Hop OZ97a: Rejected in 1960, Rejoiced in 2015?

For the Spring issue of CAMRA’s BEER magazine I wrote a feature on English hops. It looked at how the industry has shrunk to a size which threatens its ongoing existence but shows an interesting future through the research, development and breeding which takes place at Wye Hops in Kent.

Through Wye Hops, and its previous incarnation Wye College, seven new English hop varieties have become commercially available in the last 12 years. These new varieties have arrived thanks to cross-breeding and the application of new research into pest resistance and growing systems (hedgerow hops, for example, which grow lower to the ground than the typical climbing bines).

Through this breeding, around 1,400 unique seedlings a year are produced, each with potential to eventually become a variety. The vast majority don’t make it, of course, but each year a few progress to further testing – the whole process of picking the parent hops to breed with to picking a decent harvest to brew with takes 10 years. Endeavour has just come through that process and others are close behind.

There’s also the National Hop Collection (NHC), which holds 780 different varieties; some are female (it’s the female hops which are used by brewers) and some are male (just used for breeding). Some of the hops in the NHC were bred and developed years ago only to be rejected as being undesirable to brewers, others have simply been used as breeding hops because of positive qualities they give in the process without being tested for their own brewing characteristics.

Now Dr Peter Darby and his small team at Wye Hops are exploring the NHC to see what they can find, looking at rejected old varieties and testing ‘breeding’ hops for their brewing potential. One of those hops is currently known as ‘GP75’. It was used as a breeding hop years ago because of its high resistance to powdery mildew without ever having an oil analysis or flavour assessment made on it. When Dr Darby tested it he found a grapefruit-like citrus depth. Growers in the British Hop Association liked it, there was a successful pilot brew with the hop and it’s now close to farm-scale propagation.

This brings us to OZ97a.

As the issue of BEER was published, Pressure Drop Brewery in North London released a beer with the 2012 harvest of an English hop called OZ97a, or the mystery ‘Hop X’ as the brewery were calling it. Sean Ayling of Pig & Porter has also brewed a beer with the 2011 batch of this hop, as has a homebrewer in Kent. Those breweries got the hops from Kent Brewery who, in 2011, were invited to the NHC and to see the British Hop Association’s breeding programme. Being a local brewery they were interested in the local hops; being a brewery who like American-style IPAs, they were especially interested in punchy, fruity flavours from local hops.

“It is our firm belief that there is nothing to stop UK hops equalling or even surpassing the qualities of [hop varieties from US, Australia and New Zealand], and that if only we could help to encourage experimentation and development we could see a revival in the hop industry in Kent and beyond,” says Paul Herbert of Kent Brewery.

“While walking around the fields [of the National Hop Collection] I had a eureka! moment when I smelt one of the cones. Peter made a note of this and a few months later asked if we would like to take the remainder from that harvest for brewing.” With just two plants of each variety in the collection, some went for further analysis while the rest went to Kent Brewery. A little while later Paul gave some to a local homebrewer but by this time the hops were “quite old and dry” and the results weren’t as expected.  When he was also offered the 2012 harvest, “it was immediately obvious that these had much greater potential.”

As there was such a small volume of hops, Paul passed them on to Pressure Drop who used them in a simple pale ale recipes on their compact 50 litre system. “The results were exactly as we hoped, producing a taste and aroma that could stand up to the very best that the New World can throw at us.” Different batches – from the homebrew to Sean Ayling to Pressure Drop – have given apricot, pineapple, lychee, grapefruit, melon and tangerine. When I tried beers brewed by Sean and Pressure Drop I tasted all of those things and more. It’s delicate, elegant, wonderfully fragrant, fruity and utterly intriguing.   

So what’s the story behind OZ97a?

Professor Salmon ran the breeding programme at Wye College from 1906 to 1953. His work “laid the foundations for all hop breeding during the twentieth century,” writes Dr Darby in Brewery History. Prof Salmon gave us Brewers Gold, Northern Brewer, Bullion, Bramling Cross and others. Dr Darby explains: “OZ97a is a selection from Professor Salmon’s breeding programme. It was a seedling growing at position OZ97 but it was the second interesting seedling to be planted at that position over the period of his programme and so he added the letter ‘a’ to the code to distinguish it.” By the time Dr Ray Neve took over the breeding programme (he gave us Target, Challenger, Northdown and others) from Prof Salmon in 1953, OZ97a had already progressed to farm trials, which is lucky because Dr Neve re-organised the whole breeding garden and numbering system and the hop could’ve been lost. OZ97a was assessed in 1957 and 1958 and reached commercialisation stage in 1959, when it was sent for brewing trials.

Dr Darby, via British Hops

The report for this trial, published in 1960, a year after Prof Salmon died, considered three potential new varieties for their brewing qualities: one of these was released as Early Choice; another was “considered acceptable but, being sensitive to wilt disease and mosaic virus, found little favour with growers”; while OZ97a was “considered unacceptable to brewers in 1960 and it was concluded that ‘these brewing trials indicate that a number of brewers would not be willing to use this hop even at 25% replacement of their normal grist’ because ‘it has strong American flavour.’”

(Dr Darby doesn’t yet know the heritage of OZ97a but will be visiting the Wye College archives in May to find out when the original crossbreed was made and to read any of Prof Salmon’s notes on the variety. After this he’ll know more about the hops used to produce it)

“With such a damning report and without Salmon to champion his variety, it was put in the germplasm collection,” leaving just two plants. From there it’s been a fortunate survivor, making it through an outbreak of wilt disease in 1978 and a major cull of breeding materials that Dr Darby was forced to make in 2006 when Wye College was closed and Wye Hops Ltd was set up (there’s too much history to go into here but it involves government funding being dropped for Wye College and the British hop breeding industry effectively becoming self-funded as a new company, Wye Hops Ltd).

This is where it loops back into the work of Dr Darby, Wye Hops and the British Hop Association because “the hop collection is being systematically re-assessed by the British Hop Association [and] there are many hops in the collection which have never been assessed for their aroma or whose aroma was rejected in the past but where modern craft brewing might find more interest.” In 2012, the part of the collection housing OZ97a was part of the re-assessment and it was picked out blind as being suitable for tests as a dried hop, along with 12 others. “Dried samples of this hop were submitted to a panel of assessors at Charles Faram and the verdict was that it had intense pineapple and citrus notes: it was highlighted as one of the hops to consider further.” It was also selected independently by a group assessing the aroma potential of hops in the collection. Along with Paul at Kent Brewery, that makes three groups who have all selected the same hop from blind tests. “This cannot be a coincidence,” says Dr Darby.

OZ97a was rejected by the standards of 1960 but could be of considerable interest to brewers now and it will be discussed by the British Hop Association in April. “I would be quietly confident that they will arrange for OZ97a to be propagated for planting on a farm or two,” says Dr Darby. “If they do go ahead with it then it will be propagated during 2013 from our two plants in the collection and planted in 2014. Cropping will be from 2015 onwards. Until then, all that can be available is the small amount from the two mature plants in our collection.”

How many other hops were rejected 50 years ago which might be appealing to brewers today? How many wonderful varieties simply haven’t been tested for their flavour or aroma yet? Add to this the potential to then use these varieties in the breeding programme and it’s an exciting prospect. As brewers and drinkers get enticed by the juicy, fruity flavours of American and New Zealand hops, OZ97a lets us know that we can also grow them here in Britain.

The conclusion of my story in BEER was that British brewers need to use British hops or face losing them. There’s a lot being done in the industry to develop exciting new varieties and OZ97a and GP75 aren’t the only ones that we should be looking at. Hopefully the next few years are going to be very interesting and produce some wonderful new British hops with flavour profiles we haven’t tasted before, complimenting the traditional varieties we’re rightly famous for.   

Pig Pit

“The wait will be two hours and twenty minutes,” she says, looking behind them. “But you can’t wait here. We’re full.”

It’s busy. It’s dark. The music is industrial. The buzz of excitement is as thick as the fire-and-pig-filled air.

“No problem,” they say. “There’s a bar around the corner, we can go for drinks.” They’d arrived early, anyway, so it’s fine.

They go and have some drinks.

Two hours and twenty minutes pass. They were expecting a call when a table was ready.

Another twenty minutes and there’s still no call so they go back to the restaurant.

“No, you’re table is not ready. Look how busy we are.” Her arms sweep emphatically. “There are still four tables to seat before yours,” she spits. Perfume and sweat mix with pumped cooking fumes in the hot air.

“Can we get a drink at the bar,” they ask.

“No.”

“It’s just us, all we want is a drink at the bar while we wait for the table.”

“The manager decides.”

“Can you ask?”

She breathes out a long, frustrated sigh. “I guess.”

She spins on her worn-down heels. A tattoo stains her calf. Her hair is half-shaved.

“I hope it’s good. We’ve waited ages.”

“I heard someone say that it’s excellent.”

She stomps towards the bar. She doesn’t talk to the manager. She just walks a circle, head high as she looks down on the diners around, and then returns to the front desk.

“There’s no room at the bar.”

“All we want is one drink. We can see there’s room at the bar, look, just there. Plus this way we’ll be here when the table’s free.”

She exhales forcefully. “Jeez. Fine. Whatever. Follow.”

She takes two steps, points at the empty bar then goes back to her gatekeeper podium on the front door.

One variety of Champagne is served next to one can of hipster lager. As they take the first sips from the jars they are served in they are pointed to a table.

They sit. There is no cutlery. No menu. No water. No decoration. Just napkins. The table is uncomfortably small.

“What do you want?” Says the waiter; young, angular hair, thin arms, listening to his iPod.

“Do you have a menu?” They ask.

He looks around, incredulous, as if no one has ever asked this before.

“Errr. No. Obviously.”

“Huh?” they ask back.

He shakes his head. Haven’t these losers read the reviews, haven’t they followed the tweets, seen the pinterest. He points at his shirt.

It says Pig Pit.

It’s pig cooked over a pit.

They should know this. They should’ve read the reviews. Why else would they be here.

Now his job gets exhausting; he has to explain the damn obvious: “Choose a part of a pig. It gets cooked on a pit.”

“What are they eating over there?” They ask.

He doesn’t look. He just says: “Pig.”

“But one’s got something in a roll, the other has, like, a stew-thing.”

“Hot dog. Cheek.”

“Do you do ribs?”

“Obviously.”

“Belly?”

“Yes. It’s Pig Pit.”

“Do you do salad?”

He almost walks away. He swears and sighs silently. “Fuck... No. Pig Pit.” Emphasis punched on the pig. “You just tell me the part of the pig you want and I bring it for you. Pig only.”

“What about prices?”

“Prices? What, like how much it’s gonna cost? People don’t normally ask, they kinda know the policy.”

They have no idea what this means.

He stares at them. Waiting. Foot tapping. He writes OBV on his forearm.

“Thirty three pound each. Eat what you want. Drinks extra, obviously. And service.” He smiles. Just.

“Oh. We didn’t know that. Ok.”

“You didn’t know?” He can barely believe it. How is it possible that these people didn’t know that. Everyone knows it. That’s why everyone knows this place. Jesus.

“And we pay that much for whatever we eat?”

He shrugs his shoulders. What part don’t you understand? “Do you want to order or not? I’ve got...” he trails off his sentence pointing around at nothing in particular.

“Ok, we’ll take two portions of ribs, two hot dogs... no four hot dogs, cheek, sausages...”

“Nothing else?” He asks as if they’d stupidly under-ordered.

Thinking up more cuts they say: “Bacon.”

“What else?”

“Er... Snout?”

“And?” He doesn’t write the orders down. Just half-listens.

“Bacon...”

“Any sides?”

“PIG. PIT.”

“Four more beers.”

He leaves. The air feels thick and fatty. It stings the eyes, filling them like grease.

All the tables are busy. The pumping beat of music is like an old factory engine. The popping sucks of a sticky finger echoes around. The gnaw of meat from the bone like a lion chewing a deer leg. Pig juices are wiped from chins. Talking with mouths open. Ripping ribs from smoking slabs. Pulling pieces from teeth. Angry, delighted eating. Greed and speed.

Four beers arrive, are dropped and slid.

“Excuse me?” They ask. “Where are your pigs from?”

“What?” The waiter replies, taking his headphone from his ear.

“The pigs. Where are they from?”

“The kitchen.”

“What breed are they?”

“What breed? Jesus, how would I know that. They are pigs. Pink, go oink, lie in shit all day.” He walks away, stops at the bar, leans weakly on it, lazily exhausted, shakes his head and tells the disinterested, over-tattooed bartender where he’d rather be and what he’d rather be doing than being in this fucking pig sty.

“Fuck that was amazing,” says one departing diner, wiping his lips with a tenner and dropping it on the floor. “Fucking love pig.” His date is tweeting or tumbling.

Two other diners wipe their hands clean before sliding and poking at iPads. City suits sit next to the fashion let’s-be-seeners. Eating with a phone in one hand, a rib in the other. Everyone takes photos.

“I need to pee.” Says one of the group. They get up and follow signs downstairs where it gets hotter and hotter nearing the furnace of a kitchen. It’s dark down below. The orange glow of the pit licks out onto the hall.

The pigs are here. Maybe 20 of them. Massacre at Animal Farm. Dull pink, eyes closed like they’re sleeping, squashed on top of each other.

A chef, hands covered in dried blood, throws a pig over his shoulder then slams it down on the kitchen surface, taking a saw to it. 

Back upstairs, one table is immediately replaced with another, money floats in the air like colourful confetti.

Before seating, two place their order: Champagne. Rib. Loin. Trotter. Bacon. Fast, yeah. Fucking starving.

People talk loudly. Shouting favours whispering. Things are done fast as if there’s somewhere else they need to be.

“We waited for three hours,” someone says. “Wow, that’s good. We waited four!” “It’s totally worth it.” “It’s fucking delicious.”

The food arrives. Big smoking trays of meat are dropped on the table. The fat is puckered and black. Smoke spirals upwards. An ooze of something seeps onto the plate. The different cuts are unidentified; the bartender offers no support.

Our four eat. They pass around the hot dogs. “I’m so hungry.” “What’s this thing?” They take a bite of rib, pulling meat from bone. Slowly at first, the second bite is faster, the third is torn away. The sweet-bitter edge of smoke laces everything, bones are discarded like stained ivory keys. The ribs disappear in seconds, the hot dogs are gone, they chew on the cheek and rip apart the bacon. The snout is split open and barely shared. They don’t speak, they just eat, mouthful after mouthful, gulping beer in between, licking sauce and burnt bits from fingers, until nothing is left but bones.   

“Fuck, that was good!”

“Totally worth the wait!”

“Pig is great, isn’t it.”

“I’m stuffed. Pig rocks.”

The bill is slapped on the table, the plates taken away. They each throw cash into the middle of the table as they down the last mouthfuls of beer.

The waiter takes the money, counts it, leaves.

As the four walk out the pass the front desk where the girl is drawing on paper covered in phone numbers.

“Nah, it’s full. I already told you.”

The line grows.

Outside they look back into the grey, smoky pit as people stuff themselves with pig parts.

“Have you heard about Comb Claw? It’s a new chicken place. We should go next week.” 

Top image from here

The perfect glass for IPA?

I’m not a glass geek but I do own a lot of them (too many, to be honest, given that I drink out of the same two or three glasses for most beers). But I am of the opinion that the glass makes a difference to the drink, perhaps not in any perception of the flavour, but in the way we relate to the experience – the many different Belgian beer glasses might not necessarily make their beers taste more delicious, but we definitely enjoy drinking them more in a unique branded glass than in an off-the-shelf mug.

When I drink IPAs, I like an American shaker glass: straight-edged, sturdy, easy to drink from. But now I might need to add another glass to the cupboard because SierraNevada, Dogfish Head and Spiegelau have created a glass specifically for IPA. These are the features:

·         Thin, round walls to maintains proper temperature longer

·         A slender, bowled shape to amplify hop aromas

·         Wave-like ridges to aerate beer on its way in and out of the glass

·         A wide mouth, allowing drinkers to comfortably nose the beer

·         A laser-etched logo on the bottom of the bowl to sustain carbonation and head

Spiegelau make glasses of excellent quality with a genuine elegance to them and I find this design oddly-appealing. The top half is like the glass I always drink from – a tulip-shaped bowl which is good for all beers – but the bottom half is completely different and I’m intrigued by how it aerates and what that might give to the beer – I assume it’s the same as a swirl only it helps to kick hop aroma right into your nose. Will it make IPAs more wonderful? Who knows, but I'd definitely like to try a few beers in one to find out. 

It’s a glass for home instead of the pub – I can’t see many bars carrying these – but what do you reckon about the design? Do you want one for your glass cupboard or do you favour a different shape and size for an IPA?

The excellent top image is from Castello Cheese. 

The Local Pub, Athens

In a quiet quad in the Halandri district of Athens, not far from the Olympic Park, is the sort of place you never want to leave. It’s a proper pub, not a wannabe dressed up pretending to be a pub: there’s dark wood, old beer signs, beer glasses everywhere, bottles lined up, good beer on tap, TV tuned to sports, punk music adds an edge, but more importantly than the aesthetics, there’s the atmosphere, a warming and welcoming vibe as people sit around and chat in small groups, while Fotis, the owner, who knows everyone, pours the pints in between ordering the best beers he can buy (just check out their Facebook galleries to see what they're drinking). It's The Local Pub.

Greece doesn’t have many beer bars. It doesn’t have much of a beer drinking culture; at least not the type of culture we might imagine in Britain. Beer, to most Greeks, is seen as summer refreshment. It’s a cold beer on a hot day. And it’s a lager. They don’t really do bar crawls or anything like that. Beer is something to go with dinner, or before it. But it’s different in The Local Pub. People visit here for the same reasons we visit any beer bar around the world: to drink a variety of different beers.

In The Local Pub you’ll find beers on tap from some of the new and exciting Greek microbreweries. You won’t find these beers in many other places; Fotis orders them especially. He also orders bottles and kegs from around the world so that he can have a broad range of beers on tap. When I’m there Raging Bitch is on tap (at 6 euros a pint it’s cheaper than I’ll drink it in London) and they’ve just got a shipment of BrewDog beers meaning all the locals are sharing bottles of Paradox; but I’m not drinking those because I want the new Greek beers.

“No Hops, No Glory” is the t-shirt-ready slogan of The Local Pub and that’s definitely what the drinkers are interested in. Septem’s unfiltered Pale Ale is my first beer and it’s a perfect pale ale. So vibrantly juicy with hop flavour (Saaz, Citra, Nelson Sauvin), it’s elegant and light yet loaded with flavour. They also make a brilliant Pilsner (though most Greek drinkers here avoid lagers and pilsners like they’re made with cyanide or something...), this one has got a glorious hop freshness from Perle and Motueka. Then the Santorini's Crazy Donkey comes out. A big booming brilliant IPA loaded with American hops. It’s excellent. And there’s a lot more Greek beer on tap and in the fridges, chosen from the dozen-or-so small breweries and beers you can normally only find local to where it’s brewed.

The Local Pub is the best bar in Greece if you want to drink local beer (and you really should; there’s some fantastic beer being brewed out there right now). It’s also the best place if you want bottles and draft from around the world. Just don’t go looking for a pint of cold lager because you won’t find it there. 

In Athens I stayed at the Civitel Olympic hotel. It's very nice and not far from The Local Pub.

A New Beer Flavour Wheel

UPDATED NOVEMBER 2021: There's now a new version of the Beer Flavour Wheel! And alongside the Beer Flavour Wheels, there's now a Hop Flavour Wheel, a Malt Flavour Wheel, a Fermentation & Maturation Wheel, plus a wheel each for Hop and Malt Varieties! They're all available to purchase at www.beerdredge.com as a set of six as well as other formats.

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I like the established beer flavour wheel, which was introduced in the 1970s by brewing chemist Dr Morten Meilgaard. It works well, it’s easy to read and it goes into a lot of technical detail. But looking at the wheel it includes compounds such as 2-Phenylethanol and Isoamyl acetate, which are pretty technical pieces of information that aren’t exactly common knowledge (2-Phenylethanol is a rose-like aroma and Isoamyl acetate is banana).

So while I like that wheel, it’s not the most consumer-friendly. Doing some research I found wheels for coffee, chocolate (both from here), wine (which is aroma-specific) and whisky, which are easy to use and interesting and break down the tasting experience into a simpler format, just giving recognisable flavours (mostly, anyway; I had no idea what cineolic or camphoric were in the coffee wheel until I googled them – like spicy, woody bay leaf or tea tree, I think).

When I was working on Craft Beer World, I thought I’d try and rework the beer wheel to see what I could do. Not as a replacement for the one we all know, but a wheel which is more approachable for general drinkers; one which looks at the specific ingredients and processes of beer, looks at esters and off-flavours, considers mouthfeel, aroma, flavour and the general experience of beer. Not necessarily one for brewers or the technical troubleshooters, I wanted a wheel aimed at looking for the right word to describe how beer tastes or for figuring out what a flavour is and where it might have come from.

It was just an itch-scratching experiment to begin and I started throwing down words and drawing big circles with lots of lines in and around them, but gradually a useable wheel took shape. And that wheel had a nice flow of flavours to it. So I sent it to my editor, who sent it to the (incredibly patient...) designer, who put something together.

The Beer Flavor Wheel (the book is written in American; or, more accurately, I wrote it in English and someone translated it) I come up with is in the book, which went to print this week and will be out in a few months. And here it is below, the first thing I’m allowed to share from Craft Beer World. I’m really pleased with how this wheel has turned out and I hope that it can be something which drinkers find useful. What do you think? 

Thoughts for 2013

Here we go, as has now become tradition (2012, 2011, 2010), here’s 10 thoughts for 2013...

Forget American beer, we get better stuff brewed in Britain now

All those expensive bottles that used to be imported from America will be less attractive compared to the brilliant British-brewed equivalents. Of course, there will be some new American beers arrive which will get us all excited, but mostly we’ll shop British because they are better and fresher.

Americans finally embrace the ‘session’ beer

Session IPA has become an actual thing now and one of the best beers I drank in 2012, at GABF, was Avery 3point5 (I didn’t have the version brewed for the ‘Spoons fest). The rise of the pale and hoppy in Britain will transfer to the US and see a rise in sub-4% beers.

Wheat

How many British breweries make decent wheat beers? I reckon we might see a few more in 2013 following on from beers like Magic Rock Clown Juice and Camden Gentleman’s Wit. I certainly hope that we see more wheat beers – Wits, Hefeweizens, White IPAs, and so on.

British sour beer (and better barrel-aged beers) arrives

The end of 2012 saw more sour beers start to emerge from British breweries. Most of these are Berliner-weisse-style but there are others which are barrel-aged for a long time. More breweries are also experimenting with different yeasts and Brettanomyces is becoming more common. I think we can expect more of these and we can expect the quality to get better and better. Likewise, a better use of barrels will see more beers aged in wood.

Better beer festivals

IndyManBeerCon has kicked it off and I hope there’ll be more festivals that take inspiration from things like Borefts and Copenhagen Beer Celebration. The best breweries, the brewers pouring their beers, small pours, good food. Festivals which celebrate the taste of beer not just the effects of it.

The year of the beer list

Will it finally happen? Will restaurants and bars finally kick out the crap and make more effort with their beer selection? If they don’t, they might get left behind...

Better beer in general

Pubs will move towards local brews from smaller producers and away from national and multi-national products. Even in the last year, drinking in London has changed significantly and it’s now normal to walk into almost any pub and find a decent local beer.

Use British hops!

Use ‘em or lose ‘em. British hops need more of a focus and I hope we see more highly-hopped beers using wonderful British hops to show a side of them that is rarely shown. There are new British hops being developed each year and British brewers need to support the British hop growers.

Rediscover European hops

Now that virtually every brewery in the country uses American hops, the forward-thinking breweries will look to European hops but use them in a new way (the same as they will bring back to focus to British hops) – this might be a Styrian Golding Pale Ale or Saaz IPA or whatever. These hops have wonderful fruity, intense flavour profiles and I want to see more of them.

Cask and keg...

...live happily ever after. Just shut up and just drink whatever beer you want to drink. There’s plenty of choice for everyone now. 

My word of the year: Clean

If one word defines the way my taste has evolved this year, then it’s ‘clean’.

Beer is perpetually in motion. Always evolving. And drinkers move like a school of fish around it, swaying one way and then another with the current. Right now feels like we’re at a launching point (though it seems like it’s felt this way forever, already). But there’s things between now and next.

A lot of the beer we drink tastes obvious. American Pale Ales, IPAs and Black IPAs are the styles which continue to grab attention. But I think IPAs are elevated in status simply because they have big flavour, regardless of how great that flavour is. And the flavour is obvious. A sniff is like slamming your face in a bowl of over-ripe citrus. That’s fine, good in many cases, but it’s easy. And it hides a lot of problems.

Which is another issue: there’s a lot of average, bad or faulty beer sold in the UK. There are over 1,000 breweries in Britain now. That’s a lot. Maybe even too many. And the quality isn’t high enough in many. I’ve had too many beers with diacetyl, sulphur and acetaldehyde in them. A beer with no faults that tastes a bit bland has become more appealing than an over-hopped beer that is badly brewed. It seems like the search for impact has forgotten one of the key elements of beer-making: time. Just a little extra time and these beers could be better.

So my taste is towards clean beers. I want simple done well, I want subtlety and depth, I want to have to work with the beer not just sit back and let booze or hops beat me up. I think too many beers are obvious tasting – they are one dimensional and exaggerated in their flavour profile as they slam into your senses. The photo above is all the beer on tap at Odell's taproom. If you want clean, full flavour, then that's the place to go.

Clean, to me, means technically faultless, it means a clarity of flavours, an articulate, precise kind of taste in which you can drink it and experience all the elements in a clear way and not a riot of flavours which overpowers or a muddiness which means the ingredients are making a noise instead of playing a fine tune. It’s about elegance.

And you can absolutely get clean elegance in full-flavoured beer. The best IPAs have got structure, depth, hop flavour and aroma yet you can precisely taste everything, but they have this flavour from using the right amount of hops, at the right time, not simply by using lots of them.

The best Bitters I’ve had this year have had that see-saw brilliance between chewy malt and dry, bitter hop. The best lagers are defined by their clean depth of flavour. The best stouts have texture and that bittersweet mix of pale malt, dark malt and hop. The best sour beers sway between tartness, funk and something holding it all together. Think about the best beers you’ve had. What made them stand out? I bet it was the way in which all the flavours just worked wonderfully together and they left a beer which had a real clarity of flavour.

Clean beer. That’s what I want. Beer which is fresh, flavoursome, but considered. Most of all I just want beer which is well made, beer which has elegance and a clear, clean precision of flavours. That’s what I’m looking for in 2013.

The Golden Pint Responses

I’ve had a few Golden Pint responses emailed to me, so here they are. There’s also a list of all the other ones which I’ve seen online. Now I hope someone has got a few hours free to churn some data and figure out if there are any overall winners worth mentioning?!

Kristian Robinson, Three Friends Brewing Co. @3FriendsBeer 

Best UK Draught Beer

Redemption Trinity. I always like to start my drinking with a pint of something drinkable and low abv to get me in mood. This is always in good condition. Marble Pint and Fyne Jarl are other great starters (Marble Pint would win this if i could get it more often). There are certainly beers that are more 'exciting' but I know these will start me off well. And they never bore me.

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer

Brodie’s London Lager. Made me very happy on a very hot day at a packed pub.

Best Overseas Draught Beer

Jandrain Jandrenouille - VI Wheat

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer

Heady Topper. Can't describe how incredible this was. I'd happily pay way over the odds for another can. Or maybe make my next holiday location. Vermont.

Best Overall Beer

Magic Rock Cannonball. More recently on Keg it has been superb. 

Best Label

Wild Beer. Stylish. Clean. Consistent.

Best Pumpclip

Kernel. No effort required. Yet gets away with it. Love it.

Best UK Brewery

It has to be Magic Rock. Great core range and new additions have been more adventurous and no doubt will continue to be.

Best Overseas Brewery

Hmmm tough one. Firestone Walker. Tried a few beers and they have blown me away. Double Double in particular. So impressive.

Pub/Bar of the Year

The Hope in Carshalton. Doing so much despite being in village close to London. Passion. Enthusiasm. Great beer. Great community pub. A festival every month.

Supermarket of the Year

Waitrose. It has a fairly good range and appears to be adapting a little.

Independent Retailer.

Cobbetts in Dorking. Great little shop. Enthusiastic. Always helpful.

Online Retailer of the Year

Beeritz. Never let me down

Best Beer Book or Magazine

Brew your Own magazine

In 2013 I’d most like to...

I’m going to Mikkeller in May. And making our first commercial beer in January... Two dreams ticked off already

Best Brewpub

Cock Tavern, Howling Hops

Jennifer Nicholls @palate4hire

Best UK Draught Beer - Magic Rock High Wire

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer - Thornbridge Kipling

Best Overseas Draught Beer - Erdinger Dunkel

Best UK Brewery - Thornbridge

Beer Festival of the Year - IndyManBeerCon

Supermarket of the Year - Waitrose

Independent Retailer of the Year - Beers of Europe

Best Beer Book or Magazine - Melissa Cole, Let me Tell you about Beer

Best Beer Blog or Website - Pete Brown Blog

Best Online Brewery Presence - Summer Wine

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year - Saison Du Pont, with Peters Yard crispbreads cream cheese and smoked salmon

In 2013 I’d most like to... get to Belgium for a brewery tour

Simon James - @gueuzel

Best UK Draught Beer

Greene King 5X at GBBF. A revelation. Why GK keep this beer locked up is anyone's guess.

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer

Thornbridge Kipling. Grapefruit in a glass. Consistently challenging and drinkable in equal measure.

Best Overseas Draught Beer

Mahr's Ungespundet. So technically it's been a couple of years since I had it on draught. But no foreign draught beer I've had since has come close.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer

Bear Republic Racer 5. It was love at first sight when we met at Byron. Where had you been all my life before then?

Best Overall Beer

Fuller's Chiswick. OK so I haven't nominated it for any of the categories above. There are beers that shout louder and dazzle more. But there is no beer which is better.

Best Pumpclip or Label

Pumpclips by Truefitt (http://www.truefittbrewing.co.uk/). I should declare an interest as I grew up on Teesside so there's an element of nostalgia in seeing the words Erimus and Ironopolis. But I think the simple, eye-catching designs are great.

Best UK Brewery

Fuller's. They pump out God knows how much beer each year and could take the easy route. But as well as keeping an amazingly consistent core range, a few of their specials this year have really impressed (Wild River, Traitors' Gate on draught, not to mention their Past Masters series).

Best Overseas Brewery

Cantillon. Hasn't done anything particularly extraordinary this year. It's just stayed the same. Which is really my whole point.

Pub/Bar of the Year

BrewDog Camden. It pains me to give this to somewhere that doesn't serve cask beer out of "ideology". But what wins it for me is the bar staff with their knowledge and enthusiasm, particularly when asked the question "What lager have you got?" If anyone will get the young hipsters off Peroni, it's these guys.

Beer Festival of the Year

GBBF, solely because of the decision to move back to Olympia. Felt like they'd put the "Festival" back in to GBBF.

Supermarket of the Year

Waitrose. Not the widest range but well-chosen. And it's through them that I first came across Thornbridge Kipling.

Independent Retailer of the Year

Utobeer probably edge it. Always my first stop in London if I'm looking for a few interesting bottles.

Online Retailer of the Year

Beers of Europe, who finally updated their, er, "retro" site and made it a pleasure to use. Others probably serve a few more specialist tastes but these guys have all the main players, and the prices are very competitive.

Best Beer Book or Magazine

London Drinker. Always a pleasure when it pops through the letter box. Pleasingly irreverent, and comprehensive when it comes to what's going on in the London bar and brewing scene.

Best Beer Blog or Website

Boak and Bailey. In truth the recent trend towards historical research isn't my sort of thing, but they consistently put a new angle on things and question assumptions. (Nice to meet them too at GBBF this year.)

Best Beer Twitterer

Pumpclip Parade. Fighting a lonely war with the odds stacked against them. But by God it's a war that needs fighting.

Best Online Brewery Presence

No-one. Yes, one or two breweries probably make the grade. But the huge majority of brewery websites are like something done by a ten-year old. So I'm refusing to nominate anyone here as an entirely futile protest. But it has made me feel better.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year

Any Byron burger with anything on their craft beer list. I would eat there every night if my wallet and waist line could cope.

In 2013 I’d most like to...

Go on the Toer de Geuze. Which, with a bit of luck and advance planning, I will.

Best Beer Tasting

A tasting of lambics organised by The Craft Beer Co (at their original home in Clerkenwell). This was an event which didn't patronise and went into some pretty obscure detail. But what shone most of all was the passion of the guy who was giving the talk. Informative and inspirational.

And here are all the other Golden Pint entries that I’ve seen (There are probably more, too...)

Make Mine a Half

Beer Advice 

Barl Fire 

Graphed Beer 

Ghost Drinker 

The Beer Boy 

A Beer On The Downs 

Mediocre Beer Adventures 

Rabid Bar Fly 

Brewing Shed 

Wee Beefys Pub Blog 

Eating Isn't Cheating 

Hopzine 

Broadford Brewer 

Total Ales 

Pete Drinks 

Tyson's Beer Blog 

Oh Beery Me 

Booze Beats Bites 

Mrdavidj

Boak and Bailey (1976) 

Boak and Bailey (2012) 

Pints & Pubs 

Beers I've Known 

Taste Sensations 

Tandleman 

Beersay 

Beer And Food And Stuff 

Beer Viking 

Beer Talk 

A Good Beer Blog 

Ale & Stuff 

Beer Reviews 

Beer and Food Adventuring