UK beer in the new era

Those Wild Beer Co sours are fine (though not, I think, the best WBC beers) but like Matt I've had enough not-good UK sour beers that I've given up on buying them. UK Craft Beer continues to suffer from a structural requirement to brew something re-tweetable and therefore stunty IMO. Anyway, wrong thread I guess.

― Tim, Friday, 23 September 2016 12:29 (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My findings are that some of the retweetables are indeed unworthy. But others pull it off. While WBC themselves haven't quite topped their seasonal sour blends (as said already, Modus Operandi is a great red beer and they do a killer saison) with a recent lemon beer falling well short, The Kernel have made a great raspberry sour (tasted at the London Craft Beer Festival) and a stellar damson sour (tasted the other day), each with a complex and distinguished palate and none of the niggly blandness you get with most sours the likes of *cough* Siren come out with. The best beer tt and I had at the LCBF full stop was a Buxton*/Lervig collaboration called Trolltunga, a gooseberry sour that sang to your throat on the way down and invited maybe a few too many refills. (Speaking of Norway, Aegir pulled off a brilliant red sour AND a great gose - watch out for them). Six Degrees North have a sour beer offshoot/affiliate called Lindsaymans (probably a play on Lindemans) whose regular 'goze' was good, but when mixed with raspberries turned into something outstanding.

*I was surprised given how other Buxton sours I've had have only been decent

Anyway, we don't just need to talk about sour beers; we can talk about boring hoppy hop-filled hopmonsters as well, to your taste. Or mead.

glad this thread exists.

here are some uk beers i like, or foreign beers that i buy in the uk:

omnipollo - this swedish brewery is prob my favourite in recent months. i've yet to have anything of theirs that wasn't great. really good strong ipas.
mikkeller - obvious choice but actually kinda hard to get in london - i feel like the increased prevalence of local london breweries has led to fewer interesting choices
beavertown - but if we are going to have fewer choices i'm happy with these becoming v prominent. so much better than terrible camden or meantime.
kernel - still p much the best pale ale, not just in the uk either
siren - i always think their beers are underrated - not had the sour you mention tho
to ol - have liked most of their beers that i've had
weird beard - as mentioned on the other thread, always interesting

never seem to see good ambers or black ipas anymore, which i find annoying. speaking of which, it's a pity brodie's beer seems to be so hard to find in london. for a while it was like the only place you could get it was the old coffee house in soho.

in homage to my presence in the landscape i favour stout esp.of a coffee or chocolate tendency

i have also realised that the reason i like fruit beers is that they remind me of fruit juice -- which i mostly like better than beer

My experience of 'sours' is so far limited to a mouthful of something or other someone at the Craft Beer Co. said I simply must taste. It didn't immediately seem like something I'd want to drink, but maybe I should give it another chance.

I also don't much like heavily hopped beers. I really prefer old-style bitters with a malty taste (e.g. Harvey's Sussex Bitter, which is a favourite), and also stouts and porters. Last week at two different branches of Wetherspoon's I had Dorking Brewery Black Noise (porter) and that was really nice.

Golden ales I tend to steer clear of, because the concept seems boring, but I have found myself pleasantly surprised by a few of them. I had something called Sunbeam a few weeks ago and it was delightful.

never seem to see good ambers or black ipas anymore

beavertown black betty is still around, no?

had a great double coffee stout from high wire.

have been trying to get hold of a kernel single hop just to prove how unrefined my palate is but no joy yet. nb i haven't tried very hard.

yeah black betty is the first good one i've had in a while - had it in the gun on well street, nice little pub.

a lot of things marked as black ipa taste like stouts to me. i like stout fine but it's not the same.

There were two or three at my local deli for a while, all decent and unstoutish, but I can't remember the others, will see if they're still there.

As hinted at by the quote at the top of the thread, my interest in beet has changed a lot in the last couple of years - this is partly, I imagine, as a result of my no longer being in that line of business, but also I've just been drinking less beer in general (getting more interested in dear old wine and spirits as it goes, also interested in reducing my personal stocks of lard).

All of that has meant that when I have a beer drink it's likely to be one of two or three that day (rather than ten), so if my drink is not a good drink that's much higher impact. That means I'm less inclined to take a chance and more inclined to cleave to the reliably delicious. And I have never had a UK craft beer I like more than a well-kept pint of Harvey's Sussex Best; that's exacerbated by the fact that the last few prevailing trends in craft just haven't been to my taste (can't be doing with extreme bitterness of hopmonsters, most sours and barrel-ageds I've tried just taste nasty).

On a positive note, I really like Orbit beers, my only reservation about them is their persistent referencing of alt-rock. But their Kolsch, Nico, is just stellar without being in any way unusual. I like some of the beer made by my old mates at Five Points (who've been going round being called / calling themselves normcore) when not too hoppy...

Yeah this thread is about beet, isn't it?

Beavertown is okay but every pint is just exorbitantly expensive even by craft beer standards and the little cans look like they are for children.

where are you drinking - it is like a fiver afaik which seems to be standard for craft beer.

It's a fiver minimum but tbh I still object to paying even £5 for a pint. A lot of the stuff that's onsale in that price range doesn't really merit it, a lot of generic metallic tasting/overhopped American-style pale ale. It does the job okay but there's just so much of it that's basically the same.

The craft beer I like and don't resent paying extra for is the stuff where you can tell the brewer's put a bit of effort in to make it taste of something, like the smokier or oakier end of the spectrum, which isn't something you really get with Brewdog or the millions of things that taste like it. There's a sea of mediocre cask ale out there but like Tim I still think a really great cask ale can be better than almost anything, but you have to wade through a lot to get to it - I think I just prefer booze that's been kept in wood rather than metal.

I have to assemble some furniture later today but I'm definitely rewarding myself with a beer shop afterwards.

Moor Raw! Could drink that all day out of their tiny cans.

i kinda miss the days when i could drink my first draft of budweiser and announce "it's the king of beers!" to one and all and actually mean it -- you have ruined me and that's a fact

not to go all camra v people with beards but i'd correct "sea of mediocre" to "sea of vile".

i like pump ale but personally give me an average pale ale over some of the dire sweaty sock stuff that passes for real ale in most pubs, any day of the week. since craft got more popular there does seem to be nicer pump ale as well, for sure, but god the standard ones are horrendous.

not sure "it's all the same" is ever a convincing dismissal either.

the price thing is less weird to me, beer in dublin was always really expensive growing up, i guess i began drinking in pubs at the height of the boom. also like if i drink 1000 pints before i die the extra cost of buying what i like might be £500 or something. sorry next of kin.

xp More or less like anyone else but richer and less useful. Sounds like a king to me.

It's weird to me that Camra are now the non-beardy ones.

lol yeah that just occurred to me

weird and surely false

Yeah it's just beards all the way down now.

beards v beards and tattoos

UK beard in the new era

Spending a year drinking a different beer every day ruined good old standby pump ale for me, now if I see the doom bar badge my heart sinks. Or maybe I just don't like doom bar.

the stuff where you can tell the brewer's put a bit of effort in to make it taste of something

I've had some really nice beers from a brewery called Clouded Minds. Their Hazelnutter (Hazel Nutter?) is described as an American brown ale but also contains hazelnuts. I had it several times at the Toll Gate in Turnpike Lane last year. It was lovely but I haven't seen it since.

Or maybe I just don't like doom bar.

It's terrible. Tastes anonymous and even watered down. I don't think I ever drank it when it was independent but it may have changed since the brewery was taken over.

I didn't notice much difference but I never liked it much.

A lot of those regular on-everywhere cask ales really are bad, I agree (these days if given the choice of Doom Bar or Adnams best I'd choose not to bother) but not all - I will very happily drink Tribute, for example.

It's not all the same but a lot of it might as well be - I think I'm trying to separate the beer that actually feels *crafted* from the more generic stuff that gets sold as 'craft' beer and doesn't usually justify the price. The difference between what, say, Anspach & Hobday put out and a lot of yr standard Peckham Pales, which can be perfectly nice and drinkable but don't taste radically different to similar beers being brewed all over London. And that's not mentioning the godawful London Fields Brewery type stuff that really is just overpriced shit for yuppies who don't know any better. But you get fake artisan bullshit in almost everything so why should beer be any different.

I agree that the craft beer thing has improved the quality of cask ale available, or at least prompted pubs to be a bit more discerning about what they get in.

yeah i agree there's some boring stuff. i think the big offenders in blandness are like meantime and camden tho. i barely distinguish the taste of those from a heineken or whatever. they're not awful just v bland.

i forget to mention redchurch brewery upthread - i love their beers and their taproom was one of my favourite places to drink when i lived in bethnal green. great music.

my favourite pump ale is prob timothy taylor - landlord.

There are some good Meantimes but the standard pales and lagers they sell in most places are pretty generic.

Redchurch is pretty great, and I like Kernel as well. In general the biggest benefit of the whole craft beer boom has been the widespread availability of 3% session beer that doesn't taste like piss water.

Sometimes a bland lager is exactly what you need though: entirely reliable and it doesn't impinge on anything before it hits your bloodstream.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fs4LusZmrlU/T33viXfCjqI/AAAAAAAAAMM/tztwNKUmZuM/s640/sam-smith-vegan.jpg1.jpg

(can't find a picture of the genuine 3D article: scrubbed from the internet)

Yeah a bland lager on a really sunny day works in a way that no other beer does in that situation.

I mistakenly had a sour recently and it was viscerally upsetting , they are creeping in gradually and insidiously much the way that the volume of horrible music creeps up whenever I go into a shop, while heavily hopped beers encroach like overpriced city carpentry classes .

I like ambers the best, genial and rambling! but I am in need of new recommendations

they definitely have their place

xpost

A huge variable with cask ale is how well it is kept. There really is a massive difference between a beer that's in top condition and the same beer, but poorly kept. It may not taste absolutely foul but it can taste really mediocre and may lead to the conclusion that that beer is intrinsically bad. Mind you, while I've had a good pint of the usually to be avoided Adnam's Broadside, I've never ever had a good pint of Doom Bar.

Haha I was in a pub last weekend and accidentally bought a sour and basically ordered another pint straight away. They're not clearly labelled a lot of the time, last night in the pub I nearly ordered one and the barman just said "I wouldn't if I were you, it's fucking disgusting, buy a good beer instead".

I hope you tipped him

a friend of mine will sit and pints of sour beer. it disgusts me. like 5/6 in a sitting.

xpost

I wonder how it's possible to tell when a disgusting sour beer goes off?

Every so often something comes along in life and I think this is a prank, but these sours, with names that don't indicate anything to do with there being sour times ahead, you have to be alert, but at the same time alertness is an opponent of reverie, if i have to be alert to the foul play ahead then the moment is killed

Landlord is a safe pair of hands, to guide you through the glen

Anyway I have a number of entirely unresearched and unproved (ie TRUE) theories about craft beer:

1) that (as hinted at above) many breweries have twitter / facebook shares as the core of their marketing plan, and in order to make that interesting to people they are forced into pursuing wacky combinations
2) that the scale of production in smaller craft brews is such that it's possible to get enough people to buy 1 bottle / enough pubs to buy 1 cask to justify doing a brew; the difference in volume between a test brew and a proper brew is very small (in fact I have heard of some breweries only having test brew kit
3) that regularly brewing artisanal beer to the same recipe (or few recipes) is a bit effing boring, and trying to sell repeat orders of the same brews to retail outlets is even more boring, and that messing about with recipes is more fun
4) the combination of the above make this industry unusual in the context of the new wave of urban artisanal industries because unpredictability is not only rewarded but actually programmed in to the approach, and drops in quality aren't all that damaging: if you didn't like your bottle of loganberry porter from Bristleface in Beckenham, that doesn't mean you won't like their ginger and yuzu saison.

Taken together, these conditions are likely to produce a very uneven beer "scene" (but one that's very good fun if you have the energy, opportunity and cash to keep up with it).

always baffled & amused by lambics & other sours more than anything but imago being a partisan suddenly makes sense of them as maximalist monoliths to be held in awe

I'm not much of a beer connoisseur & I'm still pretty fond of the stodgy cask ales I have long been used to: wainwright, old peculier, landlord, pedigree, hobgoblin &c. but I have generally enjoyed all boom in IPAs & microbreweries despite the dross. been hooked on the beavertown tang lately, esp neck oil. feel sorry for everyone drinking in london

enjoyed all the boom

but these sours, with names that don't indicate anything to do with there being sour times ahead, you have to be alert, but at the same time alertness is an opponent of reverie, if i have to be alert to the foul play ahead then the moment is killed

Landlord is a safe pair of hands, to guide you through the glen

IRL lol, partly because these sentences reminded me of some short fiction I read recently (by Gert Jonke fwiw).

Or maybe Saramago.

Saeramago.

kinda feel like a beer now

Oh man alive I have a bottle of good sherry in the fridge and I have been wishing the work day away just thinking about it.

https://www.grandcruwijnen.nl/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/400x/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/e/m/emilio-hidalgo-oloroso-seco-villapanes.png

But before that I've gotta get busy with an icy tumbler of this:

https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/vinemedia/wp-content/uploads/20150211015652/Casa-Mariol-Vermut-Negro.jpg

I'm on their monthly subscription, recommended.

There's an article in the Times this morning including news that Wild Beer Co. apparently called in administrators on Friday, which is pretty shocking and sad news if true.

The article in question, avoiding their sign-in requirements: https://archive.ph/Lr8CP

:/

Beavertown and Brewdog must die

(obv they can't and won't)

Shout out to Deviant & Dandy's No Figgity imperial stout while I'm here btw. Tonka bean in beer won't be for everyone and it definitely fits aldo's 'bloggable' description but it hit the spot for me

thought I saw the brewdog expose doc because it was linked in this thread, apparently not. if you want to hate brewdog even more then knock yourself out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XamxzvGm8YQ

aldo's 'bloggable' description

No recollection of what this is.

Tonka is fine but I've drunk far too many Low Key beers to get excited about it any more.

Had a lovely afternoon a couple of weeks ago with Roberto from Cult of Oak where we cracked open 6 (count 'em) of his near-impossible to find beers. Then he offered me a couple of bottles to take away, one of which was one of the last three in existence, which is when the afternoon got expensive.

Having been unable to buy Holy Goat releases after coming off the preference list, I'm prepping a Year One vertical at my local in January sometime including all the super rare ones like the Hanging Bat exclusives.

Tempted to do a Foehammer/Goblin Cleaver back-to-back tonight as iirc they were very similar and according to the can have less than 1% between them.

i like beer

D'you like coffee?

i don't like coffee beer

I'm supremely jealous aldo re. Cult of Oak, that sounds amazing. I want to come to your Holy Goat tasting. Where's your local?

For reference the beers were Lexington I and Ii, Cannae, Lysander, Mega Colab Rum & Raisin and Blood of the Golden Spurs ON KEG.

Beer In Hand in Hereford is bit far even for that kind of vertical. I also might be doing the only UK Rexday next year as me and Stu are the only people with bottles.

Speaking of which I am in Glasgow next weekend.FAP?

I can conclusively report Goblin Cleaver stomps all over Foehammer, which it makes taste thin even at 11%.

Sorry aldo, I left your question hanging there.

I'm buried in the midst of December retail servitude and can't really face any additional socialising this weekend, much as I'd love to. Just pretty exhausted, sorry.

No worries, it was pretty short notice and December is a busy month.

On the way back down the road dropping in to Top Out (in their second last week of trading) and Tempest to pick up their barley wine drops.

New Bristol Brewery have done some things with cinder toffee and stout that shouldn't be legal. Now I am about to go on a hike and I'm drunk! Hurray

Happy birthday imago!

Ty I'm about to do the THORNBRIDGE BREWERY TOUR BITCHES

^which ruled

Anyway, props to Little Earth Project for not only being the first brewery I've seen to name a beer after a Half Man Half Biscuit song, but to have said beer, In A Suffolk Ditch, be a fully credible and very barnyardy fruited wild red ale

Think Pomona Island had a HMHB beer but I can't remember what it was called. Their Songs About Fucking beer was their peak I think.

Lmao, someone at Pomona Island has very ILXy tastes, I was very impressed that they recently named a beer after a bit from Severance ("This Music Dance Experience Is Officially Cancelled"), although it was a drab-looking IPA so I didn't actually get it

enjoy your sourpatch kefir porters

observation based on being in glasgow for 1 day

scotland is way less obsessed with IPAs than england is

Where have you been beer-wise, for the purposes of this thread?

Drygate Brewery and West Brewery - so, two craft ale taprooms (although this one is def going for 'beerhall', shame Oktober isn't until tomorrow)

(my 'guess the city' was Cumbernauld btw. fuck me that central building is something eh)

I know this won't go down well on this thread, but I'm quite addicted to Brewdog "Lost Lager" in Blood Orange. It's on a three 8-packs for £23 offer at Morrisons and say no more!

they probably just add whatever chemical additive goes into vimto orange, yet it works.

to be fair there is probably a brewdog beer out there I'd enjoy, but it will always be a mystery which one

a Dill Pickle Gose at Pretty Decent Brewery/Taproom in Forest Gate.

they added dill and cucumbers to the brew apparently.

wasn't bad, but then again I had to psyche myself up before I took each sip.

that's increasingly the way with flavoured craft beer IMO.

Birmingham pubs in the new era:

"Do you have a hoegaarden or anything like that?"
"Sorry, no"
"No wheat beers or anything?"
"Sorry, you'll have to explain what a wheat beer is"

(We do have more knowledgeable establishments including an excellent european style bar with a wide ranging selection of lambics, trappist ales etc)

I guess wheat beers have gone out of fashion in the UK. I haven't seen Hoegaarden for years - is it still widely available?

leffe can be found but that's pretty rare these days. we live in ipa times

xxp Cherry Red's on John Bright St is somewhere I always visit when in Brum, what's the one you would recommend?

Blue Moon can sometimes be sighted

oh that's true

xxp Houblon down in King's Heath (& Hop & Scotch their sister bar with more regular UK/US offerings next door but one).

thanks, looks good, I'm going to the cricket at Edgbaston later this year so will keep that one in mind post-match

What's that European one called ledge? Had a few nice beers in Stirchley weekend before last, though they kind of blurred together sadly.

Hop and Scotch is great, I grew up two street away from there

I really love wheat beers, they do seem a little out of time now.

Sad times for people selling slices of orange to pubs, etc

What's that European one called ledge?

That's Houblon, next door but one to Hop & Scotch.

I had no idea about this wheat beer fall off, I'll take a look next time in the two godawful chain pubs my parents force me to go to lunch in.

blue moon is terrible

istr sam smith’s do a wheat beer

hefe weizen! that was always my pick.

"This beer is no longer being produced by the brewery." :((( - now there's an 'organic wheat beer', probably much the same.

Cherry Red's on John Bright St is somewhere I always visit when in Brum, what's the one you would recommend?

― Critique of the Goth Programme (Neil S)

Are you not better off going up Hill Street into the Post Office Vaults?

Other dead central options would be Tilt on Union Passage or the Head of Steam on Temple Street. I also don't mind Purecraft on Waterloo Street but last time I was in the selection wasn't as good as before. I think there's a Bundobust on Bennett's Hill these days but I've only been in the Manchester one (which is very good).

birmingham fap!

The Wellington is good unless you're allergic to cats or CAMRA members.

Schöfferhofer or Franziskaner are often hiding in the fridges in pubs.

Our local has Schneider Weisse permanently on tap, which is a blessing. We are the only two punters who like it with half a slice of lemon (we’ve tried and failed to popularise it), so the order has long been “Schneider with gay lemon”.