The BeerCast

Welcome to the latest Edinburgh Beer Weekly! Every Sunday we’ll be posting a preview of all the beery happenings in the city for the next seven days – so you won’t miss a thing. You can sign up to our subscription service, ensuring you’ll get a notification every Sunday when the Edinburgh Beer Weekly is published. Just enter your email address in the panel on our front page. Also, follow us on Twitter (@thebeercast) to keep right up to date throughout the week. There are so many great beery things going on at the moment – stay tuned to the BeerCast, and enjoy each and every one of them!

So – what’s happening in the Edinburgh beer scene over the next seven days?

Friday 18th
Harviestoun at RBS Lates National Museum of Scotland, Chambers St
RBS Lates Website SOLD OUT

If you have a ticket for Friday’s RBS Lates event at the National Museum of Scotland, then there will be more than historical treasures on offer to keep your attention. Harviestoun Brewery are running tutored tastings of their best beers – Old Engine Oil, Old Engine Oil Engineers’ Reserve, Ola Dubh 12, Ola Dubh 16 and Ola Dubh 18. Led by brewers Amy and Ari, the tastings will run at 7:15pm, 8:15pm and 9:15pm, with 25 places available for each. Harviestoun will also be supplying their Bitter & Twisted and Schiehallion to the bars for the evening.

The Edinburgh Beer Weekly will be published every Sunday here on the BeerCast. If you have an event in or around the city that you’d like to feature – please get in touch at the usual email address. Cheers!

Like footballers and groin injuries, getting hangovers is part of the job – a challenge faced by even the most eminent of beer bloggers and writers. There’s many an occasion I’ve woken up wishing that I’d taken more of an interest in stamp collecting, or another safe indoor hobby that could leave you merely out of pocket, rather than out of kilter altogether. Last month, following a Magic Rock takeover of one of our local Edinburgh pubs, I had such a crushing hangover the prospect of collecting small sticky pieces of paper seemed almost enticing.

Thankfully, it soon passed – which is more than can be said for the hangover. A couple of days later, I caught up with the other people I’d been ruining the rest of my week with. They had all been suffering very differently, leading to the idea that hangovers (and their victims) can be divided into five distinct categories:-

1. The Immobile
These people have hangovers that sever all major motor function. Balls of agony are dispatched by the brain to gather at every major nerve junction, crunching the body into whatever unnatural shape they woke up in. Moving isn’t an option, as even the twiddling of a toe sends blasts of pain and nausea in every direction. The only option is to lie there under the duvet, whimpering, and hope the monster hangover passes by their hiding place. But just at exactly the wrong moment, they sneeze.

2. The Puker
‘Get it out, that’s the best thing’ ‘You’ll feel better once you’ve stopped’ ‘Don’t worry, the toilet needed a clean anyway’. These lies are all familiar to those who favour the most spectacular hangover category. None of them are to be believed – except the second, as once every facial orifice has stopped streaming you do, briefly, feel better. Flumping back into bed, just a bit of sleep and it’ll be fine – until three minutes later when the stomach begins pitching once again, and its back to the toilet. Don’t worry – the body has no use for bile anyway.

3. The Denial
“No, I can’t have a hangover. I only had four beers last night. And that wine wasn’t a strong bottle. The doner on the way home must have soaked some of it up, surely? Although…I don’t remember going into a kebab house. I wonder what I was eating. Anyway, I can’t have a hangover today – it’s the presentation to the vice-chairman of the regional board. Why is my left hand covered in salt? Must be something else. I wish the cat would stop staring. But I don’t have a cat. Who’s that lying on top of me? And why does my presentation have teeth marks on it?”

4. The Headache
This is often seen as the ‘best’ hangover type to get – as from the chin down you are, to a cursory glance, a real human (following a shower to wash off the stench of shame, of course). However, the tradeoff is that the City of Edinburgh appears to be building an extension from the Gogar tram depot to your brain. If it weren’t for the finest drugs available, there would be no chance to be productive. As it is, you’re not productive either – but at least you can fake it whilst mashing the keyboard with your non-coffee hand.

5. The Unaffected
Of course, everyone knows somebody who will say to you – with a beaming smile – that they don’t get hangovers. This statement is usually delivered whilst they are cheerfully pulling on their running shoes four hours after you both crawled home from curry n’ absinthe night at the Red Lettuce. As you are currently lying on the hall floor using the shoes as a pillow, face smeared with tikka masala, feel free to respond to these people in the correct manner – by noisily throwing up in them.

Lagerboy hasn’t had a run-out for a while, but as the days are starting to lengthen and the rain that plunges from the grey Scottish clouds becomes a tad warmer – it’s time to stop chewing those noble hop pellets and get with the liquid. The first tempter to pass his cage hails from the Derbyshire peak district – Thornbridge’s Kill Your Darlings Vienna Lager. Not many UK brewers bother with this style – which is a pity, as they can be lovely. They also provide Lagerboy with something slightly darker, and therefore, variation.

A quick check on RateBeer reveals Thornbridge’s KYD sits at number 9 on the Vienna chart (there’s a New Romantic joke in there somewhere). Underlying their “We might make one, we might not” status, those ten beers hail from six different countries (I’ll let you guess how many are from Austria). Unusually, the UK has two, both produced by Thornbridge. Equinox sits in tenth place.

Anyway, that’s enough tick-bollocks. Kill Your Darlings puffs out of the bottle like a watery stew, with a sweet, slightly spicy nose. Honey as well – bready too, like inhaling a Turkish dessert trolley. If Lagerboy knew what an American Brown Ale was (too many words for him), he might think it had a similar taste – brown sugar, bready malt and some sweet caramel. However, the cutting finish brings it back into his ballpark. It shuts the door in your face – a fantastic crisp end to a really rather lovely beer.

Beer is a product that is surrounded by a huge amount of often impenetrable terminology. From dropping bright to sparging out, the wonderful old language associated with brewing maintains a link to history. I love, and use them all (assuming I know what they mean, which is rare). But there’s one term recently nudging it’s way into the mainstream that I really can’t stand. No, it’s not craft beer – we’ve covered that in the past. It’s beer geek.

There are many people I know who are proud to label themselves like this – and fair enough to them. How do you classify yourself a beer geek? Have you ever scanned Twitter for a local beer night in six months time and started to email everyone in your beer circle? Can you recite every hop in each Sierra Nevada seasonal? Is there a fancy bottle opener on your keychain? Do you have a BrewDog tattoo? If so, you may be a beer geek.

At least two of those questions I would have to answer in the affirmative – so to you, I may also be a beer geek. But to me, that term – even when used in a self-deprecating fashion – borders on the insulting. I know, how thin-skinned of me. But that skin bristles when I hear those two words, I just can’t help it. Even something as ‘hip’ as geek chic doesn’t sit well with me (using the word hip in inverted commas is probably the least ‘hip’ thing I’ve ever written).

The connotation here is that people who call themselves this know more about beer than others. Sure, this may be true – but then why is that knowledge wrapped up in a detrimental term? It’s like people being proud to be bad at maths. I’m terrible at maths, but that’s not the point – is there anything ‘trendy’ (I’m doing it again) about good beer? Or does calling yourself a beer geek mean you’re automatically outside the trends, and therefore setting your own agenda?

Back in the day, the original geeks and nerds were science majors on American TV – universally depicted as bespectacled, socially clueless outcasts. At the time, co-incidentally, your author was a short-sighted marine biology student with a love of Atari videogames. These parallels are coincidental, clearly. The fact that the meek have risen up and reclaimed the term is all well and good, but for me, being called a geek still stings a little (even now, having discovered contact lenses and deodorant).

So if you want to identify a person who has an interest in a slightly different, more unusual arm of the beer world, let’s call them a Beer Fan, or a Beer Lover, or something. Maybe even something not sickening or contrived. But not beer geek. Cast off your sellotaped eyewear. Stand up and be counted. Just be counted as something other than a crude pigeonhole. If style guidelines can be blurred, why not the profiles of those who drink the beer?

The beer list for this year’s SRAF is in draft form and still taking shape, but thanks to organiser Owen we managed to secure a sneak peak at what will be on offer in June. At the time of writing this preview, not every producer has confirmed their attendance, but hopefully this time there will be 41 different breweries present at the Corn Exchange – up from 37 last year, and 32 in 2010.

Scottish brewing really is in great shape – whilst the levels may reach critical mass at some point in the future, on this evidence there’s no sign of that happening yet. Another positive is that, for the first time, every brewer who sent beer along in 2011 will be doing so again this year. With five new producers slated to appear as well, it could be a great festival.

For that to happen, the venue will need to have a positive impact. Since the redevelopment of the Assembly Rooms, the SRAF needed a new home. Last year’s site at Adam House was hired through necessity, but proved – despite some hard work – to be wholly unsuitable. Long queues, multiple staircases, and a stifling temperature met with plenty of criticism.

For 2012, the festival has relocated to the Corn Exchange in Slateford – a much larger venue, which should give the organisers plenty of scope to make things work. It may not encourage walk-ins – but most people travel for good beer these days, and with plenty of options to get out to the area, it should be a huge improvement.

Of course, the big draw is the beer. If everything in the provisional list makes it, this time around will see a bumper selection of 184 on offer (up from 148 last time). Around a third of that is new beer, or beer that wasn’t on offer in 2011, as some of the larger producers shuffle their entrants. Top of the class are Highland, who have pencilled in eleven different beers (pretty much everything they make, I think).

Some of the festival’s rarer offerings include two must-try’s from Stuart McLuckie – his Dark Mild and American Style Porter are without doubt on my list. Black Isle Export Scotch makes another appearance, and Tempest will be bringing four beers – including the much-heralded Cresta Black). Lovers of wacky weirdness will, once again, be revelling over Tin Pot. No Marmalade beer this year, but ingredients include raspberry, rhubarb, ginger and five spice.

The new debutants for 2012 are Alechemy, Cromarty, Loch Lomond, Loch Ness, and Spey Valley. I’ve tried most of them – apart from the latter. Ex-Heriot-Watt graduate Stefan Masson has three beers on offer from Speyside (as does his classmate Craig Middleton from Cromarty). Alechemy are the nearest new brewer to Edinburgh, whilst Loch Lomond have four beers confirmed for the festival.

The best thing about beer festivals is taking a punt on the unknown. Broughton Willicade, Deeside Abhainn, Houston Slainte, and Sulwath Cuill Hill fit that particular bill for me. I’ll also be keeping a close eye on Ayr’s Dr Hornbook Blonde Stout, DemonBrew Redline and Barney’s Red Rye (from Edinburgh’s latest brewery – having recently relocated to the Meadows).

There will also be a few special beers on offer for the very keen, so be sure and get over to the Corn Exchange as soon as possible once the festival gets underway in the last week of June. As you can imagine, being our local festival the BeerCast will have it covered from every angle – check back daily for our reports on the beers, follow our live tastings on twitter (@thebeercast), and keep an eye out on Thursday for the Champion Beer of Scotland (CBoS) announcement, as once again we’ll hopefully be on the judging panel.*

The Scottish Real Ale Festival is this year being held at the Corn Exchange, New Market Road, Edinburgh from Thursday 28th June to Saturday 30th June. Opening hours are 12pm-11pm Thursday and Friday, and 12pm-9pm on Saturday.

Entry is £3 for CAMRA members, £5 for non-members, but keep hold of the glass given out and you can get free re-admission over the other days. As this is a preview, breweries and beers submitted may change – visit the official website to keep up with any amendments.

For more on what to expect at this year’s Scottish Real Ale Festival, our reports on the previous SRAF years are here – 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007.

*will a mainland brewer take back the Champion Beer of Scotland prize in 2012? Last year, the shock victory for Skye Cuillin Beast meant the last non-island producer to win CBoS was Kelburn Cart Blanche, in 2006…

EDIT 11/05
The full beer list is now up on the official SRAF site – link