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…

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

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

If you’re the kind of thirsty person who accumulates a large number of beer bottle caps, but tends to throw them away – stop! A rewarding and (in parts) fun activity can be had, by turning the caps into fridge magnets. These can then be used in a decorative fashion, or to clip notes to the fridge (BUY MORE BEER, etc). It’s really quite simple – so follow the BeerCast’s guide to making bottle cap magnets, and every time you go to the fridge it will remind you of all those great beers you’ve tried (possibly not a good thing if all you have inside the fridge is a four pack of Tennent’s).

1. Equipment and tools

What you will need…
- Bottle caps
- Stanley knife
- Superglue (Araldite works well)
- Magnets
- Chopping board

2. Preparation

The first thing that you need to do is score the underside of the bottle cap with the knife. This gives the superglue something to bond to, as the rubberised liner can sometimes be too smooth. Alternatively you could sand down the coating, or try and remove it entirely by slicing or burning – but this gets pretty fiddly so etching a few cuts into the liner seems to work just fine. Remember to ask an adult to use the knife if you are a) a small child, or b) inebriated.

3. Gluing – part 1

Now for the sticky stuff. Araldite comes with a very cute little spatula to mix the two glue streams together (there’s a Ghostbusters joke in there somewhere). You need to act fast though, as it hardens pretty quickly. The magnets are all-important – I used ceramic craft magnets from Magnet Expert Ltd (also available via ebay). 20mm diameter fits nicely inside the average bottle cap, and these magnets have a vertical holding force of 26g, which will do nicely. Remember to glue the dimpled side to the cap, as that’s the non-magnetised face. Glue the other side and the whole thing will slide quietly to the floor (as I found out).

4. Gluing – part 2

The main problem to overcome is the depth of the bottle cap, and getting the magnetised face so it’s either level or stands out from the crinkled edges. This can be done by gluing something else to the cap first, such as a piece of balsa wood or metal, then gluing the magnet to that. Alternatively, the 20mm ceramic magnets are 3mm thick – so attaching two together gives you the necessary depth (the sides of a bottle cap being about 6mm).

5. Mounting

That’s pretty much it – then you just need somewhere to display your drinking history. If the fridge is taken up with other random junk then maybe the answer is to turn your collection into art. A magnetic notice board is a good option – such as the one pictured (Spontan from IKEA). Some bottle caps have great designs on them – so if you’ve got a Hitachino owl, Lagunitas pooch or the most famous of all – Westvleteren 12 – then show them off…

Mikkeller Koppi not pictured…

One of the inevitable consequences of pushing the limits of conventional brewing is the blurring of boundaries. Styles are merged, blended or just ignored completely. New ingredients arrive by the dozen, are integrated into a dozen more different beers, and then potentially endless varieties of hops, malt and strains of yeast are involved. In short – these days anything goes.

One of the must-brew styles of 2010 was the Black IPA – several hit the shelves over the course of last year. Experimentation is fantastic. Who’s to say that an India Pale Ale needs to be pale? Admittedly the clue is in the question, but then the rush of Cascadian Dark Ales provides a handy bracket for those concerned with semantics. Recently I managed to get hold of two examples (the only two on RateBeer – although there may be others) of a similarly oxymoronic style – the Coffee IPA.

For years coffee has been the reserve of dark beers – lending that lovely astringent roasty bitterness to stouts, porters and big imperials. But why not stick some in an IPA? It’s no co-incidence that the two breweries who did just that are known for their unorthodox approach to brewing, and their willingness to experiment. But how do the beers compare to each other? Only one way to find out…

Firstly we have the European challenger from the near-iconic Danish producer Mikkeller. Operated by one man – Mikkel Borg Bjergsø – brewing’s most celebrated cuckoo brewer (or gypsy-brewer as he calls himself) produces small runs of almost countless beers, working with the equipment of other breweries. Flitting from mash tun to mash tun gives him astonishing scope – last year Mikkeller released 76 beers.

His coffee IPA is the wonderfully named Koppi Tomahawk x Guji Natural Coffee (6.9%) – which reveals both the hop used (Tomahawk) and the coffee (Ethiopian Guji). It has plenty of coffee on the nose – smelling like a cold coffee that has sat for a while. There’s less on the taste – it’s bitter rather than harsh, and the coffee start gradually gives way to the hops for the decent IPA-like finish.

The other challenger doesn’t scrimp on the lettering either – Kernel Suke Quto Coffee IPA (6.5%) was released (co-incidentally) only a week or so after the Danish example. Also the labour of one man – affable Irishman Evin O’Riordain – we’ve featured London-based Kernel beers several times here on the BeerCast, and they never disappoint. Suke Quto are a coffee co-operative who also hail from the southern part of Ethiopia – so the results could be quite similar.

It’s surprising then, that they aren’t. Kernel’s Coffee IPA is firstly much lighter in colour than the Mikkeller – hazy deep gold rather than dark brown – but more importantly it’s the complete reverse in terms of the taste profile. This one is IPA out of the blocks as the hops come charging out first, before midway through the coffee bitterness arrives and pushes aside the first load of flavours. It’s such an odd – and more defined – transition, but it really works.

So which is better? Well, that’s a pretty tough choice – it’s fascinating that two ostensibly similar beers could be so different. The answer depends on whether you think Coffee IPA should highlight the first half of the term or the second. Without doubt the better IPA is the Kernel – the hops are present in the Danish beer, but only just at the end. However, this probably means that Mikkeller has the better coffee profile. Either way, they are both tremendous – proof that experimentation pays off, and that coffee beers needn’t be dark.

We weren’t the only people to pair up these two new challengers – Rob at Hopzine also got hold of the Kernel beer. You can read (and watch) what he thought here.