Are You Tasting the Pith? View RSS

Reconnections 3 Mar 2023 12:36 PM (2 years ago)

 It's fair to say that the last few years have wreaked havoc on the way that we've lived our lives. People have lost their jobs. People have lost their businesses. People have lost their lives. But finally, it feels (to me, anyway) that we are all returning to some sort of normal, to a life lived outside the home, to a life in our chosen third places.

So it was with no small measure of delight that I boarded the 9.48 from Leeds to Sheffield on Friday morning with a beer-writing hero, colleague, and friend Adrian Tierney-Jones. Delight because I knew that I would have his undivided attention for the duration of the train journey, and we hadn't seen each other for, ooooh, five years? We talked of many things, of friends and foes, of death and attrition, but the most notable finding from that journey was that we were both at New Order's Albert Hall gig in October 1986 - I was raving front of house, he was interviewing the band backstage.

We were heading for Sheffield's Indie Beer Feast, now in its fifth year - or is it five years since the first one? It's hard to know how to count it. Anyway, Jules and the team are hanging in there. I was going because, well, shit, this is what I always used to do. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is what I like to do. Meet people. Make connections. Join dots.

Not only Mr. Tierney, but also actual Pete Brown. If Adrian is a hero, Pete is a colossus. He's got a couple of decades-worth of writing chops filed away in a fast-access data bank. He's giving a tutored talk on one of Evin's beers in 30 minutes. But neither he nor Evin - another absolute titan - know which beer. But it doesn't matter, because whatever you throw at Pete, he deals with. 

And the beers? A bretted table beer from Red Willow to start - perfect. Kernel Pale Ale - perfect. D'or Mouse from SMoD - crunchy and delicious. Rock Leopard We Must Love Or Stars Must Fall - snappy and complex. McColl's El Capitan - delicious. Neptune Lost At Sea - delicious. Those last two were both absolutely banging west coast IPAs. Which was better? The jury's still out. I had to run to a pre-4pm train. 

Anyway, thank you Indie Beer Feast, for a few short hours today, the stars aligned and you were perfection to me. 

Strip Mining The Christmas Recycling 12 Feb 2023 9:28 AM (2 years ago)

[PREFACE] This article contains links to Beer Ritz. I haven't written the article just to include the links, but in these lean times it feels perverse not to include them. Everyone always assumed I blogged to publicise the various businesses and enterprises I was involved in, so eventually, here we are.

I've only just got round to taking the Christmas glass recycling to the bottle bank. Yes, that's incredibly slovenly, but it didn't need emptying until just now. This doesn't necessarily signify a reduction in my drinking - cans go in the green bin now - although it's true that I do drink a lot less these days. But it was interesting to work through a few seams of empty bottles to the bottom of the bin and remind myself of what I chose to drink (and share) over Christmas. 

First up, The Kernel. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways into the mixed glass recycling pod. Quite a lot really. They brewery were kind enough to send us a selection case for Christmas, but I already had Table Beer and a couple of Pale Ales in the cellar anyway. Like The Fall, as John Peel had it, they are always the same, and always different. They are simple and satisfying, delicious and drinkable, heroic and humdrum. And for the brewery who coined the "London murky" style, their beers are now remarkably haze-free.

Working down, past the Christmas day wines, past the Michters (one bottle a year, on my birthday), we get to the Belgians, three bottles of each. Two from St Bernardus - the Tripel, and the peerless Christmas Ale. Their ABT is still a go-to of mine, but ABT and Xmas seemed like a surfeit of riches. The Tripel was there as a foil to Westmalle Triple, a sort of a taste-off, trying to answer a question about how triples work. I didn't find an answer, but the clues all point to the yeast - Westmalle yeast seems to produce a drier, cleaner beer, St Bernardus a rounder sweeter beer. I guess this explains why St Bernardus' darker beers are all sensational but the Tripel slightly flabby, and the Westmalle Tripel arguably the classic of the style, but the Westmall Dubbel lacking in complexity. More research needed.

Outliers: De Ranke Pere Noel - not bought to test a theory, or out of love and loyalty, but just because it was there and, well, why not. De Ranke's beers are genuinely world-class, and Pere Noel has a delicious pine-resin note to it that smells like christmas trees (to my nose). And Poperings Hommel, just because I'd had a bottle of Ridgeway Very Bad Elf that was so stuffed with classic hops that it reminded me of Hommel. And it was ages since I'd last had one.

**TAPS MIC** 1 Apr 2022 6:32 AM (3 years ago)

Is this still working? Where is it posting to?

Craft Beer FUBU - or - Why People Get Upset When Breweries Get Sold 5 Aug 2017 1:57 PM (7 years ago)

I haven't blogged properly in a while (ha! "a while"), largely because I haven't had anything constructive to say. That doesn't stop many bloggers, but I really got to a point where I felt I'd said everything useful. And of course, once you have a financial interest in the game, everyone should take anything you say with a pinch of salt, so what's the point in blogging if people are just going to argue with or ignore you?

But the recent spate of takeovers and reactions to them makes me want to say something. I'm not sure where to start, so lets talk about the most recent - Anchor being bought by Sapporo. It isn't the first time in its history that the brewery has been bought out. The heroic stewardship of Fritz Maytag was of course the result of a buyout, albeit of a company that was by all accounts on its arse.

People get emotionally invested in stuff, to an extent that seems irrational to some. When a brewery is sold, I think it's natural to re-evaluate how you feel about that. I totally get that some breweries need to sell when the owner gets older, or gets bored with the grind of running a business, or just wants to cash out, but it's important that everyone looks at what has happened and asks if they feel differently now.

It's important that people do this because it matters where you spend you money, and who you decide to finance. Arguably, as political power is ceded to a global elite, how you spend your money is your last source of political influence. If you want to give your money to someone who is making beer with great determination but little critical acclaim, that's fine, it's your money. If you want to give your money to local breweries because they are local to you, even if they aren't world beaters, that's fine, it's your money. If you want to give your money to breweries that are the flavour of the month, killing it on Ratebeer, that's fine, it's your money. But it's important to think about it. All of these choices are subjective, driven by the same sort of irrational notions that drive me to buy bright yellow New Balance trainers, or to make people queue for hours outside breweries for limited releases.

So when Sapporo buy Anchor, I'm pleased to see people ask how we should feel about it. When Lagunitas sell 50% to Heineken, it's good to question how we feel about it. And then when Lagunitas sell the other half, we should at least think again, because your money is the only thing that will make a difference. And Ballast Point. And Camden. And Meantime. And who next?

It's fine to change your mind about how you feel based on new information, that's what grown-ups do. It would be a shame if you didn't let things change you, or at least make you re-evaluate things. Is your favourite brewery the same if someone new owns it? I don't know the answer to that, but at least ask yourself the question.

The reason I feel strongly about this is because, of course, it's my livelihood, and I've spent the last 17 years following the FUBU principle - I can't define craft beer, but as far as I'm concerned, it's For Us, By Us. So every time ABInBev, or SABMiller, or Constellation, or some faceless group of investors buy another independent bit of the industry (and it's happening at production, distribution and retail levels) and pass it into consortium ownership, I stop and have a long look at it. I might even solicit opinion online if I don't understand it, but the important thing is at least to stop and question it.

@IlkleyBrewery tasting at @BeerRitzLeeds - Notorious F.I.G. and Lotus IPA 17 Apr 2017 1:15 AM (8 years ago)

Our latest Saturday tasting was a few weeks ago - we're a bit slow at getting this video up owing to various bits of lurgy and absence - but we were very pleased to welcome Ilkley Brewery to the shop for the afternoon, They brought two beers, Notorious F.I.G., which is a 7.5% fig dubbel designed to pair with cheese, and the brilliant Lotus IPA, which is a burst of pithy grapefruit freshness delivered in a very clean, crisp golden IPA.

Notorious F.I.G. is certainly the more complex beer, realistically needing a slab of cheese to play against, but the Lotus IPA was probably the star of the show, providing a big explosion of grapefruity hop character against a simple pale malt background. There's something incredibly satisfying about the burst of pithy citrus being delivered in a cheeky little cold can too - I sneaked a sip at the start of the video, and the clean, zesty coolness took me by surprise.

If you can't get to the BeerRitz shop in Leeds, you can buy their beers here.

@Thornbridge Brewery at @BeerRitzLeeds - The Heart Desires & Bear State 1 Mar 2017 1:55 AM (8 years ago)

So, the last Saturday of the month is now a fixture for tastings at Beer-Ritz in Leeds. February saw Thornbridge Brewery in attendance, bringing along some of their elegant but still hoptastic west coast-style IPA Bear State, as well as a new release from their Barrel Room series, The Heart Desires.

Although in the video I skate over Bear State a bit, it shouldn't really be dismissed so easily. It's a classic Thornbridge take on a style - precise without being showy, refined without being boring, reliable without the contempt of familiarity. But of course, my inner geek wanted to talk about the next installment of the Barrel Room series, the series that spawned the unprecedented gold and silver medal duo for Thornbridge at the World Beer Cup. With two new beers. At the first time of entering. Really, that's quite an achievement.

The Heart Desires is a complex beer. On the nose, you get the white wine barrel influence immediately - bit of oak, bit of fruit, and it smells zingy, your brain gets excited and starts your mouth watering for what is about to happen. In the mouth, it's medium-bodied, with a clean zip of acidity and fruitiness, unsurprising as the beer is aged on gooseberries for 18 months - green apples, lemons, just crunchy, zippy dry fruitiness.

This is a barrel-aged wild beer, subject to the influence of organisms in the wood of the barrel (pediococcus and lactobacillus being among them - in the video, the only reason I mention them because George didn't want to). It's something of a paradox that a beer that is exposed to all manner of unruly microbial influence should taste so clean, but it does. It's something that it has in common with a lot of American wild ales, notably the wild beers produced at Russian River Brewing in California, which are Thornbridge brewmaster Rob Lovatt's inspiration for this series. The Russian River wild beers are ace, as are the Thornbridge ones.

Tasting @BeerRitzLeeds with @WylamBrewery and @yeastieboysuk 30 Jan 2017 12:10 PM (8 years ago)

Here's a short video taken at the Leeds launch of the brilliant Wylam vs Yeastie Boys WxY² an extra-pale IPA made with lots and lots of Antipodean hops. This was Beer-Ritz's first tasting of 2017, and we hope to be making a thing of these. Dave and Ben from Wylam Brewery came down, were utterly lovely, poured beer and said lovely things about the shop. Lots of people came, lots of beer was poured and drunk, lots of laughs had.

Translating Big Craft 21 Dec 2015 11:58 AM (9 years ago)

As the KLF said in 1987, "What The Fuck Is Going On?".

I saw ABInBev's two recent acquisitions described as a rampage on Facebook - it's hardly a rampage, but it is significant. And it's also unlikely to be the end of it - more acquisitions (or mergers, if you prefer) will come, that's for sure. But what's really going on here?

Much has been made of the big players suddenly realising that they have been left behind, but left behind in what sense? Craft beer has finally become cool, but the big brewers don't care about that. They genuinely have no desire for craft beer credibility, what they want is to somehow revive their falling market share and hard pressed margins.

It's true that the more craft breweries that are acquired by the big players, the less route to market there is for anyone else. There is only a finite (and shrinking) amount of bar space, and no matter how many craft bars open, the linear mileage of bar top is shrinking, getting more crowded.

It's also true that, historically, great beers have been ruined by accountants gradually cutting corners, reducing the quality of the ingredients, dropping %abv to pay less duty but not passing the saving on - all tiny things that gradually add up to royally bastardise a once great beer. Ask Pete Brown about Stella Artois. I'm not so sure that this is the particular tactic with this round of acquisitions, and we'll return to why shortly.

I also made a throwaway comment on the back of the Ballast Point acquisition that (a) they'd overpaid massively (recouping in 30 years or so at current size) and following on from that (b) how's everyone's hop contracts looking? Because the thing is, Ballast Point aren't going to remain static, they are going to grow hugely. Maybe the quality will stay the same, maybe it won't - that's not the issue right now. Ballast Point - and Goose Island, and Camden, and whoever else gets hovered up - will grow massively, and will need lots of hops to do that. Lots of hops grown expensively under license, that will only get more expensive, even as more acreage is planted.

Ironically, this could be the thing that sees Big Craft prosper. Big Craft wants to acquire small breweries with big ideas, big reputations and crucially, big margins. I'm guessing that a tipping point has been reached in the boardrooms where no more savings can be made, products cannot be squeezed any further to reveal greater margins. One of my mantras as a retailer was don't cut costs, add value. If people can taste that a product is superior, they will happily pay more for it. Sure, in global terms, that's a niche market, but that's where the growth is, and that's what Big Craft is all about.

So my prediction is that breweries aren't being bought up to be dumbed down, run down and closed down, but are genuinely being bought to grow and produce flavourful craft beer on an industrial scale. Sure, there will be a monopoly created as Big Craft takes up more of the available bar space, and swallows up all the hops that little craft needs. But Big Craft is storming the barricades and launching a counter-attack on the revolution.

And what do we think about that?

Golden Pints 2015 13 Dec 2015 9:54 AM (9 years ago)

So, once more into the list, dear friends. Having made the list below, I thought I'd check back on last year's, and perhaps predictably, not a lot has changed. This means I'm either a lot more set in my ways than I thought, or that things aren't going to get a lot better. I suspect that my exposure to new beer is a lot less than it has been in previous years, due mainly to not getting out as much, and being deluged by new breweries wanting listings has conversely made me try less new beer rather than more.

We already handle a good slice what I consider to be the top tier of UK brewing via Beer Paradise and BeerRitz, but having re-read my nominations for this year, I was surprised to see I'd missed a few breweries from the list. Tempest Brewery, for example - their Brave New World and Face With No Name are two amazing hoppy beers that are unlike anything else brewed in the UK, tipping their hats more towards "classic" American IPAs. Buxton Brewery have a solid core range and them smash it out of the park with amazing specials - Double Axe most notably. Beavertown's expansion this year hasn't been plain sailing, but they've kept the beer flowing and growing like perhaps no other, under the expert guidance of Jenn Merrick. And god knows what Arbor Ales have started putting in their beers, but sales of them have picked up spectacularly of late.

Anyway, the list. It's perhaps a little conservative, even predictable, but as I say above, I think that speaks more about my desire for reliable beer rather than a desire to try new things that might be more hit and miss. Maybe that says more about the state of the industry this year.

Best UK Cask Beer: I'm always delighted to see Roosters cask beers on a bar, and would still wade through a freezing river to get to a pint of Magic Rock High Wire.

Best UK Bottled Beer: What have I drunk most of this year? Probably various Kernel pale ales and IPAs, and Siren Caribbean Chocolate Cake

Best UK Canned Beer: What have I drunk most of this year? Brewdog Dead Pony Club, Roosters Yankee, various Vocation, and Wild Beer Bibble, with Magic Rock appearing too late in the year to win on volume grounds, but Cannonball wins. Because, Cannonball.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Loving that Tilquin. Really enjoyed Sierra Nevada Hop Hunter, for a slightly weird innovation in processing, although I couldn't quite shake the idea that I was drinking something slightly artificial. Mind you, that Pliny is all dextrose and isomerised hop extract, you know?

Best Overseas Canned Beer: I canned some Tilquin Geuze at IndyMan. That was pretty great, for a whole host of reasons. I resisted skulling it on the train home, for reasons that are still unclear. Although now I think about it, it was probably because I was drunk already.

Best Collaboration Brew: the Centennial Amarillo IPA I brewed at The Kernel last month was pretty enjoyable.

Best Overall Beer: out of those listed above, the beer that I've found most satisfying, and have laid in stocks of, is Siren Caribbean Chocolate Cake.

Best Branding: the Magic Rock cans are pretty epic, aren't they? And although the Vocation cans are all labelled, their branding is particularly arresting, to my eye at least.

Best Pump Clip: To Ol have given up making pump clips. The Kernel send out self-adhesive bottle labels. I like both those approaches.

Best UK Brewery: it's got to be one of those mentioned above. Or maybe Arbor Ales, who seem to have really hit their stride this year. Man, these questions are hard!

Best Overseas Brewery: Loving Tilquin, although I guess they're not strictly a brewery.

Best New Brewery Opening 2015: Vocation

Pub/Bar of the Year: can't chose between Friends of Ham or Bundobust. I think this year I've eaten more in Bundo, but drank more in Fram.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2015: Magic Rock Tap, obviously. Game changer.

Beer Festival of the Year: I only managed to get to IndyMan

Supermarket of the Year: the Morrisons round the corner. They've got Duvel for two quid a pop.

Independent Retailer of the Year: It's BeerRitzLeeds, of course

Online Retailer of the Year: It's BeerRitzByMail, of course

Best Beer Book or Magazine: I still haven't read the Steven Beaumont book I got sent, and I'd like to read Jeff Alworth's book. In summary: no idea.

Best Beer Blog or Website: Stonch's cage-rattling is always fun

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: TheBeerNut or BroadfordBrewer

Indy Man Beer Con 2015 16 Oct 2015 2:01 AM (9 years ago)

I know that this blog has hit the doldrums of late, and I've only been moved to post in order to put the boot into things, but let's be positive about something for a moment.

Although I only managed to get to IndyMan for a scant few hours early on Friday, it confirmed my suspicion that it really is a must-do event on the beer calendar. The addition of Camden Brewery this year means that there really is something for everyone, from the casual drinker to the hardened geek. Only a controversy-baiting sourpuss would say otherwise. Sure, you won't be paying pub prices, but it's a temporary event in an amazing venue, and while some might say the beer was expensive, I'd point to the difference between price and value. It's a fantastic celebration of beer culture away from the mainstream.

I didn't get to try a huge variety of beer, but what I did try (Quantum Pale Ale, Wild Beer Co The Blend, Wiper & True Milk Shake, Cloudwater Motueka Lager and their IPA, Magic Rock High Wire) was all superb. A few tasters from other peoples' glasses of what might broadly be termed Weird Shit confirmed my suspicion that there are a lot of beers being brewed for the benefit of brewers rather than drinkers. Or rather, there is a continued obsession with novelty - what's new, rather than what's good. This, coupled with piss-poor quality control*, are the twin challenges that smaller independent brewers face.

But let's not dwell on the negative. Everything I saw at IndyMan this year was joyous. Happy people, great beer, amazing venue, and even the music wasn't too intrusive. The addition of a take-home canning service offered by We Can was a masterstroke - the next evening, I was drinking my take-outs at home, and my feelings were summed up by this response to my tweet:

Stone Brewing Co To Lengthen "Enjoy By" Dates 14 Sep 2015 12:18 PM (9 years ago)

It's been a big week for beer. Not only has Lagunitas made that announcement, but over at Stone Brewing Co, Greg Koch announced that he is to step down as CEO of the company (link here, with a hat tip to Stan), but just today I received this email from the UK importer of Stone's beers:

"We also can confirm that Stone have agreed to extend their dates on their beer from their original 90 days to 270 days! They’re incredibly happy with how the beer is performing over time and with our refrigerated shipping, and now have the confidence to extend this into an export market that needs slightly more shelf-life."

Which is great news, as it means that we can now enjoy Stone's beers fresher for longer, right?

I mean, it's not like anyone took any notice of the dates, is it?

Or should this comment now haunt us forever?

Craft Creep 12 Aug 2015 12:10 PM (9 years ago)

Craft creep. It's a scourge. The c-word has been hijacked by clowns, hucksters, chancers, opportunists. Some actually care, but can't get right. Some can get it right, but don't really care. Some can't get it right, but don't care. The good ones get it right because they care.

It all started when I tried to buy beer from a continental European craft brewery. As a diligent importer, we pay duty on imported beers at the appropriate rate. If a brewer falls under the UK ProgreSsive Beer Duty rate, then duty is paid at the lower rate "Can you send me your volume certification notice?" I asked "I don't even know what that is" came the reply. "We don't have a brewery, we cuckoo brew at a few places. Just think of us as a wholesaler". A quick squint at Ratebeer confirmed this, but it was news to me. And they didn't have any beer to sell. Did I want to order off a production schedule? Err, not right now, I need to place orders with breweries who actually have beer to sell, who have committed themselves to a course, not just speculatively dipped their toes in.

An email from Brewdog (edit for disambiguation: to mail-order consumers, via their website - edited 14.04 13/08/15): "Stone Clearance Offer: We are offering a selection of awesome Stone beers at, or nearing their Enjoy By date (90 days old). These beers are all still absolutely amazing, but as they have hit, or are close to their Enjoy By dates, we are selling them at these rock bottom prices". Err, hang on, when Beer-Ritz Leeds knocked out a few bottles of on-date Stone beers a couple of years back, and mentioned it on Twitter, we got a personal tweet from Stone Greg saying that if we were selling his beers in anything less than perfect condition, he would see to it personally that we wouldn't get any more (I can't find that damn tweet anywhere, but it happened)[EDIT 14/08/15- this was a Twitter DM to Ghost Drinker, who runs the shop - see below].

Endless emails from new breweries who are contract brewing, or cuckoo brewing, or who haven't even brewed a beer yet, but would like to have a meeting and talk about distribution, or potential distribution, although no, they haven't got anything brewed yet. Can nobody commit to actually fronting the money, buying the requisite stainless, and let their beers do the talking? Or will they just continue to let their talking be the beers?

"Cans are the future of craft beer". Yes, done right but again, you need to pony up and buy the best tech you can afford. Commit to it, realise that you are on the bottom of the 10,000 hour learning curve, and you need to be in it for the long haul.

Craft beer. It's beyond me why people insist that it's not a marketing term. It's only use is as a marketing term, but until it is invested with some sort of meaning, then it will continue to be used to spoof the unwary. The founders of United Craft Brewers have a tough act ahead of them. Their job is to stop craft creep, to try and reduce the bullshit, and to act with commitment and integrity. Looking at the people who founded UCB, I genuinely think that there are enough various vested interests to make it a success. There's no shame in acknowledging that (as I've said before), the beer business is about beer, and it's about business, and these are equally important words. They key thing that needs to be clung to is that this is a business consortium, promoting the interests of businesses that are built on such old-fashioned virtues as consistency, commitment and quality. It's not a free-for-all arty-farty-disco-party, it's not devil-horns awesome, it's about knowing your shit, knowing what CIP means (and having the kit to do it), understanding the value of the 10,000 hour rule.

Stamp out craft creep.

"Mikkeller's Big Book of Beer" by Mikkel Borg Bjergso and Pernille Pang 9 Mar 2015 2:51 PM (10 years ago)

On Local Beer (And A Sudden Recant) 7 Feb 2015 12:43 PM (10 years ago)

It was something I read over at Stan's blog that has had me thinking about local beer for months.The fundamental question that I kept coming back to was simple: what is local beer? It's a question that has spawned several long-lasting threads in my mind.

At one level, local beer is local beer. It's beer that is produced and consumed within a tight geographical locality. There are obvious geograhical constrraints to beer that is unique to, or celebrated as being from, a particular locality. Cantillon and Brussels, Schlenkerla and Bamberg. But that reply is too trite, too obvious - that means that all beer is local beer, and just by starting a brewery and brewing beer, you are making local beer. So that's obviously not quite right. And the extension of this is that if you become a successful brewery, and sell your beer nationally, or internationally, does that make you less of a local brewery, making less local beer? Is reach a factor in local beer?

So maybe it's more to do with engagement? So this takes the initial theory about local beer being just what it says on the tin, and adds how the community around the brewery engages with the beer, or conversely, how the brewery engages with the local community. So local beer isn't just about the beer, but it's how the brewery has been adopted by the people around it. Is engagement another thing to consider when talking about local beer?

That got me to thinking about other things that might have a local aspect. So football (that's soccer to my American readers) is something that over the last 50 years has moved from being a local phenomenon - geographically tight followers supporting a team made up of (relatively) local players - to a much more dispersed fanbase supporting a team with a much more geographically disparate membership. Can the same be said for beer? And can that beer be considered local?

Well, on the first count, I think it can. I cut my drinking teeth at a time when the beer business was largely simple and transparent (in relative terms). I drank at the Wyndham Arms in Salisbury when the Hop Back Brewery was in the back yard. The brewery eventually moved 10 miles down the road, but it's still a brewery making its own beer. But the beer business isn't like that any more. Start-ups now look to the export market as part of their business plan. It isn't even necessary to have a brewery to be a successful brewery - there are many globally celebrated "cuckoo" brands, and still more breweries who contract when capacity is exceeded. And that's all fine by me. You pays your money and takes your choice.

And are those international beer brands local? Well, this is where it gets messy, because what constitutes local has changed massively. In the relatively new world of the internet and social media (20 years old tops, and more like 10 years if you view Facebook as a key factor), you find communities that are geographically dispersed, but still hugely engaged with certain brands. And this operates across all sectors, from macro, to craft-macro (say Sierra Nevada) to craft-niche (say Mikkeller and Evil Twin). While these communities aren't geographically tightly located, they have their homes online, and essentially function as a locally engaged community.

Which brings us to the surprising conclusion that local beer is alive and well, but it means a variety of different things to a variety of different people, because the meaning of local has been changed by technology.

At least, that's what I thought until I saw it written down just now. But when I read the last bit back, it sounded like so much nonsense that I'm not so sure any more. So does a beer have to have genuine, geographically local support before it can be called local beer? Or is it less local the more widely that engagement is dispersed?

Golden Pints 2014 1 Jan 2015 10:55 AM (10 years ago)

If only to move that repulsive photo from the top of the blog, I thought I'd post my Golden Pints 2014. As a general caveat, please be aware that (a) I don't get out much, and so drink the vast majority of beer bottled, at home, and (b) I make my living buying and selling much of the beer I'm about to praise.

Best UK Cask Beer: the cask beer that I've enjoyed most consistently this year has been served in Tapped Leeds. They serve their cask beer under air pressure (I think), and slightly cooler than most places. If I had to pick one beer, the pint of Wild Beer Co Bibble I drank at Tapped during the Wild Beer Meet The Brewer was memorable, even if I did have a cold when I drank it.

Best UK Keg Beer: Magic Rock Cannonball gets my money every time

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer: the day-old Magic Rock Cannonball that we had at the first BeerRitz Meet The Brewer was certainly notable. This year I've bought more beer for personal consumption from The Kernel, with their Mosaic IPA being a particular high point. In fact, at one point I found myself scouring the internet to see if I could buy more when it ran out, something I rarely do these days. The Siren Craft Brew "Discount" (cedar-aged single hop IPA) series were all pretty outrageous, with Middle Finger Discount (Mosaic hops again - there's a theme developing here) being my favourite of the three.

Best Overseas Draught: it seems as though my palate has finally matured as I really enjoyed drinking draught Cantillon at Borefts Beer Festival this year.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer: having failed to track down a can of Heady Topper in Amsterdam this year, and not having had access to a lot of really fresh American imports that seem to appear on Twitter regularly, I'd have to go for Tilquin Oude Geuze

Best Collaboration Brew: pretty much all of the Siren Craft Brew collabs have been amazing, with Middle Finger Discount being the best for me. Their head brewer Ryan Witter-Merithew also deserves a medal for the Rainbow Project, which this year looks set to be absolutely stunning. And Buxton Brewery are also doing some amazing things too.

Best Overall Beer: Magic Rock Cannonball. World-class IPA, brewed locally, served fresh.

Best Branding, Pumpclip or Label: Siren/Stillwater When The Light Gose Out is about the coolest bottle of beer I think I've ever seen.

Best UK Brewery: I love The Kernel for their consistency and purity of purpose, Magic Rock for their sheer world-beating class, and Siren for their restless innovation.

Best Overseas Brewery: I haven't drunk widely enough this year to have an opinion on this. I guess Tilquin by default, although of course, they are blenders rather than brewers.

Best New Brewery Opening 2014: pass.

Pub/Bar of the Year: Friends of Ham, for having the courage to move forward and expand when it would have been easy to stay the same

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2014: Bundobust. Craft beer, amazing food.

Best beer and food pairing: anything at Bundobust

Beer Festival of the Year: I only went to Borefts

Supermarket of the Year: Sainsbury's recently ran a promotion on Duvel which meant it was cheaper than buying it through the usual wholesale channels. That was quite good.

Independent Retailer of the Year: BeerRitz Leeds

Online Retailer of the Year: I concur with Boak and Bailey - BeerRitz.co.uk

Best Beer Book or Magazine: pass [edit: I'm an idiot -  Brew Britannia was excellent, sorry Ray and Jessica]

Best Beer Blog or Website: all of the ones on my blogroll, with preference to Boak and Bailey and The Beer Nut. Although this post by Adrian Tierney-Jones moves me every time I read it.

Best Beer App: don't use any, so pass

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer: Chris Hall is pretty good value

Best Brewery Website/Social media: pass. I'm starting to think I don't really understand social media.....

What's Wrong With This Picture? Pub Toilet of the Year, The Horseshoes, Newmarket. 11 Dec 2014 11:59 AM (10 years ago)

Craft Beer in a Post-Craft World 18 Oct 2014 2:15 AM (10 years ago)

A pair of blog posts over at Jeff Alworth's Beervana (here and here) has roused me from current torpor with a few observations. In fact, this started as a comment on the blog, but quickly spiralled out of control.

The first thought is that although there is a big difference in the legislation between the UK and US markets (see here for a summary of the US three tier system. In the UK, this doesn't exist), it seems as though in practice it doesn't make any difference. So when Jeff writes "But having an invisible layer in between the producer and retailer also offers an opportunity for hard-to-stop corruption", the important word in that sentence is "opportunity". In practice, this doesn't happen, it just adds another layer of sweeteners and kickbacks.

The big problem is that whenever anyone writes about the beer business, the tend to focus on the "sexy" bit - the beer - at the expense of the "dull" bit - the business. These two, as we've seen from Dann Paquette's accusations, are inseparable. You can make great beer, as in my opinion Pretty Things do, but if you can't get it to drinkers, why bother?

But this isn't anything new. In conversation with Garrett Oliver in (I think) 2007, he listed a few bars in New York who would call the Brooklyn Brewery regularly and say that they had a line available if the brewery wanted to let them have a few free kegs. Garrett's response when asked "What have you got for us?" was always "Great beer at a fair price". But if anyone thinks this sort of integrity will carry on as the number of craft breweries continues to rise, in the UK, the US and worldwide, think again. Have a look at what Sam Calagione says here. Anecdotally, every small brewer in the UK has a story about being undercut by another brewer offering cheaper beer of lesser quality, or worse still, being told by landlords and beer buyers that quality is less important than price.

You can expect a lot more of this as we move into the post-craft era. Uh-oh, there's a buzz-phrase that's going to annoy a few people. But heads up, because here's some bigger news. Beer isn't going to get any better than it is now. I know, that's quite a rash prediction, but the beer business is going to stop being about beer, and become more about business.

Beer isn't going to get any better than it is now. That doesn't sound very sexy, does it? It will get more consistent, more reliable, but ultimately, the technology of craft beer - focusing on quality and flavour without cutting corners to maximise profits -  has reached endgame. There is nowhere else to go. What this means is that craft beer will have to focus on the dull business of making great, reliable beer, giving people what they want every time. In short, they will become big brands, go mainstream, and flood the country - the world! - with great tasting, flavourful beer, free of production flaws, tasting the same every time you buy it. This is exactly what the top tier of UK craft beer producers has done - build a brand built around consistency and great tasting beer. Once the beer is good enough, you have to focus on the business end of things. Price. Distribution. Brand-building.

Beer isn't going to get any better than it is now. It will be cleaner, more consistent, more reliable, less of a lottery. You might not like it, but Punk IPA will become the craft beer movement's Carling - a best seller, reliable, widely available, and reasonable priced. It's already happened. We all screamed "Judas!" when Punk IPA appeared in Tesco, but Bob Dylan's response to being called Judas was to simply say "I don't believe you, you're a liar" before telling his band to "Play it fucking loud!", and never looking back.

For earlier discussions of post-craft beer, please see Boak and Bailey, Pete Brown, The Pub Curmudgeon, and Justin Mason. They all (in the nicest possible way) focus on the sexy beer bit rather than the dull business bit.

A Night Less Ordinary with @friendsofham 28 Jun 2014 12:28 PM (10 years ago)

Brew Britannia: The Strange Rebirth of British Beer 29 May 2014 11:32 AM (10 years ago)

Happy Now? 15 May 2014 10:56 AM (10 years ago)

I found myself pondering something late last night, after being e-prodded by Will Hawkes, on the subject of the rise of the beer off-licence. He'd quite politely asked if I'd like to contribute some thoughts to an article that he's writing for The Grocer magazine.

(Incidentally, that's how the pro's start a blog - infer that you have an opinion that someone deems worthy of canvassing. Gives you a bit of gravitas)

In an email back to him, I said something along the lines of "alongside the rise in popularity in beer, there are also a lot of people who know very little about beer, who are selling beer brewed by people who know very little about beer, to drinkers who can't tell if it's any good or not". I then said something about not wanting to commit myself in print to being a dick - too late! But in the spirit of Eno and Schmidt's Oblique Strategy Cards, "Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify"

For many years, beer has struggled to get as wide a coverage as it is getting today. Isn't that what we've all wished for all this time? Does it really matter if some people are in it solely for a quick buck, some of it's a bit ropey, and some people are drinking it just to be cool?

Sixpoint Brewery - From There To Here In Seven Years 7 Mar 2014 12:14 PM (11 years ago)

One Person's Bric-a-brac Is Another Person's Treasure 24 Feb 2014 9:15 AM (11 years ago)

A long drive from Leeds to Salisbury to visit the family, and a meal out to celebrate three generations of birthdays at a rural pub, yielded an unexpected collection of old bottles, not tucked away in a glass case, but out on the shelf in a corridor on the way to the toilets.

Some of them were just old, but some of them were old and interesting. Actually, that's not quite correct - they were all old and interesting to me, but I suspect that I might be in a minority on that.

Golden Pints 2013 18 Dec 2013 11:59 AM (11 years ago)

It's that time again! The time of year when I struggle to find the time and energy to write anything creative, and so fall back on the crutch of populating a list in order to give my online persona some semblance of animation!

Stewart Brewing "First World Problems" 19 Nov 2013 12:35 PM (11 years ago)

First World Problems. They surround us. I'm a blogger, I'm a writer, I'm a beer wholesaler, I'm a beer retailer, I'm not supposed to do this because, boo hoo, I've got too much invested to write anything impartial. Poor me, poor me, pour me another.

The press release comes on a scratty bit of paper, and tells the now familiar story of the victory in a home brew competition being put into production. It's basically the X-Factor of beer - figure out what people like, then sell it back to them. It mentions 80 IBUs. It mentions the 6 hop varieties, without naming one of them. It's not a great bit of PR. That's a first world problem right there.

The label is pretty cool, all cross-hatched graphic novel font and Lichtenstein half-tone comic strip frames. It makes me immediately suspicious. But the beer - oh God, the beer.

I've no idea what the exemplar for Belgian IPA is, or where the style originates, but this immediately reminds me of Flying Dog Raging Bitch. It's not all about the flavour, although that's a big part of it. There's a character to this beer that's almost a texture, an interplay between a spiciness, a minerality, and a faint suggestion of sunshine and crushed aspirin that I associate with a surfeit of Amarillo hops. There's a flat, wet stone quality to the beer, ending like a licked pebble on the beach, but in a good way, a slightly savoury, celery-salt snap in the finish, like a really fresh pilsner.

And the aroma is nuanced to be a tightrope walk between an IPA and a Belgian triple. What strain of yeast has wrought these remarkable effects? A kind of hyper-refined IPA that plays on bitterness, cleanness, a bruised fruitiness.

I've run out of Belgian IPA. Another First World Problem, if you please.

What BeerRitz Did Next. 14 Nov 2013 12:58 PM (11 years ago)

It's been quite a year for the many-tentacled beast covered by the obligatory punning name that is BeerRitz. At least, I think it's a pun - what the hell does BeerRitz even mean? Is it a clash between everyday - beer - and high-falutin' - The Ritz? Is it meant to allude to the chi-chi Mediterranean resort of Biarritz? I've no idea.

Anyway, as I say, it's been quite a year for BeerRitz. Not only has it had a major refurb (lovingly documented by 'Ritz stalwart Ghost Drinker), but we also made the shortlist for the Observer Food Monthly 2013 Awards in the online category (we're right at the bottom of the page). I guess this is technically for the webshop, but we know that a lot of our loyal customers at the walk-in bricks-and-mortar shop in Headingley also voted for us, so thanks to everyone who took the time to vote.

To round off a mammoth year, we've today just had a visit from the roving judge for the Drinks Retailing Awards (basically, the Oscars of drinks retailing, if you can imagine such a thing). We're delighted to announce that we've been shortlisted as a finalist in the Independent Beer Retailing category, along with the incumbent champions Real Ale in Twickenham and Stirchley Wines & Spirits in Birmingham.

Looking through the trophy cabinet, it's interesting to note that we won this very same award back in 2003, and so there would be a very pleasing symmetry to win it again a decade later. Like all significant events, it's hard not to look back and see what has changed in that time. The main thing really is the breweries that have sprung up since then, who we now have close relationships with: Bristol Beer Factory (2004), Thornbridge (2005), Hardknott (2005), BrewDog (2007), Arbor Ales (2007), Buxton (2009), Ilkley (2009), Kernel (2009), Magic Rock (2011), Beavertown (2012) - anyway, you get the general gist of what I'm saying.

The awards are given out at an absurdly decadent event in early February 2014 (like, bottles of whisky on the table decadent) at The Dorchester Hotel in that there London, and in true awards ceremony style, nobody finds out what the results are until the envelope is opened. Watch this space for more info around the time, and thanks again for all of your support over the years. LOVE YOU XXX

(The picture is of me on the morning after the night before, in 2004. And no, I didn't steal the robe)