This week I went to a meet the brewer event for the Wetherspoon’s International Real Ale Festival which starts in April. Say what you want about Wetherspoons, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives and I am particularly excited about this year’s selection of 50 beers. We will see Goose Island’s Honkers Ale, Maui Brewing’s CoCoNut Porter (a 5% version), Zulu Blonde from Zululand Brewing and Val-Dieu Abbaye Blonde. There are also many ‘Spoons specials and there will be a lot of American hops present in the beers. It should be good one.

After this I went to the London Drinker Beer and Cider Festival where I met up with my mate Matt. The festival is in the Camden Centre in the shadow of the hauntingly beautiful Kings Cross Station. This is always a busy event and while the centre is good for a festival (high ceilings, square hall, side bar), perhaps they have outgrown themselves… Anyway, it’s all about the beer. In the main hall is the UK stuff and then to the side there is a very decent selection of European bottles and draught.

I started on the British cask beer, as I promised myself I would. Crouch Vale Amarillo, a 5% pale ale full of gorgeous Amarillo, was fruity and light and absolutely delicious. We had some Thornbridge Jaipur, of course (it’s impossible to resist), then the new Fuller’s special, Bengal Lancer, an IPA with that typical Fuller’s spicy marmalade with a top note of lemons and fresh jam and a kick of pepper. Between us, the rest of the evening included, in alphabetical order: An okay half of Acorn Motueka IPA; a lemony Art Brew Hip Hop Bobek; Brodies Special which was a very nice, dry-finishing bitter which actually was bitter (as opposed to those sorry boring brown beers); Brodies Amarilla had lots of fruity hop flavour wasn’t quite as good as the wonderful Crouch Vale; Cheddar Goats Leap, a decent IPA with a nice biting hop finish; Cliff Quay Black Jack Porter which smelt and tasted exactly like black jack chewy sweets and that’s not a good thing; Gales Prize Old Ale, which Matt declared the best beer of the night, was big and fruity, complex but not complicated and with that teasing hint of sour cherry beneath; Denton’s Glory from Hornbeam was a very nice pale ale with a super-dry finish and a good find for the night; Naylors Magnum was a tasty drop, fruity and with a nice bready sweetness; and, Redemption’s Urban Dusk was an interesting dark amber colour with a huge coffee nose and a light body, interesting and intriguing and great to try something from this new London brewery. We also had a couple from the bottle bar too, just to finish us off. Hanssens Oudbeitje and something from De Molen, I don’t remember what but it was a fantastic stout.

London Drinker is a very good festival, although perhaps over-busy which detracts somewhat (squeezing through a packed hall of men to get a half is not particularly fun). The good thing about this festival, for me, was drinking some new beers from London – Brodies, Fuller’s and Redemption, plus choices from Sambrook’s and Twickenham. With a few new breweries on the way, and some new or improved pubs, things are looking good in London right now.

The beer which sparked off this post was BrewDog’s new Hardcore IPA, which is 9.2% and hopped to hell. I had a kegged version of it shortly after returning from California where I drank buckets of cold, kegged IPAs. The Hardcore was very good and the hops benefitted from that little push of carbonation from the keg. In the UK this is rare on two counts: firstly, a 9.2% beer, secondly, a craft beer from the keg – few places serve keg craft beer as the focus is always on cask ales. The reputation is that British beer is served warm which, of course, is a fallacy, and they are served at the perfectly cooled cellar temperature (which does sound like marketing talk for a bit warm, I must admit…). With Hardcore I noticed the difference which temperature makes. The first few mouthfuls were great, it’s full bodied and intensely hoppy, while still retaining lots of sticky tropical fruit flavour, but towards the end of the glass, as it naturally warmed, it got more hardcore – the booze was more in-your-face and the hops more up-your-nose-and-down-your-throat obvious. In the US this wouldn’t be a problem as the beers are served colder so there remains a lightness to them, in spite of their strength. So the beer benefited from the keg but was let down a little by the temperature. Then we had the same beer poured from the bottle and it had a zesty lightness to it, more fruit, less hard-hitting and was more delicious. If there had been a cask of it on as well then it really would’ve been interesting to see the difference that makes.

Most craft beers in the UK are cask conditioned ales. They are 3.5%-5.5% and hand-pulled into a pint glass. They come out at cellar temperature and are ready to go. That is how these beers should be drunk. Very few beers which are good from the cask, in my opinion, are equally good from the bottle – something is lost in the change of dispense. But then there are the beers which benefit from the bottle and improve because of it: Belgian beers with the bottle-conditioning gently working away; vintage beers suited to cellaring; geuze which opens with a satisfying cork fizz-pop (a bit of beer theatre).

The dispense and temperature of a beer changes the experience of it. At the Great British Beer Festival in August there are always casks of US beer, but they are served at cellar temperature or just warmer and are not juiced with extra carbonation. Some work very well, others would benefit from being kegged (which isn’t an option at a CAMRA beer festival). Conversely, in California I had a taste of a few UK ales which were cold and kegged and bloody awful. The choice of dispense is very important to get the best from a beer. Some beers are just better poured colder from the keg while others are made special by the cask-conditioning and being hand-pulled into a pint mug. And after drinking Ten Fidy I’m convinced that everything in a can is wonderful.

How important is the dispense of a beer for you? How often have you compared beer from keg, cask, can or bottle and seen differences? And temperature (which could easily get its own post)… how important is that to you?

I notice it most when I’m out drinking and I’ll get to a point where I just need something sharp and different to kick my tastebuds back into shape. Sour beers can be remarkably good at drawing a line under what’s gone before and getting you ready for the next beer. They are also damn tasty. My love for them is in their woody-oaky, near-savoury quality, in the sprightly lift, the puckering finish, and in a certain mystery which they hold. I also find them Romantic, harking back to an old age of brewing when most beer would’ve been fermented with these wild yeasts.

Side-stepping on from this, in a round-a-bout way, I think there’s a natural progression to beer drinking, which I’ve noticed recently. I think it goes like this: lager, ale, dark ale, strong ale, imperial stout, big IPAs, sours, session beer and lager. It’s a scale from early drinking upwards, moving through levels of appreciation and thirst and almost finishing full circle. This is certainly how my taste has developed and I know that others, particularly in the UK where beer is based around the pub, have followed a similar track. There’s always that first beer which moves you on, the first pint of cask ale, then the dark beer that’s fruity and full bodied, then you risk a stronger beer, maybe a bottle of something Belgian, then you see the imperial stouts, then you discover hops and then sours… and so on. Each level is a progression from the next until a fuller appreciation of the simple things is reached.

Has anyone else noticed this? What has your progression been? Where are you now?

A tasted tray at Bear Republic

I’m back from the US. What a week that was – I had the best time! So, where do I begin…?

Let’s refrain from a blow-by-blow re-cap of the week. I’m sure you don’t need to hear about the details of my sapping jet lag, the hangovers, the miles of walking which pretty much wore my Converse through because I didn’t trust the MUNI, the moment I broke my girlfriend’s camera when I sat on it in City Beer Store, the stressful half hour walking from Anchor Brewery to Magnolia when I thought I was about to wipe my blackberry or the sickening volume of burgers I ate… What I should talk about is the beer, and boy was there a lot of great beer.

The two ‘big finds’ for me were Marin Brewery and Drakes. I’d only heard the names before I went over there but now they will be among the breweries I recommend to anyone who goes to California. Marin’s brewpub is a great place with the brewery on your left as you walk in, filling the bar with the smell of wort and fresh hops. The food was very good and the beer exceptional. Their Point Reyes Porter was one of the best beers I had on the whole trip (and a relatively modest 6.1%), so richly full of flavour and totally delicious, their Grand funk was sherried and tickled the tongue with sourness and their IPAs are just flat-out great. Drakes grabbed me with their pale ale, bear-hugged me with their barley wine and then full-on snogged me with their double IPAs – I want more of their beers.

The West Coast is dangerously unbalanced with big-hitting hops so it’s understandable that I had a lot of Double IPAs. Ballast Point’s Dorado was seriously good and my favourite of the DIPA fest in Hayward. I had Pliny the Younger but it was my first beer of a very bad jet lag-worsened hangover, drank outside, from a tall, thin glass and I can barely remember it. It’s a damn shame I didn’t get to try it again but so many people filled growlers at the brewery to ship across the US or to sell on ebay (which is not cool). 21^st Amendment’s Hop Crisis was another excellent beer, especially straight from the brewpub. After DIPAs I went to drink Alesmith and their IPA is stunning and the Barrel Aged Speedway Stout really was something special.

The Triple Rock Sour Fest was a great event. Russian River Supplication was incredible (Temptation, which wasn’t at Triple Rock, was equally fantastic and wonderfully more-ish). Valley’s Bill Brand-bic, Ithaca Brute, Cascade Kriek and Triple Rock’s Sour Stone all stood out are super sours and my eyes have been opened further to the complete joys of this style of beer.

Then the beers I drank the most of. Pliny the Elder, of course, was fantastic. It was the first beer I had when I landed. The best pint was in the Toronado which poured the most deliciously opaque orange and never cleared. It was thick and fruity, sweet and bitter, and so drinkable. But for me, the best beer of the week, and the one I’d want to drink most of, was Bear Republic’s Racer 5. I just love it. I had a few pints and all of them were great. The best was the last beer of my week, in The Toad in the Hole (a great pub in Santa Rosa – drink there!), after a fantastic night drinking in Russian River, and the beer was full of tropical fruit, mango, peaches, apricots and big juicy hops. It is my current idea of beer perfection and I drank it in a fantastic place surrounded by happy, beer-loving people (cheers Paul, Mario, Ken, Ali and Joe!)

For the last week I’ve had some of the best beer of my life. San Francisco Beer Week is an insane cornucopia of beer events, liberally spread around the city and beyond. The atmosphere is the best I’ve experienced and I met so many great people. Now I just need to try and save very, very hard to try and make it back next year.

I’m sure you can expect the next few posts to also feature my US sojourn.

So far I’ve got a loose itinerary and I’ve made a map of the places to visit, so I’ve crossed off the main bars and breweries. I intend to go to the DIPA festival and the Sour Fest at Triple Rock (which is doubling up as a Hop Press event where a few of us will be hanging out – come and say hi!). I’m also doing the Anchor tour where I will attempt to bathe in a FV of Foghorn. The first bar on the first night will be the Toronado where I’ll probably pass out with a combination of travel-exhaustion, jet lag and sheer excitement at seeing so many new beers (it’s my first time drinking in the US and almost none of the beers that’ll be there can be found in the UK). I’ll be hanging out in City Beer Store a lot and I might even see some of the tourist sites, if I can fit them in around the bars. I should watch the Superbowl, although the whole time I’ll be wishing it was the World Series instead (I love baseball; I don’t get American football, what’s with all the stopping, can’t they just play?!). I’ll be bringing some great bottles of British beer and hopefully I’ll get a chance to share a few. Oh, and tipping… what’s the deal with that? I have to buy my beer and then give the server a little extra for doing their job?

Beyond the beer… Best breakfast? Best burger? Best steak? Best place to see the Golden Gate Bridge from?

You see, amazingly good beers which give you an experience that you’ll remember for a long time are difficult to step back from to return to normal drinking. I’ve had this a few times. A cask-fresh pint of Thornbridge Jaipur from the brewery pub is just one of the best things there is. Following this I wanted every hand-pulled pint to have the same effect on me. It didn’t and that was disheartening. The same happened with Pliny the Elder. I drank the beer and all of a sudden my beer expectations loosened their shackles and took a huge leap forward, laughing back over its shoulder at me. I had to readjust the radar and pull everything back in.

I’ve had some decent pints in the pub recently. They were good but the whole time I was comparing them to some other mythical beer I wanted to be drinking or just another that I know is great. It’s the same with bottles – I open them, I drink them, some leave me unimpressed, leave me wanting more, wanting something else. In my mind I’ve even got to the point where I’m expecting beers to be boring before I even try them – that’s the worst thing.

It’s difficult to shift expectations; I had to do it at a lager tasting I went to in October. My taste-spectrum had to be dramatically narrowed before I started to enjoy the beers for what they were – delicious, refreshing lagers in which the smallest of differences became hugely important (a drier hop finish, a citrus lift, a fuller body).

Beer is always a hopeful search for the good. Maybe it’s just part of life that we want what we haven’t got, maybe I’m just difficult to please, but I want my beer to be better and better every time. I still appreciate beer for what it is, but there’s always a little niggling feeling telling me to try something else, voraciously searching for the next amazing experience. I need to rein it in a bit or I’ll just get disappointed. I need to sit back, open a beer and just drink it.

Has anyone else had this? A need for better and better beers all the time? It’s an expensive habit.

In the last few weeks I’ve had some talkative beers: Westvleteren 12, Tactical Nuclear Penguin and Pete Brown’s Calcutta IPA, the beer at the heart of the fantastic Hops and Glory. These are not just any beers, these are special beers. Having them in your glass is a tangible experience; there’s excitement to them, delicate underlying tension, a sense of wonder. These feelings come from the rareness, history, age or the story (of the actual beer or a personal story of your own) of the beer.

Westvleteren 12 is ranked on RateBeer (and that other rating site…) as the best beer in the world. Tactical Nuclear Penguin is the current strongest (I think… is that 40% one out yet?). The Calcutta IPA is uniquely tied up with a great story (the 200-year history and the two-year history) and it’s been in a cask for two years. When you drink these they come with added involvement.

For me, the best thing about drinking the Westleteren is the way it makes people talk. It pulls out so many different questions about personal experience, rating experiences and the rating process. It makes you think about what being the best means, how it becomes the best and how it stays there. Then there’s how rarity affects experience and location. How it’d only be fair to drink it blind but it’s the sort of beer that you want to know what you are drinking. You can be consumed in conversation while drinking through the bottle, and I like that a lot.

Calcutta IPA grabs you with the history side of things, then it pulls you in through Hops and Glory, then you get to taste it and it’s this pale, sherried, fruity-sharp golden elixir. Unlike anything I’ve had before. It makes you think about the history of beer, what it would’ve been like in India all those years ago, how aging affects beer.

And Tactical Nuclear Penguin. When this was released the internet lit up with talk about it. People all over the world suddenly knew exactly who BrewDog are. Beyond that it opens up debate about when beer is not a beer, how processes affect beer, and then makes you think about what beer is and what it can possibly be. I think this beer is fantastic, intense, insane. It’s one that demands sharing because of its super-strength and is made to be talked about. It’s also great as dessert. Here’s a video of me drinking the Penguin, where I bring up some of these points and just enjoy drinking the beer for what it is.

I think beers which have this level of interest to them are fantastic and it adds so much extra to the experience of drinking. That alone makes them great beers, regardless of the taste. There aren’t many which can really do it.

Which beers have you had which made you talk? And why did they make you talk?

There is something so effortlessly natural about the combination of beer and food. Yet sadly this often means a floppy slice of pizza in one hand and a bottle of lager in another. Or worse, a handful of peanuts. Or cheese coated nachos. Not that there’s anything wrong with pizza, peanuts or cheese covered nachos, of course, it’s just that, well, beer deserves more.

Pairing your beer glass with your lunch is easy and fun. Don’t be afraid to get it wrong; just eat your lunch and then finish your beer. Nothing wrong with that. For the basics, look through a few books: Garrett Oliver’s Brewmaster’s Table is the bible on this stuff, Sam Calagione and Marnie Old’s He Said Beer She Said Wine is really comprehensive and fun, Ben McFarland’s World’s Best Beers has a great food section and Randy Mosher’s Tasting Beer has some great advice. This post is an over view of why beer is great with food. It looks at the particular qualities of beer and why it works so well.

I won’t open up a ‘beer vs wine at the dinner table’ debate because I think we all know who would win. It’s simple. Beer kicks wine’s ass. For the pure depth and spectrum of flavour, the range of styles and the range of alcohol strength, beer is the winner. Beer is the perfect partner for literally anything, and it’s not just because it tastes great; it does specific jobs and it plays tricks that wine can’t do…

Carbonation lifts the palate, it can sweep in, lift the flavour off your tongue and leave you refreshed and ready for the next mouthful. Think spicy food, think fatty or fried food, think heavy and rich desserts.

Hops provide a kick of bitterness to match bitterness in food. They also slide through richness and help to balance flavours. Vegetables and charred meat are great with earthy-fruity hops; look at stouts or hearty Belgian dubbels. Bitterness also enhances and pronounces other flavours. But different types of hops and bitterness work with different types of spice and fragrance. A lot of people cheer on chili or curry and IPA but heed this warning: hops amplify heat. That sizzling hot curry is leaving a tingle on your lips so don’t refresh yourself with a rip-roaring IPA, it’s like rubbing a grazed knee with salt. Some IPAs are very good with spice, it just takes a little care to get it right: Worthington White Shield with medium curries is super, zesty pale ales like Stone’s and Sierra Nevada’s are great with Thai food, hoppy brown ales or dark lager with chili is fantastic. If you are a bit delicate on the spice-front then don’t pair a pant-tearing chili with a tongue-splitting IPA or the explosion will knock your socks off.

Wine is acidic, but not sour. Beer can be both. The sourness in beer is made by yeasts which are wine’s kryptonite. Add this sharpness to the savoury and rustic edge of lambics, krieks and gueuze and you get something perfect for many foods. Rich food, seafood, pates, goats’ cheese, chocolate with sweetened krieks… The sour fizz is also similar to Champagne so it’s a perfect palate arouser.

Roasted flavours are something you won’t find in wine. At least not to the same level and depth as in beer. These compliment the char of grilled meat, they soften sharpness (particularly if the beer is smoky), they contrast the salinity and caress the sweetness of rich fish. Big-up the roastiness into an Imperial-sized stout and it’s dessert time. A glass of wine can’t do any of this.

But it’s the simple things that work best. Pizza and lager? No. You can do better than that. Try pizza with dark lager. Spaghetti with tomato-based sauce with a smoky porter or a dubbel. A hoppy, fruity pale ale with fish and chips. Pretty much anything you damn well like with a fat, juicy burger. A cold, crisp lager with spicy food (nothing cuts richness and spice like a good lager). Barley wine and blue cheese, in-your-face IPA with mature cheddar, spicy Belgian blondes with soft, creamy cheese. Imperial stout or sweet cherry beer with chocolate.

It’s also an ingredient, if you don’t mind opening a bottle and not drinking it. Stout ice cream is awesome, beer cakes, panna cotta is great, stews, carbonnades, breads, salad dressings (just put a couple of drops in with oil and vinegar), moules mariniere. Plus using beer as an ingredient is a natural bridge for the flavours to work together when you want to drink while eating.

I hope this serves as a basic look at how and why beer works with different foods. Cook some food, think about what with provide great balance (this could be a complimentary flavour or a contrasting one) and find a beer which offers that. If you aren’t sure then open a couple of bottles and try them both. There are no rules, just give it a whirl. Beer and food are natural accomplices and it’s great fun trying to find good matches (it’s often the unplanned ones which work best, too!). So next time you sit down to eat, and think to yourself, ‘I’ll have a beer when I’m finished’, re-wind a little, go to the fridge and open something up.

And I’m always interested in new beer and food pairings, so if you’ve got anything great that I really must try then let me know!

For example, take a pint of hoppy, session pale ale in the pub. It was a hot day, the beer was cool and refreshing, clean, fruity and it really hit the spot. Overall a great beer (4.0 if you are rating). Then take a bottle of 10% imperial stout. It was a cold day, the beer’s full body, richly roasted flavour and deep aromas were just what you wanted to drink. Another great beer, perfect for the moment (another 4.0). Nothing unusual with these. But imagine you’d just been given a pay rise then either beer will likely have tasted even better and you’d have given a 4.2; if your dog had just died then maybe they’re a 3.6. The moment has changed, your emotional state has changed, and your memory and experience of the beer after the drinking changes.

They are also two wildly different beers rated with the same score (if you aren’t rating then each will have given you the same level of enjoyment). To allow this there must be some kind of high-power cognitive process which can scan back and forth over your drinking past and slide the beer you are currently drinking in with the rest of them. But it’s not simply the taste which affects your scoring: It’s about the kind of day you’ve had, it’s where you are, it’s who you are with, it’s what you feel like drinking right now.

There is no control over what’s outside the glass affecting what’s inside. We are not emotionally-dead, beer-drinking robots (in the main) and life is there too. Open that bottle of famed IPA on your own and it’s a 3.9. Open it with a couple of friends, talk about it, share it, shout out random adjectives and flavours, compare it to others which are similar, say how much you enjoy it, score it 4.2. Sharing beer allows you to attach the moment to the experience of the beer. If you were alone then there’s very little enjoyment to be had in comparison to being in a bar, pouring a few mouthfuls for a group of thirsty beer-lovers. Or maybe you are at a wedding, a birthday party, any kind of special occasion… Add the place and the people you were with to the beer and you get something where you can taste the memory, creating something much more lasting than a few scribbles in a notebook.

This is not a limiting factor of beer rating, this is about the way life folds itself into our beer drinking, and it’s important. In fact, I care as much about where you were drinking it, who you were with and what mood you were in as I care about the sensory experience you had. I’ve had a lot of good beers and the ones I’ve shared, the ones I’ve had in unfamiliar locations or on special occasions – with very few exceptions – are the ones I remember most vividly. The way we feel changes the way we taste, or at least it changes the way we appreciate taste. The fun of rating beer (or writing/talking about beer) is that it means something more than just a liquid in a glass and we are sharing our experiences with others. It’s ultimately the search for the next great beer and it needs the right moment to make it work: beer and life complement each other.

Initially, I’m setting out on a one year rating mission to try and score every unique beer which I drink. But why start now? Well, I want to see exactly what I drink over a year, I want to be able to track my drinking, I want to see the beers I loved and the ones I didn’t, I want to see the variety of beer I drink, the quality of beers. Basically, I want to be able to look back at the end of the year and see my drinking from a quantitative view-point, rather than just a qualitative one from memory and pencil scribbles in a note book.

And this is a good year for me to start doing it. I’m going to San Francisco and Santa Rosa in February to drink (I’ll be there for Beer Week and definitely there for certain Russian River releases), I’ll be travelling around the UK more and I’ll have access to a lot more, and different, beers at home. I also want to see if I become obsessed with trying as many new beers as possible just to raise my total rates! Essentially, it’ll be somewhere to permanently store an e-version of my tasting notes that I can easily browse through whenever I want, and others can look through it too.

And this all gets me thinking… why did you get in to rating beer? What motivated you to switch from just a drinker into someone who rates? And tell me, is the best beer you’ve ever had the one which you have given the highest score to?

This is my rating profile. If you go on before January 2010 then you might not see any action but soon after this’ll start to increase. I started rating from Christmas Eve but haven’t put anything in yet. Anyway, Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to all – eat well, drink very well and I’ll see you in 2010!