Drinking outside the box

I've recently had some glimpses into the world of normal beer drinkers. A thread on a climbing forum asked "what's the worst brewery?" and the answers weren't quite what I expected.

That Black Isle got a mention was the first surprise, but then they did have an infection problem at one point. Then Brewdog were mentioned, but they do have quality issues and some of their beers won't be to everyone's taste. But when I saw Thornbridge listed I didn't know what to think. I can't remember a beer geek every complaining about them, except me about some of their prices that is.

Then down the Crown I heard that Windsor and Eton Kohinoor, a bitter IPA with a strong new world hop flavour, was selling slowly. Soon after I heard another brewer complaining how much Doom Bar was sold round his way. All I could think was, well, that's just how the world is.

Outside of beer geekdom there are a lot of people out there that don't like full flavoured and assertive beers. It's not just that they're happy to drink mildly flavoured beers, the don't actually like ones which aren't. As beer geekery tends to the extremophile end of things it's good to be reminded that most people stay away from the hop springs and drink in milder climates.

The Ballad of Reading Ale

On Saturday we had a research trip to Reading, something I've been meaning to do for some time. We started at The Ale House, a pub which lived up to its name with plenty of hand pumps. It's a small place, but we managed to find some seats in a cosy little alcove and settled in with pints of Mr Chubb's Lunchtime Bitter, an old favourite. We were waiting for another friend here so we had time for two. The lovely Lisa stuck with Mr Chubb, but as I used to work with Mr Bingham I moved on to his Twyford Tipple, which rather surprisingly had a touch of the Harvey's about it.

Zerodegrees was the next stop, it's part of a small chain of brewpubs. Though having said that it's more a bar than a pub and had loud beepy music playing so it wasn't to my taste. The beer's are some sort of CAMRA kosher keg but my hazy pale ale was fine and the smoked beer and wheat beer seemed to go down well too.

For some strange reason above the urinals they have pictures of women mocking  your manhood, not sure what that's all about.

It was time for a pie after that so we called in at Sweeney and Todd's, a restaurant with four beers on hand pump which mightily impressed me, even if the beer range was on the unexciting side. The food was very reasonably priced too.

Ready for more research after dinner I was delighted to discover another protestant sect as we waddled towards the last pub. This lot were homophobic Anglicans. I've never looked into C of E splits before but I've now got a whole new series of schisms to read up on. 

Our last stop was the Nag's Head, which had an impressive 12 cask beers on.

 
I spied Gadd's Old School Mild, which made the choice easy. Surprisingly hoppy for a dark mild I still enjoyed it even if I didn't get what was Old School about it. The pub was one big room with bare floor boards, which isn't really to my taste but I wasn't fussy by this stage of the proceedings. All that was left after that was to wend our way home, with refreshment from the M&S at the station sustaining us for the train journey.

Getting a Cobb on

The great wealth of information in the archives of the Journal of the Institute of Brewing has been a source of delight to me, but it also sent me into a temporary depression. I'd recently put some effort into tying up the loose ends of that most vexing question "what is a Goldings hop?", and felt some satisfaction that I now had the definitive answer on all ten of the varieties of Goldings.  

Then whilst using the excellent search function in the JIB archive to find more historic hop happiness I came across an unexpected bombshell: a 1943 paper which described Cobbs as a Golding variety. I'm sure you can understand the depression this threw me into. Could the most widely grown variety of Goldings really be a mere Golding variety?*

If this is the case then even buying East Kent Goldings won't guarantee you're getting real Goldings free from any interlopers. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth (I might even have pulled some hair out if I had any to spare) I resolved to investigate this calamitous calumny.

As it happens I should have done this straight away as a quick look at Percival showed Cobbs were selected from a garden of Canterbury whitebines, and so like all true Goldings differ from Farnham whitebines only by mutation and not by breeding. Phewb! I have since had it confirmed by Peter Darby that Cobbs really are a true variety of Goldings. 

Quite what caused the terrible travesty that left them languishing in a lower league for long years I couldn't say, but we can at least take comfort that they now reside where they rightfully belong.











* If you don't understand what I'm wittering on about Golding variety is the name for the second division of English hops, not considered as good as the varieties of hops that make up the true Goldings. And for those of you too young to remember the second division think League Championship .

Dr James Bryce - Microbrewing Interview

One of my old lecturers is on the radio here. 

A pub walk from Gomshall

Back in the Summer (you may remember fell it on a bank holiday this year) the lovely Lisa and I went on a pub walk around Gomshall. 

We were following another route in CAMRA's South East Pub Walks. We already had a bit of a thirst on by the time we'd got to the walk's start at Gomshall Station. The first pub we came to on the route was The Abinger Hatch. It wasn't an 'official' stop but we thought but we thought a quick off piste stop was in order. Our deviation did us no good though as it looked like a restaurant and we weren't taken with the beers so left without getting anything.

This meant we had to press on to Holmbury St Mary but it was worth the wait. The Kings Head was a proper pub, which was having its own beer festival and a barbecue. We sat in the garden enjoying a well earned pint.

The next leg involved navigating through a forest, which is something I've yet to master. The path we ended up on took us close enough to where we wanted to be though, so only a slight adjustment was needed to get us to our next stop, the Hurtwood Inn in Peaslake. This place was big, packed, and serving a couple of beers I'm boycotting. Fortunately the excellent Surrey Hills Shere Drop was on so we were able to have some righteous refreshment.

Then we were into the home straight and a late burst of speed allowed us to get in another pint between us of Shere Drop at the Compasses Inn.

We were so pushed for time I didn't even complain about the unsightly Northern head. Some quick guzzling and a dash to the station got us there in time for the train, which was just as well as the next one wasn't for two hours. Another great route from a CAMRA pub walk guide successfully completed.

Learning about lager

On Monday the IBD had an evening on Craft Brewed Lager. Though "craft" is not my favourite marketing term, and lager is not my favourite type of beer we do make a lager at work on occasion and I'd sent a case up for the event.

Sadly it was lost in transit so the assembled masses missed out on the brilliantly witty speech I'd written and the AWESOME lager I'd brewed. Well, hearing me speak and drinking my beer anyway.

But there were half dozen 'craft lagers' that had actually managed to arrive. The ingredients varied widely from German malt to English malt, all malt to not all malt, and European hops to English hops. Quality also varied widely with some pleasant enough for a lager and some decidedly unpleasant.

Some interesting things came up in the discussion though:

• One non-craft lager brand takes six days to make
• Another is fermented at 15 degrees C, rising to 20.
• There seem general agreement the long lagering thing is about clarity not taste
• There are two very genetically distinct types of lager yeast 

Then it was on to the networking, which safely back on the ales I may have overdone a bit.

I did pick up more news about a decidedly unrighteous brewery and a certain hop variety that I may get back to at some point though.

-. . .-- / .... --- .--.

As I'm sure many of  you can appreciate, sometimes brewing full time just isn't enough. The days, evenings and weekends may keep production levels up but I've still been lagging behind with the amount of hop varieties now out there to try.

As the lovely Lisa is also keen to increase her brewing knowledge we've been doing some mini-home brews with different hops and hop combinations.

One hop we used was Endavour, a new English variety with the grapefruit flavoured American hop Cascade as its mother. We've been making four to five gallon batches of wort and boiling up on the hob a gallon or so of each hop or hop combination we want to try.  My first attempt at using Endeavour was very disappointing. I'd kept the hopping quite modest and very little flavour came through into the beer. I wasn't sure if this was down to the hop or problems with weighing out on a few grammes on kitchen scales though so I gave it another go with the hopping rate cranked up to 60g for a 4 to 5 litre batch.

This time I got what I was after: a definite black currant smell, tongue coating bitterness, and a citrussy taste but still English in character. Great stuff actually, though hop heads note the flavour intensity is still not up there with modern American varieties, being more at the Bramling Cross or Bobek level. I was impressed with how my second attempt at using Endeavour turned out and it's definitely a hop I'd like to use at work.