Winter Ales Of Our Discontent?

As mentioned previously I’m off this coming Saturday to the Dark and Delicious Beer Festival at the Cooper’s Arms, Crowborough. It promises to be a good do, and one I’m really looking forward to. Pub beer festivals always seem more homely, personal and atmospheric than events held in old town halls, exhibition venues and other large public spaces. Well certainly in this country that is.

The following weekend sees Dover, Deal and Sandwich CAMRA holding the 21^st Festival of Winter Ales, housed in Dover’s historic town hall - the Maison Dieu. I’ve attended the event on several previous occasions, including last year, but with this festival following hot on the heels of the one in Crowborough, I’ll more likely than not give it a miss. Don’t get me wrong, the Winter Ales Festival is an excellent event, albeit a little dangerous. I say dangerous because all the beers are 5.0% abv or above, and I’ve returned from previous visits slightly the worse for wear. However, there are quite a few other things happening during February, not all of them beer related, that I would like to participate in, so it won’t hurt to miss the Dover Festival this time round.

I‘ve had a quick look through the beer list for the festival, and whilst there are some cracking winter ales that I would love to sample, there are also a significant number of beers that I wouldn’t class as winter ales. They may well be 5.0% abv or above, but IPAs, Red Ales or Amber Ales do not in my book warrant inclusion in a festival like this. Granted the organisers have stated “The festival features around 75 winter and strong ales, of between 5% and 10% abv, which have been selected from mostly small independent and micro-breweries from across the country”, but looking at the beer list, nearly half of the 75 beers fall into the aforementioned category of IPAs, Red Ales or Amber Ales, and whilst they are all strong in terms of strength, they are not “Strong Ales” in the accepted use of the word.

I know I’m being extremely pedantic here, and for the record I really like strong, hoppy IPA's. However, there's a time and a place for everything, and the place for the enjoyment of these beers is not a winter ales festival. But without sounding too churlish, I suppose that even with 35 or so of the beers not falling into the category of true winter ales, there are still some 40 or so which do, and surely this is enough to satisfy even the pickiest of beer geeks? Perhaps there's another reason though for the inclusion of the strong IPA’s , Red Ales etc., and that is are enough Winter Ales brewed to provide sufficient variety for a festival of this sort? Did the organisers struggle to find sufficient numbers of true winter ales, and then ended up having to supplement those they did manage to source with other types of strong beer?

I obviously need to get out more, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to ask these sorts of questions. Does anyone know the answers though?  

For the record, CAMRA judges the following categories of winter beer styles against each other at its annual Festival of Winter Ales in order to crown the Champion Winter Beer of Britain. These Categories are:

• Old Ales & Strong Milds
• Porters
• Stouts
• Barley Wines & Strong Old Ales.

A Taste of the West Country

I mentioned before that I have quite a stash of beers left over from Christmas. The number is slowly going down, but there’s still plenty to see January out and last me well into February. Foremost amongst the beers which have so far lain un-touched, are five offerings from Cotleigh Brewery which were given to me for Christmas, by a friend at work.

I’d been saving these as not only is Cotleigh an old favourite of mine, but their beers are also rarely seen in bottled form in this part of the country. Come to think of it, we don’t see their cask beers here anymore either. Contrast this to 10-20 years ago, when a hand pump offering Tawny, Barn Owl or Old Buzzard was quite a common sight in local free houses, and you will understand what I am talking about. The same applies to Exmoor Ales, another West Country brewery whose beers were also once very common in Kent.

I’m not sure why this should be, although the explosion of much more locally-based breweries in Kent and Sussex probably has a lot to do with it, but I digress. Cotleigh were amongst the first wave of new breweries set up in the wake of the cask-ale revival, having been established in Devon in 1979. They started life in the old stable block of Cotleigh Farmhouse at Washfield near Tiverton, using a five barrel brewing plant, but a year later, buoyed by the success of Tawny in particular, moved operations to the historic brewing town of Wiveliscombe in Somerset. Ironically, in view of my previous comment about them, Exmoor Ales are also based in the town, in an outbuilding of the former William Hancock’s brewery, which closed in 1959.

Cotleigh’s original owner Ted Bishop, was succeeded in the early 80's by John and Jenny Aries, a husband and wife team, who built upon the brewery's success. The brewery expanded in 1985 in order to fulfil ever-increasing demand, and in 2009 celebrated 30 years of brewing excellence. It is now owned by  Stephen Heptinstall. Most of the beers are named after birds, primarily birds of prey, and these feature on  the distinctive pump-clips and bottle labels.

So what of the beers and how did my friend acquire them? Well to answer the last question first, my friend’s wife has relations living down in the Exmoor area and on a pre-Christmas trip to the region, he spotted them on sale at a local farmer’s cooperative. The beers are:

Tawny Ale 3.8%

Golden Sea Hawk 4.2%

Barn Owl 4.5%

Buzzard Dark Ale 4.8%

Peregrine Porter 5.0%

Buzzard and Peregrine are bottle-conditioned; the rest are brewery conditioned, (filtered and pasteurised). I shall enjoy drinking them over the next week or so, and will let you know how they stack up.

In Search of Harvey's Old

Whilst writing my previous post about dark beers, I was acutely aware that I still haven’t sampled any Harvey’s Old Ale this season (autumn/winter). This is a glaring omission in my usual seasonal drinking patterns, and one which need rectifying pretty soon. Left much longer the Old will disappear to be replaced by other Harvey’s seasonal brews.

Kiss, springs to mind as the next seasonal beer to appear; definitely my least favourite amongst the brewery’s normally excellent repertoire, although the 1859 Porter which follows, makes up for it. Old though should still be available throughout February, and even into March, although by the end of that month it will inevitably have petered out.

So where to tack down some Harvey’s Old? The beer is sometimes seen in the free trade, but normally one has to visit a Harvey’s tied pub in order to sample it. There are two in the area; neither particularly close by, but both can be reached by public transport, (well it wouldn’t be a good idea to drive to them!).

The Brecknock Arms, at Bells Yew Green is about five minutes walk from Frant station, (one stop after Tunbridge Wells on the line to Hastings). However, the Hastings line has been affected by the recent adverse weather, with a landslip at Wadhurst causing all sorts of disruption. The other pub, the Two Brewers at Hadlow, is on the No. 7 bus route between Tonbridge and Maidstone, and whilst this service is pretty good during the week, on Saturday evening and Sunday, the two days when I would most likely want to go to the Two Brewers, buses are few and far between.

Social media is an excellent source of information about beers, and I've just noticed on their Facebook site that the excellent Royal Oak in Tunbridge Wells has Harvey’s Old on the bar. A pity then that I didn't see this earlier, as it’s a bit late in the evening now to walk down to the station and jump on a train over to the Wells!

I’m still fairly confident that I’ll manage to track some down before the winter is out, but why oh why aren’t local licensees a bit more adventurous in what they choose to stock? With a few honourable exceptions, such as the Royal Oak, Fuggles and the Bedford in Tunbridge Wells,  most pubs in these parts shy away from serving dark ales, in the mistaken belief they won’t sell. The trouble is they won’t know until they try, and I wouldn’t mind betting that few, if any, have actually tried. I know full well from when we had our off-licence that dark beers fly out the door, particularly during the winter months.

Many licensees around here seem to think that karaoke evenings and Sky Sports are what the punters want, then wonder why their pubs are half empty. It really is high time they woke up and stepped out of their comfort zone. There’s a whole horde of discerning drinkers out there who at the moment are stuck at home, like me. Although we are all enjoying a wide variety of bottled beers, many of us would rather be drinking and socialising with our fellow enthusiasts. Beer definitely tastes better when enjoyed in the social mix of a good pub, but present day entrants into the trade, (especially those taking on Punch or Enterprise tenancies), seem oblivious to this fact. Wake up and smell the coffee, or should that be the malt and hops?

Dark & Dreary January

It’s a funny time of year; the excesses of Christmas and New Year are now well and truly behind us, and we’ve already nearly seen January out. The weather has been damp, dull and miserable, but thankfully not too cold, so far that is! Work has been rather frantic as we’ve had staff appraisals to fit in alongside all the normal routine stuff, so I’m feeling somewhat cream-crackered at the moment. Thankfully I’ve only got one appraisal left to write up and a nice relaxing weekend to look forward to.

The weekend really started at lunchtime when, wanting to escape the madhouse for a while, I took myself off to nearby Chiddingstone and the wonderfully unspoilt Castle Inn. Sitting in the tranquil surroundings of the public bar, with just the ticking clock and a roaring log fire for company, I managed to regain my sanity for a short time at least, helped by an excellent pint of locally-brewed, Larkins Porter. This delicious 5.2% dark ale, is not that easy to come by, but the Castle is the nearest pub to Larkin’s Brewery, so if anywhere is going to stock the beer then this has to be it.

The Castle doesn’t come cheap at £4.20 a pint, but it was worth every penny so far as I was concerned, just to escape into a more peaceful and far less hurried world. This evening we all enjoyed a really tasty and rather filling Chinese takeaway, and now I’m sitting here tapping away at my computer, listening to music and wondering which beers would best wet my whistle.


Actually I’ve already decided to continue the dark theme I began at lunchtime, and chilling nicely on the back doorstep is a bottle of Budvar Dark, along with one of Bernard Cerny Lezak Dark Lager, brought back from Prague last month. Sunday sees our local CAMRA branch’s Good Beer Guide selection meeting. I shan’t be going along, but hope it all goes smoothly, and the selection process isn't too protracted. Instead I’m saving my energies for next Saturday’s cross-border foray into Sussex, to Crowborough’s Cooper’s Arms and their Dark and Delicious Beer Festival.

This event is a joint social with North Sussex and East & Mid Surrey CAMRA branches, and I’ve been told there will be getting on for a dozen dark and hopefully delicious beers on sale. The Cooper’s Arms is a stiff walk downhill from Crowborough town centre, but is definitely worth visiting. I remember it years ago, when it was Charrington’s pub, but now it’s a thriving, destination free house, which offers a good, and unusual, range of beers.

Three days later I’m heading up to London, as I’ve an invite for the re-launch of a beer from one of the City’s oldest “new-wave” breweries, followed by a guided tasting of some of their other beers. I’m not saying anything further at this stage, but watch this space and all will be revealed. After a month in the doldrums the local beer scene seems to be hotting up nicely.

Notes: Post originally written Friday evening, but not published until Saturday. The Cooper's Arms, Crowborough, doesn't have a website.

Last Rites for CAMRA's Good Beer Guide?

For the first time in many years there wasn’t a copy of the latest CAMRA Good Beer Guide in my Christmas socking. I’ve got a complete run of guides starting with the 1974 edition (the first guide to be commercially published) through to the 2013 guide, which was rightly celebrated as the 40^th edition. Now enough is enough, and I have neither the space on my bookshelves (most of the earlier editions are in boxes up in the loft), nor the inclination to go on accumulating these volumes.

But there is another reason, apart from that of space, as to why I won’t be buying this year’s, or indeed any subsequent year’s Guide; and that is the book is no longer a Good Beer Guide.  Instead it has become a cross between a Good “guest beer” Guide and a Good Pub Guide. Unfortunately it can never be the latter, as that title was claimed by another, rival publisher back in 1982, so it appears stuck in limbo land at present, with no clear ideas as to where to go from here.

My views on this subject are well known, and I have argued for several years now that the Good Beer Guide cannot continue in its current form. The unfortunate thing is that when the Good Beer Guide first appeared in 1974, as a modest 96 page, stapled booklet priced costing just 75p, it really was like a breath of fresh air blowing through the stuffy world of guides. The Guide’s editors knew this, and the introduction went so far as to claim, “It is not just another pub guide recommending the unsuspecting traveller to places cluttered up with horse brasses or landlords who won a medal in the 1949 FA Cup Final. It is for the millions of people who spend millions of pounds between them on beer – and deserve a product of quality.”

What was unique for the time was the breweries section at the rear. Nothing like this had been attempted before, and it provided valuable information for a growing audience of beer lovers, which was obtainable nowhere else, which inspired them to get out there and try something new. I was one of those early beer enthusiasts, and the Guide certainly encouraged me to travel around the country in an attempt to sample the remaining local brews. It is no exaggeration to say that in its time, the Good Beer Guide was truly inspirational.

What CAMRA should have done, at least a decade or so ago, was to separate off the breweries section from the rest of the guide. In effect publish two separate but complimentary books. However, they were either too frightened or too apathetic to innovate, and instead chose to stick with the status quo, preferring in effect to leave what had become a cosy money making machine exactly as it was.

CAMRA will argue that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but my argument is the GBG isn’t so much broke, but damaged beyond repair. It has become vapid, boring, trapped in its own comfort zone, uninspired, more like a phone directory than a beer guide, staid, stale, way past its sell by date and in a terminal decline. What’s more, it is rapidly losing its appeal to REAL beer lovers, of whom I’m just one of many!

The lengthy timescale from selection of the pubs at the end of January, to the launch of the Guide at the beginning of October, in time for the all important Christmas book trade, does the book no favours at all. It means the Guide is already 9 months out of date by the time it hits the book shelves. This is all the more galling because members of CAMRA’s various branches do the lion’s share of the work, including surveying nominated pubs, inputting the data into a print-friendly format and then proof-reading the final drafts.

This process is normally completed by mid-March, but the Guide then disappears into a sort of limbo-land for a six month period whilst Editor Roger Protz, and his team at CAMRA HQ in St Albans, knock the final copy into shape. Exactly why this takes them so long is beyond me; especially in a digital age, but it is this exact digital age which has made the GBG increasingly irrelevant in this modern world.

CAMRA has taciturnly, and belatedly, acknowledged this by launching the whatpub.com website; but what the Campaign has failed to grasp is Whatpub effectively sounds the death knell for the Good Beer Guide; certainly in its present form. Whilst not outwardly admitting this, CAMRA Director Andy Shaw said “CAMRA has developed WhatPub to be the ultimate online pub guide for all pub-goers. It may even help encourage people who have stopped using pubs regularly, since WhatPub will help them find the ideal pub to suit their needs.”

Compiled over a two year period, by thousands of CAMRA volunteers, Whatpub features 47,000 pubs, around 36,000 of which serve real ale – making the site the most definitive online guide to real ale in the UK. Of the 35,800 real ale pubs featured, around 22,000 have details of the real ales being served, thereby taking the guess work out of a visit for real ale lovers. Another key feature is that Whatpub is designed to automatically optimise for use on laptops, tablets and mobile devices, and offers over thirty different search fields ranging from dog friendly pubs to those that offer newspapers or live music, making the results customizable to each person’s individual preferences. 

 

According to CAMRA’s own website, “WhatPub entries are written by local CAMRA members and then approved by dedicated branch volunteers. A full entry offers a description and pictures of the pub, the address, opening hours, who owns it, lists the regular real ales they stock, states whether the pub offers Guest Beers, highlights the pubs main features e.g. availability of food, gives a map of where the pub can be located, sat nav reference, OS reference and highlights the local transport available.” In other words, everything the Good Beer Guide does but without the £15.99 price tag!

Even more damaging to the continuation of the GBG in its present form is that Whatpub lists nearly 36,000 pubs which sell real ale; eight times as many as the Guide’s 4,500! Anyone wishing to make use of the site will therefore have access to far more pubs and bars than the Good Beer Guide could ever hope to list, and by using a modicum of common sense, they will be able to choose a pub to suit their individual tastes, needs and circumstances. They will no longer be at the mercy of local CAMRA branches whose whims, or sometimes even out and out skulduggery*, dictate which pubs are selected for the GBG and which are left out.

At present the GBG remains a cash cow for CAMRA. It is reported to make the best sellers lists every year, although having done quite a bit of research on this, I can find no evidence of it being a massive seller. In fact it’s far more likely to be the Campaign’s executive St Albans “bigging” the book up. However, in view of the new website, with its powerful search features and all the other advantages mentioned above, the question has to be how much longer can the Good Beer Guide survive in its present form?

*Every year CAMRA branches, up and down the country, go through the process of selecting pubs for the Good Beer Guide, and every year the procedure is full of pitfalls. I am not for one minute suggesting that brown envelopes, stuffed with tenners, change hands before selection meetings, but branch officers will always have their preferences and, as I’ve argued before, vociferous or strong willed individuals can often sway a selection meeting into voting for the inclusion of their favourite pub(s), even when there are obvious far better candidates.

How to Taste Beer

Here, as promised, is the follow-up to last week’s post about the “tutored beer tasting” organised by West Kent CAMRA, at the Crown Inn in Groombridge.

So what exactly takes place at a “tutored beer tasting”? Well, the first and most surprising thing is not a lot of beer gets drunk. More on this later, but those of us who attended last Saturday’s session, at the Crown in Groombridge, were more than a little surprised by this.

On entering a pub, the normal behaviour is to quickly scan along the bar to establish what beers are on offer, and then to order a pint of whichever one takes your fancy. Most of us were about to do this last Saturday, when we were stopped in our tracks by branch chairman, Iain, and told if we bought a pint first, we would not be able to take part in the tasting. All a little harsh, you might think, but the reason is tasting needs to be conducted with a fresh palate, so not only were we deprived of beer to start with, we were also not allowed to eat until after the session had ended.

The pub knew we were coming, and had reserved their snug bar area for us. What Iain did next was to order a couple of four pint jugs of the first beer to be tasted (Black Cat Original), along with 12 pint glasses. He also ordered a couple of jugs of water, for palate cleansing purposes, and produced a packet of cream crackers, for the same end (so much for not eating!). After we were all seated, Iain talked us through the whole tasting procedure, whilst we sat there looking longingly at the jugs of beer, like parched travellers in the desert!

There are three parts to properly tasting a glass of beer: appearance, aroma and taste. There are also sub-categories and steps to each of these processes, and a whole host of different things to look for. CAMRA has usefully produced guideline cards on which the various stages are outlined, along with which criteria to look for, and how to score each one. Individual results are then recorded on the cards, and the overall results pooled at the end of the session. An example of this card is shown above.

First the beer style which the beer to be tasted falls into is selected. There are 10 styles in total, ranging from mild to barley wine/strong ale, with a host of others in between. The O.G. and abv of the beer in question is also noted and then, after the beer has been dispensed, the tasting can begin. I mentioned pint glasses earlier, but we were only given an approximate half pint each of beer. The reason for this is the beer needs to be swirled around the glass to release some of the aromas, and this would not be possible with a full glass.

Appearance is judged on colour, (black, dark-brown, red, brown, tawny, copper, pale brown, amber, gold, yellow, straw), clarity (bright, clear, hazy, cloudy) and head (tight, loose, clingy, big, medium small, none).

Aroma is next on the list, and to release the various aromas, the glass containing the beer is swirled and then sniffed. The following aromas are looked for: malt, roast, caramel, hops, fruit, sulphur and yeast. Obviously roast and caramel aromas will be more prevalent in darker beers, whilst fruit and hops are more indicative of bitters and pale ales.

Now comes the part everyone will have been waiting for, namely you actually get to taste the beer. Take a mouthful and allow it to swirl around your mouth and over your tongue. Then swallow; no poncy spitting here! Note the taste whilst drinking and record accordingly: malt, roast, caramel, hops, fruit, sweet, bitter, sulphur, astringent and yeast. Twenty seconds or so after swallowing, note the aftertaste, using the same criteria as for taste.

Whilst tasting, Mouthfeel (smooth, creamy, grainy, watery or other) and Carbonation (high, medium, low or flat) should also be determined; although the latter can also be partly ascertained whilst swirling the beer around the glass, prior to the aroma stage.

Finally the Body of the beer is scored on a scale of 0-5, with 0 being thin and 5 being thick, followed by the Overall score for the style (0-10), based on one’s impressions of the beer during the tasting. And that in a nutshell is it!

We tasted the two Black Cat Brewery beers on sale in the pub; the Original (a 3.8% Best Bitter) followed by the Black Cat (a 4.9% Old Ale). Obviously as with any beer tasting, the weakest one is tasted first, but both were first class brews which were served in peak condition.

Afterwards we got down to some serious supping of the two beers, and got some food  inside us as well. All those who attended found the session very interesting and extremely useful, and there are now a dozen or so of us who can say we are trained CAMRA beer tasters, which means we can officially taste other local beers  in order to provide tasting notes for the Good Beer Guide. Our thanks to the Crown at Groombridge for hosting the event, and to our branch chairman, Iain for guiding us through it.

Double Stout??

Question – When is a “Double-Stout” not a Double-Stout? Answer – When it’s brewed by Shepherd Neame and has an abv of just 3.8%!

This isn’t a beer I would normally contemplate buying. The facts outlined above speak volumes against something that masquerades as a strong stout, and yet is brewed to such a low strength. The fact that Shepherd Neame are behind it is like a red rag to a bull, so far as I am concerned, and even though the beer was seen on sale at Lidl’s, just before Christmas and priced at just 99p, none of this would have induced me to buy a bottle.

So how did I end up with three bottles? And why am I now trying the beer and writing about it? Simples, the beer turned out to be an unwanted gift to the husband of a friend of my wife’s, and she, knowing my fondness for the juice of the barley, as well as her husband’s rather conservative tastes in beer (he’s the type of bloke that will go out of his way to drink Doom Bar!), thought I would like them.

OK, it was a nice thought, and I shouldn’t be ungrateful, but I really wonder at the direction being taken by Kent’s largest, and oldest, brewer, where they see fit to churn out cheap, low-strength beers for sale in budget supermarkets, whilst flooding their pubs with umpteen brands of “brewed under licence”, international lager. I was in Lidl’s a couple of days ago, and noticed a so-called IPA from Shep's; strength, you’ve guessed it, 3.8%!

So, before I totally condemn the beer, what does this fine example of the “brewer’s art” actually taste like? Well, jet-black in colour, it poured with much more of a head than I was expecting. There was some roast and chocolate notes in the aroma, but taste-wise it was something of a let down as, although the balance was right, the stout was thin and lacking in body. On the positive side it was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting, and had it been brewed at say 4.8%, rather than a percentage point below, it would have been quite a decent beer.

So come on Shep’s, what do you want to be? A brewer of cheap, low-strength beers for supermarkets? A purveyor of ersatz international Japanese/American/Dutch/Swiss/Indian/Chinese lager brands or the proud custodian of Kent’s long and colourful brewing history, and the rightful heir to the title “Kent’s Best”?*

Footnote: Interesting and confusing at the same time.  Shepherd Neame produce another bottled Double-Stout; this time brewed to the much more respectable abv of 5.2%.  This beer is packaged in a proper brown glass bottle, rather than a clear one, and has a vintage-looking, beige-coloured label showing the brewery’s old logo of the super-imposed S and N. I must look out for a bottle and give it a try.

* "Kent's Best", was Fremlin's old slogan. It was richly deserved, as Fremlins beers were highly regarded and extremely poplar with the county's drinkers. Fremlins acquired the slogan following their takeover of George Beer & Rigden, of Canterbury and Faversham,  back in 1949.