Exclusive: Announcing Thornbridge’s New Brewer

“2011 is going to be a big year for us at Thornbridge,” says Simon Webster, director of the brewery, “and as we expanded the brew team it was key that we brought in the correct people.” Thornbridge have recently added Rob Lovatt, previously from Meantime, and Coalan Vaughan, previously from Little Creatures in Australia, and now they’ve added another name... Dominic Driscoll from Marble Brewery.

This image is here to allow a pause for thought. The logo also works perfectly upside-down! 

“I've loved being a Marble brewer, and have never been unhappy in all the 5 years I've worked there,” says Dominic. “It seemed a monumental decision at the time but in the past week I've realised it's an unbelievable opportunity to work at a seriously impressive brewery.” He adds: “You'd have to be a fairly stupid brewer not to want to work at Thornbridge, as it's probably the most innovative and creative brewery the UK has seen.”

“Because brewing is hard work and we're a small team [at Marble], we've spent far too much time in the same room and have thus become a bit like Morecambe and Wise in the breakfast scene. We've had an amazing time together, built a new brewery, made it a success, expanded production, started exporting, and of course made some great beer.”

Dominic’s favourite achievements at Marble include “smashing sales targets, 'meet the brewer' at Cask, brewing Vuur & Vlam and showcasing at the De Molen festival,” but the best moments “were always the beer tastings we did every week. This helped us improve every aspect of our beer-making and tweaked ordinary beers into something of which we could be proud.”

There’s lots of things he’ll miss from Marble, including the Marble Arch, Colin Stronge his fellow brewer, Jan Rogers, owner of the brewery, and there’s also some exciting projects in the pipeline which he would like to have brewed. As for the beer, what was the best he brewed at Marble? “Probably the Special 2009,” a 10.5% barley wine. “I didn't sleep properly for a week whilst it was fermenting. If you have a waxed top bottle, you should bloody keep hold of it!”

It’s a big change for two of the highest regarded breweries in the UK. “We have a great relationship with Marble,” explains Simon Webster, “and I was very keen that it shouldn't be affected so we said to Dom to take as long as they needed him before coming over to us.”

Dominic will join Thornbridge in the New Year. “I can't wait to start work at Thornbridge and be part of their plans for the future, and whilst it'll be hard graft, I'm looking forward to getting stuck in. The next few years will be amazing!”

Marble Brewery have built up a great range of quality beers and I’m sure they will continue to brew fantastic pints, grow and get even better. As for Thornbridge, I think Simon says it perfectly: “I can honestly say that if we would have had a free pick of any of the upcoming brewers in the country Dom would have been top of list!”

Best of luck to Dominic. He’s a great guy and will do great things at Thornbridge, just like he did at Marble.

Imagine Wayne Rooney left Manchester United and joined Chelsea... This is big news, right?

Beer with roast turkey and all the trimmings

Christmas Day. A day filled with presents, family, food and beer. A day when my favourite meal of the year is served. A day when an appropriate beer is needed to go with the meal. A day when it’s fine to open a bottle of something nice at 9am and carry on going straight through to passing out in the evening. A day to look forward to each year.

Breakfast is for coffee stout. Something tongue-coating and thick, rich and warming. Any Mikkeller Beer Geek will do the job and set you up for a day of fun. Between breakfast and dinner is a free-for-all before the turkey comes out and gets carved beside a vegetable mountain.

Roast turkey and all the trimmings is a fun challenge for a beer. What you want is something that’s full of flavour with enough booze to give body and sweetness; not too much bitterness as it’ll kill the vegetables and enhance their bitter edges; sweetness is key to buffer the richness of the food; a little spice or Christmassy depth of fruit cake work nicely with everything on the plate. I haven’t decided what’ll be on my dinner table yet but I’ve got a few choices...

Fuller’s Vintage 2010. A fruity-nuttiness plays with a dry bitterness and plenty of malt depth to deal with whatever your fork brings. Any other Vintage would also work very well but there’s something nice about having the 2010 before the year is out (this Vintage is also ready to go right now).

Chimay Blue. This is what I had last year and it’s a winner. Dried fruit with hints of festive spice and an uplifting carbonation. It works so well and the beer’s available in Waitrose so easy to get.

Adnams Sole Bay. A big, fancy bottle, handsome on the table and something a little different. I haven’t tried it yet but I’ve got one in waiting and it sounds like a great beer to try with dinner – Belgian-style, little spice, fruity esters, Nelson Sauvin hops.

Goose Island Sofie. One of the Belgian Goose Island beers, this is 6.5% and aged in wine barrels with orange peel so what you get is a dry, almost-tart beer with a big depth from the orange but also vanilla and body from the barrel it’s matured in. It’s the white wine alternative; it’s also a great beer.

Marble Chocolate Dubbel. What a beer. Spicy yeast, lots of chocolate, lots of body to chase down those vegetables. A richer, darker choice but a good one if you’ve got a bottle hanging around and fancy something different.

I don’t do beer with Christmas pudding. By that stage I’m more stuffed than the turkey was two hours earlier. Later in the day the bottles come back out again, but this year I have no idea what and I’ll be grabbing them depending on what I fancy.

Beers for the turkey: what have you got? And do you have a breakfast beer planned in?

The Golden Pints Beer Awards 2010

The 2009 Golden Pint Awards were a success so we have decided we'd have some fun with them again this year. It couldn't be simpler, just fill in your answers to the categories below. You can do this in the comments on someone’s blog post, write them in your own blog or email them to Andy or me and we’ll post them for you. Do it any time between now and New Year's Eve.

Feel free to do a runner-up and a winner for each category (or some honourable mentions) and link to blog posts if you’ve written about winners before. For the open category you can choose whatever you want: it could be bargain of the year, night out of the year, barman of the year, cooking lager of the year, best beer photo, worst beer, anything you want. If there are any categories that you don’t want to give a winner for then just skip it.

It’s a bit of fun to see out the end of 2010 with a few nominations of what’s been the best of beer from the previous year.

Best UK Draught Beer

Best UK Bottled Beer

Best Overseas Draught Beer

Best Overseas Bottled Beer

Best Overall Beer

Best Pumpclip or Label

Best UK Brewery

Best Overseas Brewery

Pub/Bar of the Year

Beer Festival of the Year

Supermarket of the Year

Independent Retailer of the Year

Online Retailer of the Year

Best Beer Book or Magazine

Best Beer Blog or Website

Best Beer Twitterer

Best Brewery Online

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year

In 2011 I’d Most Like To…

Open Category: You Choose

And thanks again to Rob from I Might Have a Glass of Beer for the logo.

Some Unusual Brews

I've written a piece for the Guardian’s Word of Mouth about some of the more unusual ingredients used in beer around the world, including jelly fish, saliva, weasel poo and tomatoes... Here’s the full post.

The piece was written as a double act to go with one about ancient ingredients and their current uses, which can be seen here.

What’s the most unusual ingredient you’ve tasted in a beer?!

Cooking with Beer: Imperial Chilli

This chilli is like all the other chillies out there, only it’s much better. It’s made with a bottle of imperial stout and loaded with fresh chilli peppers, including a couple of searing scotch bonnets, hence the Imperial name it’s been given.

Looking through recipes online, a number are cooked with cans of Budweiser (seriously) and occasionally a slug of bourbon. Taking this up a few levels of awesome led me straight to a chocolatey, full-on imperial stout aged in whisky barrels – BrewDog’s Paradox Isle of Arran (an extra step up would lead you to adding Tokyo*). The beer adds depth, richness and a sweetness that can’t be added from elsewhere in the food world. Just be careful not to get a stout that’s too bitter as the last thing you want is a loser-takes-all battle between Scoville and Lupulin.

No recipe for this, just a list of ingredients laid out around the kitchen like a flat-pack cupboard ready to be assembled without the instructions. The only important information: add the beer after the tomatoes but before the stock (you don’t want too much liquid and it’s better to have more beer) and cook it for a few hours in the oven, if you can. This serves about four, even though I was cooking for one.

Pork mince (about 400g). Two big onions. Finely chopped carrot. Four cloves of garlic. Lots of fresh chillis (I also added chopped scotch bonnet, plus a whole scotch bonnet to the pot). Paprika and smoked paprika. Turmeric and cumin. Salt, pepper and sugar/honey. Tomato puree. Tinned tomatoes (maybe two tins). A bottle of imperial stout (less a little for the chef). Beef stock. Kidney beans.

It’s worth cooking this for hours rather than minutes. I cooked mine for two hours, removed it from the oven for two hours and then cooked for another hour before serving. It was the most delicious chilli I’ve cooked which I can only credit to the beer adding a chocolate and booze depth that worked so well against the different levels of spice and heat. It also works really well with a beer but go for something dark and smooth like an oatmeal stout or a milk stout, something that perfectly fits the deep tomato and savoury flavours but has a cooling quality (I served mine with Meantime Chocolate but it didn't quite have enough body to hold it all together - the flavour worked well though).

Chilli: How do you make yours? Beer in it, with it, neither or both?

Cooking with Beer: Barley Wine Cupcakes

Snowed in and cabin fever approaching dangerously fast, I needed something to do before Lauren’s five-minute weather updates drove me to insanity (“It’s still snowing... It’s still snowing... It’s snowing a bit harder now... Oh, look at those icicles... Still snowing...”). I decided that I needed to occupy myself in the kitchen and to make it more interesting I tasked myself to cook with beer. A few inspiration-finding flicks through recipe books later and I was ready to bake some Barley Wine Cupcakes.

The idea was a combination of inspirations: rum and raisin, warming and rich winter beer, the rise in baking beer bloggers and brewers and the Hummingbird Bakery (who make cakes so good that I had one and immediately bought their cookery book). For the beer I chose Nils Oscar Barley Wine because it was pretty much all I had in the cupboard that would work... thankfully, it was the perfect choice given its raisin, booze and bread sweetness and a mellow green bitterness (I nearly used a bottle of BrewDog Paradox Isle of Arran and soaked the raisins in whisky, but then decided to use the Paradox elsewhere...). Something like Fuller’s Golden Pride or Robinson’s Old Tom would also work well.

Beer gets into the cakes in three ways: in the sponge, in the beer-soaked raisins and in the icing. It also leaves you half a glass, which is important. Drown a couple of handfuls of raisins in beer so that they are just submerged. Leave for around an hour and then drain well before adding to the cake mix. With the icing, just add it to loosen the mix and give a little extra beer kick.

The finished cakes were the best I’ve ever made, which is probably down to the Hummingbird recipe than the beer, but I think the beer still deserves credit. They are light and lovely with a delicious butter icing on top and loaded with little bursts of chewy-sweet raisin. The true test of a beer recipe is if Lauren (who hates the taste of beer) will eat it... she loved them. It’s easily adaptable to other beers, too, or you can leave out the raisins or replace them with something else (cherries, blueberries, chocolate). Stout (or, even better, imperial stout) is an ideal choice to use instead of barley wine and the recipe can be adapted to add cocoa; I’d like to try it with a sweetened cherry beer; a Belgian dubbel or quad would be good, I’m also tempted by a really fruity IPA but would want one that’s not too bitter.

Here’s the recipe, which is copied/adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook (makes 11/12):

Cupcakes

120g plain flour

140g caster sugar

1½ teaspoons baking powder

Pinch of salt

40g unsalted butter at room temp

20ml milk

100ml beer

1 egg

Drop vanilla extract

Two handfuls of beer-soaked raisins

Frosting

200g icing sugar

80g unsalted butter at room temp

25ml beer (maybe a little extra)

Drop vanilla extract

Oven to 170C. Mix the dry stuff with the butter in an electric mixer. Gradually pour in the milk and half the beer. Separately mix the egg, vanilla extract and the rest of the beer. Add this to the flour mixture and continue to beat together. Add the raisins, draining off the beer and discarding, and stir through. Spoon into baking cases until two-thirds full. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Once cooked, allow to cool before adding the frosting. To make the frosting, whisk (electrically, if possible) icing sugar and butter until well combined. Add vanilla extract and mix. Gradually add little splashes of the beer until the icing is the desired thickness (really thick) and then beat until light and fluffy, ‘at least 5 minutes’ the book says. Spread the icing on and EAT.

What other beer cakes could work?

This wasn’t all I made while snowed in and the rest of the time I was making Imperial Chilli which I’ll blog about soon... 

P.S. This is my 400th blog post! 

Hair of the Dog Adam and Moor JJJ IPA: Open It!

The final day of Open It! and two more bottles. The first is a survivor from San Francisco; Adam, a ‘Hearty Old World Ale’ by Hair of the Dog in Portland, which uses Northwest hops, pilsner malt and speciality malt, including some smoked malts. At 10% it pours like black petrol with a red hue. It’s so unexpectedly fruity that it brings a smile – raisins first, then a spritz of mango and passion fruit, then dark, finger-staining, overripe berries. That fruit chimes with the uplifting sweetness which runs through it but it’s shadowed by a deep, dark chocolate and charred wood background which really makes this beer. It’s intense, full on, interesting and different with each mouthful. The smoke adds a really interesting flavour to the whole thing while all that fruit cuts through it.

And the final Open It! beer is one I’ve been saving to see how time changes it. When I first opened a Moor JJJ IPA I described it as “not a pussy-footing, pretend imperial IPA. This beer is balls-out and in your face” with the “kiss-on-the-cheek, slap-on-the-bum of big malt and big hops that makes very bitter beers so drinkable.” Now it’s so very different. The hops have changed, they’ve blended in, they’ve left a little sticky, piney residue and a drying finish and instead of punching you in the face they now tickle your chin. This beer is no longer about the hops and it’s the malt that wins it with berries, jam, vanilla and oh-so smooth and easy drinking for its toe warming 9.5%. I wanted to see what it’d be like with some age to it but I didn’t expect such a large shift; it’s like a new beer. Given a choice I think I’ll go with the fresh one (I love hops), but on a cold Sunday night this one warmed me to the core and I enjoyed every greedy gulp. ‘Drink Moor Beer’ is something I intend to do next year.

That’s Open It! done and I think it was a success. So much of a success that we’ll plan another one in six months! Thanks to everyone who took part, I hope there were some good beers poured over the weekend.

Nectar Ales Black Xantus: Open It!

Some people are just nice and want to give you bottles of beer because they think you will like them. This happened to me when I was in San Francisco. A tweet arrived saying something along the lines of ‘I’ve left some bottles behind the bar for you.’ I never met Bill (I don’t think so, anyway, although I don’t remember much of SF as I was either completely wasted or disgustingly hungover with very little in the middle UPDATE: I did meet Bill! It was in City Beer Store where I was at my drunkest! Sorry Bill and thanks again), the guy who left them, but I’m incredibly grateful. The first was a Russian River Damnation 23 (an oaked tripel) and it was sensational. The second was Black Xantus by Nectar Ales.

It’s an 11% imperial stout with coffee, aged in bourbon barrels and hopped with US Fuggles, which is just my kind of thing. It pours a dark brown with a chucky head that you can’t help but dip your finger into. Immediately it bursts with bourbon and throws out vanilla ice cream, oak, coconut and milk chocolate. One mouthful and I’m in love (and lust): imagine an amazing chocolate milkshake with bourbon and you aren’t far off. It’s a smooth glugger, packed with chocolate, iced coffee, fruity and roasted coffee, lots of barrel and a little liquorice. It’s – here it comes – awesome.

Simple as that. I don’t know much about the brewery or the beer but it doesn’t matter. The beer is excellent and I’ve finally got around to drinking it. The joy of Open It! is that it isn’t necessarily about drinking the superstars or the rarities of the cellar (though this may well be a rare superstar...), it’s about drinking the beers you’ve been meaning to drink.

There’s still time for people to take part in Open It! and lots have already been drinking something good from their selection. Just look at twitter to see what people have been drinking.

Marble Decadence Kriek: Open It!

I’ve decided to make a weekend of Open It! and get through a few of the nice bottles which are in the beer cupboard. Following the action on twitter, it seems I’m not the only one taking full advantage and getting stuck into some of those beers which were gathering dust.

I’ve had the Marble Decadence Kriek for ages. It’s just been sitting in the cupboard with no real to-be-opened occasion hanging around its shoulders. It’s an 8.7% imperial stout blended with kriek, a sour cherry beer (I was told what kriek it was but my booze-addled brain has completely forgotten). They also do a straight-up Decadence, which I’ve got but haven’t opened, and one blended with Frambozen, which I had months ago. When I opened the Frambozen the cork nearly blew a hole in my kitchen ceiling, so I proceeded with caution with this, making sure eyes, teeth and lights were at safe distances.

It pours an oily black with a tan head flush with the pink of cherries. The kriek dominates to begin with to the point where eyes-closed this could just be a heavy-bodied sour beer, but if ever there was a case for a beer to be decanted then this is it, as over the space of a couple of hours it evolved and grew into something altogether different.

Starting with sour overkill, at one point I wrote that it tastes like cheap red wine (heavy on the tongue, sharply overpowering berries, tannic) but then it all changed and mellowed and the sour went in and the chocolate underneath came out. By the end of the bottle it’s chocolate, sour cherries and almonds in near-harmony, though still a little cherry-heavy for my taste. It won’t be for everyone, given the sharp tang running through it, but it’s an interesting beer. The true test: would I buy it again? Probably not (give me the kriek and the stout separately). I’d stick to the Special (which really is special) or try the new US IPA, Utility Special, which is currently available. Or the delicious Dobber.

Marble Decadence Kriek: I finally opened it! Now what should I have tomorrow... 

Open It! This Weekend

It’s almost time to Open It! This weekend, 3-5 December, is when we can get those special bottles and open them just for the sake of opening them. Andy and I have also managed to arrange for lots of people to be snowed in to enjoy it even more and to have an even better excuse to drink a beer from the stash...!

It’s simple: just choose a bottle you’ve been saving for ages and open it. Then tell others about it on twitter (use the #openit hashtag), blogs, facebook or even in real life. It’s a chance to drink those beers while they are (hopefully) still good because the last thing we want is to hoard a beer for years and then find out it’s way passed its best!

Open It! this weekend. Who's taking part?

Annoyingly, I am actually snowed in with no hope of reaching my special bottles, which live with my parents in their garage (I’ve called and made sure a few towels have been laid over them to keep them less cold). This means that one or two of my to-be-opened beers now won’t be opened and instead I need to pick a few others. Thankfully I’ve got a couple in the flat that I can finally release into my glass.

Feel free to use the logo in any blog posts you want to post. It was designed by Richard from myBrewerytap. If you are snowed in and need beer then that’s the place to go!