Opinion Piece

I recently gave a tour to some young (well younger than me) people who were in the craft brewing industry. You learn a lot from speaking to them. You learn what people on the cutting edge of brewing fashion believe. I loved their passion and their interest in beer. Ten years ago style-conscious people would have dismissed beer brewed on a small scale as something their dad likes so it’s great that they are enthralled to “craft”. I didn’t expect to find people with such a limited experience of beer with quite such certainty about what was right and wrong and what was delicious and disgusting. A lot of what they believe was true but a lot of the technical facts were demonstrably incorrect. I learned that dried yeast was better than a managed liquid stock taken through several generations. I learned that whole hops gave inferior flavour and lead to off notes in beer because their flavour and bitterness were less stable in beer than that of pellet hops. I learned that breweries making less than 10,000hl per year are charitable organisations that only make beer to give people a better life and that I am only in brewing for the money using the word craft to con people. 

 All of this is news to me and rather flies in the face of the knowledge I have gained from my 20 years of life in beer and brewing.

My tip for any aspiring beer aficionado either in brewing or beer appreciation is to maintain an open mind and a palate receptive to all kinds of beer. If you like it, it’s good if you don’t it’s not. Don’t feel ashamed for liking a beer not favoured by the ironic haircut brigade. It was probably brewed to taste nice rather than to prove a point, rebel against something or break a record.

Don’t believe what brewery promotional information says when it’s selling an aspect of the beer’s production as vital for making great beer unless you have tried the same beer made in a different way. Breweries use their point of difference as a selling point. It may be what they think makes their beer good but it won’t automatically be a prerequisite for quality. Often with small breweries it will be the only option (dried yeast).

Don’t separate beer from commerce unless it’s homebrew. No brewery can expect to give their beer away and still be brewing a year later. And you need marketing up to a Brewdog standard to get away with charging more for beer than it’s worth. There are an increasing number of breweries who are suggesting that they are rebelling against “the industry” or “commercial” breweries as if there is something inherently wrong with brewing beer above a few hundred barrels a year, labelling everything that they and their mates don’t brew as mass-produced crap. Some may sincerely but misguidedly believe it but some are publically maligning other breweries in order to further their commercial interests. Anyone who cares about beer should find this objectionable. I find it hard to believe that these rebellious ”punk” breweries would torch their brewhouses if their sales grew to the point where they needed to employ a sales manager or a company accountant. 

I don’t have anything against those who believe the punk brewing fallacy. I’m just disappointed that the wider brewing industry hasn’t been able to give them a balanced view based on reality.

I know, I’ve said all this before. It’s just that I think it needs saying. By all means drink with a critical palate but base this on an open mind and an understanding of beer and brewing which goes beyond hype, rhetoric and fashion.   

Au Sommet de Réussite

Friday was a good day. A more than satisfactory flavour panel and a trip to London for The Institute of Brewing Distilling Southern Section annual banquet would have been a cause for positivity but finding out that my beer Cornish Pilsner had won World’s Best Lager made it very special. Being an ale brewery with a mash tun and using whole hops should have really put us at a disadvantage so that makes me even more pleased.

The recipe for Cornish Pilsner is a celebration of Saaz hops and was inspired by the Monsieur Rock recipe developed by Jean-Marie Rock and I. I’ve just sent Jean-Marie and e-mail thanking him for the inspiration. The win comes at a very opportune time as we are just rebranding the bottled beer and bringing the beer out in keg. 

In other news, the 2013 vintage Connoisseurs’ Choice beers have been finalised and are in production. This year’s offering is:

Single Brew Reserve with Premiant hops (A pale ale dry hopped with Premiant at 4.5% ABV)

Honey Spice IPA (a hop forward pale ale with Cornish honey and Malabar peppercorns at 6.5% ABV)

6 Vintage Blend (6 different cellar-aged beers from 2007-2013 blended together to make a one off beer at 8% ABV)

More details will of course follow later.

Midsummer Murders

I’ve probably blogged about the Cornish summer tourist peak before. There is no more effective way of reminding you of the beauty of the peace and tranquillity of a rural existence than a visit to a supermarket that you didn’t want to visit in the first place, which takes 10 times longer and involves battling with families of tattoo-pocked greasy blobs squeezed in ill-fitting shorts as they meander pointlessly through the shop like a atoms in an excited gas. Given the evident attraction of entire afternoons spent in Tesco I am surprised it hasn’t got a brown sign. Fortunately I’m a very laid back and tolerant person so it doesn’t annoy me but I can appreciate how some people would be moved to devising schemes of mass murder involving health screening trucks advertising free donuts leading to a rendering plant in the car park. 

I received a bottle of the woodlice beer from Honest Brew on Thursday and it shows the potential to be a quite accomplished beer. There were no prawn, urine, ammoniacal notes although the late hop was obscured slightly by strong higher alcohols and esters. Dry hopping and bottle conditioning should redress the balance between the hop and products of yeast metabolism. Any contribution from the crustaceans should also be easier to decipher once the beer is cleaned up. Much credit must go to Andrew and Craig for staying until 2am after the live brewing session to finish the brew. I departed in desperate need of bed suffering from the effects of two-days-at-the-GBBF-based fatigue. Better or at least more sensible men than me!

The finished version of Project Crustacean should be available to sample in a couple of weeks. I’m 

 looking forward to it!

Enjoy your bank holiday weekend. Mine will be an abstemious one as I am judging the final round of the World Beer Awards next week so I need my tasting faculties to be à point . Which is nice.    

Watersports and the Woodlouse Hospice

I could answer the question “why brew with woodlice?” with another question. Why not? I could but that would be stupid. Most people could instantly think of several good reasons why not. Woodlice are ugly, creepy-crawly, little prehistoric throwbacks which live under rocks amidst detritus and decay.  If Wikipedia is to be believed they also taste of strong urine. If this is case the people who are seen enjoying potted woodlouse here must be urolagnic or have no sense of taste. They claim woodlice taste of prawns. I am yet to try a cooked woodlouse. Given what Wikipedia say about it, it seems strange that I’ve not yet found the time. 

Here's one watching TV with my kitten

The other aspect of using living things for brewing with is one of conscience. Although dirty-looking and not the kind of thing you would like curled up on your lap of an evening, the woodlouse does fulfil at role in the ecosystem. They are perhaps more worthy of a place in this world than the guests on an episode of Jeremy Kyle or indeed the host and counseling team. To that end I have, for the last few months set up and ran a woodlouse sanctuary (hospice) where all their needs are catered for until they shuffle of this mortal coil. Once expired they have been cryogenically-stored (put in my freezer) until their big day in the Honest Brew Brewery. 

Woodlice, like all animals are made of carbohydrate, protein and lipids. They will therefore enrich the wort with fermentables, free amino nitrogen and trace elements which could be used in yeast metabolism. I’m hoping that bearing in mind the strong urine reference above they may act like the fish sauce in Thai cooking. Fish sauce smells like something unmentionable suffering from something even more unmentionable on its own but adds real depth and breadth to Thai curries.

I will add the crustaceans to the boil as a powder so we get a good degree of dissolution. They should dissolve completely by the end of the boil. As well as the novelty of seeing woodlice beer being brewed those who come along to the event will get to try some of my short run beers, some beers from the brilliant Franciscan Well brewery in Cork and will get a full-on super involved rant/lecture about what we are actually doing on a scientific/technical level and why. You will get to ask me questions, argue with me, insult me and finally expose me as the fraud you know I am. I hope you can join us.  

  

I am transporting all of the water for the brew up from my sand, GAC, RO and salt-adjusting treatment system in Cornwall because the local mains water is a bit crap. More details about the recipe and desired outcome will almost certainly follow.

In all labour there is profit

My post today is a nice positive post about lovely people and good times. I like balance so I’ll start it with a rant. I was on line buying beer and came upon a brewery I had not heard of. I checked out their website to find more out about this new brewery. I am not going to name names because I’m sure the people in question mean well. When I got to the brewery web site I found they were not calling themselves brewers but Brewing Scientists. Images of white coated boffins in a state of the art lab pushing the envelope of brewing technology to delight and beguile the great drinking public instantly sprang to mind. Further perusing the web site which portrayed a Brewdog tribute band (so a tribute band to a Stone tribute band) revealed three plump young men brewing in what looks like their mum’s kitchen. 

I was starting to doubt their credentials as true scientists until I found that these brilliant men have found a way of brewing a beer containing no chemicals. “There are no chemicals in our beer……. None at all!” is the proud boast of these Albert Einstein’s of the beverage world. Now this really is an achievement. Making a beer without carbon, nitrogen, sulphur etc. which malt, hops and yeast are made of is an immense feat of scientific ground breaking. Making beer without the hydrogen and oxygen in water is, I have to say, worthy of a Nobel Prize. I predict great things for these guys and their world-changing beers.

And now back to the main thread of my post.

The brewing industry is lovely thing if you’re a brewer. You get paid for doing something you love and you get to socialise with other brewers who the best people on the planet. As with all groups of people you do meet the occasional bad apple (or cock as I like to call them) but they are few and far between. August is the time that brewers converge on London to attend the GBBF.

I have always got excited about the GBBF. The first few years because it was only place in the UK where you could sample all week and still not try all the beers available you intended to. Then because it was a big day out with team Brakspear. These days it’s because 100s of the people I love are assembled and in the mood for some beverages and craic. Another highlight of GBBF time which makes it even more wonderful is the brewer’s technical dinner. Hosted by Simpsons Malt the night before the GBBF trade day, the technical dinner has masonic feel to it. Head Brewers from the larger regional craft breweries down to more significant micro craft breweries assemble in the upstairs room of a Mayfair watering hole to gain insider knowledge of the progress of this year’s barley crop. The oak-clad room with huge Edwardian boardroom-style table and décor is filled with more brewing knowledge than any text book, virtually no ego and a real sense of gentile inclusiveness. The evening helps guide malt buying policy, recipe formulation and improves bread roll throwing accuracy.

I am extending my GBBF trip this year to take part in the Urban Sessions and will be brewing live in front of an audience with Honest Brew on 14th August. Brewing a normal beer live didn’t feel enough. So I am going to do something which I think (everything has been done before in brewing so I’m probably wrong) has never been done before. I am brewing a beer with woodlice (as an ingredient not a collaborator). More details to follow.