeast - cultured, uncultured and barbarous - to get the fermentation going. Then we just wandered off and left it over the weekend. It smelled pretty bad when we came back, but we skimmed the scum off and put it into the old barrels".

Months of barrel ageing have produced a beer that unpleasantly acidic, overly bitter, and full of dangerous higher alcohols. Members of various beer rating and advocacy communities are thought to be appalled by the description of the beer, but nonetheless excited to try it.

-------------------------------------------------------

For the avoidance of doubt, this is a spoof, inspired by this. It's one thing making a beer big, bold and beautiful, it's quite another thing to go all out for numbers. It's like making the noisiest car in the world, or, as Garrett Oliver says, the saltiest food - it's missing the point completely.

Complexity, length and balance - that's what it's all about, not hoppiest, strongest or bitterest. Sure, push the envelope, but remember - it's meant to be beer. I was particularly impressed that the ratings for Mikkeller X Hop Juice say things like one dimensionsal, thin, funny experiment, but it still chalks up a high rating.

(As I was writing this, I wondered if BrewDog's Tactical Nuclear Penguin fell foul of the "shooting for the high numbers" rule, but I don't think it does - it's an interesting beer liqueur in its own right, unusual and extreme, but still enjoyable, albeit with a bit of prior knowledge of what it is. And anyway, TNP is no longer the strongest beer in the world - it's been eclipsed by Schorschbrau Schorsch Bock)