I might have a glass of beer

Nip this prohibitionist nonsense in the bud

2012-01-09T18:30:00.000Z

Right, this is important. We are facing a potential alcohol ban on trains in Scotland. It is only a bit of flag-waving at the moment, but it needs a good hard kick in the goolies to put it off the agenda.

There has always been a streak of repressive puritanism in the Scottish Labour Party with regard to alcohol, and I’ve been in public meetings where sitting councillors have said things along the lines of “Why does anyone need to be out drinking at two o’clock in the morning anyway?”

It’s thanks to this small-mindedness that we’re not allowed to have a refreshing bottle of beer on the street in Glasgow, or to crack open a bottle of wine with a picnic in one of the city’s verdant parks.

Unfortunately, in this respect the SNP is even worse than Labour.

The SNP-controlled West Dunbartonshire Council, for instance, has a policy of granting no new licenses, the effect of which, of course, is not so much to inhibit the proliferation of squalid drinking dens, but to prevent any good new places from opening.

Now the prohibitionist hysteria has spilt over into the public transport sector. It was only to be expected, since over the last couple of decades one local authority after another has imposed a blanket ban on drinking in public. That one can still have a drink on a train has come to seem like an anomaly, rather than quite natural and ordinary as it once was.

Rail 2014, the discussion paper that Transport Scotland has put forward as a basic for renegotiating rail franchises, is a document which is going to be controversial for all sorts of other reasons, but the article pertinent to this blog reads:

“10.18 One of the most distressing ways to spend a rail journey is to be subject to the bad behaviour of other passengers. This can be fuelled by excessive drinking of alcohol. Currently BPT and ScotRail implement alcohol bans on specific services during events (such as services to/from rugby and football matches). However consideration is being given to whether there should be a ban on the consumption of alcohol on all trains in Scotland and we welcome views.”

Now a proposed ban of this kind is, as far as I know, unprecedented anywhere in Europe.

It would prevent hillwalkers having a dram from their hip flasks on the journey along the West Highland Line. It would prevent couples sharing a bottle of wine on a train. Absurdly, it would mean hen parties going to Newcastle for the weekend would have to wait to open their bottle of cava until Berwick-upon-Tweed. It would prevent thousands of completely innocent passengers legitimately enjoying a beverage in a responsible manner.

The purported benefit of a ban is extremely dubious. I’d wager that most drunk people causing trouble on trains are drunk before they get on. A ban on the train won’t affect them.

Has any research been done? Or is it just the result of prejudice on the part of people who, like the Labour councillor of old, can’t imagine why any respectable person would want to have a drink on a train?

Tourists from other countries who come to Scotland to visit the hills and glens will have no comprehension of this policy at all. It does not exist in their home countries, and can only convince them that Scotland is an odd, miserable, grey wee statelet ruled by fanatics, where you can't even have a beer on a train.

I urge all my readers to write to Transport Scotland and their MSPs opposing this proposal. You can download a response form at http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/strategy-and-research/publications-and-consultations/j203179-19.htm and read the document in its entirety here.

If you’d like to make your opinions known in person, there are a few more meet-the-managers sessions to go: 10 January at Glasgow Central railway station, 12 January at Edinburgh Waverley, 17 January at Inverness, 20 January at Perth, 24 January at Kirkcaldy, 31 January at Ayr, 2 February at Stranraer.

Ewwww

2012-01-08T09:00:00.000Z

Excellent way to get the message out to punters that you are a crappy pub run by sleazy people.

Is this even legal?

Bonnie beers of Loch Lomond

2012-01-07T07:30:00.000Z

As I have been saying for quite some time, you can’t move in Scotland at the moment without a new microbrewery popping up while you’re looking the other way.

One of the newest is Loch Lomond Brewery in Alexandria just south of Balloch. Fiona and Euan have been homebrewing for a few years before setting up the brewery, which made its first beer in October. I took the train up on a drizzly Sunday in December to have a look (I wasn’t the first blogger to visit – Adam got there before me).

The beers are currently being sold in the Village Inn in Arrochar and have been sighted in the Bon Accord and Pot Still in Glasgow too. The brewery is also in talks with a well-known department store about stocking bottled beer. I think bottling is a smart move – what tourist at Loch Lomond wouldn’t want a bottle or two of local beer?

Of the beers made so far, Ale of Leven is a sweetish heavy-type ale while Bonnie ’n’ Bitter is a hoppier beer somewhere between Deuchars and Bitter & Twisted. A darker ale called Kessog was being brewed when I visited.

To be honest, I was expecting an amateurish little brewery making dull beers. I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. No awards for innovation (yet), but the beers are good and polished with none of the dodgy notes that sometimes plague start-up breweries. It’s difficult to believe they’ve only been brewing commercially for three months. I look forward to tasting more of their products in the coming year.

Greene King Strong Suffolk

2012-01-05T22:06:00.000Z

The less popular beers from big breweries, to me, often make better drinking. I’ve long suspected that this is because they don’t sell enough for it to be worthwhile reformulating the recipes to save cash.

It’s not often that I have anything good to say about Greene King, but credit where credit is due.

Old people like me who grew up on Michael Jackson’s books will have heard the story of Strong Suffolk. Greene King brew a massively strong barley wine, Old 5X, in Bury St Edmunds, age it for years in oak and blend it with a younger beer to make a strong ale they call Strong Suffolk. None of their surviving contemporaries do that any more. It’s a unique relic in British brewing.

Imagine my surprise when a local pub tweeted that they had it on draught!

This is a real slice of brewing history in a glass, worth trying for that reason alone.

What I like about these old-school strong ales is that the hopping hasn’t been dumbed down to suit the timid palate of neophytes. Rich, winey and treacley though they may be, there is a decent tongue-sucking bitterness on the finish.

I may be imagining things but I think you can taste the aged beer.

The only quibble I have is that the strength has been reduced — down to 5.0% from the old strength of 6.0% in bottle. I suppose this is excessive caution on the part of the pub company, who don’t want people downing six pints of it and throwing up behind the Christmas tree, but it does mean that it is rather more watery than the unctuous bottled version.

Nonetheless it’s a delight to see this on the bar in a pub. There may be microbreweries who are aging beer in wood now, but Greene King – albeit marketing-led blandmongers most of the time — are the only ones in England still doing it continuously since the old days. I’ll salute that.

(Listen to me Greene King. Promote this stuff. You are good at this.)

(Listen to me readers. There may still be some of this beer about in M&B pubs. Drink it if you see it.)

My Golden Pint Awards: 2011 edition

2011-12-31T21:09:00.000Z

Here we are again. I’m having a quiet Hogmanay this year with just a few selected bottles and it’s time between the mince pies and chimes of Big Ben to announce the winners of my Golden Pints.

My top choices are not the beers I’ve drunk or enjoyed the most this year (that would be Fyne Ales and Harviestoun, who won everything last year anyway). But they are beers that have stuck in my mind through being good, interesting or thought-provoking. I’ve deliberately chosen beers that I haven’t blogged about specifically, but are worthy of more attention than they’ve had.

UK Draught (Cask or Keg) Beer
Harvey’s Mild: possibly the perfect session ale, still packed with subtle flavour after three pints. I worry that old-fashioned, idiosyncratic beers like this suffer from being less immediately accessible than those lovely New World pale ales that taste of Um Bongo.

Runner-up: Belhaven IPA. Yes, yes, yes. Nobody is more surprised than me to be giving an award to a Belhaven beer. Most of their draught products are frankly dreadful, having lost any character they once had. This new IPA is not one I expected much of. The first pint, drunk out of a sense of duty, was alright, better than Greene King IPA. Subsequent pints were better, with the spiciness and sulphuriness that other ales from the brewery lack. At 3.8% it’s obviously intended to compete with Deuchars IPA and does a more than creditable job. It’s never going to be a flavour bomb at that gravity but is a very palatable session pint. And at least their pubs are starting to offer this instead of the ubiquitous Deuchars or Greene King IPA from the parent company, which, quite apart from its defects as a beer, always looks to me like an angel of death when I see it in Scotland, implying that the closure of Belhaven is coming closer.

UK Bottled or Canned Beer
Worthington Celebration Shield: although I only drank it once, it stood out from the crowd. Being strong, it’s rich and boozy, but also dry and minerally as a proper Pale Ale should be. Unique among all the beers I’ve tasted this year.

Best Overseas Draught Beer
Haven’t drunk one … not one that stood up to those brewed in this country, anyway. With one exception: Stone Old Guardian barley wine, superb, oily and bitter. I have a lot of time for Stone. You don’t see Greg Koch going around shit-talking Charlie Papazian and Fred Eckhardt.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer
I don’t drink many of these either. As I’m writing this on New Year’s Eve, I’ll just put the last one I had: Odell 5 Barrel Pale Ale, which is fair enough as it’s a very nice beer. I like Odell beers; the problem is that they are too British to do well in the UK. You would think this would be an advantage, but as imports they are inevitably twice the price of a comparable local product.

Best Overall Beer
Tryst Nelson Sauvin Hop Trial. Tryst are a brewery I haven’t written about enough on this blog. Their beers can be inconsistent, but that means when they are poor they are merely good; when they are good they are spectacular. Nelson Sauvin Hop Trial is a beer I have ordered every time I’ve seen it this year, and each pint has been better than the last.

Best Pumpclip or Label

Nollaig, the seasonal beer from Williams Bros. The litre swing-top bottle looks so badass. The label is typographically superb, starkly beautiful so you don’t even notice it’s just white type on a black background. The beer is pretty good too, rich and chewy, a little on the sweet side with a marvellous dense head. There’s probably none left now. They will surely make it again.

Best UK Brewery
No award for this as it’s just not fair. There are so many good breweries now. Can't think of it as a competition any more.

Best Overseas Brewery
Schlenkerla of Bamberg. I could quite happily drink their beer all the time. Märzen in summer and Bock in winter. Oh yeah. I know there are some people who don’t like Schlenkerla. I secretly subtract about 20% from the value I place on such people’s opinions about anything else.

Pub/Bar of the Year
For me, it has to be the Laurieston Bar. When they put on a cask of Fyne Ales Highlander for Glasgow Beer Week’s Cask Night, I had no idea that it would lead to them serving cask beer regularly. I certainly never expected it, but when I was in for a quick pint a few weeks later I was met with complaints that the brewery hadn’t been in touch to sell them any more beer! One thing led to another: after an interregnum of putting on a firkin at weekends, the pub now has two handpumps and at least one cask beer on all the time. Other places will always have a wider range of beer, but there’s nowhere cosier than the Laurieston for a few pints with friends.

Beer Festival of the Year
Alloa. I’ve been disappointed by the beer quality at a few festivals this year. Alloa was brilliant because it was held later in the year when the weather was starting to get colder. As a result there were no cooling issues and the beer was in spectacular condition. We also seem to have banished the spectre of toffee-flavoured dishwater masquerading as “traditional Scottish beer” at these things, with both brewers and drinkers moving to well-bittered, hoppy beers.

Supermarket of the Year
No award. Sainsbury’s might have been in with a chance if the staff in their stores had actually been told about the Beer Challenge they were ostensibly having. I don’t really buy beer in supermarkets anymore — it’s either in the pub, independent shops or homebrew.

Independent Retailer of the Year
After a couple of years in the doldrums, The Cave at Kelvinbridge has returned to form and now seems to stock everything they can get from James Clay. Pricing can be painful sometimes but that’s the price we pay for access to specialities.

Online Retailer of the Year
No award, simply because I haven’t bought any beer online this year.

Best Beer Book or Magazine
In a world in which a work as sub-standard and sloppily produced as the Oxford Companion to Beer can make it into bookstores, it seems wrong to give an award at all.

Best Beer Blog or Website
I’ve been impressed this year not just by how prolific Jeff Alworth of Beervana is, but how insightful his posts are. Runner-up is Adam’s blog Walking and Crawling, because he goes to places nobody else does and I really enjoy vicariously touring Scotland through him.

Best Beer Twitterer
This would have to be @ThornbridgeDom, just because his tweets make me chuckle.

Best Online Brewery presence
I can't remember the last time I went to a brewery website for information. But they are usually a good source of the type of "we use only the finest malt and hops" woffle that plagues brewery marketing. Twitter is where it’s at for breweries, and here Hardknott has developed a reputation that is out of all proportion to its size. Runner-up is Magic Rock for similar reasons: they’ve achieved coverage far beyond that which rivals of a similar size get.

In 2012 I’d Most Like To…
Drink more tasty beer in great pubs. And to see crappy beer ticking sites collapse under the weight of their own fucking idiocy.

Happy new year, folks!

Real ale at Tennent's, 1983

2011-12-27T08:17:00.000Z

In 1983 Tennent’s launched a new cask beer. Tennent’s Times, the house paper of the company, reported thus on the trials in two pubs in Glasgow and Edinburgh:

Almost 18 months ago the Company re-introduced Draught Bass into a number of selected Managed Houses in Edinburgh as part of a test-marketing campaign in the cask-conditioned ale market. The success of the Edinburgh project brought about the re-introduction of the same product into a number of outlets in Glasgow and again the result has been a success.

Now as part of the overall exercise — and to consider all possible options — a new cask-conditioned ale, known as ‘Heriot Brewery Traditional 80/– Ale’ has appeared in Tennent’s Bar in Glasgow’s Byres Road. Brewed at Heriot, it has already been tasted — under the name of ‘Sheep Heid Inn Ale’ — in Edinburgh’s Sheep Heid Inn and was voted ‘a winner’.

Said Marketing Manager, Andy Lowe, “We recognise that the cask-conditioned sector of the market is very small at less than 2% of the entire Scottish market but we have to look at and consider all options, including brewing our own product in Scotland.

After all, Draught Bass is currently having to be shipped north and we would like to consider something brewed locally too.”

Note how cautious the article is. How the reader is repeatedly assured that this is just a test, just considering all options. They didn’t even want to put the Tennent’s name on it (it’s interesting to note that the same approach has been applied to the recent launch of Caledonia Best). Perhaps the project was not popular within the company. Unsurprising considering that they’d spent the previous twenty years eliminating cask beer from their pubs.

Here’s a young George Howell filling casks at Heriot. George is now Head Brewer at Belhaven.

The reluctance with which Tennent’s did this is palpable even 27 years later; next to the small two-column article reporting on the new beer, there is a larger opinion piece denouncing CAMRA. Relations were apparently less than good:

It’s always a very sad thing when people begin to exercise any kind of blind prejudice and particularly when that group is speaking on behalf of an obvious minority. No one denies anyone the right of protest or the right to try to expand the range of choice available to the consumer.

But what is offensive is when a small body begins to make unwarranted attacks upon a quality product which is already enjoyed by many people and one which has stood the test of almost 100 years of taste.

Yet that is what CAMRA in the West of Scotland has done in the recent weeks. They have made blind attacks on Tennent’s Lager on the basis, purely and simply, that they know best. They — a small group of misguided, albeit well-meaning individuals — have decided that Tennent’s Lager, enjoyed by millions throughout the world is not a top quality product!

And this comes from a group of individuals whose own spokesman was unable to tell Tennent’s Export Ale (brewery conditioned) from one of their so-called ‘real ales’ … and even admitted that he preferred Tennent’s Export!

CAMRA has a role to play and it plays that role very well in many parts of the country. However, it is doing itself no favours by ‘knocking’ other brews in a misguided fashion.

Better by far to promote cask-conditioned ale on its own merits, and let the public decide.

AFTER ALL DOESN'T THE CUSTOMER KNOW BEST???

Two per cent of the market. I wonder what it is now after the growth in recent years? It’s probably still substantially lower than in England.

The Heriot Brewery was demolished in the 1990s, but the Sheep Heid Inn, which claims to be Scotland's oldest pub, is still going strong, is now pretty focussed on cask beer and apparently still had Sheep Heid Inn Ale brewed for them until recently.

The return of black cork

2011-12-26T09:51:00.000Z

Inattentive readers with short memories may already have forgotten my post a few weeks ago about Black Cork, the lost Edinburgh beer that was the favoured pre-loading beverage of the villainous Deacon Brodie and his chums before they went out a-robbin’ of an evening. I argued that Black Cork was most probably a strong Scotch ale; “strong” in this particular historical context being 10% loopy juice, and not, as the name might suggest, a type of porter.

Now Edinburgh-based Knops Beer Company has revived the name and launched a new beer called Black Cork. It’s … a porter. This follows in the same vein of previous beers that pick up old beer names such as the previous Three Threads and Musselburgh Broke.

I had to go along to the launch at Edinburgh’s trendy Stockbridge Tap, because it was an opportunity to see the full Knops line-up on draught at once, and I’ll probably never get the chance again to tell a brewer that his beer isn’t a proper Black Cork at all (I’m not really bothered by this in the slightest. If I’ve learned anything from my research it’s that brewers will call any beer by any name if it will sell the stuff. It’s not like anyone living remembers the original black cork, which was only ever made by one brewery anyway).

Well, it’s porter. Coffee dominates with supporting chocolate. A surprising amount of fruitiness and an interesting damp-basement character. It’s easy to drink for its 6.2%. It has an underlying sweetness too, and the more you drink the easier it gets to drink. Dangerous.

I also try Knops IPA, which was launched some time ago but I’d never seen on draught before. It’s a fair bit sweeter than most of the beers I generally drink. Nevertheless it grows on you; there’s a respectable hoppiness that becomes more noticeable the more you drink. Knops has aimed from the beginning to produce easy-drinking beers; the very idea might send beer geeks running screaming down to the Cowgate but the IPA and Black Cork certainly achieve what they set out to do. Beers that are approachable, yet have enough character to remain interesting over several pints.

A midwinter night’s dream in Partick

2011-12-22T22:00:00.000Z

Depending on whom you listen to, the new Bruadar bar at Partick Cross is the best thing to happen for beer in Glasgow for years, or a flash in the pan that will be lucky to last six months.

The bar is in the premises last known as the Millhouse (which embarrassingly proclaimed itself “a great pub” on a sign outside. Erm, we’ll be the judge of that, thanks), the scene of several previous failed bar ventures. It’s the attempt by Fuller Thomson, operators of bars such as the Holyrood 9a in Edinburgh, to create a serious beer establishment in the west end of Glasgow. I’ve never been particularly impressed by the beer on offer in the Holyrood 9a the couple of times I’ve been there, so I was cautiously curious, albeit not wetting myself in anticipation.

Though announced to the public at very short notice, brewers like Williams Bros, Black Isle, Tempest and others have been happy to help out by supplying beer. Indeed the Williams brothers themselves, Bruce and Scott, had turned up for the opening to launch their kegged Profanity Stout.

First impressions were not great. Looking around and wondering where the handpumps were, it was a few moments before I twigged that the cask taps were mounted in the wall, Euston Tap-style, alongside the keg taps. Confusion ensued when I asked the bar staff what was available from cask—I was confidently assured that Profanity Stout was cask, as was 69 IPA from Lovibonds (a brewery who actually produce no cask beer whatsoever). Luckily my cynicism won out and I’d by now noticed the difference in the tap handles so could tell cask from keg. Still fumbling over which beer to try, I ordered Durham White Stout and got a shock when the half pint surprisingly came to £3. It was a strong beer and fairly good, but not worth that much. Fortunately this price point is not necessarily typical, with weaker quaffing beers even a little below the average for this part of town.

Still, these quibbles could be easily fixed with better signage (you have a blackboard, chalk the prices on it!) and when the staff get more experience.

I certainly didn’t let them spoil my night, as Glasgow’s contingent of beer nerds were arriving. We all crowded into a corner and joined brewery people from Williams and Black Isle for drink, burgers and chat.

What several people have been wondering is: is it a good idea to situate this new venture right next to one of the best-known real ale pubs in the city, the Three Judges? My answer is an unequivocal yes—it makes Partick Cross a real beer destination, worth crossing town for in the knowledge that if there’s nothing you fancy in one pub, or it’s full to bursting, you can always try the other.

Moaners will say “it’s not a traditional pub, though, is it?”, to which one can only point out that the weirdly fossilised pseudo-Victorian pub interiors favoured by pub companies are very much a historical aberration. Glasgow bars have often been refurbished in modern style, as the few remaining examples of 1930s art deco bars show. One thing I do find annoying is how loud the place is. It’s hard to hear yourself talk across the wide tables when even a few other customers are in. When it’s full it’ll be deafening.

How is the beer? 69 IPA’s deep, resiny harshness makes it an acquired taste, but I think I want to acquire it. Star of the show, though, was Tempest’s Into The Light, a pale ’n’ hoppy full of citrus flavours. Magic Rock’s Rapture was one of those hoppy red beers that I don’t normally like, but is well made.

Some of us were drinking keg, others cask, some both. Just as at Social Media Week’s beer tasting a few months ago, people are capable of enjoying the products of different brewing traditions without getting their knickers in a twist. Will Hawkes had an excellent piece on the Independent website last week which really hit the nail on the head about what’s going on in Scotland (and I’m not just saying that because he quoted me in it). Scottish brewers and drinkers are developing closer ties based on respect and a love of good beer. Suddenly it’s the sectarian Brewdog cult that looks out-of-touch and irrelevant. Everyone else is getting on great and having a good time.

Disher’s ale and Edinburgh United Breweries beers 1928–1933

2011-12-04T08:00:00.000Z

Edinburgh United Breweries. Pretty much forgotten today. It was set up in the late nineteenth century to absorb several small breweries, among them Bell’s, sometime brewers of “black cork”, and Disher’s, famous for their strong ale.

Bell’s brewery on the Pleasance remained the brewery for the united concern. Here it can be seen in the background. Splendidly, the pub in the foreground is advertising Disher’s Ten Guinea Ale:

Picture courtesy of David Gordon of the Edinburgh shop Now and Then

Here's what the site looks like today. Hooray, the brewery building is still there!

View Larger Map

Now for some numbers. I don’t know for sure what kind of beer the 54/– to 80/– and the 6d and 8d beers were. Most likely Pale Ale, but I am not going to assume. As 210/– is ten guineas, I think we can take it that they were still making Disher’s Ten Guinea Ale up to the end. But look at the gravity of it and how it plummets by almost 20 gravity points in just five years. More happily, Jeffrey’s continued to brew it after they took over EUB in the 1930s and were still making Disher’s Extra Strong Ale at 1.088 in the 1950s.

Gravities of Edinburgh United Breweries beers, 1928–1933
Brewery	Beer name	Beer type	OG	Year
EUB	6d	?	1037	1928
EUB	Mild	?	1033	1928
EUB	8d	?	1052	1928
EUB	210/–	Strong Ale	1103	1928
EUB	210/–	Strong Ale	1100	1929
EUB	54/–	?	1031	1929
EUB	80/–		1054	1929
EUB	Exp St	Stout	1055	1929
EUB	60/–	?	1036	1930
EUB	210/–	Strong Ale	1093	1930
EUB	54/–	?	1031	1930
EUB	Mild	Mild Ale	1032	1930
EUB	210/–	Strong Ale	1090	1930
EUB	210/–	Strong Ale	1089	1931
EUB	210/–	Strong Ale	1085	1932
EUB	54/–	?	1030	1933
EUB	60/–	?	1036	1933
EUB	210/–	Strong Ale	1082	1933
EUB	210/–	Strong Ale	1090	1933
EUB	60/–	?	1039	1933
EUB	60/–	?	1042	1933

On the trail of black cork

2011-11-30T22:36:00.000Z

On Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, there is a pub called Deacon Brodie’s Tavern. If you are a 19 year old German or Spanish backpacker, you have probably been there. It is named after William Brodie, the 18th century cabinetmaker by day, robber by night whose double life inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

But for his notorious trial, the beer once known as “black cork” might be altogether forgotten.

The account published as “Trial of W. Brodie and G. Smith”, in The Scots magazine, August 1788, tells us: “...they met in an upper room in Smith's house, and had some herrings, chickens, gin, and black cork, which last he explained to be Bell's beer…” (p. 371)

Later accounts appear also to be based on this version, and black cork remains a feature of the story, such as in The Trial of Deacon Brodie (1906): "Smith, Brown, and Ainslie were sitting in an upper room beguiling the time with a light refection of herrings and chicken, washed down by draughts of gin and “black cork”, i.e. Bell's beer." (p. 36)

Almost two hundred years later, Forbes Bramble can be found writing in The strange case of Deacon Brodie, 1976: “On the bare boards of the floor stood several bottles of Bell's ‘black cork’, thick, black ale more intoxicating than wine”. But this is not a contemporary source, and there is no reason to believe that Bramble hasn't just made a guess at what black cork was.

Bell's beer also appears by name in fiction, in The gaberlunzie's wallet by James Ballantine (1843):

“Talking of the fiddler, have ye heard any word of him lately,” inquired the Gaberlunzie.

“No,” said Nanny, “ye ken I maunna be ower inquisitive. But sit ye in, there’s something will suit your Scotch stamack better nor French frogs; just eat awa there, and I’ll run ower the way to Bell's brewery, and get ye a pint o’ black cork to synd it doun wi.”

The Gaberlunzie ate heartly of the savoury dish which Nanny placed before him, and thanked his stars he was at home once more.

So what was black cork? It sounds like it's a slang term for porter, doesn't it? That seems reasonable enough, as porter was at its most popular in the late 18th century, and black. And it appears significant that the beer was made by Bell's brewery, with no other being mentioned.

Could black cork have been porter? It seems the obvious answer, but contemporary sources suggest not. In an article in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, February 1820 (No. 35, Vol 6) about food adulteration, widespread in England and described in great detail on the preceding pages, to which the author patriotically, if naïvely, fancies that Scottish foodstuffs are less liable, he praises the beer of Prestonpans and Edinburgh:

Uncontaminated by drugs, the porter of the Prestonpans brewery will still maintain the high reputation it has acquired; and share with Bell's ale an honourable, an extended, and a lucrative popularity.

So one beer is described as porter, and the other as ale. If they were both porter, wouldn't they be compared as such? In 1805 we also find Robert Forsyth describing Bell as a brewer of ale, so implicitly not porter (“The Beauties of Scotland Vol I”, pages 159-160, quoted in R Pattinson, “Scotland!”, p15):

Formerly a brewer, who had established his works in the southern district at the Pleasance, Mr Bell, was more celebrated than any other in Scotland for the preparation of malt liquor ; but his ale had the fault of being extremely intoxicating.

Another source also treats Bell’s beer and porter as different things. In Hugo Arnot, The history of Edinburgh: from the earliest accounts to the year 1780 (first published, as far as I can make out, in 1779, but I quote from the 1816 edition), we read:

“The Pleasance consists of one mean street; through it lies the principal road to London. There is nothing remarkable in this suburb except a large brewery, with spacious vaults, belonging to Mr Bell, where the best strong beer is made of any brewed for sale in Scotland. The quality of it is, indeed, so good, as to recommend itself to be purchased not only for home consumpt, but also for exportation.” (p251)

“The strong beer brewed in Edinburgh by Mr Bell, and its excellent quality, have already been spoke of. Porter is also brewed in Edinburgh: but it is a different liquor from London porter, and greatly inferior to it; accordingly, a considerable quantity of that liquor is annually imported from London.” (p267)

Bell’s is, we learn, strong beer, but the statement “Porter is also brewed in Edinburgh” immediately following implies that the beer previously mentioned is not porter.

David Loch, in his Essays on the trade, commerce, manufactures, and fisheries of Scotland (1778) had already noted the inferior quality of Edinburgh porter vis-a-vs London porter — or at least what was sold to the unwary as London. But specifically, he complains about the willingness of the Edinburgh public to accept watered-down London porter in place of the (in his view) perfectly adequate local product:

I have already acknowledged that we cannot, or at least do not, for reasons before accounted for, brew Porter so well here as they do in London; but I dare venture to say, there are many persons who make such Porter as might please any English palate; and a dose of patriotism mixed with it will make it also agreeable to the Scots. Out of a great number of eminent Porter brewers, I shall beg leave to mention the following:— Mr George Miller, St Ann’s yards; Mr James Hotchkiss, Grass-market; Mr Archibald Campbell, Cowgate; Messrs Gardener and Co, Goosedub; the Industrious Company, Edinburgh; and Messrs Cundell and Son, and Mr Matthew Comb at Leith.

I have formerly hinted, that the Porter drunk in our taverns and public-houses is not genuine London Porter, but adulterated with small beer. —This fact has been declared by Londoners themselves, and others well acquainted with its true taste. In short, there is hardly a tavern or public house in Edinburgh or Leith, where London Porter, as they call it, is kept, but at least one third of the bottle is small beer, though you pay fourpence and sixpence a bottle for this precious stuff.

… Whereas, good Scots Porter, without any adulteration, can be had at threepence a bottle, and excellent strong ale at the same price, at any public house in the town, both of which are better worth the money than the mixed trash drunk by hundreds of dozens in a day, in and about this metropolis.

Following his argument that Scottish brewers, blessed with lower malt duty and cheaper coal, should be able to compete easily with imported English beer were it not for the fashion for London Porter, he concludes:

“…we may be supplied with as good wholesome drink at home and at a cheaper rate than any we can import from England.

I could particularize many instances to prove the truth of this assertion, from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Leith and other places; but I shall confine myself to one at present; and that is, Mr Hugh Bell of this city. This gentleman occupies a most extensive brewery, and, without partiality to the manufactures of my own country, I may safely aver, that no brewer in Great Britain furnishes better malt liquors of the different kinds and prices than he does. His strong beer, or ale, known by the name of Bell’s Beer, is famed both at home and abroad. His small beer, too, is of an excellent quality, and, if properly managed, will keep twelve months, being but little inferior to that which is drunk here in public houses under the appellation of London Porter. Private families may be supplied with it, being good, wholesome drink, at a little more than a penny a bottle. Mr Bell has not yet attempted to brew Porter, his demands for different sorts of ale being very considerable.”

This seems quite clear. Loch lists a number of porter brewers, and explicitly mentions Hugh Bell as a brewer who does not make porter. If we were still to assume that black cork was porter, we would have to assume that Bell began brewing it at some point in the subsequent ten years and that Brodie and his chums began drinking it. Not an entirely impossible scenario, but probably less likely than black cork being Bell’s already famous strong ale.

There is a short article by Charles McMaster in the Scottish Brewing Archive Newsletter #17 which traces the most salient points in the history of Bell’s brewery, but doesn’t tell us an awful lot about the beer, except that it was a strong Scotch ale, though no evidence for this claim is presented. There is a rather odd description of Scotch ale as strong and dark; perhaps McMaster was conflating the dark beers produced as Scotch Ale in the 20th century for the Belgian market with the old-style Scotch ale described by both Roberts and Booth as exquisitely pale.

McMaster does tell us that the secret of brewing black cork died with its last brewer, Robert Keir, in 1837. I wonder how secret a beer recipe can really be, but it seems to have been accepted that the secret, whatever it was, was lost. It seems strange that a beer evidently well-known over a period of sixty years should just disappear, but there you go.

Sadly there are no records of the Bell’s brewery in the archives. The trail begins with Edinburgh United Breweries, who bought Bell's and some others in the late nineteenth century. But black cork was long since gone by then.

There are therefore no real successors to black cork in modern times. However, in 1933, shortly before EUB went into administration, they were brewing 54/– ale at an original gravity of 1030, 60/– at 1036 (though some brews of this went as high as 1042) and 210/– at 1090. This last ale was presumably the descendant of Disher’s Ten Guinea Ale which was praised (albeit in its own advertisements) in the 19th century as “the burgundy of Scotland”. It had already fallen in gravity from 1103 in 1928, so heaven knows how strong it had been in the 1800s. Perhaps that is, though certainly not a direct relation of black cork, the nearest known next of kin.

New Scottish Brewing Archive Association website

2011-11-29T07:53:00.000Z

After years of perching on a link three levels deep in a subdirectory at Glasgow University, the Scottish Brewing Archive Association now at last has its own website: http://www.scottishbrewingarchive.co.uk/. The Association is a support and publicity network for the SBA: the Archive itself is tended by the professionals at the University’s Archive Services. The SBAA holds occasional events and publishes its Journal once or twice a year, which is well worth a read. New members are very welcome. Facebook users can also visit their page.

Well done

2011-11-28T05:40:00.000Z

I saw this table talker in a pub at the weekend. Good to see a pub making the extra effort and having proper hand-pumped wi-fi.

If you criticise the Oxford Companion to Beer, you’re a Nazi, says Protz

2011-11-22T21:00:00.000Z

I was quite gobsmacked to read Roger Protz’s review of the Oxford Companion to Beer in the Publican’s Morning Advertiser. It’s mostly the same as the review posted on his web site a couple of weeks ago, but he has gone to the extra effort of including a newly written section attacking the book’s critics – 25% of the entire review is spent attacking Martyn Cornell and Alan McLeod.

When I criticised one of Roger’s articles in the Companion, he complained that I was condemning him in public for a piece that might have been edited. On the other hand, he is quite happy to pillory the critics of the book in the pages of the Morning Advertiser. I don’t know how many readers the Morning Advertiser has but I imagine it’s a bit more than the few hundred who follow me on Twitter. I’d be worried about the state of the pub industry if it weren’t.

Garrett Oliver has assured us that nobody is making any money off the Oxford Companion to Beer. In view of this I do ask myself exactly why old-guard beer writers are so eager to defame those who have raised criticisms of the book. Roger writes, rather immoderately: “In spite of this, the bloggerati have come piling in, damning the book and some saying it should be withdrawn. How they must wish they had been around in the 1930s when book-burning was in vogue.”

So there you have it. In Roger’s view, if you suggest that getting facts right is important, or that more robust editing might have eliminated a few howlers from the book, well, you might as well pull on your brown shirt and go sieg-heiling down the street.

Roger is on shaky ground when he accuses others of practices reminiscent of totalitarianism. It was his Speakwrite machine which set the record straight, after all, so now everyone knows that London brewery Barclay Perkins never existed.

Roger lectures us: “It’s an established fact in publishing that most encyclopedias and dictionaries contain errors that are corrected for subsequent editions … Oxford University Press is a prestigious publisher and it will rapidly update the beer book.” I wonder how Roger thinks the OUP is going to correct the errors, if nobody points them out.

Beer at Whole Foods

2011-11-21T07:00:00.000Z

When it comes to beer, Whole Foods has a lot to live up to. The chain is well known in the United States for its beer selection and not a few beer lovers have been watching closely for clues about what would be stocked in the Giffnock store which opened last week.
A relatively small area is given over to beer — one large chiller and a couple of shelves. This is not as stingy as it sounds because only premium products are stocked. Peroni and other “world beers” are about as downmarket as it gets.

There is very little that you can't get elsewhere in Glasgow, which is a bit disappointing, but it’s a solid selection with the complete range of bottled beers from Fyne, Inveralmond, Black Isle, Colonsay etc. For imports there are a few Belgian specialities, the mighty Schlenkerla Märzen, a few dull wheat beers and sixpacks of Anchor and Flying Dog.

Whole Foods is also surely the first supermarket in Scotland to sell draught beer. I wondered whether they would transplant this practice over from the US, and they have. You can buy a 1 litre flagon and get it partly filled from one of three draught beers — two keg and one cask. Partly filled? Yes, because (and readers with a knowledge of UK licensing laws will know what’s coming) 1.5 pints is the largest legal amount of draught beer that can be filled into a litre bottle. Two pints is just a bit too much to fit. One and a half pints leaves you with a large amount of headspace, which is bad news for the beer. Agitate the bottle on your way home and you've got a lot of foam and flat beer.

I bought one anyway and got it partly filled with West St Mungo. Thinking of the potential problems I opened it immediately I got home to enjoy the beer at its freshest (theoretically the beer could also get badly oxidised from running down the side of the bottle and being shaken about in transit). St Mungo is often served too fizzy at the brewery, so was just right for having some of the CO2 shaken out of it on the way. I drank half and put the rest in the fridge. When I came back to it a few hours later it was too flat to be enjoyable.

This is a shame, as it means that the ultimate in ecological off-sales, cycling home with beer in a refillable flagon, is a complete non-starter. You have to drive it away in the boot of a car with good suspension, negating any environmental benefit. Whole Foods really need to re-think this flagon.

Good on them for trying to sell cask-conditioned beer too, but I wouldn't like to speculate what sort of shape your cask ale will be in by the time you get to drink it. If you’re thinking of indulging in one of these flagons, probably best to drink the contents as soon as possible, rather than wait out the three days they claim it’ll last. In view of the poor keeping quality and probability of wastage, a lot of mugs like me will probably get a fill once and then go back to buying packaged beer.

Brewing with raw grain in Glasgow in the 1830s

2011-11-16T08:00:00.000Z

The other day Ron had a post about Scottish brewers using unmalted grain in their beer.

While illegal during most of the 19th century, it did go on, as shown by this extract from a parliamentary enquiry. Who’s that being questioned by the Commissioners of Excise? Why, it’s Hugh Tennent himself, complaining about how the raw-grain brewers are ruining his business.

Minutes Of Evidence taken before the Commissioners Of Excise Inquiry
at Glasgow.
Sir HENRY PARNELL, Bart, in the Chair.
Appendix No. 78.
23d November, 1833.
Mr. Hugh Tennent called in and examined.
In what business are you engaged ?—I am engaged in the brewing department in the neighbourhood of Glasgow.

The Commissioners will be happy to hear any communication you have to make ?—It has been the wish of some of the brewers here that the duty could be thrown on the beer altogether in place of the malt; at the same time we are aware there are objections to that in England, as there is so much private brewing; but I should think the revenue would be much better collected, and that there would be but little opportunity of fraud, if the duty were laid entirely on beer. At present there is a very great trade carried-on in this very town by the use of raw grain in the mash-tuns in the place of using barley malt, which they ought by law to do; there is a very great mixture of raw grain, and the regular brewer is not able to compete with the people who make use of this raw grain.
Does not it make a bad beer ?—It makes a brisk beer that will keep for a short time; they cannot make it in the summer months, for it will not keep; but if made from October till June, it will keep for several weeks.

Do not the consumers find out the difference ?—No; they get a cheap article, and that is a great matter now-a-days. If there can be no alteration of that kind I believe the respectable brewers here would wish very much, if the Government found it necessary by giving up the assessed taxes, that the duty should be laid again on beer—and I do not think it would be much felt by the community—a duty of 4s. or 5s. a barrel. The trade is completely destroyed by these people who use raw grain, and it would help to put it on a right footing again.

What was the old duty ?—About 22d. upon the barrel of table and small-beer; 9s. 10d. upon the strong ale and porter; 9s. 10d. a barrel, and 1s. 10d. on the beer; but if Government thought proper to put on a present duty of 4s. or 5s. a barrel, I would propose it should be on all liquor; for before the law was altered they were in the habit of making very strong beer, and reducing it and selling it as porter, paying only the small-beer duty upon it, and the regular trade was very much injured by it; if there was an average duty on all beer made as strong, that would protect not only the revenue but the fair trader.

Have you any thing to suggest with regard to the regulations for collecting the malt duty? —No; I think the duty is very well collected here, so far as I have had an opportunity of seeing.

Is there no smuggling of malt ?—I think not: the regulations cannot be too strong, but I think they are as perfect almost as I can conceive them to be; at the same time we are desirous of every check that can be introduced to protect us against the smugglers. We are considerably engaged in the export to the East and West Indies and South America, and I will take the opportunity of mentioning that we feel a great competition from the Germans and Swedes in those markets, and especially in the South American market and the Havannah market, from the cheapness with which they bring forward liquor to those markets. We do not get any thing like the drawback of malt duty that we actually pay; on every barrel we get two bushels. Now I have just taken a note : there are two articles we ship to the West Indies and South America—a sort of beer and ale; on the beer, where we use eighty bushels in a small brewing, we get a drawback only of fifty-six, and on a brewing of ale of 126 bushels we get a drawback only of fifty-four; they allow just two bushels to the barrel of whatever strength we choose to make it—thus there is no allowance of drawback at all upon the hops: we pay a half per cent, duty upon the glass when we put it into bottles, and what we ship to the East Indies is in hogsheads, made generally of Dantzic wood, on which there is a heavy duty. I mention this last to shew the hardship under which we labour in competing with those persons in Sweden and Hamburgh and Bremen, that when they ship to these markets — they are free of all those duties we pay; it is cramping our export trade very much. In shipping the bottles we are charged a half per cent, on the glass, and a half per cent, upon the beer—whether the beer is in wood or in bottles, we pay a half per cent.; besides that, we are charged debenture, bond, and stamps—all together the charges come to a very considerable sum over and above what those foreigners are able to ship at from their own ports; in fact we are driven out of the Havannah market altogether by the competition, and that is a very extensive market.

Would you have a considerable increase of business, if all these matters were adjusted properly ?—There is not a question of it; not only in Glasgow, but Liverpool and London, they are all suffering equally with ourselves.

In your view there would be a greater revenue collected from malt ?—Yes, in the first instance; but if we get a fair drawback on what we actually used it would come back to us again.

Only ever brewed in … oh, never mind

2011-11-15T16:47:00.001Z

In their continuing mission to run once-respected beer brands into the ground, AB Inbev have decided to start brewing Beck’s Beer in St Louis for the US market.

No, local brewing is nothing new at all, but it is a massive fall from grace for Beck’s, which once tried to distinguish itself from all the brewed-under-licence lager brands by using the line ‘Only ever brewed in Bremen, Germany’.

I’ve never liked the beer, but I did always find it amazing in bars how people could be persuaded to pay significantly more than the price of a pint for a titchy half-pint bottle.

AdvertisingAge reports:

A-B InBev will move Beck's production for U.S. consumers to St. Louis by early next year. “We made this decision after talking extensively with our consumers, who tell us they aren't concerned about where the beer is produced as much as how it’s produced,” said Andy Goeler, VP-imports crafts and specialties, noting that the formula won't change.

Reassuring to know that, wherever it’s brewed, it will still be thin-tasting and lightstruck.

I have updated the Suckiness Index which now gives AB Inbev a distinct lead in the suckiness stakes.

A wasted opportunity

2011-11-10T21:33:00.001Z

I am convinced that breweries do some things on purpose to make me look an idiot. Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote, optimistically: “With both Tennent’s and McEwan’s now owned by companies for whom they – for the first time in several generations – are an important part of the business, I’d like to think that these formerly ubiquitous behemoths of Scottish brewing will find their way back to making really distinctive beers.”

After Tennent’s escaped from the clutches of InBev, whose marketing team now specialise in floundering about launching failure after failure on the market, I hoped that we would see interesting new beers that capitalise on the brewery’s heritage. Reading about the launch of the new beer from Wellpark, it is as if they are deliberately mocking me.

The new beer, Caledonia Best, is a 3.2% “balanced” (i.e. hopless) ale to be served from nitro-keg. Does that sound familiar? It should do. Spot the difference.

The beer is an exact match in colour and ABV with the established Belhaven Best, which is one of the nastier liquids brewed in Scotland yet miraculously secures 37% of the draught ale market. Not only that, Tennent’s have matched the name and colour scheme as far as legally possible. It looks like one of the own-brand products you see in supermarkets with the package design made to resemble the market leader.

Owner C&C has set aside £1m to develop and market the stuff, so basically they've spent a fortune getting into the fastest contracting sector of the market: a market their principal rival already has all sewn up.

Apparently it’s taken five separate agencies to come up with this, as marketing mag The Drum reports:

JKR created the font and brand identity for the new product, while Multiply handled the point of sale and Newhaven will be the ad agency involved. MPG is the media buyer and Burt Greener Communications will handle PR.

Howard Street: the story of a pub and a grocery store

2011-10-31T07:30:00.000Z

This post is only tangentially about beer; it’s mostly about a pub and a supermarket on the the same city-centre side street in Glasgow.

This was a branch of the Co-op, previously Somerfield. It finally closed last week. I don’t know what will come afterwards. The 1960s Aer Lingus building is looking very tatty these days and was earmarked to be demolished, though the plans for a hotel and retail development to replace it are pre-credit crunch, so who knows whether they will go ahead. We have a habit in Glasgow, even in good times, of demolishing buildings and leaving the vacant site for a while, say thirty or forty years, until someone figures out what to do with it.

What is planned to replace the supermarket. By the looks of things we'll
have better dressed junkies too. Image from Farrell & Clark

Ironically enough this tatty 1960s block replaced a previous Greek Thomson effort on the same site. To be fair, the Thomson building wasn’t one of his greatest, and the concrete office block was a handsome building in its time. My fascination with this store started when I found out how long it had been trading. It was like the retail equivalent of the brush that’s had three new heads and two new handles. Think about it; the business has been operating here longer than the actual building it’s in. It’s changed ownership too, several times. But until last week it was still in the same place selling groceries where it had been for 130 years.

Let’s jump to the other end of the street for a moment.

This is the Imperial Bar. It’s not much to look at from the outside, though there is some interesting stained glass and the carved wooden frontage appears to date from the 1930s. More interesting is that there appears to have been a drinking shop on this site continuously for at least 150 years.

In 1850 George Malcolm was trading as a “spirit dealer”, in the language used at the time, at 14 Howard Street. By 1851 he appears to have moved down to No. 6 and has acquired an “& Co.”

Mrs G. Malcolm (possibly George’s widow?), was a spirit dealer at 6 Howard Street in 1857. The shop at No. 14 was occupied by J. McCulloch, a tea merchant.

In 1876–77, JB Turner is trading as a spirit dealer at No. 6. Cooper & Co are a tea merchant at No. 12.

Eighteen years later in 1894, Turner’s still trading in the same place. Cooper & Co., tea merchants, have expanded to occupy No. 8, 20 and 22.

By 1902 some well-known names had moved in: Coopers have expanded further to take on No. 28 as well, and Lipton, a rival tea merchant and grocer at No. 2 on the corner of Jamaica St. A. G. Malcolm is listed at No. 4. A descendant of George and Mrs. George?

1904 4-6 Turner. Cooper & Co have opened a café at 30-32. Blackwood & Co at 36-38.

By 1907 Turner’s over thirty-year occupation of the shop is over. No. 4 has a new occupant, James Maitland. Possibly he was related to one or both of William Maitland, a wine and spirit dealer in Wallace St, Tradeston, or Archibald Maitland who had plied the same trade at 171 Cowcaddens, fifty years earlier.

Cooper & Co already occupy a good chunk of the block, at 8, 38, 36–38 with their café at 30–32. The Lorne Restaurant, another famous Glasgow boozer which can be seen on one of the photos below, is also present by this time. Today it trades as Hootenanny.

Cooper’s did very well and by the time the 1960s rolled around it had grown into a successful chain of supermarkets.

Maitland didn’t end up with a chain of pubs, but the pub stayed in the family through the better part of a century. It’s still listed as Maitland’s in the Post Office directory of 1973-4. I don’t know when exactly it changed its name to the Imperial Bar but it must have been in the late 1970s or as late as the mid 80s.

Cooper’s operating as a supermarket, still in the Greek Thomson building in 1964.

By 1966 the west side of the supermarket has been replaced by a modern 1960s building.

Then the east side was also replaced

When Coopers merged with Fine Fare it was presumably the same sort of consolidation that affected the brewing industry in the 1960s. It didn’t stop there. Fine Fare became Gateway which became Somerfield before the store was eventually sold to the Co-op.

Looking west down the street:

Maitland’s can just about be seen next door to Coopers and Ross’s Dairy is on the corner

Looking west today, the block with the Imperial Bar is the only constant

Let’s have a look from the other end of the street, the corner of Jamaica St.

We can sort of see a bit of the pub frontage in this 1930 picture


By 1939 the corner building was Ross’s Dairy and tea-room.

By 1961 surprisingly little has changed except the cars. We still can’t see the front of the pub very well.

Today the Imperial is a typical old pub that still sells McEwan’s-branded beers. I’d wager it’s done so ever since 1960 when Scottish Brewers swallowed up T & J Bernard, the Edinburgh brewery which had owned the property and rented it to the Maitlands for decades. In February 1958 James Maitland wrote to Bernard’s as follows:

Dear Sirs,

As you know, my Father was your tenant at the premises at 6 Howard Street, Glasgow, from October 1906 and that I succeeded to the tenancy on his death. Originally Father had a lease but for many years now the tenancy has been on a yearly basis.

While I have the assurance of your present mangement [sic] that there is no intention of disturbing the existing arrangement and have every confidence in that assurance, I feel that the present arrangement is somewhat unbusiness like and of course liable to give rise to anxieties in the event of changes of management. Under the circumstances I should be glad to learn that you would be prepared to grant me a Lease of the premises for say 10 or 15 years. Should you prefer it I should be most willing to consider purchasing the property and if a sale is in your mind I should be glad to have your views as to the price.

Once you have had an opportunity of considering the matter I should be glad to hear from you.

Yours faithfully, James C. Maitland.

Bernard’s did not have a sale in mind; they had in 1954 refused an approach from a third party who was interested in purchasing the whole property together with the adjoining Ross’s Dairy. But they did agree to give Maitland a 10-year lease, “subject to the usual conditions”. At the time, the pub comprised a public bar, two sitting-rooms and a cellar. Today it’s open plan, but it’s not a big pub, so the sitting-rooms must have been quite small, what we would call a snug.

James Maitland was evidently a confident negotiator and talked the brewery into removing a clause in the standard agreement which would have forbidden him from holding any other licences. His position strengthened by having a secure lease, he approached the brewery again in December the same year for help with repairs to the floor of the pub, which had been damaged by wet rot. Bernard’s agreed to pay half the cost. As the repairs cost roughly half his annual rent, Maitland was recorded as being very pleased with the settlement.

What beer might James Maitland have sold? Funny you should ask that:

T & J Bernard beers in 1958
Trade name	Brewery name	OG	FG
IPA	Bottling	1030	1010
Strong Ale	Strong	1067	1021
Double Brown Ale	D.B.Ale	1043	1013
Special Export	Sp Exp	1043	1012
No. 3	Pale 1/1	1031	1010
No. 2	Pale 1/2	1036	1011
Special No. 1	Pale 1/4	1046	1013

Don’t take these as gospel yet; the range isn't complete. I haven't looked at the grists in detail but No. 2 and No. 3 are the two main draught beers and they are very different. No 2 has maize flakes, invert sugar and Avona, which I guess is some sort of proprietary sugar, while No. 3 has maize grits and all invert sugar. And ten times as much black malt. And No. 3, the weaker beer, has 50% more hops. But more on Bernard beers soon.

In this 1946 image, frustratingly, the pub is just out of shot on the right. But I like to think the casks are empties just collected from Maitland’s. By the look of them, they are barrels, or even hogsheads.

One last pub-related bit of trivia: in the city’s West End (genuinely in the West End, that is: west of the river Kelvin) is a bar which was also once a Cooper’s store. It must have been one of the earliest outposts of the empire as it was already there in 1904 shortly after Kelvinbridge railway station opened. After operating for years as Chimmy Chunga’s and Bar Oz, it now trades under the name Cooper’s once again.

I couldn’t have written this without the images from the Virtual Mitchell, and as ever the Scottish Brewing Archive.

The Oxford Companion to Beer: wait for the second edition

2011-10-28T00:50:00.001+01:00

To lay people, the Oxford University Press is possibly one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the world. Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, is undoubtedly one of the most well-known, charismatic and articulate brewers in the United States, and is also gaining a higher profile everywhere where people are taking a greater interest in beer.

So it was a big deal when OUP announced the forthcoming publication of the Oxford Companion to Beer, described as “an absolutely indispensable volume for everyone who loves beer as well as all beverage professionals”.

The book has been received with something approaching rapture in the media, described variously as “a book every beer lover must have” and “the world’s most comprehensive book on beer, to date”.

It’s a good-looking book: the deliciously legible Adobe Minion is very readable on the smooth, creamy paper. The spine looks flimsy but appears designed to flex rather than crack with repeated reading. I understand it has already sold out its first and second printings, meaning tens of thousands of copies will be thumbed and taken as authoritative in beer discourse for years to come. Dozens of respected beer authorities, and, unnervingly, the odd beer fantasy peddler, have contributed entries on subjects ranging from amylase (enzymes which convert starch to sugar) to Zentner (unit of weight for bulk hops).

There’s even an entry on aphids. Their potential to ruin hop crops notwithstanding, perhaps this entry at the beginning of the alphabet reflects early ambition for the book to be even more comprehensive than the finished version. But in view of the number of substantial topics which have been passed over, the inclusion of topics on tangential interest often seems bizarre: how many beers really include mint, or nutmeg? Is the old tradition of wassail notable enough for half a page? There is a bizarrely short article on stout, a quarter of the length of the one on cheese. This latter can be explained as an eminently forgivable piece of whimsy on the part of the Editor-in-Chief, whose passion for cheese is evidently on a par with his love of beer.

Manhattan, manioc, but not malt liquor. It’s a shame the latter is omitted; a very old term which, in Britain, once referred to all fermented malt beverages. Such a term was necessary when people still needed to distinguish between heavily-hopped Beer and lightly-hopped Ale. Nowadays the expression is extinct in Britain, but has gained a new lease of life in America where it refers exclusively to high-strength lager made with a large proportion of adjuncts.

Any book of this size will contain errors, and there are plenty of small mistakes, of the type one would expect: there is no town of Kulmbacher in Germany (it’s Kulmbach; Kulmbacher denotes something from Kulmbach, as Pilsener is something from Pilsen), nor was there ever a “Scottish & Newcastle Brewery”. The picture caption that claims “mashing out” is the term used for removing spent grain from the mash tun is a howler, though. Löwenbräu does not mean “lion’s brew”, it means “the brewer at the sign of the lion”; and so on. Keith Villa moves the foundation of Belgium back in time to the Middle Ages in the article on witbier (and devotes a suspicious, though arguably legitimate, amount of space to his own take on the style, Blue Moon). In an otherwise decent piece on coaching inns, Roger Protz writes the 174 years of independent existence of the London brewery Barclay Perkins out of history and has its merger with neighbour Courage take place in the late 18th century rather than the late 20th century it actually was. These do not spoil the narrative too much in themselves, but one wonders how errors like these, which betray a lack of fact-checking, ever got into an ostensibly authoritative work on beer in the first place.

One might also quibble with the chosen style which renders Pilsner, Altbier and Kölsch in lower case; even two formerly venerable Kulmbach breweries are named sandlerbräu and reichelbräu. But these can be placed alongside other minor annoyances, such as the lazy American use of “ale” to describe all top-fermenting beers, which occurs throughout, depending on author.

The entry on “ale” itself does sketch some of the problems with this usage; however, the article implies that it is now generally accepted, which is true only in the United States. This is a shame, since it misses an opportunity to tell the full story of how the meaning of the term has shifted over time.

An overly short section in this article comes close to suggesting that pale ale and brown ale have existed in their current forms in England since the 16th century; judicious editing could have given us a more succinct and clearer description of the way the word “ale” has been understood in different times and places. We learn that ale in Britain originally meant the unhopped beverage, distinct from the Flemish hopped “beer”, and the article on Britain repeats this, but we are not told that although the ale-brewers eventually started putting hops in their brew, ale and beer still continued side by side as distinct malt liquors, ale being lightly hopped and beer more heavily so; a distinction crucial to understanding British beer even today.

What happens when such an understanding is lacking? Well, you get a piece like Val Peacock’s piece on English hops, which conflates beer with ale and repeats the canard (refuted by Martyn Cornell) that Henry VIII “banned hops”. You get the confused and woffling piece on brown ale, which describes mild as a variant of the same. Certainly, not a few British breweries once took the short cut of bottling their mild as brown ale; but the types have completely different origins and generally enjoyed a (mostly) separate existence. The naive reader is left with the impression that any top-fermenting beer which happens to be brown can be called brown ale; we learn that Altbier, dubbel and oud bruin are “rarely referred to” as such, but not why they are not: because they come from different brewing traditions and the people who actually brew and drink them don’t think of them as “brown ale”.

When it comes to pale ale, the same problem arises. Terry Foster manages to leave the reader more confused than when he started. Belgian pale ales are mentioned, but since he does not mention any by name, it is difficult to figure out which beers he is talking about. “Pale ale originated as a catch-all term for any top-fermented beer that was not dark”, he claims. It would be more accurate to say the term has been increasingly misused for that purpose since the 1990s. We are missing a crucial bit of information: that pale ale is (along with Porter and Ale) one of the major strands in the British brewing tradition and those derived from it; again, it doesn’t just refer to any old top-fermented beer that is light-coloured.

One kind of beer that definitely is a Pale Ale, albeit in a degenerate form, is not mentioned but gets an entry to itself: “Irish red ale”, which at least admits “the term is rarely heard in Ireland”, though the entry could still benefit from heavier usage of words such as “supposedly” and “alleged”. It is amusing to note that one popular brand of “Irish red” in Ireland is — Bass brewed in Glasgow. Glenn A Payne’s general article on Irish beer is so jam-packed with information that one can only hope it is all accurate, since the sheer density of factoids is a deterrent to checking their veracity.

Scotland fares worse than Ireland. Some incredibly inaccurate things have been said before about the subject, but Horst Dornbusch has produced the most egregiously wrong claptrap ever written about Scottish beer. In a long and confused article on the shilling system, which would bewilder the naive reader even if the information contained in it were correct, terms like “wee heavy”, “twopenny” and “80/–” are thrown about seemingly at random. 60/–, a low-gravity beer derived from 20th century Pale Ales, is conflated with Two-penny, a beer from a different historical period which hasn’t existed in any meaningful sense since 1802. The shilling system is described as unique to Scotland, which it wasn’t. We are treated to a detailed description of the beers that American homebrewers create under the name of Scottish or Scotch ales, but little more than fantasies about the beers actually brewed in Scotland.

Dornbusch doesn’t know what heavy is. He thinks it’s a strong ale brewed exclusively from the first runnings of a mash. This alone ought to have disqualified him from writing the article on Scotland. However, at least he brands the drivel about Scottish beer being made with peated malt as the legend that it is; though we can probably be grateful for that to the late Greg Noonan, whose book Scotch Ale Dornbusch uses as his sole source.

Tim Hampson, who should know better, tells us in the entry on drinking vessels: “In Scotland, strong Scotch ales are sometimes served in a pint-sized tulip glass known as a thistle, named after the Scottish national flower... ” Replace “sometimes” with “never” and you’d be accurate. Scotland gets a raw deal in general: the air pressure dispense system has no entry, although every other common dispense system does (it should be noted that air pressure was not only standard practice in Scotland, but also in what was then Czechoslovakia). There is an article on “wee heavy”, i.e. the beer that Americans think the Scots drink, but none on “heavy”, the beer they actually drink (or, since we are being sticklers for accuracy, the one they drank a generation ago).

Dornbusch is no better on German beer. In one entry, in which he quotes three articles from his own website as sources, he places Franconia in “central Bavaria” (it is in the north). One can only guess how reliable the rest of the information is. This uncertainty spoils the whole narrative of his piece on Germany, as one is never quite sure which parts are true and which are invented, and the final assertion that German beer today is in as poor a state as American beer in the 1970s is laughable. It does, however, fit in with the rather sinister sub-text expressed in several places in the book: that Old Europe’s brewing is stagnant and needs rescued by “craft brewers”.

The cod history of Kölsch produced by Karl-Ullrich Heyse reads like it was copied off the back of a beer bottle. No doubt the marketing departments of Cologne’s breweries would like us to believe that “the history of kölsch goes back to the year 874 AD”. It’s complete rubbish, as Cologne has had a long history of brewing ranging from early “red” beers, gruit beers and hopped beers, jumping in the 19th and 20th centuries from top-fermentation to bottom-fermentation, and only within living memory back again.

By the early 1900s the city was dominated by bottom-fermenting beer with top-fermenting beer the speciality of tiny brewpubs. In the 1920s the proportion of top-fermenting beer was in single figures. The triumph of what we now know as Kölsch took place in the 1950s and 1960s, when largely due to the efforts of Hans Sion of the Sion brewery, Kölsch was reinvented as the ubiquitous beverage of the city with its market share rocketing from around a third to over 90%. This remarkable story of the Kölsch revival is not mentioned, sadly, for it deserves to be more widely known. It would be, after all, a splendid case study for the self-same marketing people.

Conrad Seidl, in one of several competent and informed articles, says pretty much all that needs to be said on the subject of German Pilsner beer. Unfortunately his article is immediately followed by Dornbusch woffling on about Germany, and one is left wishing that Seidl had been asked to write it all.

The book includes a surprisingly vast amount of information on hard-core brewing technology, including such packaging practices as “jetting”, and one fears that such articles may be too esoteric for the beer drinker, but too simplistic for any brewer who needs to know about the subject. The parti-gyling entry is too short, garbled and not much use unless one already understands the basic principles. However, at least it countenances that worts may be blended, in contrast to the peculiar idea expressed several times elsewhere that parti-gyling just means making one beer from the first runnings, another from the second runnings, etc. Similarly disappointingly, a mere quarter of a page is devoted to the fascinating subject of priming sugar, and barely scratches the surface.

Garrett Oliver’s own breezy writing style contrasts with the drier prose of the other authors who write on the technical side of brewing, which is no real surprise. It is a relief to see a name like Bamforth or Stempfl underneath an article and know that the information therein is reliable … until the dreadful suspicion arises that perhaps it has been mucked about with later. One certainly hopes that the technical articles are more scrupulously reviewed than the historical ones evidently were; after all, if you can’t trust Charlie Bamforth to get things right, who can you trust? — but the layman has no way of knowing.

In general (and perhaps inevitably given the target market for a book in English of this nature), most entries are heavily skewed to the Anglo-American view of things – and American more so than Anglo. Thus brewpubs, a vital part of the American beer renaissance (over half of currently operating American breweries are brewpubs), are also credited with more importance than they really deserve in the British real-ale revival (which is not to diminish the efforts of David Bruce and others), yet the huge array of brewpubs in Germany and other countries are barely mentioned.

It may have been in an effort to achieve a level of objectivity that contributors appear to have been asked to write about countries other than their own: thus we have Tim Hampson writing about German rye beer, Roger Protz on Czech lager, Horst Dornbusch on Scottish beer, Pete Brown on Prohibition. I am not sure this was such a good idea; an extended peer-review process might have been better for clarifying crucial points and eliminating subconscious bias. Those articles from the horse’s mouth such as Keith Villa on his own creation, Blue Moon, are much more successful.

Matthew Brynildson of Firestone Walker uses a third of the space devoted to the Burton Union fermentation system to present the oak fermentation system at his own brewery; this subject, interesting in its own right, should be somewhere else, as the set-up at Firestone Walker does not share the essential characteristics of the true Burton Union: that cleansed beer flows back into the casks, leaving fresh yeast for harvesting. It’s a shame that Brynildson did not get the chance to discuss the Firestone Union in a separate article, since it is apparently unique even in the hugely diverse brewing landscape of the United States.

Poking around in the book, as one does in a volume of this size and in fact as one is encouraged to do by the editor, one often wishes that Oliver had been more heavy-handed with the red pen. Contributors get to promote their own hobby horses at will and often contradict each other; thus we find Pete Brown defending weak British session-strength IPAs as a legitimate branch of the family, while elsewhere Tim Hampson dismisses one such, Deuchars IPA, as not an IPA at all. Mark Dorber uses a disproportionate amount of his short article on “real ale” to vent his frustration at the more bone-headed members of the Campaign for Real Ale who reject cask breathers on principle; this criticism (irrespective of its merits) is also brought up in the entry on CAMRA and in the one on cask breathers themselves, which seems a bit over the top for an argument that in actuality is dead and buried, at least in the UK. On the other hand, the much more intense debate on whether CAMRA should accept or promote kegged beer is not mentioned, for which we can perhaps be grateful in the short term.

Other redundant sections appear several times over: for example, three separate articles bemoan the supposed reluctance of American consumers to buy returnable beer bottles. The decision to have separate articles for bottles, bottling and bottle sizes seems odd in itself; Martyn Cornell’s meagre half page on bottle sizes could have benefited from being longer and including more details of common bottle sizes around the world, and some illustrations of bottles might be more useful to the reader than the photograph of a 1910-era bottling line. The phenomenon of one article contradicting another comes to a head here, with Dornbusch/Oliver asserting, wrongly, that the imperial pint remains a common size in the UK, only to have Cornell refute this further down the same page.

Pete Brown’s long and reasonably balanced piece on Britain (there is a separate article on Scotland, but none on England as such) has only one serious deficiency, when he misses out the long reign of mild ale as the drink of the working class in the 19th and 20th centuries – which is a shame because his writing is otherwise some of the most careful and meticulous in the book. If every contribution in this tome were up to the standard of Brown’s magnificent IPA article, it would be a worthwhile investment.

Ian Hornsey’s article on the English pub is heavy on history and has too little on the distinctive culture and etiquette of the pub. Presumably there are no pubs in Scotland; actually a discussion of the difference between English pubs and Scottish dram-shops could be interesting, but alas there is no room for it. It ends on a melancholy note which implies the pub (as opposed to the contemporary “bar and kitchen” type establishment) is in terminal decline. Only time will tell whether he is right. One feature of the pub which has vanished, but might have been worth mentioning, was class segregation of the pub, as seen in the common separation of public bar and lounge: this phenomenon is something of which younger drinkers today are often completely unaware.

No book however weighty can possibly cover every brewery that exists, but one is forced to the conclusion that the selection has been made to cover topics of interest to American beer nerds. So Traquair House is mentioned, but not Tennent’s. Of other Scottish breweries, a short, dull piece tells when Belhaven was built and who now owns it (a further snub to Wellpark is that Belhaven, established 160 years later, is named as the oldest brewery in Scotland), and an entry on Caledonian focuses on its changing ownership with just a few words about its beer. Russian River, on the other hand, is a tiny US brewery that makes some very good beer but, as far as I can tell, is not particularly more notable than hundreds of other breweries either for its past or its present. It is included presumably because it is so revered by a small number of people that they would howl in outrage if it were not. Does Boddington’s deserve a mention? Since it is sold in the US in huge quantities in widget cans, it seems it does.

Several European beers are described with the British term “session beers” despite there being no entry for that term in the book. One cannot help wondering whether the absence of an entry on the topic is a wise decision or a cowardly one, given the heat that is inevitably brought to this argument by those determined to apply it to beers of 5, 6, even 7% alcohol, rather than the “under 4%” generally accepted in Britain.

There is progress. Even Dornbusch no longer claims that Mumme and Broyhan were the same thing, as he once did (they were extinct north German beers, neither of which gets an article, and as different from each other as beers can be, Broyhan being light, pale and highly carbonated, and Mumme thick, treacly and barely attenuated). And some long-standing beer myths are rejected or at least called into question. The ale-conners-sat-in-puddles-of-beer story is, at last, treated as legend rather than fact, and Hodgson and Harwood are no longer feted as the “inventors” of India pale ale and of porter respectively, as they were for so long in beer literature. In the long and rambling entry on porter we get half a page retelling the story of how Harwood invented entire butt to replace three-threads, before the author rather grudgingly admits the tale is “probably” not true. Unfortunately, later in the same article there is a spectacular piece of Dornbuschian revisionism which implies that the term “Baltic porter” dates from the period when British brewers exported porter to the Baltic, rather than being a retrospective term coined by Michael Jackson, who in the 1980s needed to find a name for the locally-brewed descendants of those beers. Pure invention is also the notion that Victorian England had an upper-class drink called “robust porter”; it almost certainly originates with early beer style guidelines for the American Homebrewers Association, not with the Victorians – the American beer writer Stan Hieronymus has been kind enough to verify that the Great American Beer Festival did not distinguish between “brown” and “robust” porter until 1995.

Nevertheless, there is some very good stuff in the book: for one, Oliver’s own eminently sensible article on the concept of beer styles. With the words “The great musician does not resent the sheet music; the great baker does not resent the baguette”, he neatly encapsulates the joy of brewing in the discipline of a well-defined idiom and defends the notion that a beer style, to be any use, should actually mean something. But he really comes into his own when describing the flavours of beer; in the article on Belgium his prose, Jacksonesque at its best, describes beer in such detail you can almost taste it: “Wonderfully complex aromatics, very high carbonation, attendant voluminous rocky foam, and a scintillating pinprick mousse on the tongue.”

There is valuable information in the Companion, lots of it. But as the layman cannot be expected to distinguish the valuable, accurate stuff from the nonsense, the presence of the latter devalues the whole volume. Some of the genuine experts who have contributed might rightfully be annoyed at having their own works printed along the large gobs of poorly researched hack work.

Is all this important? Well, yes it is. The buyer who’s forking out £35 in the belief that he’s getting the most authoritative book possible on beer is being had. It’s foolhardy in the extreme to suggest that errors can be fixed later: they’re in the wild now and will reproduce.

Jeff Evans, for example, says in his own review of the Companion, “There are some books you trust more than others, certain writers you know you can rely on to deliver accurate facts. When you write about beer as much as I do, it’s important to know who these people are and which are the books you can turn to to check obscure details, bolster failing memory or provide a genuine insight into some arcane aspect of the brewing process.” So even people like Jeff who themselves are regarded as experts will be using this flawed volume as a source for years to come, perpetuating all the errors that it contains.

So many questions remain. Why there is an entry for leichtes Weissbier (competently enough written by Schneider Weisse brewer Hans-Peter Drexler) but none for any other Leicht beer? Do we really need an article on beer labels that tells us such insultingly basic information as that labels “are attached to various parts of the bottle, most commonly the front”? Are we actually looking at a finished book at all, or has it been rushed out in time for Christmas?

Garrett Oliver writes in his foreword that he hopes the Companion will not be the last book of its kind. I hope so too. Beer lovers deserve better than this.

Milk stout prosecutions, 1944

2011-10-22T07:00:00.000+01:00

From the British Food Journal, January 1944:

At the Newcastle Borough Court, on December 22nd, James Calder & Co. (Brewers) Ltd. were summoned for selling a bottle of stout labelled “Milk Stout” and bearing the design of a dairy cow. The prosecution submitted that the picture on the label was misleading. Pleading guilty for the firm, Colonel A. D. S. Rogers said the labels had now been withdrawn. Before the war ingredients for the stout came from New Zealand, but shipment had now stopped. There was no attempt to mislead the public.—Defendants were convicted and find £5 and ordered to pay £4 19s. costs.

In a similar case, Tennent’s of Glasgow decided to plead guilty to avoid bad publicity:

It was reported that a prosecution has been raised against the Company at the instance of the Chief Inspector of Weights and Measures at Newcastle-upon-Tyne alleging that a sample of Tennent’s Milk Stout purchased at Tweedmouth in November last did not, upon analysis, contain constituents justifying this description, and that consequently an offence had been committed under Section 6 of the Food and Drugs Act, 1938. The complaint is due to be heard before the Petty Sessions at Berwick on 17th February 1944.

The Board gave careful consideration to the whole circumstances, including the fact that prior to any intimation being received from the Inspector the use of the name “Milk Stout” had, in fact, been discontinued, as a result of correspondence with Messrs. Boake Roberts & Co. Ltd., the suppliers of the lactose incorporated in the Milk Stout. The Board were satisfied that it was obvious the Company had throughout acted in good faith, but they felt that, in the circumstances, the course least likely to involve unwelcome publicity and thus be detrimental to the Company's interests would be to plead guilty to an offence under Section 6 of the Act; this plea should, however, be submitted with an explanation of the position as described by the correspondence between the Company and their suppliers of lactose, making it clear that the Company does not regard the product being sold as ordinary Stout; that it had all along acted in good faith; and that in any event the necessary steps had been taken to discontinue the use of the label complained of, prior to any communication being received from the Inspector. It was decided to instruct Messrs. Wright Johnston & Mackenzie accordingly. (17/1/44, Tennent’s board minutes held at the Scottish Brewing Archive)

Judging by the closeness in time of these two cases, it looks like a case of a particularly zealous weights and measures department at Newcastle town council. It would be interesting to find out if there were any more prosecutions, or in other cities.

The legislation in question, the 1938 Food and Drugs Act, does state that food products may not be sold under misleading designations:

A person who gives with any food or drug sold by him a label, whether attached to or printed on the wrapper or container or not, which falsely describes that food or drug, or is otherwise calculated to mislead as to its nature, substance or quality, shall be guilty of an offence, unless he proves that he did not know, and could not with reasonable diligence have ascertained, that the label was of such a character as aforesaid.

A particularly strict reading of it might indeed infer that you couldn’t call a beer milk stout if there were no milk in it, and as we have seen this is what appears to have happened in Newcastle. It also seems likely that producers would be able to defend themselves on the basis that milk stout drinkers knew full well that it was a beer, not a milk drink, just as nobody mistook milk of magnesia for milk either.

The usual received wisdom in the beer world is that the term “Milk Stout” was banned in the UK shortly after the Second World War. Michael Jackson wrote in his New World Guide to Beer: “Within Britain, it may no longer be identified as Milk Stout, as it once was”, and I, like everyone else, took it for granted. Roger Protz states baldly in his Ultimate Encyclopedia of Beer: “the government instructed all sweet stout producers to remove the world ‘milk’ from labels and advertising”.

The story is, as you might have guessed, repeated in the new Oxford Companion to Beer, describing the words as ‘an illegal label designation in the UK’ in the entry on Mackeson, and telling us in the entry on milk stout itself: ‘During a period of food rationing following World War II, the British government ordered its brewers to delete the word “milk” from their labels and advertisements’.

But if it was banned, when was it banned?

I took a trip to the library to try to find evidence of a ban at the end of the war. I've now been through all the Statutory Rules and Orders from 1944 through 1947 and can’t find any mention of Milk Stout. There is actually very little mention of beer of any type.

This is, remember, a time when food rationing and extensive state control of the economy were in effect, in a way that is hard to imagine today, and the government was grimly regulating everything—from the composition of mayonnaise, to the number of fasteners permitted on women’s underwear and the maximum price of fountain pens. But they did not seem to think it necessary to interfere with Milk Stout.

It’s certainly true that the biggest Milk Stout producer, Mackeson, had removed the word Milk from its label by the early 1950s at the latest. And, as we have seen above, the lack of a formal ban didn’t prevent brewers from facing occasional prosecutions — and convictions — on the grounds that the name was misleading. Perhaps in the circumstances breweries were running scared and decided to avoid the potential risk.

Nonetheless there is some surviving evidence that several breweries were still producing and selling Milk Stout well into the 1960s. It was the predominance of Mackeson’s and the general decline of Milk Stout’s popularity that did for them, not a ban of the name.

If anyone has some hard evidence that breweries were forbidden by the government from calling their beer Milk Stout, I’d love to hear from them.

Oxford Companion to Beer: the clouds gather

2011-10-21T07:00:00.000+01:00

Over at Zythophile Martyn Cornell has been ripping the Oxford Companion to Beer a new arsehole. I’m trying to avoid reading his piece until I’ve finished writing my own review of the book (and yes, it is a bizarre experience to have a book in my hands that the contributors haven’t seen yet).

There is already a wiki devoted to the book’s many errors.

My review will follow soon, honestly. I’m still only in the N’s. So far I can say: although there is plenty of good stuff in the book, it is so sloppily put together and so patchy in quality that I cannot in all conscience recommend a purchase unless you have money to burn.

A visit to Tennent’s (1859 version)

2011-10-20T06:30:00.000+01:00

A visit to a gigantic Brewery, especially when the palate requires moisture, will please most of our readers, and we have no hesitation in recommending them to seeThe Well Park Brewery of Messrs. J. and R. Tennent & Co., Duke-street.These consist of five splendid cellars, their ramifications extending in five directions, and containing an enormous quantity of beer, the greatest stock in Scotland. (We have under notice a similar establishment at Burton, in the companion volume.) In the vat-room are 30 vats, each 37,000 gallons. We have seen no room like this in any similar establishment we have visited. Our readers, especially our friends from Australia, must not quit Glasgow without seeing this extensive establishment. In another part of the premises, are hundreds of thousands of barrels. Several bores for water exist on the premises, one 381 feet deep; we also noticed several cisterns and filters, one 10 feet deep, 50 feet by 50 feet.
In the large bottling and corking-room, we see as many as 420 hands, all bottling for export only; the quantity of sheet-lead and copper wire used for this purpose is enormous; the bottles are packed in casks, and are then ready for removing to vessels lying in the Clyde; from 400 to 500 casks are used in a day for packing. Now we pass into a large vault, where we see hundreds of bins, containing from 11,000 to 16,000 hogsheads in each bin; the store vaults appear to be endless. The casks are seasoned by steam; an engine of 40 horse power, capable of working up to 55, being employed for this purpose. From the mashhouse ascend to the mill, and on the same floor is the fermenting-room. We next reach the hop-room, and ascend to the boiling-room or copperhouse, enter cooling-room, descend to another tun-room, where we see 21 tuns each containing 100 barrels. Entering the “square” room, we pass from thence into the yard and ascend to the Cooperage, where scores of men are continually employed in manufacturing casks and barrels; there is nothing like this department elsewhere: we counted Seven Rooms All Full Of Busy Workers. We are stunned with the noise of the ceaseless hammer. As the several parts are formed and the barrels completed, they are branded. We now enter the sawmills, where steam-power is in action to move circular saws; here too we notice a very extraordinary machine invented by one of the employés of the firm for opening the “flags,” thus saving a great deal of labour. Descending to another room, we see the planing-machine in full action, and pass over the new cooperage now being built, a sure evidence on the part of the public of their appreciation of the productions of the firm; thence to the store-shed for wood, which contains an enormous stock. New stables have been built for 32 horses. These erections are supposed to be the finest in Scotland, having magnificent slate fittings. Should further information be required, Mr. Nelson, “the brewer,” will be happy to forward it.

We forgot to mention that the new church, which we perceive on entering the works, was built at the cost of Mr. Tennent. We annex the following extract from “Chemistry, Theoretical, Practical, and Analytical, as applied and relating to the Arts and Manufactures,” by Dr. Sheridan Muspratt, F. R. S. E., &c., founder of the College of Chemistry in Liverpool.“The peculiar excellence of the ales of the Messrs. Tennent, like those of Burton, is their remarkable keeping quality, and their retention of that delicate flavour of the hops, so often lost by the pale ale brewer, notwithstanding his utmost effects to secure it.”

From the “Times,” of 12th October, 1854. “From our own Correspondent.”
“California, San Francisco, August 31, 1854. For malt liquors the demand is not so active as it was a month ago, although it is at all times considerable, and on the increase. Large sales of J. & R. Tennent’s bottled ale have been, during the last fortnight, at 3 dols. 62 cents to 3 dols. 75 cents per dozen, and a sale of about 300 hhds. of the same brand in wood, to arrive, at 60 dols. per hhd. This brand has a larger sale, and is more sought after than any other in the market, from its being peculiarly adapted to the warm climate of the interior, and is much used in San Francisco also.”

From the “Glasgow Herald,” of 6th August, 1858.
“Glasgow Porter. — The following extract from the Calcutta Exchange Gazette, of 18th June, has caught our eye, and as it relates to an important branch of the manufactures of this city, we think it right to insert it:—‘The Messrs. Tennent’s Porter has been equally successful. It has been declared to be second to none for hospital purposes—a proof of which is its increasing reputation among commissariat officers. It is a pity that our soldiers should not be supplied with such strengthening and nourishing liquor, instead of the acidulated trash which is too frequently contracted for.’”

As some of our readers may probably wish to be informed of the prices at which the best beer brewed in Scotland may be obtained, we have added a list of the charges :—

Terms—Net Cash on Delivery. Short Prices—No Discount.

Hogsheads. Half-hogsheads.
Seven Guinea Ale 120s. 60s.
Six Guinea Ale 104 52
Five Guinea Ale 80 40
Four Guinea Ale 67 33 6d.
India Pale Ale 70 35
XXX Porter or Double Brown Stout 78 39
XX Porter or Brown Stout 60 30
X Porter 30 15
Table Beer Superior 48 24
Ditto Ordinary 30 15
Beer 15 7 6d

The high reputation of the liquor for its keeping quality has now been long established, and in this respect it cannot be surpassed, as will be seen from the annexed certificates.

Casks should be spiled and bunged whenever they are empty, and immediately returned.Purchasers must be liable for the risk of fermentation, and for all other risks in the transit.Returns of liquor alleged to be defective are not admissible unless received at the Brewery within fourteen days after the date of the invoice.

Purchasers will be charged for the value of all casks not received at the Brewery, free of expense, within, one month from the date of invoice, according to the prices undermentioned:—

Standard Measure of Capacity.
Hogsheads of 54 Imperial Gallons 17s.
Barrels of 36 Do. 14
Half-hogsheads of 27 Do. 12
Half-barrels of 18 Do. 10
Firkins of 9 Do. 6 6d.

The transmission of casks and the conveyance ought to be carefully advised by post.

(George Measom, The Official Illustrated Guide to the Lancaster and Carlisle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Caledonian Railways, London 1859)

Readers unfamiliar with Glasgow should note that Tennent’s is next to the city’s Necropolis, which should explain the Hammer Horror-style gravestones in the foreground of the illustration.

It’s a pity they just walked through the actual brewing areas. The vast scale of the bottling and storage operations were more impressive. Nonetheless there are a few snippets worth commenting on.

Bottled beer was packed into casks. Why casks not crates? You could roll them, I guess, important in the days of manual labour on the docks.
They had a huge demand for casks, and were expanding their cooperage.
Tennent’s porter was popular in India and their ale popular in San Francisco.
Their pale ale retained “the delicate flavour of the hop” and was equal to those from Burton.

A visit to Tennent’s

2011-10-19T06:30:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Doors Open Days I got the chance to go on a tour of Tennent’s Wellpark Brewery a few weeks ago. I was looking forward to it because although I’ve been round a fair few microbreweries, I’ve never been in a proper industrial brewery the size of Wellpark, and they don’t usually do tours. So all the tours were booked out a couple of weeks before the event, with people, presumably at least some of them keen Tennent’s drinkers, eager to see where the brew is made.

We cross the courtyard and our first stop is so that the guide can proudly point at the display that shows the number of days since the last notifiable accident on the site. It’s a four-figure number, which is good. Then we pass the laboratory and the rows of huge fermenting tanks before entering the brewery itself. Visiting a big place like this really makes you aware that big breweries necessarily must devote more space to warehousing than to production. It was a clever brewer who first hit on the idea of siting fermentation vessels outside, rather than having to build vast halls to contain them all.

The brewery itself is cramped and stairs lead up to the control room. There’s a bank of computer screens running fairly old-looking software, a huge mash filter and the top of a copper. Here we are told a bit about the brewing process of Tennent’s lager. It is brewed high gravity from a mash of malt, wheat and maize to reach around 7.5%.

Tanks and kegs

Fermenters outside

Fuzzy picture of the control room, from which surprisingly primitive-looking
software controls unimaginable amounts of beer

Mash filter

The oldest remaining part of the brewery, this building contains the lab

Real actual hops are used in pellet form, with iso-hop extract to top up at filtration stage. The lager is a little more bitter than its rivals in the standard lager sector with around 20 IBU.

Then it ferments quite warm, between 13º and 15º before getting an incredible two days’ cold conditioning. It’s filtered and liquored back to retail strength. At this stage it has around 2g/L CO2 which is topped up to ~5.4g/L.

Canning line

A new bottling line is awaiting installation and the bottling hall-to-be is still being cleared as we pass through it. Space is at a premium on the historic city-centre site, and this means the brewing and packaging are distributed over several floors; in particular the multi-level canning line is apparently quite unusual.

Despite the renown of the brewery for lager and the decades of neglect that Tennent’s ale and stout brands have suffered, there is still some ale brewed here. As well as Tennent’s Special, Ember, Copper 70/– and the like, there’s a lot of keg Bass that goes to Ireland, and they have recently started brewing for Innis & Gunn. This contract brewing — they also do a lot on the lager side — is presumably one of the reasons for the new bottling line.

I also found out that there is an unpasteurised version of Tennent’s Lager. If you are a super-ticker, you can taste this version only if you go to the T in the Park festival. It’s sold there for the simple reason that it’s delivered and used so quickly that there is nothing to be gained by pasteurising it.

Back at the brewery, we get shown round the Tennent’s Training Academy. This is a new venture, brought into life last year, to provide training facilities for the licensed and catering trades.

One feature Tennent’s doesn’t have is a pilot brewery. You would think they’d have one, but they are so big that any R&D for new brews can just be done at Heriot-Watt in Edinburgh instead.

Then, after a quick look round the lab, the work of which nobody really understands, we finish off with a complimentary pint at the Molendinar Bar. This is a bar on-site which is used for hospitality and not open to the public. It’s fitted out in the kind of cod-Victoriana that new pubs used to get as a matter of course in the 1980s. Displays of old bottles and adverts make it a combination of pub and museum.

I keep hearing mumblings that Tennent’s are about to diversify with new products. The mumblings are never detailed enough to make any actual predictions.

But Tennent’s aren’t stupid. They know that their standard lager is a sector of the beer market in deep decline, and they know that the growth is in different kinds of beer. They also know that with 60% of the Scottish draught beer market, they have plenty of time to think about it.

With both Tennent’s and McEwan’s now owned by companies for whom they – for the first time in several generations – are an important part of the business, I’d like to think that these formerly ubiquitous behemoths of Scottish brewing will find their way back to making really distinctive beers.

Protz writes Barclay Perkins out of history

2011-10-14T01:46:00.001+01:00

I’ve got my copy of the Oxford Companion to Beer and shall be busy with it for some time. I’m 2000 words into my review and I’m only in the Cs. A long, nit-picking review will be along shortly, but I’ve just seen something that is so gobsmackingly appalling that I have to post it right now.

I was in the middle of praising one of Roger Protz’s articles — when he writes on social history, pubs and clubs, he can be very good indeed — when the narrative turns to brewing itself and it all goes wrong:

Thrale’s Brewery, in which Dr Samuel Johnson was a shareholder, dates from the early 18th century. It closed following the death of its owner, Henry Thrale, in 1781 and merged with the rival Anchor Brewery founded by John Courage in 1787. Courage was taken over by members of the Barclay family, who also went into banking with some success. The name Courage was maintained and the Anchor Brewery survived until 1981 when its brands were transferred to a modern plant in Reading.

Roger has managed to disappear the 175-year history of Barclay Perkins. Even though there are entries in the Companion for both Barclay Perkins and Courage which contradict the account above (If you don’t know what’s wrong with this narrative, get yourself over to Ron’s).

Given that beer experts, and Horst Dornbusch, have worked on this thing for the best part of five years, this is unbelievably shoddy. I was expecting some poor stuff but this is just incredible. Especially since Protz has written stuff in the past that shows he did once know Barclay Perkins and Courage were separate concerns and didn’t merge until the 1950s.

How can I trust anything in this book on the subjects that I don’t already know about?

All is lost in Alloa

2011-10-10T13:39:00.000+01:00

The final part of my trip to Alloa wouldn't be complete with getting a few pints in, something I try to do in any town.

The Cram Bar, just round the corner from the site of George Younger’s Candlerigg Brewery, claims on the signage outside to be Alloa’s oldest pub. The sound of shouting from inside is so offputting, though, that I don’t bother to go in. I do go into the Old Brewery, but there’s nothing in the way of atmosphere or beer to keep me there.

Round the corner in the Thistle Bar, which judging by its name and location must have been Maclay’s brewery tap, or at least where the brewery workers did their drinking, all eyes are glued to the footy on the wall-mounted television. A reversed Deuchars IPA clip and an operational handpump with Theakston Best Bitter don’t look very promising. But there is Williams Draught from the keg, dispensed from a repurposed Fosters font. A sign on the wall announces in blue felt-tip that Williams Lager “brewed in Alloa” is £2.50 a pint “while stocks last”. Interestingly enough I’m not the only one drinking it. There’s also a lot of bottled Coors Light being drunk for some reason. Most of the customers are pensioners. I’m the second youngest in the pub. The only one younger is the shaven-headed lad who might appear threatening if he weren’t perched at the bar eating a bowl of home-made soup. It’s a friendly enough place. Sweetheart Stout and Fraoch in the fridge are reminders of the past and present of Alloa brewing.

Nice table in the Station Bar

The Station Hotel is up for sale. Once across the road from the railway station, its name has been cruelly mocked by fate, which closed the station in the 1960s and opened a new one in the 2000s some distance away. My attention is attracted by the faded George Younger ‘Y’ logo in the window. Logos were more naïve in the 19th and 20th centuries: Y for Younger, T for Tennent, A for Aitken. F for Fosters is part of a proud tradition, I suppose.

Inside, the once swish interior has seen better days. I order a whisky, which is what I do when I don't want to stay long in a bar. The engraved glass in the window depicting a cocktail shaker is a sad reminder of former glory.

Across the road, the exterior of the Primrose Bar looks promising; I envisage a cosy middle-class pub with a few cask ales and perhaps expensive sausage and mash. No, drinking in Alloa is still decidedly proletarian: a quick look in the door reveals shouting men, linoleum, and Tennent’s on the bar.

I don’t stay. This leaves me with a dilemma because I’ve just missed a train in expectation of spending an hour or so here. Wandering around, I come to the realisation that I’ve already been in the sole pub in the town that sells any decent beer. What to do now?

Mansfield Arms in Sauchie

Ah, hold on. There’s Devon Ales in Sauchie, a village on the outskirts of Alloa. It’s only a mile away and I’ve got my bike. I’ve not thought much of their beers when I’ve tasted them at beer festivals, but since I’m here anyway I have nothing to lose by giving them a chance on their home turf.

Sauchie is easily reached and I soon spy the Mansfield Arms where the beers are brewed. It’s a homebrew pub of the type which is fairly uncommon in Scotland and it looks too as if it belongs more in the Peak District than semi-rural Clackmannanshire. Outside, evidence that it was once part of the Alloa Brewery empire: boards proclaiming that it sells Ind Coope Burton Ale, Tetley Bitter and Castlemaine XXXX, the brands Allied was pushing in the late 1980s.

Inside, a long bar, comfy tables and a faux-retro sign anachronistically advertising Archibald Arrol’s 80 Shilling cask-conditioned ale. On the bar, four of the pub’s own beers are on offer, dispensed from the same fonts as the Carlsberg. I try the 70/–. It’s slightly tart, green and young-tasting, with a bit of toffee and a note of penny-tray sweets. There’s nothing actually wrong with it, so it’s neither bad nor interesting. At least it’s cheap at £1.85 a pint. I suspect the Pride 90/– is the same beer with less water in it; it’s winey and sweetish. I like this better as the tartness is more acceptable in a stronger beer.

No gentrification here; in more affluent areas a pub like this would be all flagstones and lamb shanks. Here the friendly staff are handing out sausage rolls to the regulars, and me (cheers). The Mansfield is homely but there’s nothing here to make me want to visit more often.

On the train back to Glasgow the chap opposite me is swigging Carling from the can. It seems appropriate for a town that has lost its entire beery heart.

Wells & Youngs buy McEwan and Younger

2011-10-06T01:36:00.000+01:00

In a move which caught me (and not a few other people) by surprise, Wells & Youngs the other day announced they had purchased the venerable Edinburgh beer brands McEwan’s and William Younger from Heineken.

Heineken has not really known what to do with these brands since they acquired them along with Foster’s and Kronenbourg, the business they were really interested in. The marketing of them was farmed out to a third party in the hope that there was still some mileage in what were clearly seen as declining legacy brands whose customers were dying out.

If the price was right, the move makes sense. Though tired and battered from decades of neglect, these are still strong brands up here, whereas Wells & Youngs’ existing brands Youngs, Wells and Courage are marginal at best. Wells Bombardier, with its flag of St George pump clip, doesn’t sell well in Scotland for some reason. Kegged and packaged McEwan’s beers (Younger’s somewhat less so) are still a substantial, though declining, business, but the clue to W&Y’s intentions is in the announcement that they intend to bring back cask to the brands.

“We want to bring McEwan’s back on cask. We also believe we can offer a wider range of McEwan’s in bottle,” Nigel McNally of Wells & Youngs told The Herald. “We also feel there is a really significant opportunity in export.”

He is right on the latter point. American beer nerds are already clamouring for the return of McEwan’s Scotch Ale. And, although it’s not an option I favour because it’s fundamentally dishonest, speciality beers could be pushed onto the American market under the McEwan’s or Younger’s names, in the same way that Newcastle-branded beers have been launched there that don’t exist in the UK. McEwan’s Heather Ale?

As the Cask Report shows, Scotland is experiencing rapid growth in the cask sector (albeit up from almost nothing), so it’s logical for a southern-based brewer to want a piece of the market here.

Now the question is: who is going to drink the stuff?

S&N had almost completely vacated the cask market (at least with Scottish-brewed beers) by the time I started drinking, so I don’t remember drinking them often. You could find Younger’s No 3 in the Bon Accord and McEwan’s 80/– was much more common in Edinburgh than Glasgow. But looking at old CAMRA publications they don’t seem to have been that well regarded. And that was then, when the real ale drinker had little choice. Now, with fifty-odd Scottish micros and lorryloads of cask ale from south of the border to choose from, McEwan’s will have to be better than it was when the 2002 GBG described it as “thin-bodied with a cloying metallic, caramel flavour … bland and sweet.”

Perhaps the plan is to go head-to-head against the ubiquitous Heineken Deuchars IPA, in which case the well-known McEwan’s brand will be a major advantage. It has to be admitted that the brand is a lot better than the beer is. I saw one commentator speculating that the McEwan’s brand was past its sell-by date and forever branded as old-man beer. I don’t think so. Innis & Gunn has not done too badly with its faux-Victorian packaging attempting to suggest it has some heritage. McEwan’s and Younger’s on the other hand have actual real heritage, which must be worth something. I do hope very much, though, that Wells won’t be dressing any ageing alternative comedians up as the Cavalier and Father William.

The news does shed light on one mystery. This year a couple of Younger’s-branded cask beers appeared in a few pubs, and disappeared as quietly as they had arrived. There was the welcome return of No 3, which I wrote about a few months ago, and an odd thing called 1749 which I haven’t tasted.

I was at a loss to explain what these Younger-branded beers were actually for. Keeping the brand visible? The odd bit of spare capacity at Caledonian and someone said “Let’s just knock out a gyle of Younger’s and flog it in the free trade”? Now I suspect it was covert market research to see what value the brand had.

With W&Y also reviving Courage Imperial Russian Stout, perhaps we could see Younger’s No 1, or even 140/– Ale. With a bit of imagination there could be life in old Father William yet.

Wells & Youngs Imperial Stout

2011-10-04T12:23:00.000+01:00

There’s been surprisingly little reaction to the news that Wells & Youngs have revived Courage Russian Stout, with the release happening at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver last week.

Since W&Y salvaged the Courage brands from the rotting carcass of Scottish & Newcastle I have been wondering whether the rights to Russian Stout were included and whether they had any plans to brew any. The stout was formerly aged in the bottle for a year previous to release, so it was quite a surprise to suddenly read that the beer was ready for sale without any indication in advance that they were even brewing it.

I don’t really need to explain what a legendary beer this is, do I? Barclay Perkins brewed it for two hundred years, unfathomable in our age. I had a bottle of what must have been the last brewing while I was a student, shortly after I got interested in beer. It was very nice indeed. Then S&N discontinued it, the bloody idiots. Beer lovers everywhere will surely be keen to try the new edition.

But seriously Wells & Youngs, WHAT IS THIS BULL CRAP ABOUT NOT SELLING IT IN THE UK UNTIL NEXT YEAR?! Get it sorted! I want to be drinking this at Christmas!

Might just have to brew my own.

I don’t begrudge the Americans having the reputation for the finest imperial stouts nowadays, but I have always found it very weird that so little was brewed in the country where it was invented.

Postscript: As I was writing this I heard that Wells & Youngs have also bought the legacy Wm Younger and McEwan brands from Heineken. Heineken (and Scottish & Newcastle before them) never had much of an idea what to do with these brands, as they got in the way of selling Fosters and Kronenbourg. Perhaps Wells & Youngs will show more imagination. McEwan’s also once brewed imperial stout …

Sabotage in Schwelm

2011-09-30T21:20:00.000+01:00

Picture courtesy of ploepp.net

I’ve been following the story of the insolvency of the Schwelm brewery in Nordrhein-Westfalen and the latest news is grim. The brewery closed today after the administrator of the company refused to co-operate with last-minute efforts to save it as a going concern. The remaining members of staff and the works council have been locked out of the premises.

Supporters of the brewery accuse the administrator, Manfred Gottschalk, of never having been seriously interested in attempts to rescue the business.

Fermentation tanks and the brewery’s “Leergut” – bottles and custom-branded plastic crates — have apparently already been pre-sold in advance of closure. For all the income these sales provide, they seem calculated to make restarting production prohibitive – especially the crates which are useless to anyone else and will bring in their scrap value at best.

Schwelmer beer is popular locally, and thanks mainly to the efforts of the works council and supporters, two potential investors had been found who were interested in taking the brewery on. Contact was established with the administrator, which quickly became a fiasco, as it soon emerged that Gottschalk was unwilling to provide details of what equipment would be included in any sale, or to name a price as a basis for negotiations. Anyone interested in purchasing whatever was left could go to the auction in mid-November, said the administrator.

Unsurprisingly, the potential investors have lost interest after this kind of treatment and it seems the administrator will now go ahead and dismantle the brewery, destroying 180 years of brewing heritage.

Although a co-operative has been formed to try to raise money to buy out the brewery, it seems likely that it will meet the same stubborn resistance from the administrator. One can only speculate as to the reasons for his determination to prevent at all costs the continuation of brewing on the site.

Peat and Scottish beer

2011-09-28T06:30:00.000+01:00

Scottish beer tastes of peat, right? It’s made by kilted Highlanders drying malt on the smoky peat fire in front of the but an’ ben and full of the peaty water coming off the glen. Everyone knows that.

The above is of course, like much of what is written about Scottish beer, a legend based on romantic nonsense about what Scotland is actually like. It doesn’t help that plenty of Scottish brewers are perfectly willing to repeat the nonsense to sell beer. You even get people complaining that real Scottish beer isn’t “Scottish” enough. Not even Belhaven can make a proper Scottish ale according to some people. This type of discourse is the equivalent of writing an essay on Scottish politics based on watching Braveheart.

Ron has just posted a map of 275 Scottish breweries known to exist in 1837. Here is a picture of it:

Here is a map of the peaty bits of Scotland which I’ve quoted from the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute:

Superimposing one map on the other, one thing is quite clear: with a few exceptions, the breweries in Scotland in 1837 were nowhere near the peaty areas:

Now, just on the basis of this — ignoring all the other evidence, ignoring that the industrial revolution started in Scotland, ignoring that many of these breweries are nearer to sources of coal than sources of peat, ignoring that we know for a fact that several of the largest breweries made their own malt on site, ignoring that they used a lot of imported malt anyway … just on the basis of this map, exactly how likely do you think it would be that the beer from these breweries would have a peaty influence?

A visit to Williams Bros

2011-09-27T08:00:00.000+01:00

I forgot to take a photo of the exterior so
nicked this picture from Eric from Focus on the Beer

I’m a member of Scottish Craft Brewers, a homebrew club with a fancy name. Occasionally we get invited to tour a brewery, and at the weekend we were the guests of Williams Brothers, a brewery which has been quietly innovating for twenty years and has only in the last few years started getting the recognition it deserves.

We are greeted by one of the Brothers, Scott Williams and get a glass of beer in the brewing hall. Now, Williams Bros is quite a big place as Scottish microbreweries go — normally you’re squeezing past fermenting tanks to get through the door. After the early years of Heather Ale saw the company brewing as far afield as Taynuilt and Strathaven, it’s now based in the former Forth Brewery in Alloa, on the Kelliebank industrial estate. On the way there I pass the massive facility of the world’s biggest glass container manufacturer O-I, and Crisp’s maltings. Ironically, neither of these plants supply the brewery: O-I doesn’t manufacture beer bottles in Alloa, and Crisp’s malt all goes for whisky.

Inside, the mash tun and copper look a little lost in a corner of a hall given over mostly to huge conditioning tanks. The mash tun is attached to an ingenious device comprising a screw within a pipe, sort of like a Steel’s masher in reverse, which (I assume) propels the draff up the pipe and out of the window into the waiting bin.

Look at all those whisky casks!

Through a doorway into the hall next door which is mostly storage space for various goods in transit. Some of it is for the brewery, empty and full kegs, pallets of bottles for the company’s contract-bottling customers, sacks of malt, boxes of fresh ginger for the ginger beer.

In one corner the new, modestly sized keg filler; next to it, three tanks full of an Auchentoshan-cask aged 12% version of Fraoch heather ale. Scott fills a jug from the tank and we all get a taste. It’s lovely, the whisky not overpowering but nicely aromatic, backed with a marvellously fresh fruitiness which slowly gives way to the familiar dry woodiness of heather. If all whisky-aged beers were done this well, I wouldn’t get the foreboding that overcomes me every time I encounter one.

This is Scott Williams’ famous “food processor” in which aromatics
are blitzed to a pulp before being added to beer

We move into the bottling hall where we get an overview of the bottling process. Most of the space is actually taken up by the pasteuriser; it needs to be big because the gentle pasteurisation takes longer than flash pasteurisation at higher temperatures.

Lots of lemons and ginger in there waiting to be added to a brew

Unlike most breweries which start off producing cask beer and then move into bottling, Williams Bros have done the reverse, having established themselves first as a producer of bottled beer. Scott says this is basically for historical reasons: when they took over the Forth Brewery there were existing staff employed on the bottling line who had to be kept busy, so they launched a range of bottled products. There are now around 20 separate products under the Historic Ales and Williams Bros brands.

When they say cold conditioning, they mean it. I wonder what
they do if they ever need to open this valve?

All the homebrewers’ nerdy questions are answered. Ales and stouts use dry Nottingham yeast; with the large number of aromatised beers they want the flavour of the ingredients rather than a distinctive yeast character. The lager yeast is derived from the Hürlimann strain. Water is charcoal-filtered and used very soft with no back-addition of minerals.

For all the people who have been raving about Profanity Stout, fill your boots while you can: according to Scott there is currently no Simcoe, Cascade or Amarillo left in the UK, so they can’t brew any more of it. The other Williams beer in the Sainsbury’s competition, Caesar Augustus, is a blend of Ceilidh lager and Joker IPA with additional dry hops.

Then it’s back into the brewing hall where Scott fills our glasses with Williams Red straight from the conditioning tank. It’s a straightforward, quaffable beer that gets an extra bounce from being super fresh and lively. We sup jug after jug of it while Scott explains his use of the Golden Ratio to devise malt bills (working out exact recipes for all the Williams beers on the basis of this knowledge is left as an exercise for the reader).

We are sad when the time comes to leave, but wander out into the sunshine and back into the town centre, where sadly the present of Alloa brewing is as under-represented as its past.

Maclay’s and George Younger, Alloa

2011-09-26T09:00:00.000+01:00

Not quite finished with the photos from wandering around Alloa looking at where breweries once were.

The last brewery to close is also the best preserved — Maclay’s is now a pub called the Old Brewery. Bizarrely, it’s now run by Belhaven, not Maclay’s pub company. Belhaven have turned it into a miserable beer desert with big screen TVs and it was too depressing to take any pictures inside.

Outside, along the fence is that favourite of 1990s heritage consultants, public art in remembrance of the industry that was once here.

Remnants of the former Maclay’s brewery

Detail with Maclays monogram and thistle emblem

The ultimate insult, a series of memorial plaques in Comic Sans.

At least Maclay’s got a memorial. This is pretty much all that’s left reminding the town of George Younger:

Station Hotel window with faded George Younger ‘Y’ – “The Sign of Good Beer”

More legible from inside.

That and the cans of Sweetheart Stout in the fridge behind the bar in the Thistle Bar that still bear the words “Younger of Alloa”, even though Tennent’s has now been brewing the stuff for longer than George Younger ever did. Next to the Sweetheart Stout, invented in Alloa, is Fraoch, now brewed in Alloa. History is there if you know where to look.

From city of brewing to city of carparks

2011-09-25T17:35:00.000+01:00

I was in Alloa at the weekend and inspired by Ron’s map I took a little wander around the town to see the sites of the town’s formerly legendary breweries.

I made it to seven of the ten sites before the batteries on my camera ran out. There’s not much left of most of them it has to be said.

This is one of the few where part of the brewery building is still standing, George Younger’s Meadow Brewery. It looks like the whitewashed part is the only recognisable bit; the rest has been either rebuilt or heavily remodeled. But look at those blocked-up windows on the south face that are the same size and shape as those on the west side pictured in this post.

Site of George Younger’s Candlerigg Brewery, not much left of that:

Note that this is directly across the street from Maclay’s Thistle Brewery which can be seen in the background. The sites of several breweries are literally round the corner from each other.

This is the site of Robert Henderson’s Mills Brewery:

Here is what I think is the site of the Townhead Brewery. The building looks as if it might have been a brewery once, but it’s round the back of the public baths, not sure that would have been approved by the city fathers even in the 19th century. Edit: I was wide of the mark here. The Townhead brewery actually straddled where the road between two carparks now is, so a bit further east from where I was standing, as can be seen on the old map from the NLS. Definitely not the building with the chimney, whatever that is.

Not the Townhead Brewery

Also nothing to do with the Townhead Brewery

Round the corner, this is what I thought was the site of the Caponcroft Brewery. It’s actually more like where the Townhead Brewery was. The Caponcroft was further east on Jamaica Street, which no longer exists. If I had a photo of the exact site, it would be more carpark and ring road.

And just a little further on, the site of Alloa Brewery, aka Arrol’s, Allied, Carlsberg-Tetley Alloa, etc.

Four brewers, four beers

2011-09-23T22:22:00.000+01:00

Representatives of four breweries gathered at WEST in Glasgow yesterday evening for a beer tasting as part of Social Media Week. Moderated by Pete Brown, the tasting was intended both to introduce new-wave beer to a wider audience and to discuss the value of social media to breweries and drinkers.

Petra of WEST and brewer Felix were on hand to give some background about the brewery and introduce their beer, WEST Hefeweizen. The beer arrived thick with yeast and still bubbling despite the huge head of foam. It had a strong banana aroma and was remarkably tangy. Felix says the beer is 80% wheat, much more than a typical wheat beer even in Bavaria.

Next to chat to Pete were Harviestoun’s brewsters Amy and Krista who had brought along Schiehallion, Harviestoun’s sometime ground-breaking cask lager which is now also available in bottle and keg.

The last time I had this from keg it was dreadful. Yesterday it was much, much better, a stunning beer packed with spicy hops. I think it rather benefited from having some of the CO2 knocked out of it, but Amy and Krista also said they’re very careful about the carbonation levels in the keg. The pitcher full of beer has a good few centimetres of dense creamy foam on top, and looks deeper in colour than usual due to the greater volume. It was also an educational experience to taste it side by side with the maltier, more biscuity WEST St Mungo lager.

By the time we got onto the third beer everyone on the panel and most of the audience seemed to be quite merry.

Kelburn’s Derek Moore introduced his Cart Blanche. It had suffered a bit from being jugged up from the cellar and is at the lower end of an acceptable carbonation range. It does look a little drab next to the frothy lager and the opalescent wheat beer, but tastes more complex than the more approachable beers from WEST and Harviestoun. It’s enjoyable once you get used to the woody, earthy bitterness of it.

I imagine there must be quite a few breweries like Kelburn for whom social media is still a bit of an unexplored territory. When Derek Moore started up there was no platform for his business beyond what he could build himself. In those days you plugged away brewing real ale and you sold it to real ale pubs who sold it to real ale drinkers. Now there is a platform and it opens up a lot of opportunities for breweries like Kelburn.

One brewery which has grasped social media and used it effectively is Magic Rock, who were invited to take part for precisely that reason. Joining us via Skype from Huddersfield (and the efficacy of their social media use is demonstrated by the fact that I can’t think of any other brewery from Huddersfield), Stu and Rich loomed Big Brother-style on the big screen and quickly became known as the Brewing Overlords of Doom, or something.

Their beer was their double IPA, Human Cannonball. It didn’t seem to create as much of a stir in the room as I expected. Are people used to the idea of a double IPA already? It has a massive dry hop aroma and satisfying bitterness, slightly syrupy crystal malt and just a slight touch of booziness. We end up in a discussion of the forthcoming duty increase on strong beer and its effects.

By this stage we had overrun by 100% of the planned tasting time and it was time to wrap up. It was a great presentation of some very different beers and pleasant to see that brewers from different traditions can get on when there’s nobody deliberately trying to drive a wedge between them.

I can also exclusively reveal the forthcoming Magic Rock TV advert:

Social beer tasting

2011-09-19T19:29:00.004+01:00

Glasgow is one of the cities around the world hosting Social Media Week and with 120 events has emerged as one of the biggest SMW after New York.

Beer being a social drink (Are there unsocial drinks? Discuss [25 marks]), it seemed only natural to have a social media beer tasting.

The illustrious Pete Brown will be introducing several beers at West brewery on Thursday evening at 6pm and the event will be streamed online. Not only West’s beers will be tasted and discussed but several other breweries will be participating: Harviestoun, nearby Kelburn from Barrhead, and Magic Rock, who are a bit further away and have presumably been chosen due to their competent use of social media. There will probably also be a bit of chat about the use of social media by brewers, pubs and drinkers.

Magic Rock are sending their bottled Human Cannonball double IPA and joining the event via Skype. Harviestoun will be there with their Schiehallion lager and Kelburn are bringing Cart Blanche. If you can’t make it along to West, but can get hold of the beers, feel free to join in with your tasting notes online with the tags #SMWbeer and #SMWGla (like Question Time with beer), or just watch the live stream at http://www.livestream.com/socialmediaweek . It should be fun.

Mashing technology in 1868

2011-09-17T07:32:00.000+01:00

I estimate there are roughly seven people in the world interested in this stuff. Even I’m not interested in this. But Bailey unwisely expressed interest in an exposition of nineteenth-century mashing at George Younger’s that Ron posted, so he’s to blame for encouraging me to post this even more detailed description.

I can’t visualise these machines from the descriptions at all. Thank Christ for pictures.

From Engineering, 26th June 1868:

BREWING AND BREWERIES.—No. XIV.
Apparatus Employed In The Process Of Mashing—(continued).

Formerly the method of mixing together the malt and liquor in a mash-tun was by the use of “oars,” or wooden stirring rods, and this method of forming the mash is still adopted in the case of very small breweries. Where mash-tuns of more than a very moderate size are employed, however, the adoption of such a mode of mashing would not only involve a severe amount of labour, but it would produce a most unsatisfactory result. It is desirable to employ such appliances for mashing as will effect the thorough mixing of the hull and flour of the crushed malt with the liquor, and will leave the goods in a porous condition, so that they may be readily penetrated by any further amount of liquor sparged over them or otherwise added. One of the earliest forms of mashing machine, and one that is still in use in many old breweries, is that consisting of a radial frame which travels round in the mash-tun, this frame having two horizontal shafts, one above and slightly in advance of the other. Each shaft carries a number of chain wheels, and over these work chains fitted with transverse teeth or rakes. As the shafts revolve the teeth on the chains are drawn up through the goods, all parts of the latter being successively acted on as the frame carrying the shafts travels round the tun. At Messrs. Barclay’s all the mash-tuns but one are fitted with chain rakes of this kind, and they are also in use at Messrs. Reid’s and other London breweries. At Messrs. Barclay’s the chains used to consist of cast-iron links connected by wrought-iron pins, but these links used to fail frequently — rather an awkward matter if the failure occurs in the middle of a mash — and Mr. Beckwith, the engineer, is now making them of malleable cast iron.

At Messrs. Reid’s, where there are four mash-tuns, each capable of mashing 160 quarters, the mashing machine in each tun is double, or, in other words, instead of the frame carrying the chain wheel shafts, being merely a radius of the tun, it extends across the whole diameter. By this arrangement the goods are turned over twice during each revolution made by the frame, and the mixing is thus effected more quickly than it otherwise would be. In slow gear the frame makes a complete revolution in fifteeen minutes, whilst in quick gear it completes the circuit in ten minutes, the speed being equivalent to one revolution in five minutes with a single machine. In Messrs. Reid’s machines the rake chains are of wrought iron throughout, and we are informed that the apparatus is found to work very satisfactorily.

The “porcupine”
An improvement on the chain rakes is the so-called “porcupine” machinery, which has, perhaps, been more extensively adopted than any other form of mashing apparatus. Of an example of this form of mashing machine we gave an engraving on page 532 of our number for the 29th of May last, our illustration representing a vertical section and plan of one of the cast-iron mash-tuns at Messrs. Truman’s brewery, which mash-tuns we may mention, are all, with one exception, also fitted with Steel’s masher, which we shall describe presently. The mashing apparatus of which we are now speaking, consists, as will be seen, of a series of rakes carried by curved arms fixed to a pair of horizontal shafts placed one above the other; the rakes being arranged so that, as the shafts revolve, they pass each other and thoroughly turn over the “goods” in the mash-tun. The inner ends of the horizontal shafts are carried by plummer blocks attached to brackets which encircle the central vertical, or driving, shaft, the lower end of which latter shaft rests upon a suitable bearing at the bottom of the mash-tun. The outer ends of the rake shafts rest in bearings carried by a kind of frame, which is connected by tie bars with the brackets encircling the central shaft, and which is supported by a pair of rollers which bear on the rim of the mash-tun. The upper part of this frame also carries bearings for a pair of shafts, which are geared together, and each of which has, running loose on it, a pinion which gears into a rack formed round the edge of the mash-tun. Each shaft, also, carries a sliding clutch for connectiug it to its pinion, and these clutches are both worked by one lever, arranged as shown in the plan, so that either can be thrown in gear at pleasure, but so that they cannot be engaged simultaneously. One of the pinion shafts extends inwards towards the centre of the mash-tun, and at its inner end it carries a bevel wheel, which gears into a bevel pinion on the central shaft, this pinion being about one-third the size of the wheel. The rake shafts also carry bevel wheels, which gear into equal sized wheels on the vertical shaft, the pairs of wheels being arranged so that the two rake shafts are both made to revolve in the same direction.

The action of this apparatus will be readily understood. From the vertical shaft motion is communicated to the rake shafts, and a slower motion to one of the shafts carrying a pinion gearing into the circular rack. From this shaft a still slower motion is communicatcd to the other short shaft, carrying a pinion gearing into the rack, the two shafts being geared together by wheels of unequal sizes. It will thus be seen that when one of the rack pinions is thrown into gear with its shaft by means of its clutch, the whol apparatus will be made to travel slowly round the mash-tun, and the rakes will thus be brought to bear upon the whole of the “goods.” The direction of the motion of the apparatus, and the speed at which it is caused to travel, will depend upon which pinion is thrown into gear. This arrangement of travelling gear is similar to that adopted in the case of the chain rakes already spoken of.

The mashing apparatus above described has, as we have said, been very largely adopted; it being in some breweries used by itself, and in others used in addition to a separate mashing machine, such as Steel’s. In most cases the arms and teeth of this class of machinery are, as at Messrs. Truman’s, of wrought iron; but in some instances the teeth are made of wood, and in others, as at Messrs. Bass’s brewery at Burton, both the teeth and arms are of wood, the latter being fitted into sockets cast on the shaft, which are of gun metal. At the City of London Brewery, where mashing machines of this kind are in use, the central shafts are fitted with teeth, which act upon the central portion of the goods not touched by the revolving rakes ; and at Messrs. Charrington’s, where there are three mashtuns 18 ft. in diameter, and capable of mashing 100 quarters each, and where these “porcupine” machines are also used, the rake shafts are made to extend across the whole diameter of the tuns, as in the chainrake machines at Messrs. Reid’s, which we have already mentioned. The large mash-tun at Messrs. Hoare’s, which we have mentioned in a previous article as being capable of holding a mash of 190 quarters, is also fitted with porcupine machinery, the gear being arranged so that the machinery can either traverse round at a slow or quick speed, or the rakes worked without shifting their position in the mash-tun. In quick gear this mashing apparatus makes the circuit of the mash-tun in two minutes—a very high speed. In some machines of this kind, as, for instance, in those at the Well-park Brewery, Glasgow (Messrs. J. and R. Tennant’s [sic]), the circular rack, in which the pinions giving the travelling motion gear, is placed within the tun, instead of around its upper edge, the object of this being to avoid the chance of men employed about the mash-tun being caught and injured by the gearing.

Another arrangement for stirring the goods within the tun is that shown in the section of the mash-tuns at Messrs. Miller’s brewery, at St. Petersburg, which we published last week. In this instance a central revolving shaft carries two curved arms, which work close to the false bottom of the mash-tun, and which, therefore, act upon the lower portion of the goods only. In this case the mixing of the malt and water is effected by a Steel’s masher before the goods enter the tun. It may be noticed that at Messrs. Miller’s brewery the central shafts of each mash-tun can be thrown into or out of gear by means of a pair of friction discs neatly arranged as shown in the engraving.

So far we have only spoken of contrivances for effecting the operation of mashing within the mash-tun itself; but of late years a large proportion of our brewers have become convinced that it is better to effect the mixture of the malt and liquor in detail as they enter the mash-tun than to deal with the goods in a mass, as was formerly the universal practice. The consequence has been the adoption of separate mashing machines, and the best varieties of such machines we shall now proceed to describe.

Steel’s masher
The masher which may be termed the parent of efficient machines of this class is that invented and patented by Mr. James Steel, of Glasgow, and it is one which has probably been more extensively adopted than any other. Of this machine, the manufacture of which has been taken up by Messrs. E. A. Poutifex and Wood, the well-known brewers’ engineers, of the Farringdon Works, Shoe-lane, we gave an illustration on page 540 of our last number but two. As will be seen by our illustration, this masher is of exceedingly simple construction. It consists merely of a cylindrical casing, within which revolves a shaft provided with a number of radial arms. The casing is open at one end and closed at the other, the shaft passing through a stuffing-box at this closed end, and being provided, outside, with fast and loose belt pulleys. The grist and liquor are admitted to the casing by branches at the closed end, and as they pass through to be delivered into the mash-tun from the open end of the casing, they are thoroughly mixed together by the action of the arms on the revolving shaft. The branch through which the malt enters is fitted with a regulating slide as shown, and both the main casing and branch are fitted with hand-holes which give access for cleaning, &c. The water branch is not shown in our engraving; it communicates with the side of the casing, and is fitted with a cock.

Ou page 462 of our number for May 15th last, we gave an engraving which included a Steel’s masher, as it has been applied at Messrs. Miller’s brewery at St. Petersburg. In this case there is no slide for regulating the supply of the malt, the latter being received direct from a small hopper placed below the malt-mill. The casing of the masher, instead of being cylindrical, tapers slightly in its diameter, being reduced towards the end from which goods are delivered into the mash-tun; and in order still further to delay the progress of the mash through the machine, the central shaft is fitted at intervals with flat arms, or oars, in addition to the usual circular ones. The liquor is delivered into the casing from the branch, through two openings diametrically opposite each other, these openings communicating with a passage cast around the branch, as shown. Arrangements are made for admitting either hot or cold water through the openings, as may be desired. The central shaft of the masher, it will be noticed, is in this case driven by bevel gearing, which connects it with the shaft, n, on which the belt pulleys are placed, and which also carries a flywheel, o.

In a great number of instances Steel’s mashers are used alone, or, in other words, the whole of the mashing is effected by them; whilst in other cases they are used in combination with other mashing apparatus placed in the mash-tun. As instances, we may mention Messrs. Salt and Co.’s, of Burton-on-Trent, and Messrs. Mann, Crossman, and Paulin’s, as establishments where the former mode of working is adopted, whilst at Messrs. Truman’s, at Messrs. Allsopp’s, and at a number of other breweries, Steel’s mashers are used in addition to the ordinary “porcupine.” Where Steel’s or other separate mashers are alone employed, it is the practice to make but one mash, and to sparge the remainder of the length; whilst where mashing appliances are also provided within the tun, a series of mashes may be made, the goods being turned over during each mash.

Colyer’s malt feeder
In order to ensure a steady supply of malt to Steel’s mashing machine, and thus still farther guard against “balling,” Messrs. F. Colyer and Co., of Leman street, have designed the arrangement of a malt feeder, of which we annex an illustration. This feeder is placed between the grist shoot and the mashing machine, and it consists of a casing containing a drum, A, which, has an oscillating motion imparted to it by an eccentric, C, fixed on the central shaft of the mashing machine. On each side of the oscillating drum are flaps, D, the position of which regulate the quantity of malt passing through; the drum, A, as it oscillates, leaving an opening between it and each flap alternately.

Interesting that the author notes that where Steel’s masher is used, they only mash once and then sparge. Did the Steel’s masher contribute to the spread of sparging?

Also interesting to see what kit the well-known breweries were using. Barclays and Reid’s had chain rakes.

The most popular was the “porcupine” masher. Truman’s had these as well as Steel’s mashers. Bass, Charrington, Hoare and Tennent all used them.

Salt relied solely on the Steel's masher, as did Mann, Crossman and Paulin.

Ron’s post pointed out that George Younger had three mash tuns of 100 quarters each. That was the same size as Charrington twenty years earlier. Reid’s could mash 160 quarters at a time in each of four mash tuns.

I haven’t been paying attention. I didn’t realise James Steel, the inventor of the mashing machine, was from Glasgow. He must be the James Steel of Steel Coulson brewery.

Blue Moon bullshit

2011-09-15T15:10:00.000+01:00

Earlier today I saw a tweet from a local pub announcing that they now stock Blue Moon in bottles, with a photo to prove it.

I had a quick check and as far as I can tell the US label says “Belgian White Belgian-Style Wheat Ale” (which is horrific enough in its own way, but that’s a separate issue). As you can see, the UK label proclaims “North American Craft Beer”.

This labelling would of course provoke a shitstorm in the US, as there, unlike here, “craft beer” has a specific meaning closely watched over by the Brewers’ Association. Blue Moon, as one of the speciality brews of mammoth brewer Molson Coors (although they coyly prefer to promote it as ‘Blue Moon Brewing Company’), doesn’t qualify.

Blue Moon has become spectacularly successful in the US as a pseudo-“Belgian” product. Now, seemingly, the approach in the UK is to push it as a pseudo-American product. Over there the suggestible consumer gets the impression it’s from Belgium; over here it’s implied it comes from one of those little US craft breweries he’s heard about. I mean, doesn’t this stuff on the back label sound good:

“Blue Moon Brewing Company was born in 1995 in Denver, Colorado, U.S.A., when we added unique and subtle twists to old-world, handcrafted brewing traditions. Since then, not much has changed. Still just a bunch of friends having fun making great beer.”

You can almost see the guys getting together on a Saturday to fire up a brew in the turkey fryer in the garage, can’t you? Poor sods probably have to stir the mash with a canoe paddle too.

You have to admire the sneakiness of this copywriting, which manages to slip in the feel-good words “handcrafted” and “traditions” without actually claiming those properties for the beer. Read the small print and learn it’s brewed in Canada, presumably at a Molson facility. So, apart from being brewed by different people in another country, no, not much has changed. Sure it hasn’t.

Blue Moon, disingenuous on both sides of the Atlantic.

+1 for Molson Coors on the Suckiness Index. Sorry folks.

Adnams Ghost Ship

2011-09-13T07:00:00.000+01:00

I don’t post many tasting notes on here. This is chiefly because I find other people’s tasting notes incredibly boring to read, and I wouldn’t like in turn to inflict such boredom on anyone else. But Adnams were nice enough to send me a bottle of their new seasonal beer Ghost Ship, so here is what I thought of it.

First surprise on opening the bottle: it’s fruity and citrussy in aroma, I think I recognise the distinctive Citra straight away. Second surprise on pouring the beer: it’s brown! Well, more deep amber really.

The “malty backbone” claimed on the label is less apparent; it’s actually quite light-bodied for its 4.5%. Head retention is poor and a bit of caramel is all that distracts from the hops.

In the glass the Citra is subservient to the big dank charge of other hops — Columbus and Chinook according to the website — almost meaty and oniony aromas, and a bitter, oily finish.

If I were to describe it in terms of other beers, it’s somewhere between Bengal Lancer and 5am Saint, and can be recommended with confidence to anyone who likes those resiny New World hops. 5am Saint left me with a lasting aversion to these hops a couple of years ago with its offensively penetrant Oxo-cube aroma. I think Adnams might be the doctor.

Adnams

Deutsch lernen mit Black Isle

2011-09-11T05:19:00.001+01:00

I’m a sucker for anything involving German beer. This is because German beer was my first passion in the world of beer, pre-dating my discovery of real ale by a year or so. Sometimes the craving for a litre of crisp golden Untergäriges or a Seidla of brown, intensely hoppy Vollbier still surfaces. So when I heard that Black Isle Brewery were planning a German-themed beer festival I was immediately interested.

Nice barley growing on the farm

After their successful Shindig in summer the brewery wanted to have another festival sooner rather than later. The company slogan “Save the planet, drink organic” was quickly modified to “drink Germanic” and Jocktoberfest was born. I had to go.

At the crack of dawn I board a train bound for Inverness. Listening to Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express to get in the mood doesn’t work; the lyrics of high-speed diesel trains, swish Vienna cafes, hobnobbing with David Bowie don’t fit, and even seem slightly sarcastic, as we pootle through Pitlochry and Blair Atholl in the drizzle.

On the long trudge up to the farm where the brewery is based I pick an ear of barley from the field. It tastes pretty good. Later, on the brief brewery tour, I find out that some of the farm’s barley is now going for malting. Malt from your own organic barley is a unique selling point not too many micros can claim. Others might make organic beer, but they’re still buying the same organic malt as everyone else.

Most micros are also pretty cramped and you have to squeeze yourself sideways between the fermenters. Black Isle was like that too, until just a few months ago when they built the enormous black shed that now dominates the farm. Inside, huge amounts of empty space await further expansion while a shiny new 5hl brewing kit takes up one corner, conditioning tanks the other, and the dedicated bottling line reaches along one wall.

The dimensions of this impressive shed show
the scale of the recent expansion of the brewery

Beer list, the heart of any festival

Jocktoberfest is not intended as a cliched Dirndl and Maßkrug event, and thank heavens for that. There is not much of an attempt at “authenticity”; the bales of straw in the barn for people to sit on are more reminiscent of the Grand Ole Opry than the Hofbräuhaus. The signage in painstakingly hand-painted blackletter script is an amusing touch.
In a splendid bit of fun, Black Isle has asked Fyne Ales, Tryst, Highland and Tempest to each brew a special beer with some sort of Teutonic influence. Tryst has taken the brief most to heart and delivered something called Hopfen Jäger (Hop Hunter) which according to the buzz was a hoppy wheat beer. But they haven’t used a wheat beer yeast and so it just ends up tasting like another Tryst pale ale; i.e. bloody brilliant with a long-lasting bitter finish.

The most authentic food and drink at the festival are the bratwurst made right here on the farm. They are a surprise – not imported Tiefkühlware, but not plain common or garden sausages either. The spicing is right but the texture is ungewöhnlich – sloppy, for want of a better word. Nice though, flame-grilled and daubed with wholegrain mustard.

Additional praise for best beer festival signage

Fyne Ales have sent something called Munster Ale. They're forgiven for calling it Ale, as I can't see that it’s actually intended to resemble any German beer I know of. It’s quite sweet and malty; that is, it tastes of malt, not toffee. It’s also not at its best, the flattest of the three cask beers I try, all of which are lacking condition.

Tempest’s offering, just called Jocktoberfest but billed as a smoked Alt, is my first disappointing Tempest beer. Not annähernd bitter enough for Alt and very little smokiness discernible, though it gets smokier as it warms up.

These are all decent beers (they'll be turning up in pubs in the cities this week and I’ll certainly be trying them again) but an object lesson: there’s more to imitating a foreign beer culture than looking up a recipe on the internet, or using their ingredients.

At least the cask beer was nice and cold; it’s chilly up in Ross in September and I’m quite glad I’ve decided not to camp overnight. I have to get back to Glasgow for a friend’s birthday party so I leave after a last pint – it seems rude to only drink the guest beers and thus I have Black Isle’s own Goldeneye, from keg at finger-chilling temperature. I’m not keen, the hops are too resiny for me.

I leave really impressed by the festival despite the short stay. The adjoining barns make a terrific venue, people are friendly, beer and sausages are good, lots of effort has clearly been put in. Possibly even a contender for my new favourite beer festival on a remote Scottish farm, but a final decision on such an important matter needs very careful consideration.

Yee ha

Vocabulary used in this post

Seidla half-litre mug
Untergäriges bottom-fermenting beer
Maßkrug litre beer mug, beer stein
Tiefkühlware frozen goods (food)
annähernd nearly
ungewöhnlich unusual

Analysis of German Ale and Porter

2011-09-03T11:45:00.000+01:00

What joy. I’ve found an analysis of the beers produced by our old chums the Erste Norddeutsche Actien-Ale- und Porter-Brauerei. Remember them? They were making IPA in Bremen, Germany in the 19th century. Here’s the article from the Allgemeine Hopfen-Zeitung (Nr. 14, 3 Feb 1870):

Porter and Ale of the Erste Norddeutsche Aktien-Ale- und Porter-Brauerei in Hemelingen near Bremen.

It is pleasant to report, and certainly also of interest to the esteemed reader of this paper, that the German beer culture has reached a stage in respect of the so-called English beers, where it can bear comparison with the long-famous English original. In Hemelingen near Bremen a joint-stock Ale and Porter brewery has been established, which under the command of Director A. Philipson produces beers, which according to the analysis I have performed are not only equal to the English, but deserve to be preferred. I shall present the analysis and let the numbers speak for themselves.

Porter Ale
Malt extract 20.044 10.923
– Galactose 2.829 1.257
– Sucrose 3.246 1.919
– Dextrose 1.248 1.155
– Gluten 1.296 0.547
– Glucose 0.736 0.854
– Organic nitrogenous compounds 10.689 4.891
– of which: Proteins, denaturable 7.291 2.118
– ditto not denaturable 0.049 0.053
– Plant extractives 2.853 2.307
Carbonic acid 0.985 0.681
Alcohol 6.291 4.877
Acetic acid 0.123 0.091
Hop bitter components 0.899 0.785
Lactic acid 0 0
Unidentifiable organic compounds 0 0
Ash 2.739 1.439
Water 68.919 81.504
Ash:
Calcium phosphate 60.456 63.516
Magnesium phosphate 4.564 3.614
Potassium phosphate 9.894 7.783
Sodium phosphate 19.499 21.473
Potassium sulphate 0.462 0.556
Sodium chloride 2.884 1.042
Silicic acid 0.292 0.417
Calcium fluoride trace trace
Potassium chloride 0.584 0.764
Calcium hydroxide 1.352 0.766
Iron (calculated as oxide) 0.073 0.069
[Note: I am not at all confident about the translation here. I’m not an organic chemist, and 19th-century terminology is weird.]

[Here is the original table. Some of the terms
might be incorrectly translated. I am not a chemist.]
Porter. The high content of organic nitrogenous components, and the absence of alien ingredients that do not belong in porter-beer, the rich content of malt extract, the extremely balanced proportion of alcohol to malt all justify my labelling this porter excellent. In particular the high ash content and the proportionate balance of its component parts are deserving of praise, as is the complete absence of lactic acid. This bears witness to a very rational manufacture and is something which differentiates this beer most honourably from most which are imported from England.

Ale. The Ale prepared by the Erste Norddeutsche Aktien-Ale- und Porter-Brauerei zu Hemelingen can be described as a beer especially rich in extract. The chemical analysis, which is the only way to determine the genuine worth of a beer, proves definitively that the ale has been produced in a rational manner without any artificial additive.

	Porter	Ale
Malt extract	20.044	10.923
– Galactose	2.829	1.257
– Sucrose	3.246	1.919
– Dextrose	1.248	1.155
– Gluten	1.296	0.547
– Glucose	0.736	0.854
– Organic nitrogenous compounds	10.689	4.891
– of which: Proteins, denaturable	7.291	2.118
– ditto not denaturable	0.049	0.053
– Plant extractives	2.853	2.307
Carbonic acid	0.985	0.681
Alcohol	6.291	4.877
Acetic acid	0.123	0.091
Hop bitter components	0.899	0.785
Lactic acid	0	0
Unidentifiable organic compounds	0	0
Ash	2.739	1.439
Water	68.919	81.504
Ash:
Calcium phosphate	60.456	63.516
Magnesium phosphate	4.564	3.614
Potassium phosphate	9.894	7.783
Sodium phosphate	19.499	21.473
Potassium sulphate	0.462	0.556
Sodium chloride	2.884	1.042
Silicic acid	0.292	0.417
Calcium fluoride	trace	trace
Potassium chloride	0.584	0.764
Calcium hydroxide	1.352	0.766
Iron (calculated as oxide)	0.073	0.069

A normal balance reigns amongst the elements belonging to the malt extract. The quantity of alcohol contained in the ale relative to the malt extract is evidence of a professional and rational manufacturing method. Of the many sorts of ale imported directly from England which I have often had the opportunity to examine, this beer earns preference due to its high content of nutritious substances and the complete absence of alien elements.

Breslau — Director Dr. Werner.

Did you notice that? The company was headed by A. Philipson, doesn’t sound like a German name. So there was a British element in the company. Bloody foreigners, coming over here, brewing ale and porter …

I don’t fancy going down the pub with Dr. Werner though, with his insistence that you can only tell if a beer is any good or not by chemically analysing it. Speaking of analysis, now I know that “Schleimzucker” is 19th-century German for galactose. You never know when that’s going to come in handy.

The brewery was still very new at this time: it had raised its starting capital of 300,000 gold Thaler in July 1868 with the with the objective of “producing ale and porter in excellent quality” for the Customs Union [i.e. Germany] and overseas markets (Zeitschrift für Kapital und Rente, Stuttgart 1869). The following year it suffered a fire on 5th May. (Deutsche Industrie-Zeitung (Chemnitz), 13 May 1869). As we can see from the advert at the top, it was also selling malt to other brewers.

In 1880 it was restructured as the Hemelinger Aktienbrauerei which was later taken over by Beck’s. Beck’s finally closed the brewery in 1985 and in 2008 the rights to the name were bought by a local drinks wholesaler which hoped to revitalise the brand.

The legend of kettle caramelisation in Scottish beer (2)

2011-08-31T07:30:00.003+01:00

Following on from my previous post on the subject, this snippet about Wright’s brewery in Perth caught my eye:

The brewing copper is one of the traditional direct-fired open vessels—one of the few of this type remaining in use today, and worthy of a visit by young brewers whose experience is limited to the modern welded enclosed steam-coil heated copper.
—Brewers’ Guardian October 1960 (reprinted in Journal of the Scottish Brewing Archive vol. 5 (2003))

So by 1960 at the latest, a direct fired copper was already an anachronism and something you showed to young brewing students to show them how things were done in the past.

Previously to this, English breweries would presumably have been using the same direct-heat technology, but we never hear anything about caramelisation being a characteristic of English beer.

Truman’s, the cunning sods

2011-08-26T07:58:00.001+01:00

As someone who likes that sort of thing, I was happy to see that a few people down in that London have revived the Truman’s name and are having beer brewed under contract until they can acquire their own premises — repossession of the historic Brick Lane brewery, before which I genuflect every time I pass it, presumably being out of the question. Their Summer Runner is a perfectly decent bitter, dry and flinty. I think they should really be brewing Porter, but that’s my problem.

It wasn’t until I was wandering about London recently that I twigged what they’re up to.

East London is still dotted with a fair number of these beautiful old ex-Truman pubs with the tiled frontages. Some are still open, some long since closed (and I dare say a great many similar ones have been demolished, but that need not concern us here).

Get the brand noticed, and people will start asking for it in these pubs that say “Truman’s Ales & Stouts” outside, thus putting pressure on them to stock it. Now that’s clever.

Cask night

2011-08-24T06:57:00.001+01:00

One of my favourite pubs in Glasgow is the Laurieston Bar. It stands just south of the Clyde in an area which was largely demolished during the 1970s, but the handsome facade of the former Bridge St railway station, the original terminus before the construction of Central Station on the north bank, remains, and the Laurieston is right next to it, although it has lost its original upper storey at some point over the years.

Although I love jakey pubs and have been around a lot of them, I’d never been in the Laurieston until the book Scotland’s True Heritage Pubs came out a few years back. A friend and I visited one Sunday afternoon and were instant converts. Not just because of the unique formica-heavy 1960s interior which got it into CAMRA’s National Inventory and the guidebook; it was, as my pal said, the friendliest pub he’d ever been in. We started telling people what a gem they were missing and got more and more fond of the place. Not a few evenings have been spent here, listening to the whimsical jukebox that occasionally plays “This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius” from Hair instead of the track you’ve selected. Sometimes we have a pie from the vintage pie heater that says “McGhee’s” on the front. The pies still come from McGhee’s. I like that.

The only thing wrong with the Laurieston is that Fürstenberg is the best beer they sell. Often I find myself drinking smoothflow mild, keg heavy or even Guinness. It’s worth putting up with all that, just for the brilliant crack.

Comparable pubs in Edinburgh or Manchester would sell real ale. This is a Glasgow-wide problem; a cultural divide rooted in the extermination of cask here in the 1960s. There’s a long-standing notion that quality beer will only sell in the West End and the Merchant City, though thankfully this is changing.

Badgering reluctant licensees to sell cask permanently doesn’t often work; it’s a risk to stock a new, perishable beer when you have no idea who, if anyone, is going to drink it.

A different approach was needed. The Americans treat cask as something special: bars make an event of tapping a cask and invite people to come along specially. Perhaps that would work here. Nervously I asked James, who runs the bar with his brother John, if he would consider having a cask for one night only during Glasgow Beer Week. At first he was cautious, saying “Well, we don’t really do promotions here,” as if I had suggested having dolly birds handing out bottles of Heineken.

But he agreed to let me put a brewery in touch, and Fyne Ales agreed to supply a nine of Highlander heavy and lend the pub a handpump. We set a date during Beer Week, and every time I pop in thereafter James seems more enthusiastic, until he is positively bouncing the day before when I look in to check that the beer has arrived.

The brothers have been in the trade long enough to remember when all draught beer was cask-conditioned. I was lucky enough to be invited to see the cellar. Remember I mentioned the unaltered 1960s interior? The pub itself and the cellar are much older than that; we think it probably dates from 1890, contemporary with the railway station next door. Down in the cellar, raw stone surrounds the delivery hatch, which is big enough for the barrels and hogsheads that would have been in daily use when

the pub opened. James nonchalantly picks up a thermometer to check the temperature in the cellar. It’s a promotional one with the name of a brewery on it. Except the brewery is Campbell, Hope & King (closed 1970). This thermometer is older than me and it’s just lying around in the cellar, a reminder of a defunct brewery.

Every time I see James after that he looks happier, and has some anecdote to relate about the old days when they had to hose the wooden beer casks down with water in the summer to keep them cool. He’s also realised that serving real ale means not having to buy CO2 — an advantage which, it seems to me, CAMRA has neglected to emphasise in its promotion of cask to publicans.

The appointed day arrives and we pile into the pub at the ordained time. We each take our turn to receive our foaming pints — a tad warmer than I’d like it, but in marvellous condition. The pub slowly fills up and the quiet of the afternoon session is replaced by the gentle murmur of an evening’s chat. Charlie has come down from the brewery. Veteran Camranauts are here, attracted by the beer. West End scenesters are here, attracted by the beer. One pint goes down, then another. Same again? we ask, unnecessarily.

This is proper old school drinking. There is one kind of beer. You drink lots of pints of it. Food is crisps or toasties. Entertainment is talking to your friends. It is completely stripped-down, essential pub. And it’s bloody brilliant.

Tom goes to the bar for another pint; the handpump sputters and spits and the cask is finished. We have killed the Highlander. A cheer goes up; we are all talking rubbish and happy. Except Tom, who has no beer left. Poor Tom.

Since this night the Laurieston has put in a couple of further orders for cask beer. I am hopeful. There is a further post devoted entirely to the Laurieston’s wonderful tables over at Glasgow Bars and a Crane.

Details of London pubs

2011-08-23T07:56:00.002+01:00

1959 | Charrington | Toby Ale | Pale Ale | OG 1046.6 | FG 1009 | 4.65%ABV

Just off Old Street, this pub has either not long for this world…

… or the developers intend to build around it. If it were going, it’d be gone already, wouldn’t it?

Imagine if there were some way of drinking awesome draught beer at home!

You have to admire the tenacity of this place which still
has a petition in the window even as the building next door is being demolished.

Courage Ales (it’s just a sign mate, we sell Fosters)

Public Bar

Delivery hatch right in front of the door to the public bar – why?

Nice old pub, closed. Not all London pubs are doing well.

GBBF periphery, grapefruit beer and cat pubs

2011-08-21T10:14:00.000+01:00

I like to take advantage of being in London for GBBF to visit pubs, both old favourites and new discoveries. One pub I’d been meaning to visit for years, chiefly because Michael Jackson wrote about it, was the Star Tavern in Belgravia, which according to him was a good place to drink Fullers beers. But times change and I was disappointed there was no Chiswick. Pint of Discovery then. My mission to drink Chiswick on its home turf is thwarted again. You’d think it would be easy, too.

Wenlock

I have met up with a couple of friends and we are just spending a day wandering across the city. The Wenlock Arms? Why not, on a day like this? The threat to the place seemingly less urgent than it was thought to be, we drop in for a pint and to experience what Real Ale pubs were like in the 1970s. Sussex Best. No rush.

Then it’s off to Clerkenwell and the Jerusalem Tavern. Last time I was here the beer didn’t impress, but today it was spot on. Old-Style Porter goes down a treat. After tasting my friend’s Grapefruit Beer I beg the others to stay here for another round, so I can have a pint of that to myself. Gorgeous stuff. The sun is streaming through the windows and it’s just perfect.

Ye olde menu of ye winter fare and ye summer fare

We are passing the alley that leads to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. My friends have never been, so we pop in for one. Ye Samuel Smith’s beer isn’t exciting, but it’s worth a half pint to sit here for a while, even if ye larger rooms aren’t open and we have to crowd into ye small bar. Looking at ye old menus in ye display cases outside, it’s clear they’ve been milking ye great age of ye place for at least a hundred years already, if not longer.

Cat pub

The Seven Stars in WC2 is a pub I’ve never been in, or even heard of before. But we have to go there, as it has a cat that wears a ruff. Alright then. Fortunately the cat is not the only attraction. It’s a nice old pub, rather scruffy in a good way, and serves a delicious pint of Dark Star Hophead.

The cat changes the dynamic of the pub. People come in, pet the cat, and order a drink. Bet there are never any fights in here. Cat pubs are the future. I’m going to start a chain of them.

Schwelm update

2011-08-20T14:38:00.000+01:00

The fight to save the Schwelm Brewery is taking a further step today with a second demonstration in the city centre following the first last week.

Campaigners are upset by the lack of support from local politics and the decision by the insolvency administrators to cease production immediately and wind up the brewing business as soon as possible. The administrators say, as they always do, that they are forced to act conservatively in the interests of creditors and owners.

But all sorts of rumours are circulating about the alleged nefarious machinations of the administrators and brewery owners and some suspect there are already plans to redevelop the brewery site.

Certainly the announcement by the administrator that retail outlets will not be able to redeem the deposits on empty bottles and crates after a specific date is a great incentive for these outlets to delist the Schwelmer products immediately, making the restarting of production more difficult.

Campaigners have responded by using their Facebook group, which now has almost 8000 members, to organise flash mobs at beer depots to purchase crates of Schwelmer and show that there is still a demand for the beer.

Cynics say that hundreds of small German breweries have already closed without such a fuss being made, which is true. More’s the pity.

There are also negotiations with potential investors, and the foundation of a cooperative in which supporters can buy shares. No one knows what will happen in the end, but it appears more likely than it once did, that some sort of brewing operation may be salvaged from the wreckage.

A plug

2011-08-16T13:43:00.000+01:00

Just a plug today for another Glasgow blog: Glasgow Bars and a Crane. It’s devoted to photographing the interiors of the city’s pubs.

Thanks to Scottish & Newcastle’s and Tennents’ determination to wipe out cask beer in the 1960s, Glasgow has been left with a lot of lovely Victorian pubs that don’t sell anything worth drinking. I thought I’d been to a lot of these, but the blog keeps surprising me with pubs I’ve walked past hundreds of times, but never been into. The author clearly has a deep appreciation of these places, even going as far as writing a piece on the ideal pub table.

With jakey pubs dropping like flies, especially in the city centre, this blog is providing a valuable service.

GBBF

2011-08-06T09:56:00.000+01:00

Every August, the sole legitimate representative of British beer drinkers puts on its flagship festival, and pilgrims come from all over the world to London to discover (or rediscover) the path of cask-conditioned enlightenment.

I’ve only been going for three years but it’s become a firm fixture in my calendar. I’m a little blase about local festivals of the sixty-firkins-in-the-town-hall type nowadays. The Great British Beer Festival is different both in its vastness and in its complexity.

One thing I have learned is to keep track of my drinking using the Pork Scratchings Index (PSI). It is quite simple: a sober person finds the very idea of pork scratchings revolting. Thus, once the idea of getting a packet of pork scratchings starts to seem attractive, you know that you have consumed too much beer and need to go home.

As I always do, I started with a pint of dark mild. It washes the city dust out of my throat and means I don’t run out of beer while wandering around trying to get my bearings. Last year I kept bumping into people I knew on the way in and due to all the chat it took me about an hour to get my first beer. To avoid that happening was the reason I spent my first few minutes striding purposefully about, studiously ignoring everything around me (sorry again Pete). Moorhouse's Black Cat was light and refreshing as ever. I was very glad to find that the cooling systems were holding up under the heat of London in August.

I don’t bother with a tick list these days, as I prefer just to scan the labels and handpumps to see what’s actually available. It’s quicker than reading the catalogue and thinking “Ooh, that sounds nice”, only to find the beer isn’t on. So I'm having a relaxing pint and watching tickers manically filling suitcases with rare and recherche bottles from the foreign beer bar. I think I have the better time of it.

After my mild and a good old wander round, it’s time for a hoppy beer. Sierra Nevada Torpedo to be exact. I wasn’t too impressed by this the first time I had it from the bottle. This is better. The cask version is fresher-tasting, yet only subtly bitter. Where are the hops?

Wander around, talk to bloggers, drink some beer, talk to brewers, drink some more beer.

Over at the Worthington stand, cask White Shield makes a good first impression — it’s properly farty as a Burton pale ale should be. But it’s not bright, it’s overly sweet and not bitter enough. Worthington ‘E’, poured by Steve Wellington himself, is better, with a caramelly touch but a more balanced dry finish. Worthington’s stand is pretty slick with smart new pumpclips and signage in Gill Sans, and they do a mild too!

Am I drunk enough for pork scratchings yet? Definitely not.

One of the exciting things about the beer renaissance is that some breweries who were thought of as sleepy and staid are waking up and starting to brew a wider range of beer. One such is Thwaites. Their new IPA is true to style at 3.9% and pleasant, but in the end still too cautiously hopped for me. I wanted to try their Triple C all-Cascade beer too, but ran out of time.

Back to the American bar for Oskar Blue Dale’s Pale Ale. Perfumey, resiny and syrupy, it illustrates my issue with so many American beers. Too much damn crystal malt and not enough bittering hops! People keep saying it’s because these beers are designed for keg not cask, but that’s rubbish; I have exactly the same reaction when I drink the keg versions. I think it’s down to a genuine difference in palate of drinkers on the two sides of the Atlantic. It’s a pity, because it’s a well made beer … if you like it gooey.

Am I drunk enough for pork scratchings yet? No.

Brewster’s Hophead at just 3.6% is the beer I've been looking for all afternoon. Dry, bitter and austere, it makes my lips smack in the way the supposedly über-hoppy American beers failed to.

Am I drunk enough for pork scratchings yet? I believe I am. Which means it’s time to leave. It’s a terrible shame my liver and wallet won’t allow me to stay longer. GBBF is absolutely unique in the range of beer available; Earl’s Court may be a bit of a barn but you’ll do a lot of travelling to find all these beers otherwise.

Before I do leave, a glass of lambic to help me on my way. Girardin is pleasant and surprisingly (i.e. noticeably) bitter. It does go rather well with the pork scratchings.

Jakey pubs in Wishaw

2011-08-05T07:45:00.001+01:00

Jon at The Brew Site is curating The Session this month on the topic of sour beer. On an apparently unrelated subject, I was in Wishaw recently. Don’t ask why I was in Wishaw. But I’m on a mission to visit jakey pubs whenever I can, so I sought out a couple.

The Imperial Bar in Wishaw. It doesn’t get much jakier. It’s so jakey that it is in CAMRA’s Scottish Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors (Jakey Section).

I was last in here years ago with a female friend. At the time they refused to serve us, because they didn’t have a women’s toilet. It’s possible they still don’t. The gents’ are ancient (The gents are also ancient). A once-handsome interior with booths. Sorry no pictures as I was scared to take any.

Here, you drink lager and whisky. That is pretty much all there is. It’s one of the most spartan pubs I’ve been in for a quite a while. Blended whisky, no fancy single malts here. A pint of Tennent’s Lager during the week will set you back £1.75. They also have McEwan’s light — a rarity these days — at the same price.

Nobody drinks the light. I know because mine had gone off. Even keg beer will go off eventually, or maybe they just hadn’t cleaned the lines. It actually made the beer more interesting, adding a Rodenbachesque acidity to it. I didn’t finish it though, as the thought of what might be living in the pipes spoiled my appreciation of the beer.

That’s my sour beer story.

Carling: there’s more flavor to it because there’s more hops in it

2011-08-03T08:53:00.008+01:00

No, really. At least according to the advert there is. Carling Red Cap Ale, that is. You remember, it’s light like beer but hearty like ale.

I genuinely can’t imagine a major beer brand today – one big enough to advertise on TV, I mean – talking about the amount of hops they put in their beer.

As ever, the advert is from the wonderful collection of ads from the Benton & Bowles ad agency stored at Archive.org.

Ale or beer?

2011-08-01T10:57:00.000+01:00

Light and dry as the smoothest beer … but with that hearty flavour only an ale can give. Doesn’t that sound good? Younger beer geeks who have been “educated” by Beer Advocate will scratch their heads and say “Huh? But ale is a kind of beer! Those guys back in the day didn’t know anything!”

In the 1950s of course, “beer” in America meant lager, while “ale” meant, well, ale. This ad just reminds us of it. It makes me feel old realising that some people are unaware of the change in usage.

In the UK the situation was reversed until recently. Beer was the word used for ale, and lager was regarded as something other than beer (the word for stout was Guinness). I remember when supermarkets had a ‘beer’ section and a ‘lager’ section. Now they divide them into ‘Premium Bottled Ales’, ‘World Beers’, and everything else. Our thinking about beer and the terms retailers use have changed quite dramatically in a short space of time. So there isn’t just American usage and British usage to take into account, but also recent usage, 19th century usage, and so on.

We don’t live in a homogeneous beer culture but in a world of many cultures. Our history is a different culture still – or rather a series of cultures. Appreciating that is more helpful to understanding beer than trying to force them all into one universal schema, which is impossible anyway. And you can confuse people by saying things like “Actually, strictly speaking Pale Ale is a Beer not an Ale”, which is why I like it.

Bad news and good news from Germany

2011-07-31T14:26:00.000+01:00

Photo: Frank Vincentz [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Brauerei Schwelm in Nordrhein-Westfalen is threatened with closure after administrators failed to renegotiate debt.

The brewery, in existence since 1830, was bought out from Veltins in 2000 but has been suffering from uneconomic rents for hired equipment, though the business is basically viable and the beer is popular locally.

Overnight the situation has deteriorated with over half of the brewery staff given notice and told not to bother turning up for work on Monday.

Also affected is the Schlegel brand from Bochum, which is contract brewed at Schwelm.

Unlike the administrator, the employees have not given up hope and are urgently seeking investors to secure the future of the business. @SchwelmerBrauer has the latest news.

Happier news from Munich, where after a period of uncertainty it has been confirmed that the Forschungsbrauerei in Perlach will re-open this month. The retirement of the owners caused a longer than usual winter break while a successor was sought. Now the Silbernagl family have taken over and – with the exception of a few tweaks to the menu – they're not going to change a thing. According to Blog ums Bier, whence I've nicked all the news on recent developments, the Pilsissimus is as good as ever, and will be served unfiltered in future.

It’s reassuring to know that the Forschung will still be there the next time I’m in Germany. I hope that Schwelmer is too.

A visit to The Kernel

2011-07-25T01:15:00.000+01:00

There’s no denying that people like the romantic story of The Kernel: a homebrewer setting up shop in a foodie corner of the South Bank, and within a year winning widespread respect among beer connoisseurs, awards from fellow brewers and coverage in the national press, complete with the inevitable mention of the brewery’s location in a railway arch. You don’t get much more London than being underneath a slowly crumbling Victorian railway line in red brick; it gives the enterprise an immediate sense of place. Just south of Tower Bridge and round the corner from where Barclay Perkins and the hop factors of Southwark once did business, it’s immensely satisfying to drink a 19th century style London porter in the heart of the city where the stuff was invented. One can almost feel the ghostly presence of Dr Johnson — [Get on with it – Ed].

Be that as it may, it’s The Kernel’s beers that have cemented its reputation. “The brewery springs from the need to have more good beer”, is the refreshingly matter-of-fact mission statement, and the beers are similarly unpretentious: revivalist porters and stouts, pale ales loaded with Oregon and antipodean hops, simple beers done very well. London’s brewing heritage and New World influences meet here and combine; it’s much more exciting than just copying the Americans.

When I arrive on a fresh Friday morning, Toby greets me and shows me around the brewery. It’s bigger than the “brewing under a railway arch” trope leads one to believe; London has some pretty big railway arches. Most of the space is taken up with storage, though, and the brewing space itself is about the size of someone’s living room.

Evin appears and the first thing he does is check the progress of the beer in the fermenters. There are four round open fermenters, one square and one odd windowed affair resembling a bathysphere. All have a thick yeast head on them and smell fantastic. In particular I am rather tempted to climb into the square that contains the export stout, but I think better of it.

Then it’s onto brewing. Though The Kernel is known for its strong, hoppy pale beer and stout, we are brewing an amber ale of under 5% today, rather less typical, so we need a bit less malt than usual. This is absolutely fine by me, as I’ve volunteered to dig all the spent grain out of the mash tun again when we’ve finished.

There is no grain hopper in the brewery. No point in over-engineering these things, remarks Toby, and we use the simple method of sticking a hose into each sack of malt and turning it on to let the jet of hot water wash the grains into the mash tun. It works very well and the mash is pretty well mixed by the time we have added all the malt. The grist is pale, crystal and wheat.

We leave the mash to its own devices for an hour; there’s work to be done elsewhere. Over the road in another railway arch is a stack of empty pallets. They need to be loaded onto a van so that Chrigl can drive them back to their rightful owners. The teetering pile of wood is scary and I contemplate that if I have to die I’d probably rather drown in that vat of export stout than be crushed under a pile of timber. Eventually we manage to get the van loaded up and Chrigl drives off while Toby and I head back to the brewery to do the sparge.

When we get back across the road, a stack of trays of bottles marked LARRRGER is at the front of the brewery. There are nearly two thousand of them and they all need to be labelled by hand. It’s the “Imperial Märzen” brewed in collaboration with Dark Star. Its 9.1% leads Evin to joke that it’s a tribute to Tennent’s Super and should have been packaged in cans. Mark from Dark Star has also arrived with an essential bit of equipment – the rubber stamp with Dark Star’s logo, to be added to the house label on the bottles.

First, though, we stop for a taste of the beer. It’s dominated by the “traditional” (ahem) hops used – Centennial and Motueka, and not very larrrger-like at all, but it’s delicious. Then it’s on to polishing and labelling bottles. Packaging beer is a pain for small breweries whichever approach they take. At The Kernel, doing everything by hand means they spend one day a week brewing and three days packaging. Alternatively, you can have it contract bottled, squeezing your profit margin, or you can invest in a huge bottling line that’ll take years to pay for itself even if you can get finance for it in the first place. There are no easy answers.

Toby tends to the sparges and run-off. While we were away Evin has thrown some extra roast malt in the mash to darken it a little.

I get to weigh out the bittering hops. Toby notices the surprised expression on my face as he tells me a figure only slightly more than the amount I’d use for five gallons at home, and explains that this is just the first charge and a much greater quantity will be used at the end of the brew.

Back to the bottles. Sitting around labelling bottles and chatting about beer is not that bad really. Especially since we keep trying new beers. Mark has brought along some Thornbridge/Dark Star Coalition. With grilled cheese sandwiches one of Evin’s IPAs is perfect.

Time to dig out the mash tun. Fortunately the mash tun is so small that it only takes about twenty minutes to have it emptied and all the draff in two wheelie bins (Tip for all beer writers: make a point of visiting tiny breweries). Then back to bottling again.

Toby comes over with a sample jar of wort from today’s brew. It tastes full-bodied with lots of digestive-biscuity malt, not so bitter. The hop character will emerge as it ferments and dries out. The original gravity is 1.047. Amber Ale. It’s going to be nice. I could woffle about the renaissance of brewing in London but Evin would probably just say it’s another couple of barrels towards satisfying the need for more good beer.

My new favourite London pub

2011-07-23T06:53:00.000+01:00

Photo used by kind permission of www.goodbeergoodpubs.co.uk

One of the things I like about the vast, bloated metropolis that we in the provinces refer to as “that London” is that there are always new things to discover. Not necessarily newly established things either, just things that I haven’t got around to before.

London readers may look away now, as the pubs I am going to mention are surely familiar to them (and if they’re not, they should be). This post is mostly about the Royal Oak in Borough. But I actually start my evening in the Lamb in Bloomsbury, having arranged to meet a friend there. The Lamb was one of the first London pubs I ever visited and it’s remained on my list ever since. It’s central, the beer is good and I like to take friends there, since they’re invariably impressed by the immaculate Victorian interior.

It’s the first time I’ve drunk Young’s Ordinary since the move to Bedfordshire and it’s still a pleasant pint. I’m fortunate too in bagging the last free table before the place fills up. As I approach the end of my pint with no sign of my friend, I get a message. Can’t make it to the Lamb, how about the Royal Oak? Well, why not?

The Royal Oak is utterly mobbed when we arrive, and rightly so, for it is one of those pubs with something of a time warp about it, where you immediately feel at home. Ancient interior, lots of painted wood and best of all, what appears to be a genuine social mix, not just suits, pensioners or beer geeks. Even the handpumps are fascinating, a design I’ve never seen before and, delightfully, no screw threads on the spouts, so that even should some madman wish to attach a sparkler, he would be unable to do it.We are still gawping at the surroundings halfway through our first pint.

Our first pint. Harvey’s Mild. Oh, the beer! The offering is simple: the beers once offered by every family brewery in the second half of the 20th century. Mild at 3.0%. Pale Ale at 3.5%. Best Bitter at 4.0%. All cask of course. There was a time when 4.0% was the strongest regular beer. “Ooh, careful with that,” my friend jokes when I order a pint of Old Ale, rocket fuel at 4.3%.

Then there are the bottles. Nut Brown Ale, Sweet Stout, the styles of beer that were dying out even when Michael Jackson wrote about them in the 1970s. India Pale Ale, true to style at 3.2%.

We’re hungry so we each order a pie. It’s pricey — £11 for a pie? but it’s London, we say to ourselves. When the pies arrive, though, we are convinced. Huge portions. Side dishes of obviously freshly cooked vegetables, and mountains of chips. Pies filled with enormous chunks of meat: if a pie is ever worth over a tenner, it’s here. Later, we discover there’s a secret, cheaper menu; we had just ordered from the specials on the blackboard.

The beer is heavenly. It just disappears as we chat – Mild, Pale Ale, Sussex Best and back to Mild again. The ridiculously weak Mild has more flavour than many beers of twice the strength; albeit most of it comes from the Harvey’s house yeast and the hard, minerally water. An acquired taste but one which rewards the effort.

Many pints later, we stumble out into the night, happy in the way only an evening in a perfect pub can make you. You can keep your “craft beer” bars. Give me a pub. This pub.

Finching line

2011-07-22T15:04:00.000+01:00

While other students have been enjoying the summer, the four Heriot-Watt undergraduates of Natural Selection Brewing have been hard at work on their project to devise a beer and bring it to market.

Since I last wrote about them in June, the beer, Finch, has been brewed and successfully sold in cask and bottle to a number of Edinburgh outlets. I went along to their launch party to taste the result.

So how has it turned out? The aim was a strong, hoppy red ale. The cask version being drunk in the Guildford Arms last night surprised everyone, including the brewers, by showing much less hop character than expected. The rich, full character of the beer dominated, with a substantial bitterness. More than one person commented that it resembled a slightly cloying 80/– with American hops. At 6.5% it’s not a session beer, the levels of crystal malt becoming overwhelming by the second pint – it’s possibly not best suited to pub drinking at all.

For comparison, the bottle the brewing team gave to me to take away opens with only a light scoosh, and the beer pours a murky brown colour. It’s slightly lighter on the palate than the cask version, and the grapefruity notes of the hops are more apparent. Much better balanced between bitterness and hop aroma, but ultimately the toffee sweetness bludgeons everything else into submission.

Probably time didn’t allow for it, but perhaps this particular beer could have benefited from a few more generations of evolution before being released. However, it’s a creditable beer and I’ve drunk much worse from established brewers who don’t have the excuse of inexperience or brewing on unfamiliar kit.

As a one-off project, the students can now relax and congratulate themselves at having reached the end. Most brewing students would – rightly – be delighted to have their own beer on sale in pubs and off-licences so soon in their careers. To a real start-up brewery, of course, the launch party would just be the beginning of the hard work. We will surely be hearing from the Natural Selection boys again at some time in the future.

Mass-Market Brewers Attract Female Consumers By Making Less Shitty Beer

2011-07-18T14:19:00.000+01:00

Sadly it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing this headline in the Morning Advertiser anytime soon.

I still think it’s a good idea. How about it guys? I’ll even waive my consultancy fee.

Pedalling towards a pint

2011-07-16T16:19:00.000+01:00

Somehow beer and cycling just go together.

Perhaps it’s that beer always tastes best when you’re thirsty and you can convince yourself that you’ve earned it. Or the cycling helps burn off the beer calories. Although personally, having a bike makes getting about the city so much faster that I just go to the pub more often.

So there were a lot of reasons to have a cycling-based event during Beer Week. To recognise the cyclists who turned up at Market Gallery Pub last year and helped make it a success. A nod to Portland, Oregon, where cycling is almost as trendy as beer and brewpubs cater for bikes. Because it was a bank holiday and people want to get out into the countryside. To visit the Antonine Arms, an out-of-town pub that was keen to take part in Beer Week but which isn’t really accessible any other way.

But most of all, to give me an excuse to post my favourite video in the world ever. Watch the first part for context; the beer is in part two:

Here we can see the continued relevance of beer, as the chap at 1:12 sinks a delicious glass of what looks like dark mild. Observe, too, the glasses of bitter at 0:38 and 5:46. Pretty pale, not what you’d call brown, and at 0:28 there even appear to be two varieties, judging by the difference in colour (There is a prize for whomever can decipher the name of the brewery on the pub at 4:26, and if you feel like being a real smartarse, name both the pubs in the film and state their location).

But anyway. We met up in the west end, as you have to go up there to get onto the canal path. The canal once joined the Forth and the Clyde and was used for transporting freight, including beer of course. Now the towpath is popular with runners and cyclists who want a traffic-free journey to Bishopbriggs, Kirkintilloch, Falkirk.

As we left Glasgow to the north, the heavens opened and we all got soaked, but fortunately it cleared up again soon and by the time we passed Kirkintilloch we could discard our kagouls and let the sun slowly dry us out. If only there were a decent pub halfway along the route we would have stopped for a break, but there’s a Spoons and a riverside Tennent’s-n-cider house and that’s about it, so we kept on.

On arrival in Twechar we crowded into the bar to find a selection of Houston beers on sale. Now I think Houston beers get a bad rap; the hideously tacky pump clips and beer names like Top Totty and Helga’s Big Jugs surely contribute to that, but the beers (at least the ones I can bring myself to buy) are perfectly palatable. In good condition Killellan Bitter is a very nice beer with a subtle but satisfying smack of hops, and a pint of that went down very well indeed after a 12 mile cycle.

I was tempted to go for the infamous “coronary platter”, but in the end, like everyone else (I think) I had a burger with the chef’s real ale chutney – delicious stuff it was too. More Killellan and a look round at the dark wood walls and antique brewery mirrors as the sun streamed through the windows. I could have sat there all afternoon but our fellow cyclists had to head home again.

Why lager conquered Northern Germany

2011-07-07T08:38:00.001+01:00

This anonymous English author has a simple explanation: because what they had before was crap.

Conservatism has many peculiar ways of displaying itself. In Berlin it is shown by drinking white beer, and ignoring the claims of the Bayerisch, which has almost entirely ousted that pernicious beverage from the market. For our part, we are not surprised a bit, for the beer in North Germany was really atrocious. During our residence there, we suffered from these atrocities in the shape of beer. First there was Brunswick Mumm—eugh! tasting for all the world like treacle and vinegar badly mixed: then came Schwarzbier, which you were flatteringly told was like English porter, and at which a pauper would turn up his nose; and last came white beer, which was just endurable, and that was all. Perhaps, though, the great fault was that you were served by men. After living for years in and around Bavaria, and listening with delight to the “Wos Schoffens” of the pretty beer girls, as plump and hearty as their barrels, it caused a sudden revulsion to be waited on by a male creature, who talked excruciatingly polite German that set your teeth on edge. But, we still maintain it, the white beer in itself and apart from the waiter, was a mockery, delusion and a snare. You took a heavy pull, and about a yard of froth adhered to your moustache, and you found that the pretentious Seidel was only half full. Perhaps, though, regard being had to the nature of the beverage, that was a mercy. Still, there are patriots in Berlin who stick to this stuff, when they can procure the delicious Salvator beer! It evidently emanates from the same feeling that made the women for a time drink that villainous acorn coffee, and give the difference towards the German fleet. The oak trees were not cut down to build it, and yet the ladies soon recovered from their folly. But the white beer houses are few and far between in Berlin, and they are already beginning to be regarded as antiquities. Ten years hence and guide-books will describe them with the same reverence as the Coliseum in Rome, or the Palace of the Doges in Venice. Ten years later there will be a case in the Berlin Museum containing the mysterious goblets, representing a “white or a half white” and the so called “cool blonde.” Yet, in our own knowledge, time was when a large class of deep thinkers and clever orators was known in Athens on the Spree by the name of the “white beer Philistines” and the brewers of that beverage were regarded by the thirsty populace as unapproachable Brahmins. Alas, sic transit even the glory of beer! Pale ale is destined to become the great mistress of the world. Imagine the Great Eastern chartered by an Alsopp solely to carry XXX to our pining brethren in the East! We really should not be surprised if the leviathan were eventually employed for that purpose; but, even then, the old argument may be applied—her untimely shipwreck would prove a national calamity!

Of course a stranger rarely puts an unhallowed foot in these few surviving white beer refuges. If a pedlar or a hurdy-gurdy boy dare to enter, the whole establishment takes up arms to repulse the invader. The guests are all respectable old gentlemen who have met together for years, and play their customary game of cards. But enough—perhaps too much—on so vulgar a subject: we only allude to it as a characteristic of social life in Berlin.

(Bentley’s Miscellany, London 1859)

One important point there. “The Bayerisch” — Bavarian beer, i.e. lager — had “almost entirely ousted” white beer by the 1860s.

Beer Week redux #2

2011-07-05T21:33:00.000+01:00

Still catching up on these Beer Week posts. I needed an early night on Friday as it was up early on Saturday morning to go to the farmers’ market. Tapa organic had beer bread for sale. The stuff was in short supply as I only managed to try one of the two varieties they’d made. It was a tasty oatmeal loaf, a little crumbly and less dark than I expected porter bread to be. Sadly I have only seen pictures of the other bread, rye and red beer.

Then over to Peckham’s for the main event, one of the “beer festivals” they put on a couple of times a year. The structure is US-style rather than what we think of as a beer festival – you buy a ticket and each brewery or distributor has a table where they then pour you tasters ad lib.

The sneaky bit at these is that they don’t tell you which tables are staffed by the breweries and which aren’t. I spent a good five minutes telling one chap how great I thought his beers were, until it eventually transpired that he worked for Peckhams and knew less about the brewery than I did.

The last time I was at one of these I was very hungover and forcing myself to taste the beers in the interest of science. This year I was much more sensible.

Žatec beers were there, both the common svetlý ležák and a darker version. There was also Baronka from the same brewery, which judging by the cheap-looking label is meant to be the budget brand. I actually thought it somewhat better than the Žatec-branded pale, which you can tell is trying to be a gold standard beer but falls terribly short of the mark. The dark lager was far and away the best of the three. I didn’t know this at the time, but the brewery and their previous distributor Molson Coors have apparently parted company in the UK market, supposedly because they weren’t happy with progress. I don’t know who the brewery imagine is going to be able to pimp the stuff any more effectively here.

On the same table were some dumpy bottles from Wooden Hand Brewery; I don't remember much about those except that they were pretty poor. Barrhead's Kelburn were there at the next table with bottled Ca’Canny, a strange choice for May as it’s their winter seasonal, but hey ho. It was nice with loads of raisin flavour and I look forward to seeing it in pubs when the weather cools down again (in Glasgow, that means August).

I don't go to these event for ticks. But I do try to use them to get tastes of things that I wouldn't normally spend money on. Pacifico, for example, which tasted as expected of bugger all. Or AB:06. On principle I don’t buy BrewDog’s beer anymore, but I’ll still taste it if it’s on offer. It was a perfectly nice beer from the bottle but light years away from being worth the tenner they charge for it.

I skip Williams Bros’ table, not because I don't like their beer but because I do and hence already know their range inside out and back to front. New beers were in the pipeline but not ready. Strathaven Ales are here too; though I'm not bothered about most of their beers I do like the seasonal Summer Glow and find out that the citrussy aroma comes from orange peel as well as hops.

Lastly on Saturday was a women-only beer tasting, held at swish female-owned bar The Two Figs in the west end and moderated by the boss of WEST, Petra Wetzel. I wasn’t there, but I am assured it went very well indeed. The beers on offer were WEST Hefeweizen, Fyne Vital Spark, Williams Bros Fraoch, Harviestoun Old Engine Oil and Highland Orkney Porter – a deliberate choice to show off beers with radically different flavours and characters. We found that every beer was someone’s favourite and definitely disproved the “women only like fruity beer in a tacky glass” cliches. In fact, a quite impressive number of the ladies were going for the 9% Orkney Porter.

Younger’s No 3 is back …

2011-07-04T09:43:00.001+01:00

I was surprised a while back to see Younger’s No 3 on sale in a Glasgow bar. Surprised because it was discontinued years ago. More surprised because it was in a bar which has Stewart Brewing’s No 3 as one of its regular beers. The Stewart beer is widely thought of as an imitation of, and excellent substitute for, the discontinued and quasi-legendary Younger’s product (though ask the brewery and they won’t admit it), so it was a perfect opportunity to taste both side by side. Brilliant!

Younger’s: Chocolate malt, some yeast character. Bit of dark sugar maybe, not sure. No fruit to speak of. Respectable bitterness, satisfying aftertaste. It was selling very well as it happens, a lot of people clearly remember it.

And the old-style pump clip too!

Stewart: Very similar actually, slightly fruitier and a little sweeter. Rich and chewy, not as dry.

There are a lot of mysteries here. Why did S&N discontinue this in the first place? Why have Heineken started brewing it again (presumably at the Caledonian)? Having decided to brew it again, why didn’t they tell anyone? Not sure but it’s probably something to do with the sub-contracting of the sales and marketing of the S&N “heritage” brands (McEwan’s & Younger’s) to the secretive Jygsaw Brands outfit. Perhaps we are just part of a bit of market research to see if the stuff sells?

Natural Selection has intelligent designs on the beer market

2011-06-25T13:34:00.001+01:00

Natural Selection Brewing is the name being used by a group of students at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh for an innovative practical project that involves them designing a new beer and bringing it to market in the real world. In a few weeks’ time the beer will be launched in selected Edinburgh outlets. I spoke to marketing manager Steven Kersley about the project.

Who are you and what is the project about?
We are a team of four: me, Steven from Oban, Scotland (sales and marketing); Damon Scott from Colorado, USA (brewer); Kevin Emms from Vancouver, Canada (team manager); and Colin Lymer from Texas, USA (brand designer/builder). We are four students completing our one year MSc projects at Heriot-Watt Uni.

This project is the first of its kind from the University: never before have students released a beer to the public. The idea came from Dr David Quain (ICBD professor) and Steve Stewart (Stewart Brewing). Both are ICBD graduates and were looking to give the students a new opportunity, and came up with the idea of giving the students first-hand experience in the industry.

Everything we are doing is off our own intuition. Recipe, branding, marketing and launching: we have totally been given the reins on this one and we’re loving the experience and learning all the time. From concept to launch we have had about three months, so if we pull it off and it’s successful it will be a great achievement.

Is this programme run every year? Is it the first time? Will it be happening again?
The project is the first of its kind, a completely new concept that hasn’t been done before. The view is to make this an annual event for MSc students if we are successful, so there is a bit of pressure on us to nail this.

It’ll be easier for the guys who come after you, won’t it, because it’ll be a familiar idea – ah, it’s time for the student beer again ...
Yeah definitely, I think the view is that this year was a trial run so to speak. The originators will measure our success and have strongly hinted that our team is laying the foundations for the coming years. They’ll learn from this year and have a better idea of where things can be improved in the future. It’s a learning experience for Quain and Stewart too, but we believe that this will be a successful project, and so long may it continue.

The programme seems to be focussed on giving you experience of running an entire business rather than just the brewing side. I take it that’s intentional?
You’re spot on here, of course the brewing part is the maker or breaker. We need a solid product to launch to the public. However, as I said, everything we do is on us, from brand design to marketing our beer and then finally getting the sales out the door.

It should also be noted that many of us are inexperienced with regard to the non brewing side of things, so we have been thrown in at the deep end, and are being forced to think fast and learn quickly so that we can achieve our goals. I speak personally here as the marketing and sales guy: I love chatting to folk and building rapport with folk but translating that to sales and marketing has been challenging, I’m Scottish but this is my first year in Edinburgh. I’ve come to know a few good bars but we’re trying to sell 15 casks and 3000 bottles – this is a big challenge and I have very few contacts, so a big part of my job has been hitting the streets and building relationships with bar staff and off-licence owners. This is the opposite of Damon, who is tweaking his recipe and concentrating on the beer.

Colin, our brand god, is completely focused on labels for our bottles and also flyers and posters. We all help out in the brewery when we put on a test batch (there have been three), which is great, but our jobs are completely different and cover all aspects of the business. Kevin is team manager and he oversees our work and keeps us on target with regard to timelines and such.

So all the marketing is solely in your hands, no support from Stewart’s or Heriot-Watt? It’s not as easy as it looks on Morrissey Fox’s TV programme, is it, where the two guys make some homebrew in their shed and a week later Tesco have agreed to list it ...

The marketing is solely in my hands. I’ve had a few tips from Stewart with regard to how to plan ahead, getting everything on paper so you have a written outline and a clear structure, but as for marketing our beer and getting it known, that’s solely my job. It’s been tricky being new to the city and not having any contacts but on the plus side, I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of people and the contacts I am making have been very receptive so far and are keen to hear about what we’re doing. We do have a budget that we will make use of, but for now I’m trying to network by using Facebook, Twitter and by getting in direct contact with people. Oh and it certainly isn’t as easy as Morrissey’s show! We’re having to work a bit harder to secure sales but cask sales are moving nicely and case sales will be on the way soon too.

Will the brewing be equally hands-on and left to your own devices? Is it a case of “here are the keys guys, let me know when you’re finished?”
The brewing will be also hands-on. At the pilot brewery at Heriot-Watt we have had almost free reign; we’ve been able to operate in the brewery as we like but under a little supervision. At Stewart’s we will be brewing with head brewer Ian, simply because we don’t know their brewery that well and obviously Steve can’t take the risk of something going wrong and neither can we. It’s a one-off brew so has to be done right, and so Ian will be working with us to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Did you do any market research or just decide to brew a beer you liked?
We did a fair amount of research. We asked 200 people from all kinds of different bars in Edinburgh, asking males, females, young and old. I tried to get a feel for what Edinburgh was drinking and what exactly the market was wanting. We did have a fair idea of what results this would yield, simply because the American craft scene is buzzing at the minute and those styles of beer are really getting popular over here. The research supported this, with a lot of folk interested in hopped beers whilst many still liked the traditional malty characters that have been traditional in Scotland. We also wanted to do our own thing so we came up with a nice compromise. Do what we want but just be sure the market won’t freak out.

What direction do you think the Scottish beer market is going?

The Scottish market is interesting at the minute, talking from experience of only really the Edinburgh market. From our market research, folk are really willing to try new beers. Our market research showed that the majority of people are trying up to 7 different beers a month and with edgy brewers such as BrewDog, Tempest and even the more traditional breweries getting a little adventurous, it shows that the market is really opening up. Hoppier beers are enjoying a big surge and becoming very popular.

Edinburgh seems to be the big focus for brewers, and I think if they can establish themselves in the Edinburgh market then you’ll find they’ll have enough revenue to push their product further afield, which would be great. Of course Tennents, Carling, Fosters etc. are going to sit at the top of the tree, but I think what will happen as the smaller breweries build their brand e.g Stewart’s, Black Isle, Fyne Ales (when they move out of their barn) etc., they could really command a decent wedge of the market. In the coming years people are going to become much more educated about beer in Scotland, and that will grow the craft industry nicely.

Bringing this back to our project I believe this is why our project can be a big success. Edinburgh folk are loving the amount of different beers that are available to them at the moment, and are keen to try new brands and styles. This plays into our hands and we can really push the boat and see how folk respond.

So what is the beer going to be like and what will it be called? I have deduced from the photos you’ve been posting on Facebook that it’s American-inspired, all those Chinook and Cascade and crystal malt ...
Our company name is Natural Selection Brewing and the beer will be called Finch. The story behind this is that the team members have come from a diverse background, and when bringing this beer to life we had ideas from everyone, and so it really evolved into what we have now, which is a Red Ale, and we will market it as a ‘Robust Red Ale’ at 6.5%, which we know is strong, but we’ve tasted a couple of the test batches and it is very well balanced.

Our brewer, Damon Scott, is from Colorado; therefore, the beer is inspired by Odell’s Red Ale, Victory Hop Devil, Deschutes Green Lakes Organic Ale, SKA Decadent IPA and similar well-hopped, well-balanced beers. Finch is noticeably malty and deep red in colour. Amarillo hops make up the flavour, aroma and dry hop additions, providing a spicy, floral and citrus complement to the caramel/toffee-like flavour from the UK malts. Nottingham yeast adds a unique fruity character that suits this beer perfectly. We believe a strong beer (~ 6.5% ABV) can be well balanced, and Finch aims to prove just that.

What does Finch refer to?
Finch: this name came around after a bit of consideration from Colin, our brand designer. He wanted to tie in the beer name to the company name. The Charles Darwin link to Edinburgh is well known when he studied here, and as I said, the beer style choice really evolved from all our brainstorming, again a play on natural selection. Also, as we only use natural ingredients, that also fits well. Furthermore it was a bit cheeky calling our company natural selection but we wanted to get noticed. Finch is kind of short and punchy, it’s not a mouthful, and it ties in nicely with Natural Selection Brewing.

The graphic design has a kind of hippy/California feel to me, reminiscent of US microbrewers in the 1970s and 80s – intentional?
It’s kind of an art nouveau style that you don't really see anymore but it was a deliberate style choice. I don't believe we had the 70s–80s style in mind when it was designed but I think the final design was chosen simply because there's not really anything like it on the market (in Scotland at least), and for a small one-off release we wanted to be a bit bold and stand out from the crowd. Drawing folk in with a unique label design was always part of the plan – it may not be to everyone's taste but you are going to notice it on a shelf.

And where will we be able to buy it? What’s it like trying to get it to market?
The beer will be launched around the 20th of July – at present I’m finalising cask sales, also off-licences in Edinburgh, [at this point Steven names a few off-licences but I’m not allowed to mention them until the deals are done]. Also we’re trying something very different: 80 cases have been assigned to internet sales. We’re going to try and reach the maximum amount of folk possible, and to do that we want it available online. We will have links to a separate sales page on Stewart’s website which will allow folk to purchase online. Our hope is also to get some folk in the states interested, we’ll be drawing on the yanks on our team for that!

The market has been very receptive so far. You find in this industry that folk are really sound and will love to help, so I’ve not been told to use the door on any occasion. And if a bar can’t help they’ll usually recommend me someone who would be interested. The market is very close knit and everyone knows everyone, so you can build up a nice network with a lot of people – it’s great.

Thanks for the interview and good luck!

The pub with no beer … well, the pub with no pub, actually

2011-06-23T10:32:00.001+01:00

Some headlines just write themselves. At least, they write themselves for the story you start off intending to write. I had this post planned out in my head. But it's not going to turn out the way I imagined it.

The Mitre Bar in Glasgow was a classic pub: tiny, cosy and popular. It was full if there were half a dozen customers, and it never seemed to have the 60/– ale that the Good Beer Guide claimed it sold, but it was such a charming place that that didn’t seem to matter.

I was lucky enough to drink there a few times when I was at university. Just a few years later it closed, ostensibly because the building had become dangerous; in reality because it was in the way of a planned Selfridges store. Ironically the retail development hit the rocks of the credit crunch and has been postponed, probably for ever.

So I was delighted to hear that the interior of the Mitre Bar had been saved and would be the centre of an exhibit at the new Riverside Museum at the Clyde harbour, which opened this week. There is a street scene building on the popularity of the original at the old Transport Museum, featuring shops, a Glaswegian-Italian cafe ... and a pub, “The Mitre”.

Except it's not The Mitre at all. The original signage is there on the outside, but you go into the “pub” and it's just a generic mock-up of a bar. It's not even the same shape as The Mitre and doesn't have its furnishings - notably the comfy leather benches are missing. I think parts of the back bar are original; the bar counter on the other hand is freshly stained and obviously brand new. Some old beer and whisky bottles are dotted about, and a row of tall founts stand looking lonely behind the bar, but it's no use. Not what we had been led to believe was going to be presented. “The Mitre Bar has also been removed – lock stock and barrel – from its location in the Merchant City”, the BBC announced shortly before the museum opened. Well, where is it then? It's not in here. Pretending that this is the Mitre is a falsification.

A great disappointment. I was going to complain about something else entirely, namely that paranoid anti-drink hysteria at the city council and its associated quangos mean that this exhibit will never serve a drop of actual beer. And I was going to ask why the museum didn't invite the last licensee of the Mitre, Gerry Febers (who is still in the trade, running the Beer Cafe in the Merchant City), along to get his picture taken for the press? At least I know the answer to that one now: because he wouldn't recognise the place. What a crying shame.

Terms—Net Cash on Delivery.	Short Prices—No Discount.
	Hogsheads.	Half-hogsheads.
Seven Guinea Ale	120s.	60s.
Six Guinea Ale	104	52
Five Guinea Ale	80	40
Four Guinea Ale	67	33 6d.
India Pale Ale	70	35
XXX Porter or Double Brown Stout	78	39
XX Porter or Brown Stout	60	30
X Porter	30	15
Table Beer Superior	48	24
Ditto Ordinary	30	15
Beer	15	7 6d

Standard Measure of Capacity.
Hogsheads	of	54 Imperial Gallons	17s.
Barrels	of	36 Do.	14
Half-hogsheads	of	27 Do.	12
Half-barrels	of	18 Do.	10
Firkins	of	9 Do.	6 6d.