The BeerCast

Sadly, Doctor, I have a previous engagement to attend

We’re still in the midst of our strong beer protest month at the moment – but we’re going to waver very slightly for the next few paragraphs. This week sees the SIBA Great Northern Beer Festival take place in Manchester, and we’ll be there on Thursday and Friday – doing some judging, and drinking some beer. With that in mind, a session-strength preview post is needed to look at some of the good – not to mention new – things on offer.

Being a SIBA festival (run in association with Greater Manchester CAMRA) the majority of beers on offer will be well below the raised duty threshold. Having said that, the comprehensive beer list does include three entries over 7.5% – Cumbrian Croglin Vampire and Hardknott Queboid (both 8.0%), and Stringers Mutiny (9.3%) – we’ve sampled the Hardknott beer before, but will definitely try the other two if they appear during our time there.

We frequently bang on about festivals being a great chance to try something new – and this one does that in spades, being far from our tartan-decked homelands in the frozen north.* Having our hop-honed noses close to the grapevine (hopvine, surely) breweries such as Hawkshead, York, Daleside, Marble, Coniston and Dent have all featured on our BeerCasts at one time or another. But in a festival setting such as this, each will be bringing several of their range to try – e.g. Hawkshead NZPA (6.0%) and Coniston Infinity IPA (6.0%) – two must-try beers.

For me – and it may be the bloggerati gene talking here – it’s always the ultra-rare that jump off the beer list. Things from producers I’ve never heard of. In the same way as visitors from far afield to the Scottish Real Ale Festival head straight for something like Tin Pot Mango Pot (something even I’ve yet to experience), I’ll be after the likes of Hopstar Smokey Joe’s Black Beer (4%) and Milltown Slubber’s Gold (4.2%). Producers who bring only one beer – such as Old Bear Great Bear (3.9%) – are also compulsory in my book.

Other things I’m looking forward to include the beers from RedWillow and Offbeat breweries. The former have been winning rave reviews since ex-homebrewer Toby McKenzie took that brave step into production last year. The chipotle-infused Smokless (5.7%) sounds fantastic, as does his big IPA Ageless (7.2%). Offbeat were also founded in 2010, by Michelle Kelsall – who previously produced the wonderful Windie Goat beers in Ayrshire. Now re-branded in Crewe, hopefully they are just as good.

So plenty of things to look forward to – the festival takes place at the Ramada Picadilly in Manchester. Doors open at 4pm on Thursday the 27th, running until 10:30pm. It then opens 12pm-10:30pm Friday and Saturday. Entry is £3, which includes a £1 deposit on a tasting glass. We’ll be there on Thursday helping out with the SIBA judging, then all day Friday – including a special appearance with my bitter-loving father. Check back for reports on what happened just into the start of November. If you see me, come and say hi. Cheers!

*Even if I was born 35 miles from Manchester. As my dear old Nanna used to say – “Are you a Scotchman yet, Richie?”

SIBA’s GNBF Official website

Blogger, RateBeer legend and all-round philanthropist Craig Garvie recently returned from a short break to London. The above photo is what he picked up. I don’t know what’s in the carrier bag on the top step – maybe a packet of crisps or something…

The Scottish Real Ale Festival is done for another year, and once again it generated a fair bit of debate. In fact, 2011 seems to have been one of the more contentious SRAF’s of recent years. You may have noticed our daily posts didn’t make it into the final day (Saturday) – an official tweet was released mid-afternoon stating they had run out of beer, and the festival had closed early as a result.

So in many ways, the event was a success – following the difficulty of a venue switch, to get that many people in the doors to drink Adam House dry was pretty impressive. Certainly, the round-the-block queue when we turned up on Friday night showed a healthy interest in Scottish beer. The twelve new brewers in the lineup had their products showcased – and one of them (Kelso’s Tempest Brewery) undoubtedly won the BeerCast beer of the festival with the magnificent RyePA.

So why the gnashing of teeth? This seems to lead back to two issues – the victors of the showcase award, the Champion Beer of Scotland (CBoS), and the venue the festival was held in. We had a direct input into the former, so let’s deal with that first. The overall winner was Isle of Skye Cuillin Beast. Second was Cairngorm Black Gold, and third Houston Peter’s Well. Amongst the (small but selective) Scottish blogosphere a resounding ‘errr…what?’ emanated.

No household names there. I include myself in the bafflement, as admittedly (and I mean no slight by this) I had never heard of the third place beer until it was announced. As a member of the judging panel I copped a fair bit of flack for the result – but we had nine beers placed in front of us, and those were the ones that scored the highest on the day. Cuillin Beast had a great toffee sweetness and a boozy finish, so I don’t regret that it came out on top.

There is an issue here though – more than one, in fact – the selection process takes an age to get the beers through to the final, and then at the final one off-day can scupper everything. The beer I scored lowest was very poor indeed, only later did I learn it’s one of my favourite Scottish beers – this is clearly the danger of a one-off judging event. Of course there are plenty of better beers around at the moment – but on the day, those three got the nods from the experienced panel.

It’s great for a relatively small producer like Isle of Skye that they won CBoS. On the day, Cuillin Beast was the best beer we tasted – so congratulations to them. There may be some discussion on the structure of the process – the lag of twelve months between the rounds should be addressed, for example – but time will tell. Lost in the fallout was the fact that a 7% barley wine won CBoS for the first time – definitely an under-utilised style north of the Border.

The other SRAF issue that cropped up in conversations on Twitter and in person was the venue – Adam House on Chambers Street. The usual venue on George Street was unavailable as the Assembly Rooms are being renovated, hence the switch. The multi-level hall was always going to be tricky, with everything spread over four floors (five if you include the toilets). Crowds at beer festivals always happen, but throw in all those stairs and it becomes far trickier. Personally I didn’t witness any incidents, but hopefully it all passed smoothly.

The biggest bone of contention however, was the heat. Trying to keep the smaller rooms cool (even with the typical inclement June weather outside) was very hard. Even on the relatively empty Trade Session Wednesday, the temperature was getting to the people, and the products. We spoke with one brewer who took his beer off as it had been sitting in the lines too long in the stifling room, and later on in the week people were actually leaving as it was too much.

This is a shame, hopefully these were just teething problems that were caused by the new venue. Beer festivals are inherently warm and uncomfortable when busy, and as a method for showing beer they leave a lot to be desired. But as a method of getting hundreds of beers together for the public, there may not be a better alternative. Keeping the beer as it should be served under these conditions is tough, and clearly at some point things took a downhill slide.

But the SRAF will return, and so will we. There were some great beers out there, I think personally I got through about 25 – from dark roasty porters to lemongrass infused golden ales. We got a surprise CBoS, but one that will hopefully lead the brewery to bigger and greater things. With the stupendous Fyne Ales Jarl winning the SIBA competition, look for good things to come at next year’s festival – just don’t wear too many layers…

Day three, really – having been at the Trade Session on the Wednesday – but the second day of the SRAF is always the busy one, occurring on a Friday. And so it proved, as we turned up to Adam House* to find an enormous queue stretching round the block. Having piled our way through twenty-three different beers over the previous two days, and faced with the prospect of queuing in the rain for another shot, we decided to check out the other beer festival currently happening in the city.

BrewDog have been hosting an ‘alternative’ beer festival all week just round the corner, so we descended into Little Saigon and levered our way inside to find….a fairly typical Friday night in the BrewDog Bar. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary was the mythical hopinator bubbling away, coursing a different edge through Punk IPA. In fact, I much preferred it to the new Punk recipe, the sweeter hops gave the beer a more rounded edge – which itself is more rounded than Punk Mark I.

BrewDog are all about the tinkering, and I’m not sure what they’ve done to Chaos Theory but it’s far more bitter than it used to be – some puckering astringency on the end where there used to be citrusy grapefruit. Royal Virility Performance was also on, but we went straight for the only non-BD beer on offer – a strangely non-inclusive vibe for a ‘beer festival’. Lost Abbey Angel’s Share is a monstrous 12.5% oak-aged barley wine that feels like drinking Irish creosote. Thick, chewy tar, mixed with that sweet boozy alcohol and fruity chocolate. Just incredible.

At this stage the bar was crammed to capacity, so we headed out and watched a couple of the Cowgate’s finest inviting out a couple of doormen for an altercation, as a group of twenty men dressed as Where’s Wally? meandered past. Not something you see outside the SRAF. We also bumped into one of our other contributors who said the heat had been so intense in the SRAF venue he’d decided to leave – so maybe it was the better decision to seek out the alternative, such as it was.

Best beer of day two of the SRAF – Lost Abbey Angel’s Share

*Apart from a certain BeerCaster, who went to the Assembly Rooms on George Street – venue for last year’s festival…

After yesterday’s Trade Session the Scottish Real Ale Festival kicked off today with the judging for the 2011 Champion Beer of Scotland. After last year’s win for Highland Orkney Blast it was a question of if Rob Hill could carry on with his brewery’s dominance of the CBoS title, having won three of the last four. The BeerCast were once again invited to help with the judging process, and although there was one of Rob’s beers on the blind shortlist, it didn’t feature in the final top three from the judges selection. Eight different brewers were represented in the final, and it was a tough act to pick a winner.

Whether this was down to the condition of the beer, or the fluctuating nature of cask ale, or just the play of chance, the judges scores were very close. The panel consisted of brewers, publicans, beer writers and CAMRA regional chairs, and after almost three hours of deliberation, the results were announced. In third place, Houston Peter’s Well. Second – Cairngorm Black Gold. The winner – and 2011 Champion Beer of Scotland – Skye Cuillin Beast. Wait…what? A barley wine winning CBoS? In terms of style, that’s good to see – something unusual taking the plaudits – but in all honesty, it was the best beer of the nine on the day of the judging.

With that, it was time to hit the floor to sample some of the other beers on offer. With the lack of expected favourites reaching the CBoS finals, it was time to head for something from Highland (although Dark Munro did win the Mild category). Island Hopping was a good start to the festival day, some sweetness in there but a good touch of hop to offset. We’re all about trying new things on the BeerCast, and the Tinpot Brewery are one of the newest producers in Scotland, putting their interesting recipes out through TSA’s equipment in Stirling. Their Thai Pot (5.0%) had something of the lager tops about it, but a zesty lemon edge that just about worked in it’s favour.

Unfortunately that couldn’t be said about Devon Ales Thick Black Stout. However, this was probably down to the temperature of the main hall more than anything – it wasn’t that thick and the roasty flavours mellowed out a little too much. In fact, the mild I had next topped it – Luckie Ales Midnycht Myld had a lot of things to like about it – the inherent thinness of the style was helped along by a subtle roast and a touch of (probably unintended) sourness that worked really quite well. After that, another dark one with the outstanding Deeside Talorcan. The balance in this one is almost perfect, that mix of roasty malt and woodiness, with a slightly smoky finish.

We had Burnside’s Black Katz Mild yesterday, so tried the Mad Dogz IPA today. There really wasn’t that much to it, some slight hop and then a vaguely bready finish. For the last couple of beers of the day, time to head back to the unusual flavours of Tinpot – Marmalade Pot and Beetroot and Blackpepper. The first, a sweet cordial orange with a beery edge lurking underneath – the second, a classic Marmite beer. For me, I really liked the sweet, earthy beetroot giving way to sharp, bitter black pepper. Really interesting – not to everyone’s taste, admittedly – but you can’t argue it’s not a good way to finish a day at the festival.

Check back tomorrow for Day 2 a the festival – our beer of Day 1 has to be Deeside’s under-rated Talorcan. Keep up with our tweets @thebeercast, and if you are attending, enjoy your beer…