The BeerCast

My name’s Richard, and I’m a Rater. Not a ticker – there’s a difference (at least in my mind) – Tickers are like trainspotters, whereas Raters are more like locomotive enthusiasts who ride on the trains as well as writing down the numbers. Admittedly, that analogy doesn’t make the beer community sound any sexier, but there you go. Tickers record merely that they’ve had a beer – Raters actually review each one as they go, and objectively put forward their thoughts.

Anyway, recently I approached a milestone – I had ended up on 999 entries on RateBeer. What to sample to get me into four figures? Something extra-exciting, or extra-rare? (RateBeer and Beer Advocate both being famous for boosting rare beers above their station – but that’s another post). Really, there was only ever one thing I could turn to. The first non-lager to pass my lips. The gateway to a lifetime of beer love. Boddingtons.

Not for me the urban corner swigging cheap cider. Nor the later, more shameful, generation weaned on alcopops. My introduction into the pleasures of booze – and yes, drinking can be pleasurable, don’t ever forget that – was a bitter. That’s if you forget about Carling Black Label, of course. So many cans of fizzy piss. In more ways than one.

No, being raised in the North West of England, it was the cream of Manchester that I fell for, the exotic yellow tin drawing me towards it like a flame. Having the strange widget bobbing inside gave you the sophisticated option of drinking it from a glass – or the unsophisticated one of tearing the metal open to see what it looked like. A tiny plastic heart. Beating the life into our beloved.

As with everything else, these days it’s a mere shadow of its former self. Bod’s (not Boddies – Bod’s) used to be a symbol of Northwestern pride. Sold to Whitbread, production was switched to other plants. Hop extract was used instead of the real thing. The original 18th Century Strangeways brewery plant was demolished. Once InterBrew (now Ab-Inbev) acquired Whitbread, the writing was on the wall.

Bod’s has changed a great deal over the years. But then, so have I. We both have a higher malt component, for one thing. Is it time to move on? Soft, very smooth and with almost no alcohol in evidence – the fond memories do come back, but they are fuzzy around the edges. Sweet, biscuity water. It used to be the cream of Manchester. Now, it’s merely fading into a faint, middling bitterness.

At the start of the year we predicted big things for a few UK brewers in 2012. Some were experienced players looking to make the next step – others complete beginners starting out. The new boys aside, we’d already sampled plenty of beers from the other producers – so can feel fairly confident in our predictions. One brewer we’ve never tried, however, are (or rather were) Henley’s Lovibonds. Having recently got hold of two bottles from a retailer in London, it was time to put them to the test – and see if our enthusiasm was well-founded…

Lovibonds Henley Dark
Paying homage to London porters of old, Henley Dark contains seven different malts – including one smoked with beech wood from the Chiltern hills. Coming in at 4.8% and 40IBU’s it actually looks like a Coke float – ruby red and highly effervescent. The aroma is fabulous – smoky chocolate, with fruit in there as well. Chocolate on the palate, it’s quite bitter and prickly – with noticeable smoke on the aftertaste. I wasn’t expecting that at all – it really brings a nice sub-flavour to the beer.

Lovibonds 69IPA
Part of the ‘new generation of IPAs’, 69 was produced using the Hopinator – which is either a turbo-powered dry hopping machine, or the best Gladiators name ever. Lovibonds founder and head brewer Jeff Rosenmeier hails from across the pond, so naturally wants to pound hops into everything, given the opportunity. 69IPA is full of those delicious piney, citric hop aromas that modern beer fans go all gooey over. Tropical on the taste, with more pine and a touch of alcohol – it’s completely wonderful, and so drinkable. One of the best British IPA’s I’ve ever tasted.

We’ll hopefully be getting more Lovibonds beers in the near future – so stay tuned for our reviews. Rumours are they’ll be appearing in Scotland with increased regularity…

Lovibonds website

As we head into the New Year, the UK brewing scene seems to be in great shape. The economic climate might be as bad as a Scottish hurricane, and the Government seems intent on sticking it to everybody in the industry (with a few, notable, exceptions) – but this is a fantastic time to be a beer drinker. Whether you like traditional foamy pints of cask ale, or tonsil-stripping keg beer in funny glassware – 2012 could be very good for British brewing. Why? Well, we think several breweries are going to have breakout years.* Here’s our list of the players who are about to step up – from both sides of the border…

SCOTLAND

Tempest Brewing Co
Considering what they did in 2011, this year could be when Kelso’s Tempest Brewing becomes a major name in UK brewing. Brewer Gavin Meiklejohn has already produced some astonishing beer from his plant in an abandoned dairy in the Scottish Borders. RyePA was one of our beers of the year – but any of half a dozen could have featured. Tempest are our tip to look for in 2012 when it comes to Scottish brewing.

Black Isle Brewery
If there’s one producer north of the border that seem rejuvenated, it’s Black Isle. A new sales and marketing team in 2011, coupled with a new head brewer (Colin Stronge, ex-Marble of Manchester) – and all of a sudden the 4% pale ales have been shunted aside by barrel-aged this and Imperial that. The session beers are still there (some having been gently tweaked) – but Black Isle aren’t so much on a roll as a Highland charge. Don’t believe us? Here’s what they have planned…

Luckie Ales
I’ve never been to Stuart McLuckie’s tiny brewery, located somewhere in the midst of the Fife countryside. I imagine there’s a small barn where you have to turn the second flowerpot on a certain shelf to gain access. The beers Stuart produces taste like they come from the chamber of an underground genius – delivered by hand to only a couple of Scottish outlets, they are as rare as beer gets. Look for great things from Luckie in 2012.

Stewart Brewing
The most anxiously-awaited signature in Edinburgh since that to cancel the trams has finally taken place (although the trams are still with us). Loanhead’s Stewart Brewing have finally received permission to relocate their facility to…Loanhead. Moving round the corner means more room for Steve, Jo and the team – already pushed to the limit. It also means a chance to experiment more, and to add to their lineup this year.

Loch Ness Brewery
The Benleva Hotel in Drumnadrochit gained a small two-barrel plant last year, and after a sensible amount of time getting ideas together – look out for the Loch Ness Brewery in 2012. Both their cask and bottling operations begin in earnest very soon, so for what is pretty much an entirely unknown quantity, hopefully good beer will be the result. There are a few recent start-ups in Scotland now, June’s Scottish Real Ale Festival could see plenty of new faces.

ENGLAND

Summer Wine
Being based in Edinburgh, we often find out about English brewing news second-hand – from some of our peers over the border. Holmfirth’s Summer Wine Brewery blazed a trail through the Yorkshire blogosphere last year – and they have the potential to go even bigger in 2012. Keen to experiment, and at that stage where anything seems possible, a new beer every other week could be the order of the day for many months.

Tyne Bank
We do stretch our legs sometimes, however, and in November we Twissup’d around Newcastle with many other beer fans. One of the day’s many highlights was a trip to Tyne Bank (another being their Cherry Stout). Having only begun in May 2011, they are clearly run the right way – by people with a genuine passion for beer. As their distribution network increases throughout 2012, they are definitely ones to watch over the near future.

RedWillow
The world loves an underdog, and in brewing there’s no bigger hill to climb than opening a brewery by yourself. Toby McKenzie took the plunge in late-2010, opening the RedWillow Brewery in an industrial unit in Macclesfield. His oyster stout – Fathomless – was one of our best new beers of last year, and his blog really brings home how hard it is to brew for a living. But with Toby’s determination, RedWillow will make it.

Lovibonds
Henley’s Lovibonds Brewery aren’t new on the scene – they were founded in 2005, following in the footsteps of their namesakes who traded in the town for just over 50yrs. Jeff Rosenmeier and his team make all kinds of beer, in all kinds of different ways. Three weeks ago several of their products reached Scotland for the first time – at the opening of Glasgow’s Bruadar Bar. If more follows, the secret could be out.

Mallinsons Brewing Co
Is there a harder working brewer in Britain than Tara Mallinson? Fans of hoppy golden ales in Huddersfield have been spoiled for choice over the last five years or so. Currently working on their 250th(ish) creation, Mallinson’s know what they do well, and stick to it. Every one of their beers I’ve tried has been incredibly drinkable – if they keep going at the same pace, global session dominance awaits.

So that’s our list – undoubtedly there will be plenty of other new UK breweries that will capture the attention over the next twelve months, and many more existing producers who will raise their games in 2012. We couldn’t fit them all on this post – which are you looking towards for great things this year?

*And when have we ever been wrong?

Our good buddies the Aleheads are never shy of an opinion or three, so when the duty rise kicked in at the start of October, I dispatched one of the Queen’s messengers to the colonies to get their reaction. Stateside brews are typically (although not always, of course) stronger and punchier than British beer, and Alehead Barley extorted us Brits to stand firm against the evil Government.* He then flipped the post around, to query just why Americans like nothing more than chugging (smaller) pints of enamel-stripping hop bombs, whilst over here we casually flounce our way through twenty milds of an afternoon.

Barley came up with six main headings – allow me to address them, in the respectful manner that befits the ‘special relationship’ between our countries (or is it ‘very special’ now? I forget which base Dave Cameron has got to with Barack Obama)

1. Differentiation from Big Beer Blasting out the multi-syllable words right from the start, Barley noted Prohibition deleted pretty much every small brewer in America, leaving a wasteland to be filled by macrolager. When the 1980′s brewing revolution arrived, everyone wanted to be different.

I can see this happening, the enthusiastic amateur homebrewers scaling up and letting their fantasies run wild. It would be like giving a Scalextric fan the chance to design a Formula 1 circuit – you’d end up with something that would give Princess Peach (the cheating b*tch) a run for her money. Over in the UK, we remember the 80′s only for Duran Duran videos (or at least I do). British brewing continued unabated, thanks to our own revivalists from the 1970′s.

Pub Drinking vs At-Home Drinking The next hypothesis was that we plummy Brits are constantly down the pub, whereas the Americans tend to favour more home-based drinking. As a result – we go for more, weaker beer, and they favo(u)r fewer, stronger triple dry-hopped Imperial whatnots.

I’ve been to more than a few cosy pubs in the USA – and had many more than a few solitary, slumped-against-the-fridge beers in the UK. We all know Americans live hundreds of miles from anywhere, and only travel over the state line during police chases – so locality must play a huge part. Many US drinkers have little experience with pub-based sessions. From my flat, I can probably pick from forty different pubs if I walk for twenty minutes – again, something Americans have little experience of (walking, I mean).

American Craft Experimentation Barley – in a non-boastful way – boasts that brewers over the pond just love to push the envelope a little more than we do.

Clearly, there are more than a few British brewers who experiment on a regular basis. But over there, the scramble to get noticed amongst all the other young pups on the craft scene (Sam Calagione excepted), inevitably leads to people doing many different things. I know the English have that reputation for being reserved (unlike the rest of the home nations, the reputations of which I won’t go into), but I think that’s kind of true.

One way to illustrate the inherent differences between people (and therefore by weak association; brewers) from the US and UK, is to recant something I saw on the tiny Scottish island of Iona a few years ago. With tourists scurrying everywhere, my Dad – rougeish Liverpudlian that he is – was sitting on a bench (where we often leave him). Another man sat next to him, a similarly aged tourist from the States. How do we know this? Because he was wearing a name badge that said “Dick Todgee, Iowa”. Americans think nothing of sporting name badges in public – because it facilitates interaction. My father, of course, shuns interaction at every opportunity.

Brewery-Owned Pubs Pub ties over here maintain the status quo, whereas over Stateside other than the occasional brewery tap, bars are largely independent and therefore free to sell what they want.

The big pubco’s in the UK do tend to limit choice – to a certain extent, as ‘guest ales’ are often in evidence. However, having said that there are certain parallels in both countries with the large breweries merging – whether it’s Molson and Coors or Bass and Whitbread. Over there – for market share. Here – market share + pub estates. Like a giant board game, over time the number of players decreases…

Historical Trends Finally, Barley fails to heed Basil Fawlty’s advice and mentions the war, quoting this chart from the Pub Curmudgeon showing the O.G. of British beer dropping during both World Wars.

The effects of two devastating conflicts that rocked Europe understandably reached every facet of life. The lack of ingredients, shortages of fuel, manpower, and difficulty of distribution made brewing particularly difficult – as Ron Pattinson expertly covers in his book War!. But everyone knows we Brits are a spunky lot, and Jerry wasn’t going to get in the way of our foamy warm beer for very long (although we did have help, of course).

I think Brother Barley is along the right lines when it comes to some of the differences between our two proud, beer drinking nations. Another main one was first raised by Steve Beer’s I’ve Known Lamond, who pointed out the simple reason we’d all failed to remember – tax. The difference of taxing on strength (as here) versus on overall outpout (as there), gives US brewers fewer reasons to hold back, when it comes to high abv brews.

Anyway, whatever the differences between the two – subtle or not – our great nations share a common bond – beer. As long as there are moustachioed Brits and cigar-chomping Americans, there’ll be a variety of beers out there to take away all of life’s problems…

*Much like Lincoln in his ‘cold dead hands’ speech at Gettysburg. Or something.

A blogging version of Where’s Wally?

Beer bloggers tend to be a friendly bunch – and by and large get on well with each other (unless someone mentions sparklers, CAMRA, cask v keg, ‘black’ IPA’s, or the Oxford Companion to Beer). As such, each year a large group descend on a beery city and attempt to deplete it of every beer over 6% within a few hours. Last weekend, the latest Twitter-led pissup (Twissup) took place in Newcastle, and the BeerCast made the 90min journey southwards from Edinburgh for the day.

Being a 10am train connecting Scotland and Newcastle, everyone apart from the conductor and ourselves was already drinking – from the lads with the crate of Stella to the young girls downing pink champagne (“Totally – she was proper tonguing him!”). Saving ourselves for the beery delights, we prepped the moleskine notebook and waited for 11:30 – arriving at Bacchus on High Bridge. What an amazing place – forget about the ocean liner décor for a moment (see photo above) – the beer selection was astonishing.

What’s a good late-morning tipple? The 9% Highland Old Norway? 7% Nøgne Ø Porter? 7.4% Black Isle Black Stout? 6% Summer Wine Diablo? Clearly, the chaps at Bacchus knew we were coming. After a couple of warmup beers – including the bespoke house beer from Yorkshire Dales Brewery – Bacchus vs Zeus (3.7%), it was time to catch up with the fellow beer writers, brewers and lucky partners who had made it to the event.

That done, and a few names/faces sorted out, it was off to a brewery for a visit. Tyne Bank started production only six months ago, having been founded by ex-chemical industry worker Julia Austin. Along with head brewer Mark McGarry, they gave us an interesting talk on the formation of Tyne Bank, and their philosophy of production. We also got to try a number of their beers – such as the lovely 5.2% Cherry Oatmeal Stout – the oatmeal really brings the cherry in line nicely. The Monument Bitter was also excellent.

Tour complete, and Julia kindly pointed us in the direction of the Cumberland Arms “You have to go through a bit of a sketchy area, but it’s daylight so you’ll be fine”. What a fantastic place (the pub, not the neighbourhood). An end-row alehouse with the houses having been demolished, it’s like a real-ale island. Gravity dispense, wooden interior, huge range of beer and cider, and a tremendous spicy chicken ciabatta. Even outdoor seating (although it got extremely parky – even for visitors from Scotland).

From the Cumberland, we wandered off and ended up in another great pub – the Free Trade Inn. Firstly, the view along the Tyne was really something. The beers, too, were just as good. Highlights included two from Summer Wine – the marmaladey Covenant and deep roasty Cohort. The amiable Dave Bailey was floating about, so we got an impromptu ‘behind the beer’ story of Hardknott Vitesse Noir – a wonderful 11% vanilla and coffee infused imperial stout.

Also, a mention of Panda & Frog Pandazilla (7%) – produced at the Mordue Brewery as a side project by blogger and assistant brewer Rob. A Cascadian Dark Ale (although we didn’t know that at the time), it was creamy, with plenty of coffee and banana, and big walloping booze hit at the end. Love the pump clip, too. By this time, the Twissup had fragmented a bit, as others went to the Cumberland for food – so we hot-footed in back into town along the river.

Everyone in the UK knows the reputation of Newcastle for being a party town – high heels and coat-free hedonism, whatever the weather. Having never been on a night out there before, I can safely say this is a colossal understatement. I’ve never been anywhere on Earth with a higher concentration of pubs, bars and clubs. It seemed like the whole of England was there, tottering about in their best shoes, or shirts, or both. Drink is the currency in Newcastle. Drink.

A quick trip to the Newcastle Arms – found everyone about to leave again, for somewhere else (but we also found Thornbridge Crux – can they do no wrong?). So us hardy Scots ended up back in Bacchus, piling through the big hitters. At 8pm, beers that seem too much at 11am go down a treat – witness the Old Norway, and Nøgne Ø Porter. Cracking stuff. Home on a deserted train, rejuvenated by the warmth of a Burger King takeout, another Twissup complete. Nineteen new beers in the book, as well – although, clearly, I am not a ticker.

Many thanks to Andy and Mark for sorting out the twissup, not to mention the local bloggers for taking the group under their Geordie wings. Big thanks also to Julia and Mark at Tyne Bank, and to all of the pubs we ended up in during the day. Where next, for Twissup’12?