The BeerCast

On Friday there was further good news for Loanhead’s Stewart Brewing, as their 5% pale ale Hollyrood was named Champion bottled beer of Scotland. It will now go on to the national SIBA finals in February to take on the other regional champs from around the UK. MrB and myself were in attendance for the judging, having secured a couple of invitations for the BeerCast to take part. Alva’s Williams Brothers were also the day’s big winners, securing Golds in three of the five categories, and taking overall Silver for Midnight Sun and Bronze for 7 Giraffes.

Having taken part in the judging for last year’s Champion Beer of Scotland I was looking forward to the competition. The beers had been divided into categories, and the judges were allocated two each for the afternoon’s tastings. MrB was put into the ‘Bitters under 5%’ and then ‘Bitters 5% and over’ sections, meaning he got through a lot of golden session beers, whereas I was selected for the ‘Speciality’ and ‘Milds, Stouts, Old Ales and Porters’ categories.

The Speciality tag can mean pretty much anything (as you can see from the colours in the photo above), and it was interesting to judge an oak-aged porter against a Finnish-recipe juniper ale. Of course, the judging is done blind so you can only go on your senses – although it’s human nature to try and guess what it is you’re drinking. Only afterwards when the identities of the beers are released do those guesses prove to be wildly inaccurate. The standout for me were Harviestoun’s Ola Dubh 40 (that oak-aged porter) and Stewart Brewing’s Hefeweizen (which we identified immediately, there not being many bottled Scottish weissbiers).

After a short interlude and the swapping of stories – MrB asking for second helpings of Fyne Ales Avalanche, for example – it was back for the next category. Where speciality beers were varied, the stouts and porters were much harder to differentiate between. Six dark malty offerings later, and our scoresheets were heading back to be collated. In that category there was only one winner for me – Highland’s awesome Orkney Porter got the highest score on my sheet, although there were so many dark beers that it didn’t make it into the final reckoning.

So the overall winners were announced as Williams Brothers Cock o’ the Walk (Bitters over 4.1%), Stewart Brewing Hollyrood (Bitters 5% and over), Colonsay IPA (Gold beers), Williams Brothers 7 Giraffes (Speciality) and Williams Brothers Midnight Sun. These were all re-tasted in the final, with Stewart Brewing’s offering coming out on top – and only five months after it won best pale ale at the 2010 World Beer Awards – congratulations to Steve, Jo and all the team.

In a few weeks the national SIBA finals takes place, and amongst the cask (and for the first time, keg) competitions are the national bottled beer awards. Hollyrood will face stiff competition from the other regions, as Thornbridge’s peerless Kipling is representing the Midlands and Kernel Export Stout 1890 will be there for the South East. We won’t be able to make it to Nottingham for the finals, but we’ll let you know how Scotland’s entrants do against the rest of Britain.

SIBA Official Website

Every beer drinker knows the backstory to India Pale Ale, and as you’d expect, the UK has many different varieties – most breweries have one in their range. Although it was producers in the south-east of England that originally developed the style, up here in Scotland IPA’s are plentiful. So the 15th BeerCast podcast is a jaunt around four of these from our home patch. We begin very much at home, with Caldeonian’s Deuchars IPA – brewed in Edinburgh and drunk probably at least once a week by one member of the BeerCast or another. Then we move on to one from the islands, Colonsay IPA, produced from a small brewery in the Inner Hebrides. The third beer today is Belhaven’s Twisted Thistle IPA, from sunny Dunbar in East Lothian, and we finish the episode with a bang up north in Fraserburgh with BrewDog’s aptly-named Hardcore IPA.

1. Deuchar’s IPA (4.4%abv)
Caledonian Brewery, Edinburgh.
500ml glass bottle

Opened in 1869, the Caley is the only brewery left in the city of Edinburgh out of over 40 many years ago. Sadly it’s now no longer independent either, as at the start of the month (in between us recording this episode and it going out) they were taken over by Scottish & Newcastle. But they produce the most famous beer related to the city, which is now available on cask throughout much of the UK as a guest – presumably even more so now S&N’s distributary muscles will be flexing. Pronounced Joo-kerrs, we’re all incredibly familiar with it here – but that makes for an interesting beer to judge.

What They Say – “Deuchars IPA is a fabulous beer. A brilliant blend of malt and hop character and above all a drink with enormous drinkability.” [Roger Protz]

What We Say…
Richard – Worse than on cask, but still good and hoppy 7
Shovels – Nice, but there are better bottled IPA’s out there 6½
MrB – Deuchars is the stock beer I go for if there’s nothing nicer 6
Grooben – Your basic after-work-knock-a-few-back beer 6

2. Colonsay IPA (3.9%abv)
Colonsay Brewery, Isle of Colonsay.
568ml glass bottle (1 pint)

We’re all big fans of the Scottish islands here on the BeerCast (podcast 11 was our Northern Isles Special), and off the west coast you’ll find Colonsay. You might have to look hard, mind – it’s only 16sq miles of rock and beach between Mull and Islay. About 120 people call it home, and they are very lucky indeed to have a brewery in their midst. Founded in early 2007 their five barrel plant produces an 80/-, a lager, and an IPA – when the seas allow the ferries to collect their beers for distribution to markets on the mainland, that is. When the seas are too rough, the islanders get their own unique version of a lock-in.

What They Say – “What you get with this beer is a pale colour to reflect the malt type, but lots of hop and citrus and character to make this a pint to be savoured.” [Official Website]

What We Say…
MrB – Lots of flavours going on but they are very subtle 6½
Shovels – The light tastes grow on me when I have other IPA’s 6
Grooben – Very smooth and ever so slightly peaty aftertaste 6
Richard – You can taste this is from an island – light and airy 6

3. Twisted Thistle IPA (5.3%abv)
Belhaven Brewery, Dunbar.
500ml glass bottle

Thirty miles down the coast from Edinburgh is Belhaven – statistically Scotland’s sunniest place. Home to a brewery of the same name, which is most famous for Belhaven Best, another beer often seen around these parts, they also produce a rather undervalued IPA. I couldn’t find a single mention of it on their official website, but Twisted Thistle comes in a modestly-labelled bottle with few pretentions. Belhaven were founded in 1719, and were the oldest independent in Scotland, until they were bought out by Greene King in 2005 for £187m. We sampled their St Andrews Ale way back in BeerCast #1.

What They Say – “The blend of Cascade and Challenger hops combine to produce an abundance of fresh hop aroma that preludes a bitter-dry taste explosion.” [label tasting notes]

What We Say…
Richard – Got that characteristic zingy IPA hoppy taste 8
MrB – Bitter hoppy session ale with a bit of fizz, floats my boat 8
Grooben – This is right up my street, very nice 7½
Shovels – Classic IPA but makes me appreciate the subtler Colonsay 6

4. Hardcore IPA (9.0%abv)
BrewDog, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire.
330ml glass bottle

Many 25yr olds have drunk enough fizzy lager to wish they could do something about it. Few actually have – but two of those few are James Watt and Martin Dickie, old school friends from Aberdeenshire. They pooled their life savings and bought a ten barrel plant on the Kessock Industrial Estate in Fraserburgh to found BrewDog in April 2007. As you’d expect given their outlook, they produce a wide range of strong beers such as two kinds of imperial stout, one of which is aged in malt whisky casks. They entered some in the 2007 World Beer Awards, and amazingly won two awards – best strong pale ale (The Physics) and best imperial stout (Rip Tide). Today we sample their 9%abv imperial IPA.

What They Say – “Maris Otter grains to provide the robustly delicate toffee malt canvas, and hops to ensure your mouth is left feeling punished and puckering for more.” [Official Website]

What We Say…
MrB – Suck a duck, if you didn’t know it was 9% you’d end up drinking lots of this 9½
Richard – Alcohol/hops complement eachother, it’s tremendous 9
Grooben – Smells of cottage cheese but it certainly tastes good 8
Shovels – Tastes strong, label makes it look like an alcopop 7

BeerCast panel verdict

BrewDog Hardcore IPA – 33½/40
Belhaven Twisted Thistle IPA – 29½/40
Deuchars IPA – 25½/40
Colonsay IPA – 24½/40

Panellists – (from top left) Grooben, MrB, Shovels, Richard

• Listen to the episode here: BeerCast #15 – Scottish IPA’s
• Subscribe to the podcasts in iTunes or our site feed

We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode. Stay tuned for details…and please leave us comments on the blog or iTunes, or emails. Cheers!

Beer fancying isn’t just about a competition to find the darkest, strongest, most pungeant brew you can. Most beer websites and blogs do tend to concentrate on that end of the spectrum, but only because they tend to be the most interesting and flavoursome. Even the most ardent lagerfan would probably admit the lack of taste the lighter-coloured stuff suffers from. But less taste doesn’t mean no taste (unless you opt for certain lagers), there shouldn’t be a stigma against drinking good lager – after all, it was invented by the Czechs, and they know more or less everything good about brewing.

So amongst the BeerCast’s regular malty, hoppy, caramelly (Podcast no.1 was brought to you in conjunction with that particular word) offerings, this committed Lagerboy will now and again pop up with a few drinks from the world of beers that you can actually see though. But just as ‘real ale’ suffers from an image problem, so does lager – one of popularity. In 2005, the UK lager market was worth £11.3bn – nine out of the top ten takehome beer brands were lagers (Guinness being the other). 42% of British adults now buy and drink it. By 2010, 80% of all UK beers sold are expected to be lager. Yikes.

But most of the major brands out there are the same old suspects – Stella, Carlsberg, Carling, Fosters. They don’t taste of much, they are fairly cheap, you can buy them in any off-licence or pub. But it doesn’t make them any good. Take Stella, the UK’s most popular lager (it has a third of the market), due to recent issues of ‘branding’, producer InBev added more boutique beers to the stable, a wheatbeer called Peeterman, and a 6% super lager called Bock, which someone bought by mistake the other week and nobody would drink it. Fosters, brewed in Edinburgh, is the typical Australian lager – except I lived there for almost a year and hardly ever saw it.

You have to search them out, but local lagers are available. They cost more than the mass-produced types (although Stella recently went up again, by 12p a pint), but are infinately nicer, with more taste – and you get a pompous air of smugness to have sought out something regional that the other lagerboys will have never heard of. Take Colonsay Lager. Produced by a small new microbrewery from the tiny Scottish island of 120 people, they knock out this 4.4%abv gem using local ingredients and a slower fermentation process. That means the lager has a touch of the wheatbeer about it, and is a dark apricot, almost amber colour. Incredibly refreshing, and with a packed taste, it blows the Carlings of this world out of the water. Which can only be a good thing.

Colonsay Brewery