danieldwilliam | On Living in the Golden Age of Beer

A few Sundays ago I went to an Edinburgh heat in the Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt. This is a competition to find new and saleable craft beers to sell in Sainsbury’s.

It reminded me that I think we live in a golden age of beer.

The format of the British Beer Hunt is as follows.

The UK is divided into 5 regions. Scotland and Tyneside being one region. Each region has about 20 beers entered into the competition. At sessions like the one I was at in Edinburgh the beer drinking public will select 5 beers to go into the second round.

There is a regional and a national competition. The top 5 beers in the smaller volume regional competition go through and the top 4 beers in the larger craft brewery competition go into the national second round.

The second round is a sales round. Regional short listed beers get a listing in local Sainsbury stores for up to six months. National shortlisted beers get a 3 week listing nationwide. The top two sellers go into the national final and get a guaranteed six month listing.

So the judging process is already a great financial boost to breweries who get through.

The regional heat had 100 judges, including your humble correspondent. From a description of the beer and a look a the bottle we were asked to chose 8 beers to sample and from those 8 beers to vote for 4.

I tried the following beers

Cairngorms’ Trade Winds

A blonde beer, which has won prizes for excellence for years.One of my favourite beers from one of my favourite craft breweries. Ever reliable, ever present in my fridge. Cairngorm Brewery was the first ever craft brewery that I visited way back in my late teens. If there were a beer that set me on the road to enjoying craft beer – it might be this one.

Cairngorm’s White Lady

Described as Bavarian style wheat beer with corriander and citrus this beer was a bit of a disappointment to me. I couldn’t taste the subtle flavours. One of the guys on my table loved it and thought it one of the better beers. For me, it over promised and under delivered. It tasted fine but not as special as it’s billing lead me to believe. The corridander and the citrus didn’t really come through for me.

William’s Pavlov’s Dog

A mix between a blonde beer and a lager. The beer was okay but a bit of a non-entity. It felt and tasted more like a lager than a blonde beer. This might be just the job with a curry or on a hot summers’ day but it just faded off my palete too much to be a favourite when drinking it on my own.

William’s Prodigal Son

The other William’s beer I tried was a favourite. Prodigal Son is a classic blonde beer.

Broughton Ales’ Dark Dunter

This was an interesting dark beer with chocolate and coffee tastes. Not a stout but the same colour. A beer to be drunk beside a warm fire listening to good stories.

Tyne Bank Brewery’s Silver Dollar

This was my favourite beer. A blonde beer with a very pronouced citrus taste. Definitely a beer for hot summer days on the Meadows watching the Captain charm sausages from barbequing students. The citrus was refreshing without being overly lemony. Like licking an alcoholic pickled lemon – in a good way. I had a lovely chat with the owner and chief brewer after the event. She had been a chemical engineer and had bought the brewery after being made redundant. I got the impression that the brewery she bought was a touch to big for a first brewery. I really hope she makes it work.

IPA

A fairly standard IPA. In the crowded IPA field it didn’t particularly stand out for good for for ill. Which means that if I saw it in the pub I’d order a pint of it if only to support craft beer variety. I’d certainly order a pint of it ahead of cooking lager.

Traditional Scottish Ales Double Espresso Premio Caffé Birra

This beer caused me all kinds of problems. It’s an interesting and well-made beer; delicious in its way. Certainly the most interesting beer I drank during the day. As the name suggests this is a coffee flavoured beer. It comes in a small dark bottle which suits its intense taste and texture. The coffee taste is strong, it’s very much the double espresso of the coffee beers. I enjoyed my wee taster glass. As a taste sensation it was fantastic.

However, I think, as a beer it was a bit of a novelty. I could see myself pulling out a bottle or two at the end of a dinner party and enjoying everyone really enjoying (or really not) one small glass. I couldn’t see myself sitting listening the Test Match on Radio 4 sharing a pork pie with the Captain and sipping a pint of this. It’s delicious but it’s not beer the way I understand beer.

So to the voting (it wouldn’t be a post by me if there wasn’t some form of voting chat and this time isn’t not even shoe-horned in.)

1^st Preference – Tyne Bank’s Silver Dollar.

This is the beer I’d most want to find in my fridge.

2^nd Preference – Prodigal Son

As a second choice to a refreshing citrus blonde beer this vanilla blonde beer was well made and tasty.

3^rd Preference - Cairngorm’s Trade Winds.

It’s all about the well-made blonde beer for me. Trade Winds could have polled higher for me but I was in an experimental and exploratory frame of mind and favoring breweries I’d not heard of before.

4^th Preference – Broughton Ale’s Dark Dunter

This was the most unusual and interesting beer on offer that I’d have drunk as a beer.

Traditional Scottish Ales Double Espresso Premio Caffe Birra nearly grabbed my 4^th preference. It’s an exciting drink, but it’s not a beer I’d be as delighted to see on Sainsbury’s shelves as I would Dark Dunter.

The beer I would have voted for had I not been there to experiment was Harviestoun’s Bitter and Twisted. I always enjoy this great craft beer and having met the brewer I’m even more determined to support them.

So I rolled round from Easter Road to find the Captain and My Lovely Wife reflecting that I live in a Golden Age of Beer.

When I started drinking beer CAMRA had only just won. For the first time you could buy beer in a can with a widget that would taste as good as old men remembered locally brewed beer from the 40’s tasted. The requirement to have guest beers to avoid suits for anti-competitive practices was taking effect. Brewers and landlords had remembered how to put decent beer in a bottle, or a can or a barrel and keep it tasting good until I drank it.

These were the days of Boddingtons being the Cream of Manchester. Mel Sykes’ lips may have done more for British Beer than any other lips kissing any other beer.

I remember the student local I drank in having Orkney Dark Island on tap and the incredulity of my best mate as I made him order some “Orkney Black Badger” or “Orkney Damp Trouser”. Twenty years on from then Sainsbury are asking local beer fanciers to tell them which interesting craft beers they should sell. There is a huge variety of small breweries. Each has a range of beers. Some are great, some are unusual. Some beers are the result of a firmly held philosophy of brewing; organic, Iron Age, Victorian, High Tech, post-Modern. All are well made and well kept. Craft beers crop up all over the place. There are pubs that specialise in serving craft beer. I can buy them in my local off-license or my local sausage and mash café. It’s odds on that if I walk into a pub in the UK they will have a beer I’ve never tried before behind their bar.

Over the last twenty years I’ve seen a growing number of craft brewers set up and start producing. They’ve found distribution chains and customers that seem keen to support them and to support experimentation. Hundreds of brewers make a living making beer. I didn’t vote for a Double Espresso beer, but I nearly did. I’m agog to find out what comes out of the brewery gates next. Craft brewing provides a flexibility of supply that larger breweries seem to struggle to match. It’s a different business model and there seems to be room for them both at the moment. Cooking lager isn’t dead, and I wouldn’t want it to die. However, it doesn’t dominate the beer market in quite the way it used to be. Competition is more based around the sensuality of the experience than it has been in the past.

The variety is also seen as a source of interest and pleasure. You can now have the same conversations about beer as you can have about whisky and wine. Conservations about tastes, textures and smells; the whole sensual experience. Conversation about how ingredients affect the outcome. Conversations about techniques of making and philosophies of crafting. The conversation is now an enjoyable part of the consumption.

Craft beers are part of the process of the British falling back in love with food. Good quality ingredients, well prepared, produced with confidence and enjoyed with pride. A range of beers I could once only see imported from the Low Countries are now brewed within an hour or two’s drive of my home. I’ve never enjoyed such variety and quality and such expectation for the fu

ture.