The BeerCast

It’s getting near to the end of the year, and putting Christmas and everything else to one side for a moment, awards and lists pop up pretty much everywhere. We’re never ones to miss a bandwagon here at the BeerCast, so here are our nominations for the 2011 Golden Pints – the UK Beer Blogger awards everyone wants to win, takes notice of, spends ages thinking about, etc etc. Actually, they are always harder to decide on with every passing year – surely a sign that British brewing is in great health…

Best UK Draught (Cask or Keg) Beer:
Tempest RyePA, first tried at the SRAF in June

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer:
Kernel IPA 100 Centennial

Best Overseas Draught Beer:
Lost Abbey Angel’s Share at BrewDog Edinburgh

Best Overseas Bottled Beer:
Nøgne Ø Red Horizon, also at BrewDog Edinburgh

Best Overall Beer:
Kernel IPA 100 Centennial

Best Pumpclip or Label:
Magic Rock Human Cannonball

Best UK Brewery:
The Kernel

Best Overseas Brewery:
Nøgne Ø

Pub/Bar of the Year:
Cloisters, Edinburgh

Supermarket of the Year:
No

Independent Retailer of the Year:
Appellation Wine

Online Retailer of the Year:
MyBreweryTap.com

Best Beer Blog or Website:
Aleheads

Best Beer Twitterer:
TheBlackIsleBoy

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year:
Black Isle Hibernator smoked oyster with Hibernator Oatmeal Stout at Caley Sample Rooms (06/06/2011)

In 2012 I’d Most Like To…
Get that West Coast BeerCast road trip sorted out. Go to Borefts (not in the same week)

Open Category:
Most misguided beer of 2011 – Garlic Beer

That’s it – hopefully nothing too contentious, let us know if there’s anything you agree or disagree with. Speaking of awards, next week sees our annual Best New British Beers of the Year – every day we’ll reveal one of our five most favourite new beers from British brewers. Check back on Monday for the first…

Today is the official UK release date of the Oxford Companion to Beer, the latest in a long-running series of intended reference materials on subjects from Aboriginal Art to World Sports. As anyone who has searched for beer-related gifts knows, there’s no shortage of books out there – particularly if shopping online. Many are about specific topics, and there are plenty of glossy, well-shot picturebooks of the ‘X beers to try before you Y’ variety.

The Oxford University Press has the cachet in this regard, to produce a one-stop, catch-all compendium of everything to do with the world’s favourite alcoholic beverage. With their pendulous new Oxford Companion to Beer, edited together by Brooklyn Brew Master Garrett Oliver, they have very much laid down the cornerstone in this regard (have I given enough of an impression of its size yet? With over 1,100 entries inside, the book is a meaty two inches thick).

Clearly, there’s no way it can be read through other than in a piecemeal fashion – dipped into at random, or consulted like an encyclopaedia. With an astonishing 166 contributors, this book is very much meant to be the definitive work on the subject. But there’s a problem. Collective works have an inherent danger – the book, and the reputations of the editor and publisher – stand or fall based on the copy filed by the other authors.

Putting my cards on the table straight away – clearly, I’m not a beer historian. I know about beer, I know what I like, and I know how to combine those two things in writing. As editor-in-chief of this website, I’m fully aware that anything written by the other BeerCasters will reflect on my reputation*. As such, I make sure to check all the facts on anything written by the others**. So for 1,100 entries, the wavy red lines on Garrett’s spellchecker must have been seared into his eyeballs.

Soon after OUP began sending review copies out – and many thanks to Kate at OUP for ours – the first few websites to feature the book gave it above average reviews. This was my initial opinion too – this thing feels right – it looks the business, it has numerous jargon-busting pages on the machinations of brewing, and the individual characteristics of different hops. The entries written by Garrett himself have that languid, wordy style of his – which is how I imagine he talks.

But then the historians got hold of the book. A few inconsistencies came to light; someone got the Anglo Saxon invasion of Britain in the wrong century or something – not a massive problem, really. Although the OUP crest is on the spine, this book very definitely has an American backbone. However, very soon the two beer historians I do rate highly – Martin Cornell and Ron Pattinson – really cast serious doubts, with Martin even questioning whether it’s a “Dreadful disaster”.

Simple inaccuracy is one thing, but the level of mistakes that Martin and Ron found in a few entries is pretty astonishing. Ron’s post on Old Ales savages the entry written by Horst Dornbusch by contradicting Horst’s statements with archive photographs of brewery ledgers. This is the unfortunate issue with the book – as a textbook on brewing fundamentals, it seems fine. But the sections that can be argued with are being questioned intently. Who to believe?

Well, – I tend to believe the guys who thumb through dusty records in municipal buildings. The question should really be ‘What to believe?’ A quick straw poll of BeerCasters in the pub last Friday (no writing from them required; guaranteed response) had an even split – either this is just academics nit-picking, and the general facts are good enough, or once you know something’s wrong, you can’t trust any of the rest of it.

The scope of the Oxford Companion to Beer was enormous – there’s nothing wrong with 1,100 entries on a subject. But if a few are shown to be wrong, for people like myself who (on certain subjects) don’t know what we don’t know, can it be taken as the ultimate resource? Should they have let Martin and Ron handle British beer history? The book would have been longer, but it might have been worth it.

*By the way guys, if any of you want to write anything – just let me know. I have no reputation to speak of.

**Again, this is all hypothetical

BrewDog certainly like to blow their own trumpet – my goodness do they ever – but if you can filter out the punk-nonsense they have a number of interesting ideas. Having one eye keenly focused over the Atlantic at all times (understandable given the styles of beer they create), they have latched on to a very American idea – the growler. Other British brewers do have them, but only BrewDog have their own network of bars at which you can fill them up.

The reason behind the rather unusual name has been lost in the mists of time, but one oft-quoted explanation is the growling noise created as CO2 escaped from early examples. These were little more than tin buckets – local urchins hauling them from American bars in the pre-war era, to replenish thirsty workers (for a fair price, no doubt). With many bottle shops closed on Sunday, having the ability to continue your weekend drinking via a take-home container made a lot of sense. When these liquor sellers gained Sunday licences, the need for growlers decreased.

It wasn’t until the 1980′s that some American brewers decided to resurrect the idea – that decade that did so much for US brewing (ditto classic television). These days, pretty much every Stateside producer encourages their use, and as a result growler design has improved somewhat. Intended to keep draught beer cool in the fridge for a few days – and with most of the carbonation retained – they must also be intended to reduce the ‘one-for-the-road’ mentality that can lead to horrendous accidents.

In BrewDog’s case, their beers are served cold and kegged – so are closer to the bottled equivalents than, for example, a pint of St Austell Tribute and the version in the bottle. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a noticeable difference – I filled up with Punk IPA, and it tasted a lot fresher than their other portable versions (some of the canned Punk I’ve tasted recently has been truly awful). Although there was a slight seal leak in the growler – spumey bubbles were rolling outwards from the lid – the carbonation lasted for about three days.

From what I’ve read, Stateside when you fill growlers up, the bar gives a discount price – the equivalent of getting a triple-whip mochachino with sprinkles* to go, versus the sit-in cost. Same price at BrewDog. However, £6 for the growler isn’t too bad – it holds two pints (contrary to their press release), so loading up with Punk cost me an additional £7. As the equivalent of a few beers from the offy, I’d happily pay that. Ok, growlers have some drawbacks, but kudos to BrewDog for highlighting their use – I’ll be back down to their Cowgate bar to fill up, asap.

What are your thoughts on growlers? Would you use them? Do they work? Our American readers – how do they work in the US, and are they well used, or just a gimmic?

*I’m still learning to like coffee

Today is #IPADay – a hash-tag friendly Twitter campaign to pull people into drinking decent beer, and away from macrolager, Pimms, battery acid, water etc etc. Educating the masses is one of the great goals of the American craft beer industry, fighting through a tide of Bud Light. Similarly, over here the real ale brewers and niche micros apiece are keen to get as many people sampling their wares as possible, obviously. And more power to them – we were all lager drinkers once, after all.

The Champion that the beer-people have chosen, striding forward to face these mass ranks of gassy pop, is the India Pale Ale. You can see why – tempt the ignorant, or curious but uncertain, with a characteristic flowery, hoppy fruit cocktail of a beer. There’s more taste in 5ml of a decent 6% IPA than 330ml of whichever ice-cold refreshing lager you can shake a spigot at. Whisper it, but this even holds for your base British-style IPA’s (i.e. session-strength bitters).

Many people’s gateway beers are these slightly more unusual – but still commonplace – beers, like your Deuchars IPA here, or your Sierra Nevada Pale Ale there. Not much in common between them, of course – and at least one isn’t even an IPA – but both are moving in the right direction for those in the know. So the idea of a day to promote a decent alternative is a great idea, and the use of social media even more so. India Pale Ale is the obvious candidate – so why does #IPADay sit uneasily with me?

I think it’s just that, to me, IPA’s now seem ubiquitous. Being a self-confessed hop head, the majority of my favourite beers of all time fit into that style bracket. The top beers of our BeerCast rankings are universally pale and hoppy. Searching out so many new brewers, from the UK and beyond, reveals many, many IPA’s. Don’t get me wrong – I love them – but maybe I’ve reached the other side of the bell-curve. Citrus. Check. Pine. Check. Flowery notes. Check. Bitter finish. Check.

Has IPA reached market saturation? Maybe I should switch to malty brown ales – after all, the seasons are about to change. I really hope #IPADay is a roaring success, and will be followed by other #insertstylehereDays. It’s just, there are so many of them, and so much other beer out there. Make it your gateway, please, just come through to the other side and realise that there is more on this side than beer geeks and acronyms…

*Disclamier I’ll still be drinking everything the Kernel Brewery makes, however…

We’re well into the midst of the UK holiday season now (to our American friends, this means the time of year when us Brits escape the rain, not open presents). As such, no self-respecting beer website would be without a post regarding a strangely-titled Eurolager that whilst we’d never consider buying over here, put us in shorts and weather over 15°C and all of a sudden actually these foreigner types can kind of brew certain types of beer reasonably well although there is a touch of corn in there. Well – here’s ours!

Pivovarna Laško are the largest brewer in Slovenia – as we’re all aware, I’m sure – and were founded in 1825 by a gingerbread man* called Franz Geyer. Over the years they became increasingly popular all over the northern Balkans, and when Yugoslavia was integrated, they found a more concentrated following. Becoming something of a mini In-Bev, Laško absorbed their nearest rivals Pivovarna Union and went from strength to strength.

Apparently in around the 1950′s they were in the top six Yugoslav breweries in terms of sales – steadily increasing output until 1991. At this point, Slovenia declared independence and was caught up in the conflict that plagued the area for much of the next decade. Not surprisingly, sales in the other ex-Yugoslav states plummeted, but slowly Laško beer rebounded and drinkers again took up the brand, irrespective of their particular fledgling national identity in the new Balkan arena.

And I only bought a Laško Dark because it had a goat on it. Proving that their beers have spread outwards from Slovenia, it was readily available in Croatia where I happened to holiday recently – alongside the punctuation-heavy local lagers such as Ožujsko and Karlovačko. Laško Temno (Dark) is a 5.9% dunkel, that pours very temno, and has a decent roasty edge to it. Quite bready, with a sweet finish, it’s not awesome, but is surprisingly nice – however, in the Croatian sunshine, pretty much everything is…

Interestingly, the following is a direct quote from the Pivovarna Laško website – and is something I think we can all agree on…“Dark beer drinkers are cosmopolitan in outlook, sybaritic by nature and are true connoisseurs of taste.”

* A man that made gingerbread