UK beer in the new era

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

Zero beero for me.

ah vermut, lovely!

had some of this when in holiday in seattle recently & it was stupidly thirst quenching in the sunshine
http://21st-amendment.com/assets/Hell-or-High-Watermelon-3d-can-copy1-230x449.png

Should really have contributed to this on Friday.

Can't compete with your fancy London ways, or any other reasonably sized city tbh, but Hereford sort of does all right. Star is the Hereford Beer House, Jonny used to work for Brodies and BrewDog at various times and it's really an off-licence with a couple of kegs. But his fridges are quite excellently stocked, so a list of British beers I have loved (since I started doing Untapped to remember them 6 months ago):

Beavertown - both the Phobos and Deimos collabs recently have been great and disappointing at the same time, barrel aged Weizenbocks where the source beer is identifiably great but the BA isn't quite enough. Bloody Notorious is a big improvement on Bloody 'Ell, the orange is strong enough to support the DIPA. 8 Ball is maybe the consistently best rye of a British brewery? But their star is 'Spresso, the harshest but tastiest coffee stout on the UK market. Heavy Water was pretty great too (sour cherry stout) but impossible to find these days.

Magic Rock seem solid enough on the surface but don't make enough of an impression to seek them out imo. Vinification, High Wire, Common Grounds and maybe Contortionist are the only ones I'd go back to?

Thornbridge are far too up and down for my liking, although Love Among The Ruins and Days of Creation were truly great sours the only beers of theirs I'd seek out are the raspberry Imperial stout, and Serpent.

I haven't really explored Kernel outside of the table beer and the ipa. I should really pay them more attention.

Don't see much of Weird Beard, but love their Sadako range (with the tequila BA working far better than it should). Weird Brodmance was pretty great and their novelties are at least drinkable (A Lemon Tree My Dear Watson, A World Without Dave, Pankot Palace).

I have been disappointed by nearly everything I have ever had by Wild Beer Co. Not their fault, I have just haven't been impressed with anything except Cool As A Cucumber which is as good a summer beer as it is possible to have.

I really must explore Moor more.

I had two beautiful hefes from pressure Drop during the summer called Wu Gang Chops The Tree. I know nothing else about them, but I really should investigate.

BrewDog are arguably improving, but only in stupidly rare editions - Black Hammer was pretty tasty, the Vietnamese coffee Black Eyed King Imp was pretty good and the Ballast Point collab BA was excellent (even if it was a task to get through), Tokyo* absolutely did not disappoint and the Paradox Islay BA was exceptional. It's just a pity about all their regular beers.

Tiny Rebel are a Newport/Cardiff brewery that are beginning to take off round here - Cwtch is probably the closest they have to a house beer. Some tweaking needed on pretty much all the line but I think they'll come good soon and will take off.

Odyssey are a Hereford brewery working out of the Beer In Hand. After 3 years they still aren't getting things right and I'm beginning to doubt they ever will. The breakfast stout is probably the most successful of theirs?

A one off I had was Omnipollo's Chocolate Ice Cream Brown Ale, which was great in the summer especially as an ice cream float.

Cloudwater might secretly be the stars of the scene. I really don't think I've had anything I didn't love, though the DIPAs have been of varying quality (v3, then v6, then any of the others).

mmm breakfast stout

Question from a savage: Was Brewdog canny in offering shares in 2011 before a tidal wave of what they had wrought diluted their market share? Or am I mistaken, as a savage, in their timing or their influence?

Their market share may have diminished (I don't know about that) but the market itself is growing massively.

I suspect it's a combination of canniness and luck. You're right about dilution but that's still only in fairly major centres and amongst non-savages. It's BrewDog that have got into the supermarkets and the public consciousness. Whether they'd have done that without the share issue raising funds to hit that big a PR offensive is probably the question (see also novelties and/or 'scandals' to keep them in the public eye).

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

Brodies is generally available at the Cross Keys in Endell St.

A lot of craft beer is insufficiently beery for my taste (i don't want to drink IPA that tastes like Lilt), but I agree with the sentiment that it has improved real ale, esp. in London. It also seems to have led to an increase in pub re-openings or renovations. Sitting outside the reborn Prince of Wales in Wood Green drinking Five Points Pale Ale this weekend was a treat.

I buy directly from them and pricing seems fair for what you're getting. There are certainly cheaper breweries, but I don't think it's a huge price difference and CW quality is top notch. £8 for one of their TIPAs is money very well spent for me. Are they expensive from other retailers?

Their Pales are £4-5, IPAs £5, DIPAs £6, TIPAs around £8 and Imperial Stouts £8-9. Barrel Aged stuff is £17-18 for 750ml. That's about par for the course, no? Very similar pricing structure at say Overtone, Neon Raptor, Verdant, Pollys etc etc etc.

Howling Hops has very comparable pale ales (imo) for much less money. I’ve stanned for them before here I think and they are local to me so I may be biased but they’ll do a mixed 12-pack for just north of £40.

Their 9.5ABV stout is £6.50.

I'm a self-confessed massive Cloudwater fan, so apologies if I'm too defensive, I am genuinely interested. Just don't want to have to get my "I <3 CW" tattoo removed. Other breweries are available...

Sorry, was out all day yesterday.

Cloudwater were already in some people's bad books for trying to move to an exclusively B2C model in the first waves of lockdown, but then in June last year Stacey brought messages into the big Facebook group (the one we're both in, Krakow) where Paul referred to him as an Uncle Tom. To be slightly generous to Paul it's not a view he appeared to have but one he ascribed to someone else (memory say it's Watt, as this was a squabble over BD and CW contract brews and where they happened) but using it was utterly needless.

Anyway, when called out on it Paul doubled down and made excuses rather than apologies and it drove wholesale admin change in the FB group and that was why the name of it changed too.

CW farm out all their supermarket line to Brewdog as contract brewing in Ellon, so if you're Watt-phobic then that's something else to consider.

As this thread has demonstrated though, it seems to have been largely forgotten.

I've been a real fan of CW over the years and although nothing touches the era of the V series DIPAs the New Zealand series in 2019 was brilliant. I sort of lost touch a bit when they changed their labelling so that you couldn't work out what things were without taking cans out of the fridge and reading the back (meaning putting glasses on, trivial I know but hey) and completely lost track of what they were putting out over lockdown so should probably take a look at some point.

I remember all that Aldo, but unless I'm mistaken it wasn't Paul from Cloudwater, it was an entirely different Paul in said group, one of the admins at the time. It was at the time of the Brewdog & Cloudwater controversy, hence them being at least mentioned in the fallout from it all, but I don't believe they were involved per se.

Rock Leopard continue to work with Cloudwater, as far as I see. Their collaboration Step Up was re-brewed and released again not long ago and Rock Leopard have released a bottled, barrel aged beer that Cloudwater seem to be the only place stocking and could perhaps have been picked from CWs barrel stock given the sound of it.

You know I've just done a search and you're right. I may have been besmirching Paul J unnecessarily in that case for which I apologise.

Yet another E London craft brewery, Pretty Decent Beer Co, has made some really nice oat/wheat/barley/hops beers. They all have stupid names. “You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Oat” NEIPA is fantastic. They do quantity discounts.

Just ordered another 12 pack from Pretty Decent.. less than £40

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.