The BeerCast

Having just enjoyed our annual sunny weekend here in Scotland, the mood has definitely improved as a result. Being beery optimists, our branded glassware is always half full – but even the dourest of drinkers wouldn’t begrudge us a quick roundup of things to smile about this July. Forget the upcoming duty rise and the fact that the nights are drawing in (porter weather begins in late August here) – and think of a few moments of sun-drenched positivity. Cheers!

1. Big bars are back

JDW may have started it back in the day, but the multi-fonted pub has returned with a vengeance this summer. Small, bespoke watering holes are all well and good – indeed are far more preferable than the ‘old bank with chips’ approach of Wetherspoon’s – but why should small mean a poor selection? Recent new kids such as Bradford’s The Sparrow and London’s Craft Beer Co are brimming with choice – cask and keg options ahoy, and a bottle list you can see from space. No more ‘Beer A’ or ‘Beer B’ choices…

2. New brews

We just can’t keep up with the micros opening at the moment. July’s Scottish Real Ale Festival may have been sauna-esque, but with a dozen new breweries attending from 2010, there has to be grounds for optimism. Admittedly, the test will be how many are still around in four or five years – but don’t rain on this parade, Mr Negative. From the noble ethos of the Scottish Borders Brewing Co, through the hopcraft of Tempest, to the wacky world of TinPot – the new kids on the block are here to stay…

3. Clickety click

As I write this, I have a recent shipment sitting under my desk at BeerCast towers – containing bottles from new English producer Magic Rock, outstanding stalwarts Marble and Mallinsons, and a dozen cans from Maui in Hawaii (if only there was a simple podcast theme that connected all of these…mmmm…). Online ordering is now reaching a new age in terms of increasing selection. The likes of myBrewerytap, The Bottle Shop, Beers of Europe and BEERmerchants have really upped the game, enabling beer fans everywhere (Northern Isles of Scotland excepted) to share the fun…

4. Can me, baby

While we may not agree BrewDog are at the heart of the UK’s keg revolution (they are involved, yes, of course) – they really seem to be on a winner with cans. Not quite at revolutionary stage just yet – the time to take up the pitchforks and march on your local bottling plant can’t be far off. Cans are great. They don’t affect the flavour of the beer – they don’t – they are easy to store and cart around, and thanks to the abundance of foreign fizzy pop now (Rubicon etc), Punk IPA looks like a Polish lemonade – the boss will never know…

5. Making up is fun

As the dust settles following the latest CAMRA/keg/blog brouhaha (insert specific subject of ire here), there seems to be a refreshing period of calm on the internet at the moment (i.e. people are discussing sparklers again). Ok, someone said something and others took offence, but who cares? Let’s crack open a can-conditioned imperial saison from Yorkshire and just all get along. Besides, we all need to support worthy crusades, such as Dave Bailey’s Saturday Kitchen campaign. Wine’s hogged the limelight for too long…

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…

Roger Protz – beer writer and editor of the Good Beer Guide – isn’t short of an opinion or two, which he frequently displays in his monthly column in What’s Brewing?. When I read his latest column in the April edition of CAMRA’s newspaper I had to suppress more than a chuckle at his closing paragraph. The piece was about one of the more major thorns currently stuck in the side of the Campaign – the lumbering gas-powered monstrosity of keg beer.

We’ve steered clear of the subject here at the BeerCast until now – there are many more eloquent articles on the whole cask vs keg debate around (an entire Session devoted to it, for example). Personally I tend to go with the flow (slight pun intended) and think it’s all a matter of horses for courses – I love cask, but not at the expense of keg – or bottle, can, plastic cup, Nordic drinking horn etc etc.

But something about Roger’s parting shot compelled me to post on the matter. His article revolved around the fact that CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) in their 40th year of existence are now apparently ‘under fire’ for not embracing keg beer. Here’s a quote…

“Far from joining hands with CAMRA round the birthday cake, some craft brewers and beer writers have chosen this year of all years to attack the campaign for – and I almost have to suspend disbelief as I type these words – refusing to embrace keg beer.”

“Today there are more than 700 breweries, four times as many as when the campaign was launched in 1971. Total beer volume may have declined, but choice and diversity have never been greater.”

Right – firstly I am a CAMRA member, enjoy reading the publications and going to the festivals – and as I was born in 1976 I have no recollection of Watney’s Red Barrel (always infamously mentioned as the nadir of British beer drinking). My first ‘real’ beer was cheap pints of Boddington’s in the only pub in Preston that would serve us – the Sherwood, just behind Fulwood ASDA (only time I was asked for ID – my 18th birthday).

I think we all agree that the current UK brewing industry is – Government interference notwithstanding – doing pretty well, considering the circumstances. Whether that’s all down to CAMRA or just that they were there at the beginning, I have no idea. But as more breweries arrive, the need for them to differentiate from each other increases. Coupled with the drinking public’s greater beer education, the demand for beer that isn’t just brown also increases – hence the rise in diversity.

Roger continues…

“And yet, in spite of these facts, CAMRA is being criticised for refusing to embrace keg beer. It seems scarcely credible, yet the question of CAMRA and keg raised its over-carbonated head at the annual SIBA conference in February. Some SIBA members are either making keg beer or are considering doing so and wanted to know what the Campaign’s attitude would be. My reply – and it was a personal one – was that if some brewers want to make keg they are perfectly free to do so but, given the current success of cask beer, I thought they would do better to concentrate on real ale.”

Fair enough here – Roger was asked what looks potentially like a leading question at the SIBA conference, and batted it back with a classic forward defensive. But these cask ale brewers who are experimenting with keg – because that’s how breweries innovate, through experimentation – are apparently out of bounds for asking CAMRA what their attitude was to this?

“The result – not so much from SIBA members but from a few beer writers on their blogs – is that CAMRA is a restrictive organisation and should rethink its attitude to keg. They should remove the blinkers from their eyes. The GBBF is the only major festival I know that serves beers from other countries and many of these products are not necessarily real ale by our definition. But, belt and braces, CAMRA is fundamentally about cask beer, a style that would have disappeared 40 years ago but for our collective effort. And some of the noisome bloggers would have little to write about if CAMRA hadn’t raised the banner for good beer. Keep the faith…”

And that’s how the article ends. Eh? Just who are these noisome bloggers? Roger sounds a little like Henry II there – I doubt anyone will rid him of the troublesome scribblers anytime soon. I know a bit about beer. I can appreciate what CAMRA stood for then, and what they stand for now. I can also appreciate that this stance hasn’t changed over the intervening 40yrs. Good for them – cask ale is British and is fantastic.

But – people like to drink kegged beer. Sorry Roger, but it’s true. And we like to write about it. I know producers like BrewDog are anathema to CAMRA (and Roger has had his run in with the Fraserburgh outfit in the past ) – but they, and others like them, make some great beer – irrespective of the method of dispense. Take a look at our last few posts – BrewDog (keg), Kernel (bottle), Thornbridge (cask), WEST (keg), Stewart (cask). This is the modern British brewing scene – whether you think that bloggers are noisome, loathsome or awesome, we’ll still be writing about it.

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.

Following this post by Mark Dredge, today has seen a series of interesting discussions on whether the American-born term ‘craft beer’ has any meaning in the UK. Mark argues that it could have a place in the British beer terminology if enough people adopt it – but as the comments on his post show, there are plenty of people who feel the term is pretty pointless. The key difference here is the history the term has in the States – and the controversy it has generated there recently.

The Brewers Association are the trade body for small US breweries, and were originally established in 1942 to fight for issues that affected small producers – such as getting the tin needed to make bottle caps. Their big victory came in 1976 when they secured tax relief for their members – brewers who released under two million barrels a year would get a tax differential on the first 60,000. To decide who could qualify for this, the Brewers Association laid down a definition.

Not only did the brewer have to produce less than 2m barrels per year, to gain the ‘Craft’ tag they had to be ‘independent’ – less than 25% ownership of the brewery by non-brewers, and also ‘traditional’ – they were required to have an all-malt flagship, or over 50% total production volume containing malt or “enhancing adjuncts rather than adjuncts that lighten flavour” – I think we can all think of a few brands that would fall foul of that rule.

So far, so good. The number of defined craft breweries rocketed from 8 in 1980 to over 1,600 in 2010. But last year the success of one of those producers caused a big problem for the Brewers Association. The Boston Beer Company – brewers of Sam Adams – one of the pioneers of the US craft brewing movement, announced their annual output was going to exceed 2m barrels. That would put them out of the definitions, and into the Macro producers. Without their enormous sales, the Brewers Association’s figures would take a big hit.

So they simply changed the definition. In January they amended their code to read a craft brewery is one that produces less than 6 million barrels a year. The Boston Beer Company are therefore still classed as craft brewers. Beer writers questioned the moving of the goalposts – but the Brewers Association are a lobbying group, and the Sam Adams figures are too large to pass up. So although the Boston Beer Company probably don’t need the support of the Brewers Association anymore, they are too valuable an asset to let go.

When the American system has to be amended in this way – and I can totally see why they would want to do so, to keep one of their largest members – it does slightly undermine the craft message. All beers are crafted – some more than others, obviously – but when the organisation that created the term has to fudge the definitions, the limitations become apparent for all to see.

If ‘craft beer’ is a term that is becoming increasingly confused in the USA, it is being increasingly used over here. But in the UK it has no real meaning – unless we apply it to producers who qualify for Small Brewer’s Relief and the lowest level of Progressive Beer Duty – but that would rule out BrewDog and Adnams, two producers who use the term on a regular basis.

Beer writers and bloggers in the UK may be using the phrase more, but with no real historical background to the term here, ‘craft beer’ might be on a hiding to nothing. Earlier today I visited Evin O’Riordain at the Kernel Brewery – who could be a poster boy for British Craft Brewing, but with no defined ideals of what it means over here, it will take a long time before it enters general use. Looking at the problems the Brewers Association are having in the States, that might actually be a good thing.