London called once more

Great British Beer Festival 2016 Pint

Last week, the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) was held in London’s Kensington Olympia. This was my fifth consecutive GBBF. It’s not quite the exploits of Michael Phelps and Steve Redgrave but it still makes me smile. It has become firmly an annual jaunt over to London.

GBBF 2016 had a slightly different feel to it over previous years. It seemed as there were one or two fewer brewery bars. Some big brewers like Shephard Neame relegated its sole beer (Spitfire) at the festival to a shared bar, which in the grand scheme of things is no big loss. The festival certainly had a more corporate feel to it, if by corporate one means organised.  It felt more spacious than previous years. This is more space on top of what is already the cavernous environment that is the Kensington Olympia venue. There was a big push by CAMRA to sign up new members. Some had the air of chuggers about them, keen to push the £20 Wetherspoon vouchers above all else. Corporate hospitality featured also with groups given guided tours, tastings etc. This is becoming the norm it seems at large festivals these days.

Olympia

The organisers managed to invoke the ire of many a beer geek, who are known for their carefree attitude, by moving the announcement of the Champion Beer of Britain from the event itself to a separate awards dinner. This didn’t go down well at the festival and contributed to a fairly muted atmosphere during the afternoon of the trade day. However, many a beer writer quickly jettisoned his/her umbrage as the American Cask Bar opened around that time.

The presence of international beers at GBBF is always contentious. Yes it’s sad to see so many beer people crowded around the American beer bar. Then again the U.S. Brewer’s Association put in a lot of work to make sure the beers present are interesting, eclectic and first-rate. What’s more is that they pay tribute (except for the international bottle bar) to cask ale. They also throw in appearances by brewers or others connected with the breweries. It’s no wonder this bar’s popularity will continue, they put in a serious effort to make it exciting. Unfortunately, two Vermont breweries were due to be there but their beers missed the shipping deadline. For the record, the U.S. beers I tried were Ziggy Stardust (Boulder Beer Co.), Daydream IPA (Santiam Brewing); Hop Hunter IPA (Sierra Nevada); and Spruce Tip Session Ale (Urban Farm Fermentory).

Anyway back to the Champion Beer of Britain. I was expecting some ardent CAMRA folk to have picketed the dinner. Did it happen? I don’t know but then again coverage of the actual awards dinner on twitter was poor. There seemed to be only two people tweeting from the event. I was keeping an eye on proceedings more out of curiosity to see if any of the beers I had tried during the first day made the final three.

Binghams Brewery Vanilla Stout

As luck would have it, my brother Eoin had a pint of Binghams Vanilla Stout in front of him. It was his beer for the road. That was probably the last pint of it (or close to it) sold at the festival during the rest of the week – the Supreme Champion Beer of Britain being limited to third or half-pint pours. Thankfully, I had tried it earlier because it would’ve made the brother’s smugness all the more unbearable. The beer was smooth, silky with a pleasant vanilla hit – reminiscent of a quality chocolate truffle. Whilst there was a hint of sweetness in it, the vanilla didn’t overpower the character of this beer. It was well-balanced and drinkable.

Old Dairy Snow Top

This year’s three overall medallists would be even more enjoyable when the weather gets colder. It was also the first time a speciality beer won the overall prize and no doubt will be an answer in many a future CAMRA themed table quiz.  There was obviously a preference amongst the judges for darker beers this year. Snow Top by Old Dairy, a 6% abv (plenty of spice, winter fruits on the nose, warming and toasty) took silver and Tring’s Death or Glory, a 7.2% abv barley wine (not overly sweet, dark fruits, marmalade, and spice) taking home the bronze.

Tring Death Or Glory

There were some excellent stouts and porters on offer. Particular highlights for me were Crafty Stoat (Wibblers); Old Growler (Nethergate); Boss Black (Boss); Lambeth Walk (By the Horns); and Parabellum Milk Stout (Gun); Triple Chocoholic (Saltaire); and Chocolate Marble (Marble). Speaking of Marble, I enjoyed its lemony Earl Grey IPA and thought Lagonda IPA deserved better than bronze in the golden ale category. Other pale and IPAs worth a shout out include Nova (Bristol Beer Factory); Nor’ Hop (Moor Beer); Revelation (Dark Star); Magus (Durham); 77 (Heavy Industry); and Gyle 1500 (Flowerpots), although it’s billed as a red ale, given its hop profile it can pass somewhat as a red IPA. In case you’re wondering, no I did not forget to sample some mild and yes, I did try Fullers annual Vintage release. The 2016 version had plenty of the expectant vinuous notes, it could do with a bit more ageing.

A nice touch at the festival was to be found just inside the front door. Too often London breweries were underrepresented at the festival. This was a shame because there’s some amazing things happening in the city’s local beer scene. London Beer City grew up in and around GBBF and some might say, in response to it. London is definitely a front line in the craft versus real ale battle. Thankfully, the Real Ale in a Bottle bar returned to GBBF this year with offerings (all bottle conditioned) from Kernel, Redemption, Orbit, Partizan and others. Giving myself a break from the cask offerings, I enjoyed Weird Beard’s Saison 14. It hit all the right notes, with plenty of esters and leather in the flavour. The carbonation levels were spot on and set me up nicely for more beer tasting. I must say that Weird Beard is certainly a brewery that’s getting better both in terms of quality and consistency.

Earlier I mentioned that there seemed to be fewer brewery bars at the festival. There was an especially welcome new one. Tiny Rebel has gone from strength to strength since winning the Supreme Champion Beer of Britain accolade last year for Cwtch (still tasting great). Of course, they made a name for themselves well before winning the title but the brewery appears to have stepped up a gear.

Tiny Rebel Great British Beer Festival

The brewery was out in force at the festival and besides the likes of Fubar and Hadouken, it had Hank, a wonderful session pale ale and Juicy, which as its name suggests was a vibrant fruity all-rounder. As you probably guessed, I spent a fair bit of time at the Tiny Rebel bar, enjoying those beers mentioned, along with their black IPA Loki. It pleasantly avoided even the slightest hints of dark roast and opting to focus on bitter citrus notes. Finally, I could not but try Stay Puft, a 5.2% marshmallow stout. I was a little uncertain of this beer when I first tried it and on the second day, I bit the bullet and tried it again. I admit that this beer grew on me.  It wasn’t overly sweet even though that’s fear elicited by its name and description. The best description would be of a thick and creamy milk(shake) stout. Interesting and was worth having a pint of it.

Great British Beer Festival 2016 Pint

All in all, it was a good festival. More could be done to improve it. There was a lack of atmosphere on the first day that continued into the afternoon of the second day. The venue’s cavernous and could do with a bit of music. Perhaps various buskers dotted around the venue, not just on the stage. The food offering was the best yet. Talk already started of next year’s trip to GBBF 2017.

First, I have the Irish Craft Beer Festival to look forward to. It returns to the RDS on 8th to 10th September. Tickets, opening times and event information can be found here: http://www.irishcraftbeerfestival.ie/

 

 

 

World Press Freedom Day in Brooklyn and elsewhere

Today is World Press Freedom Day, a United Nations backed initiative to mark freedom of press and calls on all governments to respect free speech and expressionism. Sadly in 2015, attacks are still taking place on members of the fourth, and increasingly on the fifth, estate. These rights must be continued to be protected today as much as people fought for them in years past.

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We should fully appreciate the risk journalists take in covering stories. Veronica Guerin will long live in the Irish consciousness and there’s a wonderful tribute to her in the Newseum in Washington, DC. Journalists are daily taking risks to draw our attention to issues that are occurring long from our doorsteps.

Brooklyn Brewery, a member of the Class of ’88 craft beer start-ups, is a company that actively recognises this. It’s hardly surprising given that co-founder Steve Hindy was one-time Middle East correspondent for Associated Press in the early 1980s. It was during this time that he picked up the home-brewing bug. It was a popular pastime amongst diplomats based in dry countries. I’ve come across Irish engineers based in Saudi Arabia who are keen Brewers because what else would they drink. Apparently they’ve become quite adept at in their words “converting” non-alcoholic beers into sometime supposedly passable.

Back in the US, home-brewing eventually led to Hindy to giving up the journalism game and start the brewery with Brooklyn neighbour Tom Potter. The brewery’s growth is an interesting story, including being criticised for contract brewing, Milton Glaser, launching Sierra Nevada in New York and giving Garrett Oliver a vehicle to unleash his talent on a global scale. These are covered in two books by Hindy, Beer School (with Tom Potter) and The Craft Beer Revolution. The latter is also Hindy’s take on the craft beer revolution and includes a number of interesting insights into the personalities, events and controversies that marked the last 40 years of the US craft brewing era.

He may no longer be a journalist but Hindy still tries to do his bit. He’s been known to give talks on the role of foreign correspondents and participate in charity and other fund-raising initiatives. For example, he hosts War Correspondents at the Brooklyn Brewery. It’s an annual series of talks to raise money for RISC (Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues), which provides free advanced first aid training to independent conflict reporters, photographers and filmmakers.

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So for this World Press Freedom Day, I’ll raise a glass to journalists everywhere (even if I don’t always agree with what some of you write) with an appropriate beer for the occasion. What else could it be but Brooklyn Lager, a beer that people may overlook today but it helped win over a lot of people to craft beer. I even remember trying it a good few years back in a dingy bar inside New York’s Penn Station.

The beer pours polished copper. It has light floral and lemon notes on the nose. The flavour is earthy and herbal. Grassy notes are kept to a minimum. There’s healthy dose of bitterness both on tasting and in the finish. The malt backbone keeps the bitterness from getting away from itself. It’s a beer that’s crying out to have with a good club sandwich and chips.

For the rest of July the outlook is bitter

The Porterhouse is back with its latest festival. This time it’s the IPA Festival, which runs over ten days in July starting on Thursday. With predictions of a heat wave on the way, what could be beer than a festival celebrating pale ales and IPAs.

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The festival will see many familiar beers putting in an appearance on their rolling bank of guest taps such as the erstwhile citra-packed Torpedo from Sierra Nevada, its archetypal Pale Ale and Ruthless Rye. Founders’ All day IPA, Centennial IPA and its Pale Ale will be there, along with Flying Dog’s Pale Ale and Snakedog IPA. England will be represented by Camden Town Brewery and Thornbridge. Camden, like Founders has been making inroads into the Irish drinking-scene in recent months and its Pale Ale will be served. Derbyshire’s Thornbridge will be represented by its black IPA Wild Raven, the stunning Jaipur, the Nelson Sauvin infused Kipling and Chiron, which is wonderful when fresh. Festival goers can also expect to taste Twin Peals, its collaboration brew with Sierra Nevada. Rumours are circulating that Hippocrates’ Purge, a summer ale with elderflower and Spanish orange blossom honey will be available on cask. Italy will be represented by much-acclaimed Birra del Borgo (My Antonia anyone?) and ReAle will be putting in an appearance. Irish variants will consist of Eight Degrees’ Full Irish (in the running for Beoir beer of the year) and Galway Hooker.

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Some of the most eagerly awaited beers will be from Yorkshire’s Magic Rock Brewing brewer of the excellent Cannonball (think pine, tropical fruits and some sweetness), their flagship IPA but also look out for their double IPA (Human Cannonball) and triple IPA Un-human Cannonball, which is released annually. During the Porterhouse festival, customers can experience the following beers from Magic Rock Brewery on cask: Ringmaster (3.9% original pale ale); Carnival (4.3%, golden summer ale); and Great Alphonso (5.6% Mango pale ale).

It wouldn’t be a Porterhouse festival without them launching a special brew. However, Dublin Pale Ale is not just a festival special but a new regular offering for their five Irish bars and their London and New York outlets.  It’s styled as an “Irish-style pale ale” (one of those descriptors that provokes debate amongst beer geeks). So what’s it like?

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Dublin Pale Ale pours clean and clear copper, an appearance that is very much at home in The Porterhouse Temple Bar. It’s earthy with light citrus notes on the nose. The carbonation is typical of kegged pale ales. It’s in the taste and the finish that this beer gets started. Notes of orange and lemon meld into a dry biscuit and an assertive bitter finish. At 4.2% this would be a good session full-bodied beer for hopheads looking for an Irish bitter equivalent of an All Day IPA (minus the pine). This beer is the sibling of Hophead, which is described as a beer “beyond the pale” and hopped with Cascade and Centennial. Dublin Pale Ale, however, is billed as a beer “within the pale” (even though it’s going to be available across the group) and it’s hopped with European varieties, namely Styrian Goldings and the high-alpha acid beast that is Admiral. Hopefully they’ll go on to produce a cask version of this beer.

No doubt this festival will prove popular. Let’s face it hoppy beers sell. I have no doubt the new beers on offer will be in high demand but also the festival will give us the opportunity to be reacquainted with old-favourites as fresh as possible.

 

Super Bowl Sunday picking a winner

This is one of those in the sporting calendar which has a lot of traditions attached to it. The FA Cup Final used to have some of it, when we’d hear about how many kettles were boiling and toilets flushing at halftime. I have never experienced “Super Bowl Sunday” first hand in the US. Most of what I associate with it comes from various TV shows which have a Super Bowl themed episode. My experience tends to come from trying to stay awake and wondering if It’s worth the trade-off in terms of having to go to work the next morning, usually tiredness wins out regardless.

One of the most intriguing aspects besides the whole concept of the “halftime show”, is the excitement generated for the big budget ads shown during the countless interruptions to the game (again something we don’t get during our coverage of the game). It was an ad break during Super Bowl XXIX that the infamous Budweiser frogs first appeared and let’s not even go near “wassup” (an ad during Monday Night Football). Needless to say YouTube will have each one available shortly after broadcast and we can see for ourselves what the creative agencies pushing the macros have come up with this year.

Today’s match up sees the Denver Broncos with the best offence facing off against the best defence in the form of the Seattle Seahawks. I toyed with the idea of doing a sort of beer Super Bowl but it was hard to get some of the great beers from Colorado that were around last summer and autumn particularly those from Odell (who could forget deconstruction), Oskar Blues and Left Hand. I could have perhaps turned to Flying Dog, which has its spiritual home in the Rockies before escaping to Maryland. Rather unfortunately we also have a distinct lack of great beers on this side of the Atlantic from Washington State. I would have had to turn to Redhook, which would have courted some controversy from beer aficionados for its “Budhook” connotations. Perhaps we could’ve hand a Redhook v Blue Moon (if we took some of the seasonal collection) shoot-out.

So with time running out, I decided to opt for one beer only and one that reflects the game for me. This year’s game has an added twist because of the weather factor. It’s being played out doors for the first time in 42 years and the venue being New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, the successor to Giants Stadium which of course was home to one of the greatest days in Irish sport. So much talk during the two weeks leading up to the game was about the cold snap (polar vortex anyone?) and the potential for snow. The most interviewed person was not Peyton Manning but the NFL’s official Super Bowl weatherman. Taking all this and the fact that I’m picking Denver for no other reason but having seen more of them this season, I have opted for Accumulation from Colorado’s New Belgium Brewery.

I really like this brewery and am a fan of their iconic Fat Tire (amber ale) and their black lager 1554. They can really brew and perhaps like Sierra Nevada they’ve become a little bit of a victim of their own success in that people see them as too familiar. Just wait until they try their Rodenbach-inspired La Folie and other Belgian interpretations. They haven’t called themselves New Belgium just to be clever. I hope that they will soon follow their neighbours and also family-owned brewery from Fort Collins (i.e. Odell) to this part of the world. This may be sooner that we think, they’re expanding like Sierra Nevada with a new East Coast brewery in North Carolina.

Accumulation was the brewery’s winter seasonal and it’s a white IPA. Sure why not? Apart from the classic and black IPAs, Uncle Sam would be proud we now have the red and the white and all we need now is a blue IPA (A step too far? I once worked at the International Food Expo, which had a tribute to “blue” food). Now back to Accumulation, it pours a hazy light straw colour that was topped with a vibrant creamy white head that gave way for a thick band around the rim. There’s fresh citrus and pine on the nose. Amarillo and Mosaic are the workhorses here. It is initially bitter but allows some sweetness to come through. A mild and pleasant bitterness remains in the aftertaste of this 6.2% brew.

The brewery chose Accumulation for their winter seasonal to demonstrate that not all winter beers need to be dark. It might not be too your taste or you might prefer other styles, but in many ways it reflects our approach to American Football. Regardless both are increasingly popular at this time of year.

Post-game follow-up: Well that was a surprising result, no one expected the Seahawks to completely dominate the game and for the Broncos to capitulate like they did. Another surprise was the weather apparently was a balmy 7ºC at kick-off. The ads involved at one time Arnold Schwarzenegger playing table tennis, Anna Kendrick plugging Newcastle Brown Ale (still so popular Stateside), a puppy and a clydesdale (guess who?), as well as Don Cheedle and a llama because why the hell not?

I may have gotten it wrong about the result of the game but I watch it more out of curiosity than anything else but I still think Accumulation was worth the punt.

Musings on the best Irish beer fest yet

The All-Ireland Craft Beer and Cider Festival has attracted a lot of attention online and save from repeating a previous post, I have opted to provide a series of short observations on the festival. Oh and did I mention that I attended all four days because where else would I be!

Packed house on Festival Saturday

In no particular order:

  1. Biggest festival yet! Huge crowds over the four days (over 10,000 according to Ruben @TaleofAle). It was packed on the Friday and many had made their way up from the Aviva after the Ireland-Sweden march but Saturday was something else. The crowds simply kept on coming with a queue to get in and an even bigger one at the token stand.  if keeps growing like this, it’ll probably have to move into the main hall next door.
  2. Two collaboration brews can be best described as sweet. The O’Hara’s/JW Sweetman’s version containing honey. There’s a story to be told about it but can be best summed up as there’s a group of people out there nerdier than beer enthusiasts – honey people! Troubled Hooker from guess which two breweries (see my previous post if you can’t for the life of you work out who it is) was a mistake gone well. It was supposed to be a Double IPA but became almost a sweet Belgian Tripel, even sweeter than Kwak.
  3. Dry-hopped Irish reds, what’s the point? The malt sweetness is there for a reason. Leave the hops for the “Irish” pale ales & co.
  4. The Hop Randall festival goes to try the Kinsale Pale Ale with added Simcoe, Citra and Nelson Sauvin. The Hop Randall  has now been introduced by the Bull and Castle and the Bierhaus in Cork . Has it already been condemned to the realm of gimmick?
  5. Franciscan Well wasn’t picketed by members of the craft purist front and the casks ran dry fairly early on. Punters weren’t put off by this big beer-owned concern.
  6. In previous years Dungarvan trialled their seasonal beers for the following year (Comeragh Challenger and Mahon Falls). Cormac brought six variants with him, including a Saison, Amber Ale, Mild, session DIPA, Wit IPA and an IPA. I  still don’t know which or if any are scheduled for release  in 2014.
  7. Every time the show the All-Ireland Hurling Final On festival Sunday, it ends in a draw.
  8. In past years people flocked to the White Gypsy stand to imbibe on the stronger beers available. However, I don’t know what is happening down in Templemore as a string of very fine session beers turned up at this year’s festival.
  9. Did every band at the festival do a cover of The Lumineers’ Ho Hey? Don’t get me started about the Johnny Cash covers!
  10. Two barley wines at the festival and two were duly sampled. I know barley wines are known for their port/sherry like comparisons but I’m not going to go into how one was sweet (Porterhouse) and one was dry (O’Hara’s). That’s just going too far!
  11. Putting the newer breweries in one corner (although Brú was across the way) grouped in one corner was a great way of concentrating interest in them. One thing noticed is that the newer breweries have fantastic branding and T-shorts for sale (in the past this sort of behaviour was confined to Metalman and the Porterhouse).
  12. Beers to look out for include Eight Degrees’ Amber Ella (might give Howling Gale Ale a run for its money in the popularity stakes), Kinsale Pale Ale (a great beer to show to festival novices that Ireland can match Sierra Nevada et al), Mountain Man’s Hairy Goat (nice copper ale for the autumn) and hopefully Five Lamps will release the darker version of their Liberties Ale (they have a lager so why put out a golden ale?).
The fantastic branding from some of the newer breweries at the festival