UK beer in the new era

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.

Beavertown knows what's up imo

The 'Lupuloids' can they've just come out with is maybe the best they've ever made. Not too unreasonable at 6.7% plus hey the top of the can is pink. Easily stands toe-to-toe with the best American IPAs from the Alchemist, Ballast Point, Dogfish Head etc

I have always wondered what 'the new era' was.

I thought it was the new ILX era.

Was it actually the craft beer era?

I think of myself as liking beer and knowing a little bit about new craft beer but this thread shows how far I really am from any such expertise.

I think you probably do know a little bit about it.

I note with a mixture of admiration and horror that one former ilxor notched up his 2500th different beer on untapped this weekend.

I assume that it's a reference to the Beer in the new era thread (now over 9 years old!) which is largely US-based, though the proximate cause for this one was an upswing in beer discussion in the London thread.

xp Crsml by any chance?

I drank some of the Beavertown Lupuloids at the developmental stage (Declaration 1 & 2, Sgt O'Mors, Doctor Enigmaticus, Cpt Hasta) and they were all pretty good - don't know which one the new core beer is based on though.

AF: yes, I realize this title is a reference to that one, but I had always wondered - for 9 years, apparently - what that new era was.

xpost I have only been on Untappd since Valentine's Day and have 268 distinct beers. That feels like a lot, although 2500 puts it into perspective.

i know v little about beer but love beavertown (my local brewery) neck oil and gamma ray as every day beers. they did a blood orange-brewed beer earlier this year which was excellent. love kernel, and wu gang chops the tree, by pressure drop, which reminds me slightly of a weiss beer, my go-to kind of beer before the new era.

I drink a lot of five points pale and Fourpure's pilsner, which is the best pilsner imo

Also had a delicious Norwegian pale ale called Thirsty Frontier in Lisbon last week which I guess I won't be able to find in London

I only know about eight adjectives to describe the taste of food and/or drink with and one of them is "crunchy", I'd like to improve on this because some of the beers I drink are quite fancy and I sometimes worry I'm not selling them v well

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.