Pubpaper 658 – Small Dogs and Brewsters v Big Buillies and Lawyers

Posted: 17th May 2012 by santobugtio in Pub Paper, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0
In the world of brewing there a 3 broad camps in which a brewery can fall into, multinationals like InBev and Heineken, large national brewers like Greene King, Marsons, Black Sheep and Wells, and then you have smaller operations, brewers like York Brewery, Mallinsons, Magic Rock and Thornbridge.  Brewdog just make this last category, but could break from it in the next few years.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Heinekens’ indirect bullying of local pubs in Cardiff to the effect that they couldn’t market the actual beers they sell outside of the premises.  This restriction applied to businesses within a certain area of the Millennium Stadium.  It is actually LOCOG (the London 2012 Organising Committee) who enforces the rules, but Heineken are paying a large fee to bully for the privilege.  Sadly they are protected by the law and the big company will win in the short term.  Big Brewers 1 – Small Business 0

A second instance of big brand pressure occurred a couple of weeks ago. Brewdog were to be nearly awarded the ‘Bar Operator of the Year’ by the Scottish arm of the BII, the professional body for the licensed retail sector.  On the 6th May, the award ceremony took place in Glasgow.  Before the ceremony, there were strong rumours that Brewdog was favourite for the award.  When the winner was announced another company was named, something which even shocked the judges who had been dealing with the category.

However the twist in the tale is that upon being given the trophy, the announced “winners” immediately refused it as it already had Brewdogs’ name engraved on it.   On questioning the BII, Brewdog found out that the organisers had been approach prior to the ceremony and told by one of the key sponsors Diageo (the makers of Guinness) and were told “under no circumstances could the award be given to BrewDog. They said if this happened they would pull their sponsorship from all future BII events and their representatives would not present any of the awards on the evening.”

Brewdog being the reticent little poodle it is, immediately took to Twitter and within a day had elicited an apology from Diageo who stated “There was a serious misjudgement by Diageo staff at the awards dinner on Sunday evening in relation to the Bar Operator of the Year Award. We would like to apologise to BrewDog and to the British Institute of Innkeeping for this error of judgement.”.  This sorry episode was reported in the national press, Scottish national TV and was one of the top trending topics on twitter.

Brewdog winning the award would have got a few headlines in the Scottish newspapers and trade press, Diageo’s’ actions gave the smaller brewer 100 times the publicity and more public awareness than they could ever have hoped for.   Big Brewers 1 – Small Business 1

Now to a more recent and more low key story, last week I wrote a profile of a local craft brewery based in Huddersfield called Mallinsons ran by two brewsters (an old technical term for a female brewer).  The brewery is forging a reputation for very good quality single hop beers among their range.  I said in the article they had released 11 so far, I found another since then, taking the total to 12.  This week they received a letter from the brewers of Stella Artois, InBev.  It asked them to withdraw or rebrand their single hop brew named after the plant it derives from, the “Stella” hop.

There is no way you could mistake they two drinks, one is brewed just outside Huddersfield, has a blue label, is a really well balanced ale from the single variety hop which names it, has no chemicals and doesn’t give you a headache after one pint.  The other is mass produced in multiple countries, is heavily marketed with a french tinge and tastes, in the writers opinion, chemically and artificial.  The Mallinsons brew is available mostly in the Yorkshire and north of England at less than 100 pubs, while the InBev product is ubiquitous across our pub landscape.

The local beer has been out for about 5 months now, if it was that big an impact on the giants sales, it would have been noticed a long time ago.  Big companies are litigious by nature, however I don’t see the point of taking this action as all it will do is make the excellent brewers who run Mallinsons rename it to “Stellar” or similar at some cost to the company when the next batch is brewed.  Some lawyers, printers and designers win the day, not either company.  I”ll call this a score draw.

It will always be the case that big will win sometimes and small will other times.  I’m rooting for the little guys in extra time.

Pubpaper 657 – Mallinsons Brewery – Two brewsters and a talent with hops

Posted: 13th May 2012 by santobugtio in Pub Paper, Writing
Tags: , , , , , ,
1

What do you get if you cross two ex teachers, a love of real ale and a room full of hops to choose from?  The result is no joke, just a range of 11 distinctive single hop beers (all sampled personally) which are consistently good as well as bitters, milds and stouts.

West Yorkshire is experiencing a boom in new breweries, specialist beer shops and real ale pubs, from Halifax to Leeds and Ilkley to Huddersfield, such venues are opening on a regular basis and doing good trade.  In the past 5 years, new breweries have appeared all over the area and longer term fixtures on the brewing map are going from strength to strength.  One of the younger upstarts is Mallinsons at only 4 years old.

Mallinsons Brewery is ran by Tara Mallinsons and Elaine Yendall.  One night at the Star Inn in Huddersfield, an idea formed, as do many ideas (good and bad) over a beer. Tara had already gained some experience of brewing with John Eastwood at the Elland brewery of the same name.  With the shared love of real ale and the day job becoming stressful at times, the simple question was asked, why not make a living creating something we love.

From inception in 2003, it took five years to start the brewery.  Initially only Tara was onboard full time, with Elaine combining the business with her existing teaching career, but in 2010 the trade finally allowed her to finally quit teaching to help run the business on a dedicated basis.  The plant, located in an old factory unit in Lindley now produces 4 different beers, 70 casks and 600 bottles a week with a wide distribution area over the north of England.  Both owners share the brewing responsibilities, with Tara concentrating on cask sales, Elaine on selling the bottled output.  Three pubs currently have a permanent Mallinsons tap in Huddersfield, numbers they hope to increase.

The philosophy behind the operation is simple, like most brewers, it is to brew beer that you would like to drink yourself, but the real driving force behind what is brewed is hops.  It is a very good time to be brewing single hop beers with new plants and variations being developed all over the world for the increasing market.  However with a single hop beer the quality of the plant is king, a bad batch will ruin 5.5 barrels of beer, not something you can write off easily, with the same net results for a hop which doesn’t work solo.  To avoid this new hops are added to an experimental multiple hop beer for aroma, the results from the successful candidate plants are then fed into a single hop recipe.

The thinking behind this obsession is that a good brewer should be able to produce really good single hop beers.  One of the reasons that they concentrated on the blended hop beers when starting out was that when they finally produced their first, it had to be good.  As in all breweries, some beers just don’t work out and recipes are never used, others need a refinement of the recipe before they are of the quality to be released.  Their Amarillo is a case in point, the beer that now leaves the brewery being a very different beast to the original first brew.

As you would expect from a pair of hop heads, their favourite beer is pale and very hoppy, with Tara favouring the Centennial hop for its “sherbet lemon freshness”, while Elaine goes for the Citra plant for the aroma and distinctive taste as well as the fact that is one of the hops which doesn’t crumble when handled, very much a brewers point of view.  The public seem to agree with Elaine as their “Citra” is the breweries best selling and most awarded beer.

A lot of the new hop varieties are coming from the new world of New Zealand, Australia and America.  As pointed out on the Craft Beer Special from The Food Programme on Radio 4 a few weeks ago, like the wines from the region, the hops are generally fruity, bolder than the European varieties and can drive the flavour a single hop beer demands.  Tara and Elaine plan to try as many as they can get imported. The last experiment to go to production, Galaxy was a success commercially, with the next hop to hit the experimental vat being Topaz from Australia, which if successful will be released later in the year.

The future for the company involves moving to larger premises, scaling up the same brewing plant (by Dave Porter) to a larger capacity from the original building, to keep the same production style.  Bottling will still be done in-house (by an old pub friend), keeping complete control of the process from ingredients being delivered to the cask leaving the building. The philosophy of the company will not change, the two women will continue to brew what they want to, with plans to develop a dark hoppy IPA and more stronger beers.  With one new beer being created once a week, it’ll be interesting to see what comes out from this ex car repair garage which has been converted to a nobler cause.

Looking locally to the brewery, Huddersfield and the surrounding towns are forging a reputation for high quality micro breweries, enough to justify a front page lead in the Huddersfield Examiner in early April.  They join the local alumni of Empire Brewing, their very close neighbours Magic Rock, Summer Wine at Honley and the Riverhead Brewery Tap at Marsden.  A group of brewers  that has made the narrow strip between the M62 and the Peak District a hotbed for real ale drinkers.  This is without mentioning a couple of brewpubs and smaller breweries like Golcar in the area.  Huddersfield itself is becoming a destination for real ale with pubs like The Grove, The Sportsman and The Head of Steam forging a reputation. New specialist beer shops are opening with the arrival of HDM Beer Shop.  This is a situation which can only be a winning one for the companies lining up to supply the market and with many willing customers in the area plus visitors, one which will benefit all involved.

Pubpaper 656 – The Great Olympic Beer Stitch Up

Posted: 7th May 2012 by santobugtio in Pub Paper, Writing
Tags: , , , , ,
2

A few weeks ago, one of the top beer writers Roger Protz covered the fact that Heineken have sole beer rights at Olympic venues, however they only went in as a third tier sponsor limiting them to having only one named product,in this case their namesake lager Heineken.  In addition to this they can provide 2 other alcoholic products under generic names, so Strongbow will be supplied as ‘Cider’ and John Smiths Smoothflow will become ‘British Bitter’.  Where an Olympic venue already has a preferred beer supplier such as Lords (hosting the archery) who serve Marston’s beer the pumps will need to be removed for the duration of the event and replaced by temporary Heineken provided equipment.

It is worse if you live in Cardiff where the women’s football is taking place.  An exclusion zone around the stadium over which Heineken has marketing exclusivity takes in most of the city centre, and pubs in the area are not allowed to promote their own beers with banners or pavements signs.  Brain’s, the countries best known brewer, who sponsor the Welsh Football and Rugby team based at the Millenium Stadium have to forfeit their pump positions and I’m sure are not best pleased about the fact.

Discussing the Cardiff issue, having an exclusive zone for a paid sponsor is not wrong as a concept, but there needs to be common sense applied to this rule, if you have a stadium like Wembley where its grounds and car parks take up a big acreage and is in the suburbs then I have no complaints, but where a stadium sits at the heart of the city, as the Millenium Stadium does, then that zone needs to be pulled back to the area of the ground and its immediate area only.

The rule is actually a nonsense and hazard, are they going to cover up hanging pub signs with the tied brewers name on it or scrape off the brewers name etched into the glass in older pubs. The rule limits a pub in going about its day to day business of trying to bring in as many drinkers as possible, whether it be via offering big brand lagers and bitters at £2 per pint during happy hour to get in the 18-25 pre club crowd or advertising the fact that they now have Ilkley Brewery Lotus IPA now on tap to appeal to real ale fans.  I can fully understand controlling promotions which try and associate themselves too closely with the Olympic brand, but an outright ban is just wrong.

It must be remembered that the taxes from the sales of the beer in those pubs paid for a part of the games and are now paying for the officials to go round admonishing premises which flout these unfair rules.  A special law was brought in to give enhanced protection to the Olympic games and the brands which sponsored it in 2006 as part of the criteria for hosting the games.  The pubs aren’t just getting shafted, but officially shafted with their own sticks.  At least they are not being banned from accepting payments from non Visa bank cards, something you can’t do at official Olympic outlets.

Alcohol companies sponsor a lot of sport events and competitions, Budweiser and Carling cover the two English football cups, Heineken themselves support the major European rugby union competition, as do Guiness and Magners regarding the English and Celtic leagues respectively.   However, they only get stadium rights to alcohol sales at very best, sometimes not even that, and at most venues they will share with more local brands.

You sponsor an event to gain goodwill and good publicity from it, not being in the same gang as an over controlling bully, people may fear you, but not like or respect you.  When your big stick is taken off you, people get their revenge.  I wonder how many of the pubs in Cardiff who sell Heineken currently are re-considering their choices when it comes to next reviewing the beer selection.

A lot of companies do respond to pressure and competition, a local pub near me had no luck getting branded glasses from a premium lager brewer until they took on a second similar brand, the glasses arrived 3 days later once the first found out.  Hopefully Heineken will be left with a bad taste after this endorsement of the games, maybe then companies and IOC will learn that protectionism at this level is wrong.


Pubpaper 654 – In Praise of the Mighty Hop

Posted: 23rd April 2012 by santobugtio in Pub Paper, Writing
Tags: , , ,
1

Where would we be without hops? Well, if English Ale had remained as it was before hops introduction around 1400, then it would a be murky malt based fermented liquid with an alcohol content of about 13%. On the continent, hops had been in brewing use since about 800AD, but took 500 years to take over as the main flavouring ingredient of beer. It took another 100 years to cross the channel, it was only then that English ale became beer.

Germany leads the world of hop growing (as per 2010 figures) with nearly 30% of global production and the Hallertau region of Bavaria accounting for the vast majority of this in an area only 178 square kilometres in size. Ethiopia are not far behind, with the USA making up a triumvirate of nations which produce nigh on 75% of the worlds’ total crop. The UK produced 1,500 tonnes (compared to the Germans 34,000 tonnes), mostly in the Kent know as the “Garden of England”, with a popular variety being Kent Goldings.

Hops are a climbing plant that can be trained to follow a wire to maximise sunlight exposure and generally only the female plants are grown at commercial hopfields to prevent pollination and flowering. The resultant dried crop can be added at most stages into the brewing process. They can be added to the wort (the process of extracting a liquid from mashed malted barley and producing an alcoholic liquor) at boiling time to add bitterness, or at a later stage of this process for aroma.

Hops can also be added when cooled in what is known as “dry hopping” to increase the aroma and inject a more direct hop flavour to the beer. An example of a dry hopped beer is “Brewdog Hardcore IPA” which is a veritable 9.4% hop bomb, something that is saying a lot from an ex hop head when it comes to beer.

The distinguishing elements of hops are bitterness, and a taste which can be described as grassy, floral, citrus, spicy, piney, or lemony. Different varieties of hops can enhance aroma, bitterness and one or more of the flavours listed previously in different ratios, and a good blend will bring out all of these. Generally English hops are a balance between the bittering and citrus elements, slightly more restrained than the American plants which are more in your face, typically American. German hops are have low bitterness but high aroma properties while the Australian and Kiwi plants are known for their floral and fruit notes.

Last week I mentioned the mix which went into Septimus Prime from Bridgestones, to quote “German Hersbrucker hops add a citrus edge, while Challenger hops develop the aroma and the bitterness.  When it gets to the second stage Goldings hops are added, and finally Fuggles hops towards the end both bringing out the aroma more”.  The art of the brewer is the mixing of the hops, malted barley and yeast.  The hops are what you taste first in most ales and what you remember.

However there are now a number of breweries who are producing a range of single hops beer highlighting the differences between the different crops. One of the more local brewers who are doing this is Mallinsons based in Lindley just outside Huddersfield. I’m now into double figures counting beers I’ve tried from this brewery. These include bitters and stouts (I recommend the Oatmeal Stout especially) with not one of them dropping below good, however 7 of the beers I tried are single variety hopped.

Aramis, Amarillo, Chinook, Sorachi Ace, Galaxy, Motueka and Citra hops are all featured in their range with beers of the same name. It is only when you try a range of these focused hopped brews that you appreciate the range of flavours and bittering. All share the same fresh taste with the hints of citrus and dryness well balanced, but are slightly different in the inherited flavours from the hops. The Sorachi Ace and Chinook are my favourites out of a very good batch, with the preferred drier hop taste for my palette really appealing. Citra doesn’t fall far behind, but with more of tendency toward the citrus than these. Aramis, Motueka, Galaxy and Amarillo sit on the citrus side of the fence with less dryness, but still being extremely drinkable, well flavoured beers.

Of course other people will disagree with me on these flavours, as these are merely my interpretation, but that is part of the fun of drinking good beer.  If you have been normally drinking blended hop beers, then these single plant varieties are very pleasant diversion in the journey that is beer drinking.

On that note, happy drinking.

Session 63 – “The Beer Moment”

Posted: 18th April 2012 by admin in Writing
1
Pete Brown hosted this months beer session, on the topic “The Beer Moment”, his original post can be found here.

Each month, a group of online writers are given a set topic and asked to write on it, this month the topic is ‘The Beer Moment’, something which means different things to different people. So after a sustained period of writing news pieces, it’s as good a time as any for a more philosophical piece.I don’t exclusively drink beer, few of us do. I love a good cider, whisky, rum or brandy when the mood takes me.  However none of these come anywhere near my interest in a good beer.   

I don’t go hunting out certain ciders or have a list of ones I want to try, as I do for beer.  A nice spirit finishes the night off well, but isn’t for the session.  Only beer meets that requirement for me.There is that moment, the “beer moment” when a fresh untouched pint sits before you, never tried before, with only the brewers description to pre-warn the taste buds.  It doesn’t matter if someone else has tasted certain elements when they tried it, there is no guarantee that you will interpret them the same.  Some flavours will develop over the life of the pint, while some will hit you from the start.

The first sip dictates a lot of what you will think about the pint, I’ve tasted McEwans Cold, it immediately shouted “that’s f**king nasty”, Fosters illicited “some taste would be nice”, Greene King IPA said “It’s still so bloody bland and I still don’t like it”.  However when you get a good beer, it shouts out to the brain when it hits the tongue, when I first tried Brewdog Punk IPA soon after I seriously got into real and craft ales about 3 years ago it was like a hop flavoured popping candy, a sensation now blunted by years of tasting well hopped beer on a regular basis.  When I tried their Hardcore IPA for the first time about 18 months later, I got the same response from the taste buds as the Punk IPA got on that first occasion.

For too long that “beer moment” was all about the hops, looking for the strong citrus, bitter and aroma mix that these wonderful plants ellicit.  I admit I was a hop head for at least 18 months during this period, looking for the next hop experience where I could.  It was only 9 months ago I started to make myself look for other elements in beer.

It should be noted at this point I also love my coffee, but it needs to be good else I’m not interested, I’d rather have tea than instant from a jar. I’m like a ex smoker in this aspect, I gave coffee up for 7 years from 2000-2007, but ended up coming back more dedicated than I originally was.  While researching and photographing a pub walk, I happened upon a couple of pubs who were doing coffee based stouts, the first beer was Dark Star Espresso, the second at the end of the walk was Summer Wine Barista Espresso.  Both beers very similar, but with differing tastes from the coffee infusion.

A new “beer moment” had been discovered.  Previously my experience with stout had been entirely with mainstream products, so the interesting ales drove out bland commercial stout for a few years.  However these beers had the pique from the coffee and the earthiness from the malt that you get from stout and the combination was a revelation to me.  The first taste again was king and for the next few months I went on a mission to try as many good stouts and porters as I could find on my beer travels.   I can’t deny it was fun, but thankfully a balanced approach came back over me and now drink what I fancy at the time rather than being on a hunting mission.

I still go through phases of certain styles of beer dominating my purchasing, but these periods are more for the purpose of research now, note the recent number of articles from me regarding hybrid beers, culminating in last weeks piece regarding Septimus Prime.  It was a discussion with the landlord of the pub mentioned which started all this.

As I experience more beers, finding that moment takes more effort, as you inevitably compare it to another brew you have tried, when you reach that 80 or so beers I have already tried this year, it is hard for a beer to stand out, but when it does, the “moment” happens, and it is always welcome when it does.


Pubpaper 653 – Septimus Prime and appealing to lager drinkers

Posted: 17th April 2012 by admin in Pub Paper, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
1

Blonde and Pale (not to be confused with IPA) beers started to make a significant entrance into the real ale market about 5 years ago, with some of the most notable entries from the Yorkshire area being Leeds Pale Ale and Saltaire Blonde, later entries from the area also including beers such as Daleside Blonde and Ilkley Mary Jane.  These beers were originally created as a lighter, refreshing beer for the spring and summer seasons, but recently there is a move to use them as way to tempt lager drinkers into the world of real ale.  Even major nationals such as Greene King are trying to get into the market with drinks such as their IPA Gold which I covered a couple of weeks ago.

The 18-35 year old market is being targeted, but this cannot be simply split into the two camps of lager drinkers and ale drinkers, its is far more complicated than that.  When looking at lager drinkers, some avoid ale because of the misconceptions of the drinks reputation and taste, other simply don’t like it.  The second group cannot be converted, but the first certainly can.  However there needs to be more just a good pale ale with a more “lagered palette” friendly taste and appearance.  Some persuasion is needed by the person behind the bar upon the customer approaching and once you break the “I’m not an ale drinker” barrier, enticing them to try different ales of that ilk is easy in comparison.  This conversion needs a good knowledge of the beers on offer by the bar staff to work effectively.  Appealing to life style elements such as the locality of the product (Calderdale has a thriving Totally Locally scene) with less carbon miles on the pint also brings a number of people across the lager – ale threshold.

I’ve discussed a good number of these ales (here and here) in recent weeks under the label of “hybrid beers”, a label which is misleading in a way now.  Some of the beers mentioned are brewed and marketed as a lager style ale and others not so specifically at that market, but indirectly aim to appeal to them just the same when branded as blonde / pale beers.  These beers do not appeal to everybody, and takes a commitment to give over 2 out of 5 pumps for an extended period to such beers in bring people over to them.  Lewins in Halifax has been doing this for the last few weeks with 7 ales picked for their crossover potential.  Demand has been good with sales of the beers going well against darker / heavier beers and stouts.

To this end, the pub has commissioned a beer of their own in this style in partnership with Bridgehouse Brewery, which has supplied a number of ales to the pub since it re-opened last year.  The beer is to be titled Septimus Prime after the long term landlord of the pub Septimus Lewin.  Bridgehouse Brewery is located near Oxenhope close to the town of Keighley and full use is made of the space in the small brewhouse which is dominated by 5 stills.  Located on a natural spring from which all the water is drawn to make the beer, they utilise on-site water storage and recycling to minimise waste of this resource.

The head brewer Harold Coburn ran Ryburn Brewery in Sowerby Bridge for 21 years before selling up and several years later he moved to his current role after being approached by the owners of Bridgehouse, now brewing alongside his apprentice.  Their range of regular beers include golden ales (Diken Gold, Blonde), bitters (Moorland, Stokers) and stouts (Heathcliffe, Bridgehouse Porter).

The new beer is made with the local water, their own strain of yeast which has been in service for 9 months now, a mix of malts to develop the colour and 4 hop varieties.  At the first stage of brewing German Hersbrucker hops add a citrus edge, while Challenger hops develop the aroma and the bitterness.  When it gets to the second stage Goldings hops are added, and finally Fuggles hops towards the end both bringing out the aroma more, with the resultant beer expected to have complex nose and citrus rather than dry hints.  The beer is the naturally filtered out through the left over hops at the end of the process.

The beer is being brewed as a limited run exclusively for Lewins with it going on tap at the bar in conjunction with a live event for young local talent on Thursday 26th April, and being available over that weekend while stocks last.

This article was written with the assistance of Bridgehouse Brewery and Lewins Ale House, Halifax.

Greene King’s New Beers – The Response

Posted: 15th April 2012 by admin in Writing
Tags: ,
1

My normal writing cycle is a eight hundred word article every week to suit the publication of Pubpaper, where these articles are normally printed.  I’ve had a rare couple of weeks off as the piece for next week has already been written in conjunction with a local ale house and brewer for prior fact checking.  Normally I try to write only one CAMRA piece a month, same with Greene King, the two topics which seem to pop up again and again.   So I face a week where I don’t have to write and I’ve already covered both topics as a full column already when they are hitting the blogosphere and promoting discussion.  I’ve got the itch to write (and also my 2 year old has got me up at 6am and I have an hour to kill before the Chinese Grand Prix starts).

I should say I haven’t tried the beers, not planning to go hunting them out either.  2 out of 3 of the beer writers mentioned below got sent review samples, Zak Avery also received samples from the company (corrected from earlier copy).

Greene King IPA Gold seems to have split beer bloggers, CAMRGB didn’t like it, Boak and Bailey said it was finishable and Zak Avery said he liked it.  CAMRGB captured what I don’t like about Greene King beer in the simple phrase “there’s that Greene King taste that so many of us don’t like”.  I’ve never thought of it that way before, but it sums it up perfectly.  Their review said there was no hops, no balls, and like me, wasn’t surprised, but disappointed by the results.   I worry about a beer however when the review mentions “ashtray” as a constituent flavour.

He gave the IPA Reserve and extremely poor review, with it finishing “What this is is a moderately unpleasant, definitely uninteresting beer with a scouring alcohol that has just started to give me acid burn in the pit of my stomach.”, enough said.

Going back to the IPA Gold, Zak Avery admitted in public that he liked it, and confirmed it to me in discussions on Twitter. Something which surprised me, but it is horses for courses I suppose.  Boak and Bailey said it was moreish once you let harsh carbonation and skunkiness drift off, and that it is lager like while being reminded of orange barley water, concluding it is designed to appeal to the lager boys.   They think it is better than the standard IPA (not hard), not bland or nasty, but there are plenty of other beers they’d choose from the shelves first.

Boak and Bailey said that the IPA Reserve was finishable and that the stronger ABV should make it more tolerant to travelling from Bury St Edmunds.  It should be noted that they admit they have a prejustice against Greene King, as do I, mine is probably bigger, intolerance of them is proabably more accurate.

Both reviewers however mentioned the clear bottles and the affect on taste of “Light Strike”, something they have been criticised for in the past.

Looking at the GK website, their official description of the IPA Gold is “This light golden ale brings the best out of the Savinsjki Goldings hop variety. The timing for introducing these hops is all-important because this creates the balance between the hoppy aroma and the bitterness of the aftertaste. For Greene King IPA Gold, our brewers add the hops at a later stage of the boil than with the Greene King IPA – this brings out tropical fruit aromas and spicy notes, which are followed by the clean, bitter flavour and crisp, dry finish.”

For the Reserve IPA, they say “This warming, full bodied ale has a reassuringly rich appearance and a mellow fruit aroma. Grapefruit and orange citrus tones combine with the floral and herbal Styrian Goldings hop variety deliver a reserve ale of exceptional quality with a dry, bitter finish. Greene King IPA Reserve is distinguished by a higher alcohol level, and this premium-strength ale feels and tastes more powerful, robust and warming. Very popular with ale connoisseur”

Looking at the statements above, B&B and CAMRGB didn’t find the same set of flavours, and I think the Reserve has fallen well short of “Very popular with ale connoisseur”, while the experiences with IPA Gold could be a totally different beer.   Casting a wider net, only one person has reviewed the Gold with a score of 10/20 and rating of 2.5/5.0, the Reserve has no reviews as we speak.  Beer Advocate has reviews for neither.  This could be down however to limited distribution in the initial rollout of the brand.  Beer Beauty gave them a general thumbs up (at a Greene King marketing event), but the site seems to republish too many press releases for my liking, so the weight I attach to this review is lowered.  I can’t find the link, but Roger Protz gave them qualified approval from memory, and calls on us not to dump on big brewers around the same time.

Otherwise its hard to find any more reviews at the moment, the key measure for Greene King is the sales and it will be interesting to see if the £4m is well spent.

Pubpaper 652 – My dichotomy on CAMRA and theirs on Craft Beer

Posted: 9th April 2012 by admin in Pub Paper, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
6

CAMRA are bringing out a mixed bag of feelings this month in me.  Pushing me away from them is the rejection of the majority of the craft beer motions submitted by the working group which was set up to investigate the matter to its National Executive, although my annoyance is that one in particular was not passed which I shall discuss later.  Alongside this is my personal view that they gave their support to the “beer duty escalator” e-petition far too late, although after speaking to the CAMRA marketing manager on Twitter at the time, I agree with him that a co-ordinated industry campaign would have made more of an impact.

However you cannot criticise the Community Pubs Month that is running throughout April.  This campaign supports all areas of the brewing trade, directly as in giving publicity to events at local pubs or indirectly in the case of brewers by encouraging beer sales on trade.  This is in a time where we are losing far too many pubs in the UK on an annual basis, not being helped by the recent increases in beer duty, cheap off sales and the greed of giant pub companies such as Enterprise Inns.

However moving back to the craft beer issue, CAMRA’s mission is to “support and promote good pubs and real ale”.  Who can disagree with the first part, we all want good pubs to survive, but it is the second that is starting to appear to an increasing number of people as being too exclusive.

The proposals which were rejected at the end of March at the AGM can be summarised as
1) recognise good beers exist which are not real ale.
2) CAMRA and SIBA to write definiton of ‘Craft Beer’
3) Positive Campaigning is encouraged throughout CAMRA
4) Audit of CAMRA publications to remove negative comments about ‘Craft Beer’
There were 5 points, but the last was more procedural.

Only point 3 was passed by the National Executive of CAMRA, the one which really made no difference at all.  Point 2 would have been almost impossible to implement as beer writers have been wrestling with this issue for the last 6 months and still not come up with a good answer.  Point 4 was practical on digital media and future publications, but you can’t retrospectively clean up the already printed word. The only point I wanted to see passed was number 1 – that good beer does not always mean real ale.

There are very good beers out there that do not totally or even partially fall under the current auspices of CAMRA.  Brewdog, Hardknott, Thornbridge, Magic Rock and Camden beers can be classed as ‘Craft’ and are well respected among those who know a good beer.  We cannot forget the excellent produce of Germany and Czech Republic, Belgium and the craft scene in the US.  CAMRA are stating, by rejecting point 1, that none of these are good beers by their definition.

Thankfully they do not take the opposite line that all cask beers are good beers, a fact which is patently false (Greene King disprove this in one sweep), as is the statement that all keg and craft beers are good beers.  In every field, at every level of quality there is the good and bad.  However it cannot be forgotten that personal opinion is the most important thing when it comes to beer, one mans nectar is another mans vinegar.

I repeat that modernisation is needed by the executive of CAMRA, however it is ultimately down to members to drive this change through pressure on the same people and they won’t get the new members who will push to make these changes when exhibiting the attitudes they do.  One cynically blogger speculated that most new members of CAMRA join for the free entry to beer festivals and Wetherspoon vouchers alone.  I’m sure a good number do currently!

I’ve never denied that CAMRA do a good job for their aims, but they do represent a slowly shrinking, although still vastly significant share of the ale market. I acknowledge that they are making a good fight back against mainstream lager as a whole and applaud them for it.  So lets not finish this piece on a down note, you cannot dispute some of their branch pubs of the year within West Yorkshire, Sparrow Bier Cafe deserves the Bradford award and the West Riding Refreshments Rooms in Dewsbury justify the Heavy Woollen award.

Enjoy your beer however it is dispensed or produced.

Pubpaper 651 – “Hybrid” beers continued and more possible Greene King dross?

Posted: 31st March 2012 by admin in Pub Paper, Writing
Tags: , , , , , ,
1

As anybody who has followed me in the past should know Greene King are not my favourite big brewer. In fact it is a brand I personally will not drink due to the blandness and inconsistency of the beer.  Only a few months ago, I wrote about moving onto coffee when Greene King and Guinness were the only non lager alternatives. I have even spoken to landlords who run Greene King pubs and have the same non consumption attitude towards the beer.

However, I appreciate that they are a gateway brewer that bring people into real ale and then hopefully onto good real ale.  They are now spending £4 million to try and bring younger drinkers into a market which they define as being dominated by males aged 35+.  While people of that demographic do make up a large section of real ale drinkers, dominate is too strong a word.  They state the growth in the sector for 25-34 year old males is up by 19%, this figure is realistic in my opinion when compared to simply observing the people who do drink the product on a day to day basis.

To this end, they are going to introduce two new drinks. Greene King IPA Gold at 4.1%, to quote them is a “a golden ale aimed at experimental younger drinkers looking for refreshment”. The second beer is Greene King IPA Reserve (5.4%) is “a warming, full bodied, quality ale with a rich aroma – is aimed at cask ale aficionados looking for an indulgent treat” according to their marketing team.

I am not their target market, but this extra choice will be good for the customers of their tied houses, as long as the beers are not slightly different, but equally bland and inconsistent brews.  The first beer reads to me as “ale lite”, maybe a hybrid beer, to tempt lager drinkers.  However no more details of the beer have been given, so it is hard to make a more informed opinion, but I don’t hold out a great deal of hope.

The description of the second beer comes across as an oxymoron, most people drink Greene King beers or are “cask ale aficionados”, rarely do the paths cross.  The same can be said of “indulgent treat” and the company’s brews. Many of these aficionados did probably once drink Greene King, but have moved on.  There are so many small and medium craft brewers creating distinctive high quality beers now, that the choice for such a person is extensive without the need to resorting to a big brewery beer.  Personally I have a wish list of about 50 beers currently, its not about to become 51.  Again very little detail is given about the beer, so the output at the pump is hard to predict.

Many free houses stock Greene King IPA or one of its sister beers as one of their core ales, along with a number of guests, and I can’t see these new beers breaking onto the guest pumps, so the logical guess is that if these new beers are picked up where there is a choice, it will cannibalise an existing Greene King pump.  Will this increase their sales and profits? Probably not to any great degree, there will be some growth, but cannibalisation of their existing beers sales will make up a good proportion of the new beers sales.

Going back to hybrid beers, don’t read it as dislike of them, there are some good hybrid brews out there with lager (or more lager style) hops included in the brewing process, in fact I am visiting the Bridgehouse Brewery to talk to the brewer about such a beer they are brewing for Lewins in Halifax this week.  When I popped into Lewins over the weekend, he had 2 such hybrid beers on to see how the customers took to them.

Trying them both, Wharfedales Chalkies White was a nice light refreshing ale, with the lager hop element coming through as a good dry flavour for the life of the pint.  Rudgate True Brew matched it in colour, but was a more complicated beer, out of the pump, citrus dominated the hop element of the flavour, but as it moved towards ambient temperature sitting on the bar, the dryer notes emerged and started to take over.  Both good beers, but overall I’d lean towards the Wharfedale brew more as my personal taste is towards the dry.  Both these beers sit in the low 4% range ABV wise as you would expect.

Postscript – you can find reviews which confirm my suspicions here and here 

Pubpaper 650 – The great beer tax escalator and leveraging the beer community

Posted: 22nd March 2012 by admin in Pub Paper, Writing
Tags: , ,
1

One little word makes all the difference.  On budget day George Osbourne announced there would no changes to planned alcohol duty. Initially this read (even by the BBC) as duty was not to be increased, but after listening more carefully what he said, what was really meant was that there was no change from the planned “inflation plus 2%” increase announced previously.   When this 5.4% (3.4% inflation + 2%) increase takes effect, the price of a pint of beer will increase between 7p and 10p per pint.

In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t seem too much, but can be enough to make a small number of punters to stay at home and drink shop brought beer.  With many pubs struggling as it is, even this small number of lost customers can make a disproportionate difference.  To protect the licensed beer trade there was already a campaign to get 100,000 signatures on the stop the beer escalator petition under way, but without the vocal support of the largest beer consumer body CAMRA, who only started to support the petition officially via communications with its members on the day of the budget.

The reason given was that sending the message out to coincide with the rate increase would get the most publicity.  This strategy has its risks, the timing of the press release could either ride the wave of the publicity for the tax post budget, or get drowned by the same wave, with the tax increase being the news instead of CAMRA’s campaign.  In a non scientific survey of some major newspapers online the following day, The Guardian, Independent, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror made no mention of their support for the petition, with some them merely noting CAMRA’s disappointment with the tax hike.  In national media it appears to have been drowned.

When searching for “camra beer tax escalator“ in Googles’ news search, it found 104 references to stories mentioning the words with a check of random results showing very little mention of their support for the petition.  When merely searching for “beer tax escalator“ it returns nearly 5,000 matches, so the story again seems to have been lost in the wake of the actual policy.  This is not to say that the CAMRA announcement will not come to more prominence once the post budget splash has settled, but I suspect it may have been better to do a pre or post budget campaign, something others online have disagreed with me on.  Even if only a fraction of their membership was to sign it then it would pad out the current 20,000 who support the campaign to between 50,000 and 70,000 which pushes it significantly closer to a chance of debate.

Indeed if you do a web search for the same term, you see that individual CAMRA branches have already been active in promoting this campaign unofficially before the budget, and I commend them for that.  The twitter feeds have also helped to raise the awareness.  But we now have a year to raise 100,000 signatures to force it to be considered for a debate under the rules of the e-petition system.  I ask that anybody reading this online or in print sign the petition to help to try and prevent future increases.

Regular readers may think that I am anti CAMRA, and although it is true that I have published more articles critical of the consumer body than in their praise, I do support what they do to a great degree. I think some of their policies, decisions and procedures are outdated and need updating, I am glad to report that some modernisation is now taking place regarding issues such as Craft Keg.  However it appears that they still are a reactive body not a proactive one, this is a symptom of their size and diversity of their membership to some degree, but the management still need to be quicker to respond to the ever changing world of beer, cider and ale.  This was a prime opportunity to show some leadership across the sector.

So a missed opportunity, maybe, only time will tell.  I hope to be proved wrong and will hold my hands up happily if I am.  If they could convince a majority of their 136,000 members to sign we will hit the target with their membership alone.  Lets hope that their support, that of beer enthusiasts and other trade bodies will get us past the mark.

Older Entries