The Cheer

A rainbow of people, colours and sounds, all holding glasses filled with golds, blacks and browns. A chatter purrs happily, an ebb and flow of conversation, laughing, rising and falling as you pass through the groups. “Have you tried this one?!” Someone excitedly bursts out thrusting a half of something under his mate’s nose. “What do you want next?” Around a corner drinkers are three deep at the bar, stretched all along, looking up and down, all around, a constant passing back and forth of glasses, money and beer; an empty here, a pint of stout there, a half of pale ale, a fiver, another empty, another half, a couple of quid change. Another corner and the smell of food strikes. Another corner and it opens into a line of bars and a huge seating area, so big you can barely see the other end, a rock star stage in between. People everywhere drink their beers, they talk about their day, their week, the weekends ahead; they gossip, talk about the news, cinema, sport; they talk about what they drank earlier, what they’ve got now, what they’ll order next; they say this is good, this isn’t, this is great, this is incredible, this is insane, this is… All around are the interested eyes of friends in conversation; the glazed-eyes of seven hours of being there; the eager eyes of the newly arrived; the crosshair focus of the poacher eyes of the ticker. And then it starts. It begins later in the day, five hours in, maybe six. The grip loosens, the excitement fails the hand. We don’t hear the shattering tink of glass on hard floor, what we hear is the cheer. The ‘whay’ which grows and spreads throughout, getting louder, building like a wave as everyone joins in, passing it on, the growing smiles and whoops and then the laughter and then back to where we left off, talking about this or that. Then later, nearer the end, it happens more, a constant flow of crash and cheer breaks conversations for a moment to join in - a second to drop everything and shout with the crowd.

That cheer is the uplifting soundtrack to the beer festival. It’s more than laughing at the loose fingers of someone unknown and unseen, it’s about having a chance and a reason to stand up and just cheer and let it all out, to call out because you are having a great time, to express the joy and belonging and spirit of carefree drinking fun that we are all feeling, and to do it in the simplest, most primal of ways. It’s a shared, united ‘cheers’ to our fellow drinkers, a way of chinking your glass with a thousand other merry men. The cheer is not for the broken glass, it’s for the full ones about to be emptied and then refilled - it’s for us. I’ll drop my glass to that.

A few pints of the same beer

A typical night out drinking will be planned ahead: we’ll know exactly where we’re going and we’ll be going there specifically for the variety of beers they offer. This means that a night out will involve drinking many different beers; a pint of something to begin, a couple of half pints in the next place, and so on. We do this because we like trying different beers and we like a variety (plus the places we go to offer the chance to drink differently with each round). But this isn’t, for many, a typical way of drinking. For a majority of beer drinkers an evening out will mean multiple pints of the same beer, back-to-back. When was the last time you did that?

For me it was Friday. I was in Wetherspoons to watch the football. They had a few ales on, the usual ones, plus something football themed and then a Westerham Challenger single hop. I went for the Westerham as the brewery is only a few miles up the road. It was delicious. Clean and light, just sweet enough, then bursting with Challenger hops, off-fruity, a little old citrus, earthy and pungent, properly English with a wonderfully long, clinging bitterness. I had a couple more (I would’ve had another but wasn’t in the mood for drinking after the game finished) and the beer was changing throughout; the first pint tasted more vibrant, the second more bitter, the third more pungently hoppy. That was the first time in I-don’t-know-when that I’ve just sat and drank a few pints of the same beer in a row. 

I like to try new beers all the time and this was a brief departure in my usual drinking habits, but I’m probably not alone in the fact that I seldom just drink the same beer all night on a regular basis. When was the last time you just sat down in a pub and had pints (three, five, seven, twelve...) of the same beer all evening (through choice too, not just because they didn’t have anything good on or because you got dragged to an All Bar One, or something)? 

48 Hours in Belgium (Part 1)

Friday 28^th May

5.00am: Get up, shower, dress, pack, panic I’ve forgotten something important.

6.00am: Leave house, walk to train station.

7.20am: Meet Phil and Owen in Folkestone and get the Eurotunnel.

10.00am: Arrive in France, heading for Belgium, first stop: Westvleteren for breakfast.

10.30am: Realise Westvleteren is closed on Friday (lazy bloody monks), change of plan: Oostvleteren.

11.00am: Arrive at Oostvleteren, home of De Struise Brouwers, head for their ‘school’, where they have a shop and offices. This is also closed. I begin to start worrying that we will never get a beer. Owen, who is in Europe interning as a brewer, worked at Struise earlier this year so called Urbain, the brewer.

11.30am: After arriving at Deca, where the Struise beer is brewed (they don’t have a brewery, instead they rent space where they can make, package and distribute their beers), and meet Urbain, a short, scraggy guy with stress and laughter lines etched into his skin, who speeds around like a madman, here one moment, gone the next, infectiously busy and cheery. He’s bottling, labelling and packing palates of Pannepot, as well as many other simultaneous jobs. I have never seen so much Pannepot in my life – over five palates full – and we help to lift the crates off the trolley and pack them.

12.00pm: Work done, we finally get a beer: Saint Amatus 12. We might have failed to get a Westvleteren but this is the next best thing: Struise’s ostensible 'copy' of Westvleteren 12. It was young (too young, said Urbain, as he poured and then tasted it before leaving us for half an hour while he filled in some paperwork) but it was stunning: a body like velvet, dried fruit sweetness then a super-fresh hop flavour, leaving a dry finish. They are working on a new bottle cap for this beer which is a firmly tongue-in-cheek nod to their West neighbours.

1.00pm: We are in the office/shop for the brewers, sitting upstairs in what can best be described as a bachelor pad with the best beer fridge ever, drinking bottles with the brewer: Elliot Brew, a big IPA brewed with Mikkeller, wonderfully fresh and very good; Roste Jeanne, a delicious red Belgian ale; Mocha Bomb, a blend of stouts (50% Black Albert aged on coffee beans, 25% Hel & Verdoemenis from De Molen aged in Jack Daniels barrels and 25% Cuvee Delphine – yes seriously) to make a superheroic one to kick everyone else’s arse; Black Mes, which is Black Albert aged for three months in Caol Ila’s Distillers Version 1995 casks, which is an incredibly good whisky-aged beer with the barrel adding just enough to improve the original (if such a thing is even possible); and finally a couple of Westvleteren 12s (we got there in the end). Carlo, another member of the Struise family, shares a couple of the beers and then it’s time for us to leave.

2.30pm: Hungry – need food!

3.30pm: Arrive in Roeselare for a Rodenbach Foederbier (the unfiltered and unpasteurised version of Rodenbach) and lunch (over-dry croquet monsieur) in the busy square. I don’t really like Rodenbach so this wasn’t my thing (it’s the aceto that I don’t enjoy, that vinegary harshness at the back of the throat). The question of attractive Belgian women is first raised: are there any?

5.30pm: Get to 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, meet Armand the blender and (former) brewer, tour the cool, aromatic cellar, lined with chalk-marked casks of different beers ready for blending. We try the last batch of lambic brewed on site, straight from the barrel, which is young but delicious (of course it is, we’re drinking it in the cellar, surrounded by giant barrels of lambic – there’s something to be said for context) then drink their kriekenlambic in the bar, a bright blush of pink with a wonderful cherry depth. Did you know they used 10-year-old challenger hops to brew with here? 3 Fonteinen is a great place.

8.00pm: Arrive in Brussels at hotel after driving around looking for parking for ages. The hotel (hostel) is best described as cheap, cheerful and cosy, overlooking a very busy and noisy street, with four single beds lined up side by side, perfect for four drunk guys on a budget...

8.30pm: Eat something disgusting (half a baguette stuffed with two burgers and fries) to prepare me for an evening of drinking. Brussels is lively, busy, jazz music plays all around because we arrive during a Jazz Marathon.

9.00pm: Meet Dominic from Marble Brewery, Janine, girlfriend of Dom and brewer at Ashover, and John Clarke at Moeder Lambic. We sit outside, in the warm evening, and drink. Taras Boulba is light, dry and hoppy, just what I needed after imperial stouts, quads and sour beer all day. A IV Saison is just about the best beer I drink all weekend, packed with tropical fruit and just so bloody tasty. We continue to look for attractive Belgians without success.

10.30pm: To Poechenellekelder, opposite the lamest national landmark I’ve ever seen: the Manneken Pis. A bottle of year-old Orval (because I couldn’t not have one) and various others, including a 2008 Cantillon Zwanze, made with rhubarb. A great evening just chilling outside drinking and talking.

12.15am: To Porte Noire, a dark and grungy underground bar, filled with smoke and people (the non-smoking section is empty when we arrive, in fact they have to turn the lights on for us). It’s salubrious, the walls are bare, the tables wobble too much to be safe, but it’s a great place to drink late at night. The Hercules Stout was very good.

1.30am: To Delerium’s Hoppy Loft, a smelly, hot, smoky place with a decent selection of taps and bottles, including a new brewery to look out for – Hornbeer (Black Magic Woman is fantastic, their IIPA is delicious and their bottles look great). Dom also thought buying a bottle of Sam Adams’ Triple Bock was a good idea. It probably wasn’t.

2.30am: Chips and mayonnaise. Still searching for good looking Belgians and even at this time of night with beer-blurred vision we are unsuccessful.

3.15am: Bed.

I was absolutely wasted...

Here’s a question for everyone and it’s inspired by something Andy wrote in a post earlier this week. He said: “to put it bluntly I was bolloxed.” It’s not surprising given the list of beers he was drinking during the day, but the question is this: from a writer’s and a reader’s perspective, should we talk about being drunk in blogs?

Traditional beer journalism has worked hard to make beer a serious beverage up there with wine and whisky, breaking away from the binge-drinking statistics, so by getting completely hammered and then telling everyone about it, are we in fact doing more harm to beer than good? Or, is that just a side of beer drinking which now gets a chance to be written about honestly thanks to the diary format of beer blogs?

What do you think: is it good to read about someone being drunk (so long as they aren’t throwing up on trains and pissing in bins) or does it do a disservice to beer? What about discussing a raging hangover? A part of drinking we should talk about or not?

I also ask because I’ve mentioned it in a piece I’ve written for CAMRA’s Beer magazine and wonder what others think. I got the image from here.

RIP: The Pub

Pubs are closing at a supposedly alarming rate, beer is getting more expensive, life is getting more expensive, people socialise differently, community has a new definition and Guinness is no longer good for you; I think the pub just entered the early throes of death.

Something has happened in the last 20-odd years to make a seismic change for the pub; a generational change. For the generation who have just reached the legal drinking age, going to the pub is something to do once or twice a week on a Friday or Saturday, tarted up and looking for action - a weekend fuel stop on a journey to Fuckedupsville. It’s not important what the place is like so long as they serve booze and it isn’t too expensive - what DJ is playing is more frequently asked than what guest ales do you have. A couple of years on, in the early- to mid-twenties, away from the bingeing, the pub is something different. We leave work (if we have a job) and go to the gym or there’s a long commute or we go home and cook and relax in front of an enormous TV with hundreds of stations zapped straight into our living rooms. Be healthy, we’re always told, eat your five a day, more than one pint or a glass of wine a day and you’re overdoing it, take at least 30 minutes exercise, don’t smoke, relax, drink two litres of water, have less salt, avoid caffeine, get eight hours sleep a night. And if you don’t do all of these then you’ll die from cancer.

Going into a local after work - at least where I am, away from a big city and in a small town - feels more wrong than right, more anti-social than social. The chaps at the bar have been there too long, it’s almost empty, it’s a realm of misbehaviour - drinking is bad for you, didn’t you know? And walk into a local pub and take a look around – there won’t be many people in their early 20s just sitting there and enjoying a beer. Call me bigoted, but if there are some then they aren’t likely to be the sort of guys who you’d feel comfortable socialising with, are they?

After we’ve decide that we don’t want to be a binge drinking statistic and stop doing the pints-and-shots of our late teens, the pub is where we go if we want dinner out, of if we are meeting friends once every few weeks, or there’s a game of football on, but it’s not a daily thing. If we want to drink daily then the supermarkets do some great deals on multi-packs, saving lots of money. Have you seen how cheap beer is in the supermarket? Why bother going to the pub? Life is pretty expensive – we need to save up for the uncertain future. Restaurants face a similar problem. It’s expensive to eat out and it becomes a luxury. Plus we can buy all the ingredients in the supermarket and cook it ourselves - everyone cooks now, don’t you watch Jamie Oliver? And haven’t you been warned about the ill-effects of bad diet and heavy drinking on society and the individual? Drinking is bad for you; stay at home with a glass of water.

This is also the generation of social and mobile media. We don’t have to go to the pub daily to meet our mates to see how they are doing, we can email them, we can text, we can call them anytime and anywhere, we can see their latest facebook status updates or tweets. We can follow what they do and others can follow us. A lot talk to more people regularly online than in real life – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just different to how things used to be. We can’t compare today with 30-years ago. Plus the definition of community is now so much broader than it used to be, in fact, try and define community for me... The generation of social media is changing what it means to be social.  

But the pub is important. It’s where we grow up and learn to act like an adult, it’s where we become who we are going to be, it’s where we socialise and meet people - it’s the starting line of our adult life. But that’s a short burst of freedom, breaking the shackles with that legal ID, learning about life before actually living it and ordering a pint because we can. After that it changes. We aren’t brought up with the pub as part of a daily routine, instead we’re brought up with the daily routine of being told that it’s a bad thing – it’s unhealthy, you need to save money, don’t binge drink - and that is the change which has affected everything.

Soon pubs and bars will need to be specialist to really succeed. They will need to attract people in from miles around with something unique. Maybe it’s the food, the location or maybe it’s what’s on the bar. Beer bars might become more popular and a pub known for stocking great beers will get more customers, but they will probably be the type of customer who only drinks once a week. The specialist market - appealing to the connoisseur, wannabe expert or curious newcomer – might be the only place which can grow; either that or all pubs will become gastro. Can the local survive without a USP? Will the ‘local’ be one of those terms which slowly drops into antiquity.

It’s been a gradual generational shift, not an overnight thing. Fast-forward two more generations and what will the pub be? When the existing pub goers become extinct, how will the pub survive? Will it evolve? Survival of the fittest kicks in, whether we like it or not. It’s no surprise that we don’t drink out like we did two, three, four or five generations ago and it’s no surprise that this community spirit is dying (communities of people we don't know, chain pubs, corporate chain managers not doting landlords). But it’s a shame. The government battering ram of warnings and fear-mongering wins the battle of attrition; the world is dangerous so stay inside, eating healthily, not drinking and saving money – things aren’t going to get easier.

What is the real future of the pub? Can, and will, it survive as we know it, or has it already started to change?


UPDATE: Tandleman has written a reply to this post. In truth, I hoped that somebody would pick up on it and show a different side - that's what makes blogging fun. His is almost the opposite of what I say but that's understandable as he's coming at it from an entirely different viewpoint. Interestingly, if we met right in the middle we'd probably be fairly balanced and close to the real situation. What do you think about the opposing views? 

Bigger... Stronger... Louder... Better?

Ken Weaver has written a great piece on his Hop Press blog about the increasing strengths of US beer. The above graph shows the average strength of new beers added to Ratebeer over the last 10 years - it shows a marked incline for the US and a steady rise for non-US beers. In another graph on Ken's post the figures show that last year over 70% of new US beers added to Ratebeer were over 5.5% (compared to fewer than 40% for non-US).

The second paragraph of Ken’s piece perfectly explains his changing feelings towards strong, rare beer: “Perhaps that’s overkill. Perhaps I’ve had just one too many accidental fusel bombs, one too many bad examples of barrel aging, one too many “Imperial Weizens”, or one too many encounters with Tactical Nuclear nonsense. Have I waited in too many lines for limited releases? Have 12% hop bombs actually made me bitter?”

The whole notion of session beer is different in the UK and US, where something around 6% could be considered sessionable in America but put that beer on the bar in most British pubs and it won’t get touched. It’s a cultural difference. British beer culture revolves around the pub, around drinking a few pints after work, around socialising. It’s modest, reserved and controlled. We had ales before we had the more recent imports of lager and every British brewery has a 3.5-4.5% pale ale or best bitter, which is the beer they are measured against. Every US brewery is measured against their IPA, a 6.5-7.5% beer. It’s hard to separate US beer culture with lager, brought over and brewed by Germans in the late nineteenth-century, surviving Prohibition and evolving into the proliferate beers we have now. The current and ever-growing US craft beer scene is an attempt to create a new history for beer by radically pushing past what is already there. And they keep on pushing.

We are in a period of experimentation, learning what beer can do and what people will drink. Extreme beer is there to satisfy a certain niche, but the foundation of drinking is with the beers you can drink every day - that’s why 5% lagers are the biggest selling beers in the world (that and their enormous marketing budgets). The thing with stronger beers is that they evoke a bigger reaction, good or bad. It’s almost like the beer glass comes attached with a microphone and the higher the strength, or the more processes the beer goes through, the louder it plays back. It’s easy to shout about a 10% rum barrel-aged coffee and coconut imperial stout (I would so drink that) because the experience of it is an amplified one; a 5% stout, no matter how good, will illicit less of a powerful response, especially in those with the loudest voices. It’s interesting to look at the ratings websites too and you’ll see that very few beers under 6% make the top 100 list on Ratebeer or Beeradvocate; it’s not that they aren’t worthy, it’s that there’s almost an inhibition to say that something 4% can be ‘better tasting’ than something that’s 9%, even if both bring the same enjoyment.

Brewers are aware that bigger beers illicit more response so they brew them and sate the thirsts of the most vocal end of the market which creates an upward-spiraling trend for the extremes of experience. Purely by their volumes of flavour they pack a punch where a 3.9% ale can’t, but this isn’t necessarily a reflection on overall enjoyment. Like those love-hate foods, which always have big flavours, people either get it or they don’t and there are passionate people on both sides. Session ale is different to big beer; we approach them and drink them differently. Each suits their own occasion and style of drinking and there is room for them both but it is a little concerning to see the upward trend in strengths. Are these pushed up by a few one-off 10% beers, or are they genuinely rising? Belgium has always had a range of strengths from 4-11%, so these ABVs are nothing new, but their drinking culture doesn’t circle around the pint glass.

I’m all for the strong end of the spectrum, I like experimentation, I’m interested in new beers which push boundaries, but good session beer in the pub is more important, especially if we want to encourage new drinkers. What I hope this amplification of experience and flavour will do is push forward the quality of session beers, creating low-ABV beers which are packed with flavour but still balanced (I think the definition of balanced has changed in relation to beer but that’s another post). Great, full-flavoured beer which you can return to day after day is surely more important than a 10% IPA which you can only drink a couple of times a year?

Should these figures be alarming or is there just a current trend towards making strong beers because of the vocal chorus or reactions to them? Is the session beer dying in the US and is it changing in the UK? Or are we just experiencing an upward spike in strength before we see an upward spike in flavour? In fact, maybe we need to measure the levels of ‘flavour’ in beer and plot these over the last 10 years – would we see an increase...?

How much alcohol...

I like to check what people are searching for when they land on this blog. The most common is 'pencil and spoon', as you might expect, and most searches are quite normal (Chimay comes up a lot, so do hits on Thornbridge, Marble and BrewDog). But then there are the weird searches. Some don’t really make sense, some make you question the state of mind of people, others are just strange ('pierced arse pics' was one a few months ago). And then there are the funny searches. I might get one or two of these a month, but they are always my favourites. Yesterday, at 4.45am, someone landed on my blog after searching ‘how much alcohol do you need to get 3 people drunk for 7 nights’. I am the second link down in the google search.

Obviously I hope that I was helpful and provided them with the answer they wanted, however, as I’ve never formally addressed the subject of how much alcohol you need to get three people drunk for seven nights, I thought I’d better put together a quick post, just in case the person is still searching for the answer, or someone needs to know in the future.

There are things to consider. Firstly, how drunk do you want to be for the seven nights? Do you want to stay drunk during the day or will the drinking be strictly limited to nights? Is there a maximum budget? What do you actually want to drink? Where will you be (do you need appropriate glassware or can you drink straight from a bottle, do you need to carry the alcohol somewhere for a trip)? And, will you have a fridge to keep everything nicely chilled? When you have thought about these then you are in a good position to answer the question.

Unfortunately I don’t know the definite answer to this, I’m afraid, but I’m hoping others will know. So, anyone, how much alcohol do you need to get three people drunk for seven nights?

If I were to guess, I’d say that three people could each drink a steady maximum of eight pints of beer a day (assuming it's not strong), which is 168 pints in total for the week. The logical suggestion is therefore to get two firkins as a starting point. Then, I would take a crate each, so 24 mixed bottles per person. And you will want a bottle of whisky each, of course. That should do it on the booze front. Then you might like a couple of bottles of water and I suggest some family-size packs of crisps. I hope this helps.

Drinkability in Beer

The word 'drinkability' has struck a chord over the weekend. As so frequently happens, it started on twitter and went from there. Woolpack Dave, Beer Reviews Andy and Pete Brissenden have all posted something; here are my thoughts (Warning: I freely add –ability to words it doesn’t naturally belong to).

Drinkability is one of the most important qualities of a good beer, but semantically it can be interpreted in different ways. Firstly, I don’t think ‘drinkable’ and ‘drinkability’ are the same thing. ‘Drinkable’ is something which is palatable but not necessarily something you will want much of - warm lager, cold tea, vodka and diet coke, for example. ‘Drinkability’, for me, suggests three qualities, which work (sometimes uniquely, but typically) together: something which is enjoyable in itself; something easy-drinking; and, something you’d want more of.

Enjoyability and drinkability go hand-in-hand, whether it’s a crisp lager or a full-on imperial stout. Lagers pride themselves on drinkability, especially the big brands which use it as a selling point (Bud Light's website tag line is the 'Official Home of Drinkability'). Imperial stouts, not known for their sessionability, can be wonderfully enjoyable and delicious. If a beer isn’t tasty then it won’t have drinkability and it will almost certainly fail in its main goal – to be enjoyed.

An easy-drinking beer is often labelled as having great drinkability. This is the main context in which I would use the term ‘drinkability’ and it’s often reserved for the stronger beers which retain a particular lightness and a quality which makes them very drinkable. To be easy drinking suggests that you can, and will, want lots of them, or, in the case of strong beers, it suggests that a serving will be enjoyed throughout.

Drinkability also means you will want more of it; it means re-buyability. If you have a nice pint in the pub then you’ll likely want to buy another one. It’s the same with a decent bottle, whether it’s 1.4% or 41%, and regardless of cost. This is probably the most important aspect of drinkability for me and will often be the culmination of the combination of enjoyability and easy-drinking. Re-buyability is key. If you won’t buy the beer again then it’s not successful. You might not want to have another one straight away, but the desire to have it again is important, even with the most extreme beers. I remember Garrett Oliver (somewhere) saying that a good quality of beer is the desire to want four pints (or servings) of it and neither be wasted nor unsatisfied. I think this is central to drinking British beers but the example can go beyond that for stronger beers which retain enjoyment and which you’d like a few servings of, either immediately or in the future.

Of course, on top of these three qualities there’s a time and a place for everything and context plays an important part. The example, and the beer which started the drinkability discussions, is Sink the Bismarck. It’s an extreme beer experience, boozy-hot, oily, rich, bitter to the upper limit, strong; an insane beer mind-fuck, creating new definitions. It’s a beer to sip in small quantities, to share around and to discuss, but it doesn’t have much drinkability. It’s a one-off-experience type of beer, best reserved with a special occasion or to whip out unannounced and poured around to see what people think. Its price point and the esoteric flavour do not make it the beer you buy in six-packs to keep the fridge stocked. One bottle is enough for anyone who can get it.

Drinkability is central to the enjoyment of beer, but context plays an important role. In its essence, to say that a beer has drinkability is to say that it is easy-drinking, tasty and something you’d want again. Drinkability is a quality which the majority of beers need but, sadly, some miss out on – I’ve had many average pints which are drinkable but do not have drinkability (blandness, lack of condition, lack of flavour, wrong temperature, served in the wrong context... all these affect drinkability and enjoyment). It’s also a very subjective thing dependant on time and place and context. It’s a complex issue, largely undefined, but very interesting. And it’s something brewers should be very aware of.

What does drinkability mean to you? How would you define it?

@Sheffield, #twissup was awesome

Well that was fun. The pictures say it all (especially this one, although this is my favourite thanks to the hilarious caption). Take 30 people, a combination of bloggers, brewers and drinkers, mix them up inside three breweries and lots of pubs, soak in beer for up to 12 hours and it’s a good recipe for a cracking day.

Thornbridge and BrewDog lined the bar in the Sheffield Tap at midday (Black Dog is the best looking beer I’ve seen in ages); a pit stop in the Harlequin which broke up the long walk; a Kelham Island brewery tour where everyone was drinking Marble Brew No.14; to the current CAMRA Pub of the Year, the Kelham Island Tavern, for a Thornbridge Samhain; to the Sheffield Brewing Co, another tour, a couple of beers; to The Hillsborough Hotel, to a bar lined with Crown Brewery beers, a Marble, Thornbridge and a Pictish; the most to-the-point-brewery tour ever (that’s the mash tun, thanks); Ring of Fire 2009 being tapped; a tram and a bus to a sandwich eating competition and a pint of something from Abbeydale; back on the bus to the Devonshire Cat and a pub full of drunk people drinking Ruination and heading straight for just that; and onwards still, back to the Sheffield Tap, for more, and more; and then food, the missing ingredient of the night, some chicken things, chips and potatoes cooked in southern fried chicken batter; a taxi; a broken key; a shared bed; too-little sleep; the worst hangover ever experienced; a delicious breakfast that couldn’t be eaten as all focus was on controlling the body functions; and then to Leeds; a round of juice and tea in Wetherspoons; taxi to Avery at Beer Ritz; Rooster’s fantastic American IPA on cask got me back on track; a dizzying selection of bottles; bye to Zak, hi to North Bar, for cask, keg and bottles, for bread and fantastic cheese, for a Raging Bitch; then the best pint of Sam Smith’s OBB I’ve ever had; a quick Old Peculiar; another train; a couple of half pints in the Sheffield Tap; Burger King; a four hour train journey made into a five hour train journey by missing the connection by one minute; finally getting in and realising the text I sent to Lauren to tell her I’d be late didn’t actually send; unpack, sit down, pass out.

Damn it was a good time. I felt like hell all day yesterday but who cares, it was worth it. Sheffield is a seriously good place to drink seriously good beer (and if you go then stay at The Hillsborough Hotel, it’s a great place). Jaipur was my first and last of the weekend and just delicious; the Marble Brew No.14 was fantastic; Crown Pale Ale and Stannington Stout show how good a brewer Stu is and then his Ring of Fire blew me away with its green-chilli fruitiness (that was beer of the day); Ruination IPA was a glass of peaches and apricots that kicked my arse; bottles of Orval and geueze ended one day and left their wrath on the next.

A day spent drinking, talking about beer and enjoying it is always fun. Thank you to everyone who came, it was great to meet you or to see you again – I hope everyone had a brilliant day. Special thanks to Alex from All Beer for sorting us out a lot of extra treats and brewery tours and hurrying us along when we floundered. Now we just need to sort out the next one! So far we’ve had suggestions for Manchester (Tandleman, we’ll need a guide!), Oxford or Cambridge, Norwich, Derby, Newcastle (Jeff Pickthall offered to guide us around there), or even Belgium. Plus there’s GBBF, but that one’s a gimme. Where do you fancy going?!

Thanks to Matt for the photos. Check out the #twissup timeline too, it makes for fun and interesting reading! 

There began an education

The Tap ‘n’ Tin. I was 17, thirsty to fit in, hungry to be different, eager to act like a grown up. I had dyed hair, the piercings had started. The pub was under railway bridges, heavy bouncers manned the doors. By day it’s a pub, relaxed, industrial silver, pool tables, free sandwiches, different rooms and levels throughout, big benches, great jukebox sound-system, a cool backyard in the shadow of an old, dark church. By night it transforms into a rock dive bar, loud music pumps, the crowd throb and push to DJs and live bands, hot, busy, fun. Fashion was a big thing, divided between the Goths, the Rockers, the Cool crowd and the wannabees. We went there to get drunk, to play pool, to hang out with friends and, later in the evening on the top floor, to dance wildly to great songs. The beer wasn’t good. One cask of Abbot Ale on gravity was always vinegary and stale; two casks of 8% cider which only the hardcore braved (vinegary and stale); the usual array of kegged lagers; a wall of spirits to get drunk quick; bottles of Bud and, thankfully, Newcastle Brown Ale. So there began an education in ale. Heavy bottle in hand, drinking it down, logo facing outwards to market myself as different, feeling super-cool. There was also Newcy Brown Girl. Tight jeans, funky hair, a piercing by her lip, tattoo on her back, dark eyes, one of those walks. She drank it from the bottle as she floated around, lots of eyes on her. And (this is the best bit) she had a belt made with the yellow-and-blue-starred caps, like notches or battle scars. She made us want to drink it more. And we did. Around we walked with our bottles, bumping in to people, feeling their sweat against us, our eyes stinging from the thick smoke, our ears banging from the music, our heads giddy and light from everything... So many great memories... Of playing pool, of dancing to the best songs, of going there on Christmas Eve and getting wasted, of going to a beer festival with two mates and my dad and then to the pub after, of afternoons spent there when we shouldn’t have, of pints of lager and cigarettes, of seeing people and things that opened my mind (it was there that I saw two girls kissing for the first time; it was there that I saw two guys kissing for the first time). That’s where we grew up, my friends and I, drinking bottles of Newcy Brown, trying to fit in, playing pool and dancing like we didn’t care.

I haven’t been back there for years and I really must. The pub is now flanked and linked to a laundrette, a tattoo parlour, a hairdressers and a cafe. It’s a pretty cool place to be. Pete Doherty played there once too, after he was released from prison. You will hear that story every time you mention the Tap to someone who loves it.

How Much Do You Drink?: Learning to Get Drunk, Temperance and Neo-Prohibition

How much do you drink? And, how often do you drink? These are questions I get asked a lot (usually by my mum). In light of the Neo-Prohibition series by Pete Brown (I’ve learnt a lot reading these in the last week) I wondered how much everyone actually drinks, when they drink and the way they drink.

My drinking habits are fairly routine. Friday and Saturday I’m on it and these are my dedicated beer days. Sunday is sometimes a few pints or bottles, sometimes dry. Monday to Wednesday I try to keep beer out and usually manage it. Thursday can go either way.

I try to have dry days as a way of balance; it’d probably be more sensible to spread the week’s worth of drinking out over the full week, but I feel more righteous not imbibing for a couple of days. On the drinking days, it’s usually a few pints or a few bottles if I’m at home. Sometimes it’s a lot more, but that’s quite rare – who actually enjoys the feeling of having too many? Not me.

I don’t think my drinking habits are unusual. I also don’t think they are unsafe because I know what I’m doing and I know my physical limits. When I was at university things were different. Every Friday night, without fail, we played monstrous drinking games. It was usually a crazy version of higher or lower where we ended up drinking ridiculous amounts of the cheapest gin and vodka. It was an organised, focussed attempt to get as drunk as possible. Then we went out and drank more in the student union. And we drank cheap rubbish - alcopops, spirits and mixers. That’s proper binge drinking. I’ve said it before, but it’s a mentality thing: drinking six shots of vodka to get drunk is different from drinking a bottle of wine at home to relax; one is a means to an end, the other is social and relaxing.

And we are, like most others, a nation of social drinkers. Social drinkers aren’t the problem here. It’s the ones who are anti-social with their drinking. Cheap deals on supermarket lager and three-for-one on shots mean that getting alcohol (getting drunk) is easy and very affordable but it’s no cheaper than a box of KFC and that’s equally ‘damaging’. As for anti-social drinking... that happens when your drinking directly affects someone else, physically or mentally (alcoholism, aggressive ‘social’ drinking).

Technically, whenever I choose to drink I binge, yet the thought never crosses my mind that I might be doing wrong. I think the unit scale is only relevant if people are driving, and even then it’s not an exact science. You see, I personally don’t care whether I consume 2 units or 20 units. It’s like worrying about 100 calories or 1000 calories. It’s not about the ‘label’ of units, it’s about the thought process behind the consumption and the mentality of it (plus, have you ever heard someone sitting in the pub saying, ‘no more for me, I’ve reached my four units for the day’?).

What do the government want to do? Is a temperance movement gaining pace? Will a pint soon cost £7? The trouble is, it’s not about the product but it’s how it’s used: use a car sensibly and everything is ok, use it stupidly and people get hurt. Before we can drive we have to take lessons and tests to prove that we are capable of driving. Drinking should be an education too, learning respect, how to act responsibly and the serious consequences (because, there’s no ignoring it, the consequences are serious). Scare-mongering is telling a one-sided point of view; education is about forming balanced opinions. Mark at Real Ale Reviews talks about the PR spin on things and that’s what it is: a quick cosmetic procedure that looks effective to a lot of people in a short amount of time. But it’s cosmetic and doesn’t fix the real, underlying problems.

Neo-prohibition is an easy and quick tick in a big government box; educating the nation is a difficult tick. Some people are terrible and unsafe drivers; some people are unsafe drinkers. Some people does not mean all people.

So out of interest, how much do you drink and when do you drink? Do you think you are unsafe and do you try and balance things out with good diet and exercise? Everything in moderation, so they say.

I found the picture by googling ‘drunk’. Most of the others, oddly, were of Paris Hilton.

The Hop Press: What’s outside the glass is important too

In his New Beer’s Resolution post, Reluctant Scooper writes about how place, time and company impact upon beer enjoyment. This is massively important and it’s pretty central to my latest Hop Press post. You see, attaching a numerical value to a selection of criteria based on a sensory experience is not easy, yet at the same time all you need to do is decide how much you like something and then score it accordingly (if you aren’t ‘rating’ then the same idea applies and there is still some kind of subconscious process in which you decide how much you like what you are drinking: How drinkable is it? What does it taste like? How refreshing is it? Shall I get another or choose something different?).

I care about what is outside of the glass: the mood of the drinker, the kind of day they’ve had, what the weather is like, the kind of thirst they have, who they are with and where they are. All of this is important. Drink a bottle of ice cold lager in your garage on a rainy February afternoon and it’s probably going to taste crap. Open the same beer on a hot tropical beach in the middle of summer and it’ll taste wonderful. Likewise, a barley wine shared with friends after a long, enjoyable dinner will be better than a lonely bottle drunk while watching TV in the evening when you are full of a nasty cold (that’ll clear the system!). Sharing experiences also attaches extra texture to the memories we have of something. You’ll remember the barley wine with friends because of the fun you had. You might not even like the beer that much as a taste experience, but as life wraps around the glass it becomes more enjoyable.

Here’s the full post.

I’ve written about the taste of memories before. There’s a similar idea behind that post.

The Hop Press: A pint of imperial stout, please

This week’s Hop Press post is inspired by the Old Ale festival at The White Horse, Parsons Green. You see, the smallest measure of beer they served was a half pint and I don’t really think a half pint of 11% beer is all that sensible in the pub, especially when there are so many other (strong) beers you or I want to drink.

I think that so much of British drinking revolves around the pint glass but as the beers change the glasses need to also. I like third-pints but we don’t see them anywhere, plus I’d argue that they are seen as emasculating to your usual pint drinker (it’s a mentality-thing based on the principal that beer is served in a pint glass. Full stop). There was recent move to introduce a two-thirds glass but personally I think making the third-pint more visible would be better.

The nature of British beer is evolving and I think the vessels it is served in needs to evolve too. What do you think? Are you happy with a half-pint of imperial stout at a beer festival or would you rather it was served in a smaller glass? Or do you just want a full pint and be done with it.

Here's the full post.

I’ve only scratched the surface on this one. It’s a big area to look at, encapsulating the drinker, the drink, the history, the culture; it needs to look at who drinks what and the changing beer scene plus it needs to take into account the beer geek side of things… and the whole thing is wrapped up inside a ‘please drink responsibly’ banner.

The Spoon to my Pencil?

Lauren often asks me when I’m going to write about her on here. “What do you want me to say?” I ask her. “Just tell them how I’m the best girlfriend in the world.” “You’re the best girlfriend I’ve got...” I tell her, “but it’s a beer blog and you don’t like beer.” “Oh.” She says.

To begin, she doesn’t actually drink beer. This is both good and bad. It’s good because she can be my driver. It’s bad because I’d love to share these bottles with her and have her get excited about them with me. I’ve tried hard to get her to like it but it’s not going to happen. Lauren does, however, have a great nose for smelling beer. And a great ear for listening about it. You see, whenever I am anywhere with a beer or whenever I’m doing things which I write about on here, Lauren is usually always there. She’s the one next to me in the pub reading her magazine (the bribe to keep her there so I can have a couple), the one opposite me at dinner while I talk to her about something beer-related, or how I wish they had something else on, or how next week I plan to open this bottle or that, or she’s sitting on the sofa while I sit behind at the table tapping into the laptop, “spending more time talking to people on twitter than talking to me”, posting blogs, or she’s in the driver’s seat while I give (always bad or wrong) directions to some distant “old man’s pub”, or she’s listening to me describing why this beer is good and that beer isn’t or how this one could be better or how I wish I could go here or there, or she’s putting beer glasses back into the cupboard or moving bottles around in the fridge because they take up more room than the food, or she sees me putting away my latest beer order and wonders when I’ll spend some money on her for once, or she’s answering questions as I playfully quiz her on my latest blog post (“You’re my favourite beer blogger,” she told me once, “but then I don’t read anyone else’s blog”), or she’s patiently waiting for me to post a blog, or read a blog, or send a tweet, or buy the bottles I’ve been staring at for ages which took us an hour out of our way to get, or she’s following to a pub (“honestly, it’s just around this corner” I say, hearing the feet drag) only to walk straight out because there’s nothing on, or she’s waiting to start eating her dinner while I take pictures of mine, or she’s planning her next few weekends around my drinking schedule, or she’s kicking me out of bed when my 5am alarm clock goes off so I can get up early to write or she’s woken up late when I steam back in at midnight (I’m sure she’ll tell me what I’ve forgotten, too).

And then there’s the times when she talks to me about beer, when she mentions hops or buys me some of my favourite bottles, when she says she likes something I’ve just written or she suggests going to London to go to some pubs or she says, “I bet that beer would be great with chocolate cake”, or when I catch her looking at my blog and reading the comments people leave, or when she smells a beer and picks out aromas I hadn’t, or when she clears away all my empties and tells me that she likes this label or doesn’t remember me drinking that bottle, “what was it like?”, or when she genuinely takes an interest in what’s in my glass.

I’m quite lucky, I think.

I write this blog but there’s always someone else there, someone who probably should hate beer but tolerates it and listens and actually knows a lot about it because she cares about what I care about. I guess she’s the real Spoon to my Pencil.

Sorry if this is gushy and sentimental but that should keep her sweet while we go for a huge steak dinner at the Hawksmoor on Friday (she doesn’t eat meat) and then drink around Borough, followed by a massive and potentially messy beer night at ours on Saturday, followed by more beer on Sunday and Monday (she will also hopefully be cooking me dinner on Monday). Plus next weekend at The Bull’s huge beer festival, the weekend after at The White Horse’s Old Ale Festival, then the British Guild of Beer Writers Dinner (which she isn’t coming to) followed by the Pig’s Ear beer festival the next day and then the next weekend on a London pub crawl.

Drinking Around

You know what I want to do more of? Drinking around. I feel faithful to the few pubs which I regularly visit, but there’s so much more out there that I’m missing out on. After the visit to the new Thornbridge Brewery, Brad and I were faced with a mini-dilemma: where next? We had a few hours of drinking time left and Chesterfield station was our starting point. Sheffield was nearby, as was the Coach and Horses, or we could’ve gone to Derby or Leicester or even back to London for a few. As we were with the Reluctant Scooper we went to Derby and visited three incredible pubs and it made me crave going to new pubs.

I want to drink in Sheffield, Leeds and Norwich. I want to do a massive tour of Manchester, its breweries and the surrounding area. Huddersfield is calling me to The Grove. If BrewDog are opening a bar in Aberdeen then that’s calling, as is Glasgow or Edinburgh and I want to grab a few pints of Moor beer in Somerset. And this is just the UK based drinking, don't get me started on the other places…

The places I want to visit will serve me beers that I know about but they will also give me an opportunity to try new beers from breweries that I haven’t encountered before. And that’s important. While I’m happy drinking the beers from the breweries I know, I want to know about more breweries and the best way to do that is to get out there and drink the stuff. And this is one of the reasons that I wanted to get a beerswap going. But I need you to tell me, where should I go and what should I drink?

There are also the rumblings of a big blogger meet up early next year, so this might help us decide where is best to go!

Lager of the British Isles

It’s British Lager Week, didn’t you know. On Tuesday I went to the White Horse on Parsons Green because Melissa Cole (see this post) was hosting a night on behalf of Lagers of the British Isles (LOBI – check out their mission statement on their website as it’s a good one). Basically, a number of chaps from a number of lager breweries spoke while we drank their beer.

The first was Hepworth’s Blonde which I’d had before from the bottle. I didn’t think much of this. The Freedom beers came next – Pilsner, Lager and Dark Lager. The Pilsner had a biting dry finish, the lager was sweeter than the Pilsner and/but less interesting and the Dark was brown bread and caramel (but not all that dark). Cotswold Brewing Company followed with their smart and simple bottle labels. 3.8 was clean and biscuity with a faint citrus finish, Premium (which uses Cascade hops!) had little aroma but more biscuits and a dry, hop finish which was really tasty.

Then things stepped up: Harviestoun’s Schiehallion, with its great fruity-floral bitterness and full, smooth body, is a really cracking beer. Staying in Scotland, next came WEST (beer menu here): St Mungo was berries, shortbread and a lovely dry finish which gets sweeter as you drink; the Munich Red was okay, but reds aren’t really for me; and their Dunkel, a dark, roasty, smokily dry beer was spot-on (it might also be worth saying that while drinking the WEST stuff I wrote: Is Scotland the best brewing country right now? Interesting thought, there’s probably a post in that idea…). Towards the end there was also some Cotswold Autumn lager (no link) with a stone fruit sweetness to it and a Cotswold Wheat Beer which was very drinkable, citrusy, fruity, 'wheaty'.

What was great to see was that all of these beers were also being sold on draft in the pub downstairs; I’ve never seen so many different lagers available in one place. There was also a few cask ales on which were very tempting, but after all that lager I was thirsty for more and went for another Schiehallion, which really is super (interestingly, I wonder how cask lagers fit into CAMRA’s ideas? I’d guess they don’t.).

I don’t drink much lager, as you might know from reading this blog (save for bathing in Mythos whenever I can), so it was really interesting to spend an evening drinking just that and it reignited something in me from my holiday to Greece in the summer, that ‘lager, it’s the little things…’ You see, it takes drinking a few in a row to really appreciate that it’s the tiny nuances that make the really big differences – the citrus hop in one, the fuller body in another, a sweeter aroma, a dryer finish. Lagers don’t punch you in the face with a bag of hops and they don’t fill your mouth like oily stout, so there isn’t that esoteric wow factor to them. But it’s all relative. Comparing a lager to a big IPA is like comparing chicken soup to chicken madras, but compare a tin of soup to a Michelin-starred chicken broth and hopefully you see my point. What lagers do have is the power to sate, the simplicity to gulp without thinking or a subtle complexity to make you think if you want to and just something about them which suggests belonging and friendship and drinking together with mates for the pure fun of drinking together with mates. It’s great to see that there are some really good lagers being brewed in the UK right now and good luck to LOBI.

Great to see Dave there and Oliver Thring too, the best food writer I know of. Oz Clarke was also there, thankfully I didn't see him burp-back tasting. Eww. And British Lager week runs from the 12th October to the 18th October.

If beer didn’t make you drunk…

I was walking to the pub (FYI: check out that link to see what beers are on this week - that's a wicked line-up!) a while ago with Pete and his brother, David, and the discussion turned to this horribly obese chap who had a (mythically?!) super-efficient liver that enabled him to drink gallons of beer every night and not feel any effect (except, of course, that his 20+ pints contributed to his already-monstrous girth). This then turned to a musing along the lines of: would you like to be able to drink and drink and drink and never get drunk?

So that’s the question: would you enjoy beer as much as you do if it didn’t come with the drunkenness?

I’m not saying the falling around, slurring, loss of motor controls and all that, I’m more interested in the stages from the first beer, through relaxing, into the merriness. You know how it is, a few beers in, where you talk shit, laugh more, feel happier; that fug of warmth and belonging and relaxation. And this isn’t about getting drunk, per se, it’s more about that 'beer feeling’.

This can probably be separated into further questions: would you prefer drinking if you can go all night and never get pissed? Given a choice between never getting drunk no matter how much you throw down, or getting drunk after one beer, which would you prefer? How important to your enjoyment is the whole inebriation process? What do you think...

Sharing Beer

Beer is for sharing. It’s the friendliest thing I know. Beer makes friendships. A love for beer itself is a long-term love affair. You like good beer, I like good beer. An instant bond. An understanding. A desire to share. We meet up for beers; that’s when we see each other. How’s your beer? Try some. Yeah, that’s good. Nothing else is like it. Let’s go to the pub. What you having? If you’re having that one then I’ll go for this. We talk, we laugh, we relax. The best beers I’ve ever had have been shared - they’ve been talked about, they turn into better beers because of it. Wow this is good. I’m not that fussed. I love it. I love it too. The one who wasn’t fussed gets into it. Actually you know what… We bounce words around, hyperbole, lyrical similes, random tastes and smells and memories. We laugh at him, then we get it ourselves, it does smell like that. We can open another bottle, we can order another half; we can drink more beer. Quantity and quality. It’s about being with friends, sharing something important to all of us, having a great time with a few beers. That’s why we drink it.

The Bull’s Best of The Best Beer Festival

Here’s a round-up of last week’s beer festival at The Bull. Garrett and Lynne, the landlord and lady, put on a fantastic event and I really hope they’re pleased with how it all went. The beer was spot-on, the food was excellent, the garden was a great place to hang out (the weather stayed dry too) and the atmosphere was perfect. To Garrett and Lynne: It’s you two who make The Bull my favourite pub. You are willing to go that much further than everyone else. Thank you.

To set the scene: I was there on Thursday with Pete from Pete’s Food Blog and Brad and James and friends from Ale Affinity. On Friday Pete and Brad were back again (we couldn’t stay away!), both with their younger brothers. I was with my mate Matt. And Steve from Beer Justice and Phil from Beermerchants were there too. The barbeque filled the cool air of the pub garden with grilling meat and Garrett’s irrepressible laugh rang around his kingdom as everyone chinked glasses and talked and laughed and got pretty damn merry.

I started down low, way down low at a measly 2.7% with BrewDog’s Edge. But measly it ain’t: this 2.7% minx is a flavour bomb. So full bodied, a perfect creamy head, chocolate roasted notes and much more hop bitterness than I expected. One surprising beer that you could drink all night. Next Pete and I went tag-team-style on Saltaire’s Amarillo Gold and BrewDog's 77 Lager (the Amarillo in each being a cozy and chance partnership). Amarillo Gold was very pale, loads of neat Maris Otter grain and a delicately refreshing lemony-citrus finish. The 77 lager was surprising fruity with a great body and good hop bitterness - good cask lager action indeed.

More double-teaming next with Thornbridge Kipling and BrewDog's Dogma. Now it kills me to say this but none of the Thornbridge beers we tried were up to their usual standard. I don’t know why this was, but the fact that it was across the board is worrying. Now Dogma. Here’s something you might not have read around these parts before, but here goes: I don’t care all that much for bottled Dogma or its previous incarnation, Speedball. It does nothing for me except make me mildly giddy. However, on cask it’s much better. There was honey and vanilla and blackcurrant and toast and another creamy head (they give good head at BrewDog) all wrapped up in a slick body. Nice. We also opened a bottle of unlabelled BrewDog’s Atlantic IPA to share around the bench. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, you say? Well guess what… It was a thumbs down from a table of BrewDog fans. I like the oxidized notes in Zephyr but in the Atlantic IPA they are too much (sour and cement-like) and it doesn’t mix well with the whisky warmth and the punchy-earthy-fruity-bitter beer.

I believe we had a burger here. It was very good and very necessary.

Next came two beers from Marble: Pint and Dobber. Garrett told us that Dobber was the bigger brother of Pint and he was spot on. Pint was pale, clean, crisp, quenching, gluggable and finished with juicy citrus hop bitterness. I absolutely loved this beer. Then I tried Dobber and fell in love again. It’s a fantastic beer, loads of C-hop sexiness (I believe I bet this blog at one point that it contains Centennials!), orange and a juicy-pithy clawing finish with a great toffee body. Super, super stuff. And honestly, I would’ve been happy to drink just those two all night, but I was on a mission.

Let’s zip through in a montage: In the following hour, or so, I had: a mouthful of Jaipur, my favourite cask beer, and it was a shadow of itself and this brought a tear and a sorrowful swoon. This swoon was not cured by the half of Pitfield IPA which was boozy like nail polish, had a too-sweet candy sugar body and didn’t deliver on the hops. I had a taste of the Saltaire Blackberry Cascade which I liked until just after I swallowed when it became sickly like a chewy sweet. I appear to have tried Ginger Marble and remember not enjoying that too much. I’m not a big raw ginger fan and this tasted like raw ginger. It was hot stuff (literally as I’m posting this Reluctant Scooper has just put up something about Marble Ginger – he likes it more than I do!). A lot of the others loved it though and I think it could be a grower. Thornbridge Red Brick was just not right. And there was a glug of BrewDog’s Trashy Blonde at some point. This was Pete’s beer and I’m pretty sure he enjoyed it. Phew.

This was where we stepped it up. Another tag-team effort went down here to wrestle BrewDog’s Devine Rebel and the Pitfield Imperial Stout into submission. I can proudly say that we won the battle. The Pitfield was bloody marvelous, all rich and roasty with chocolate and coffee and dark fruits and a super earthiness. This stuff rocks. As does Devine Rebel. It’s honey and marmalade, some whisky smokiness way back in there, sweet but not too sweet, a complex sipper rolling around. Thursday done.

The morning after prompted my post about hangover breakfasts and I didn’t truly recover until I had the first pint on Friday, when I was back on it in a flash. I obviously went for a pint of Pint and it was even better than the day before. After this we went and got on the beer train to Ramsgate, Matt’s local brewery (I didn’t have them on Thursday knowing he was down on Friday). Gadds’ No.3 was a great pint as always; caramel, fruit, earthy hops; a Kent classic that I wanted to drink a lot of. Then came the Thoroughly Modern Mild which had a big sweetness with honey and marmalade (kind of like Devine Rebel) and was an easy-drinking 6% - a mild for winter, when Mild Month really should be. Dr. Sunshine’s Special Friendly followed, a wheat beer with a classic wheaty taste (quality beer writing there), vanilla, citrus and a good butterscotch quality (not a bad butterscotch quality). I’m not a wheat beer lover but I could’ve had a lot more of this. Thumbs up to Ramsgate!

Next I tried Saltaire's Sublime Blonde, which I think was Phil’s. The resounding verdict was that it tasted like Foster’s Twist: lager and lime. Not great. There was a Rye Smile in there but bugger me if I remember what that tasted like. All I know is that we ordered a Gadds’ No.7 and a Rye Smile and it took Matt and me a few sips to work out which was which. After this I went back and had more of my favourite’s from Thursday. Another Dobber, an Edge and another Pitfield Imperial Stout. And that’s where the night ended, I think. There may have been more. I lost track and was just having a good time by then.

There were a few beers which didn’t come on while I was there, the notable one being Thornbridge’s Epic Halcyon (here is the full festival list). The good thing is that now I get to look forward to it another time!

And there we are. I don’t think this is particularly illuminating but I wanted to share my thoughts about the beer and the fun that we had. This was a great festival because it was small and friendly and the beer was fantastic. Marble Dobber won beer of the festival and I can’t argue with that. Marble Pint would have been a close contender for my vote and that’ll be a beer I look out for from now on. Gadds’ No.3 was flawless and Pitfield’s Imperial Stout was epic. You can’t expect to love every beer which is on. Enjoyment is so subjective and the beers which I liked others didn’t and vice versa. That’s why we drink with friends; to compare, to discuss, to try other beers. I had a great time as you can probably tell. Cheers Garrett and Lynne!