HardKnott Dave's beer and stuff blog

What is Craft Beer?

2012-01-25T01:27:00.001Z

One of the criticisms against Craft Beer is that it does not have a definition. We don't think it needs one, but there is an explanation in this video that might help people to find their own answer.

A question for CAMRA

2012-01-13T10:22:00.000Z

I have repeatedly complained about the High Strength Beer Duty levied on beers over 7.5%. I still question CAMRA's approach on this matter. On my last writings on the subject it was suggested I talk to CAMRA. I decided to write to Mike Benner, Chief Executive of CAMRA.

I was delighted that he replied. Many will no doubt see his reply as satisfactory. It will probably disappoint, but not surprise those people to know that I don't see it that way.

However, my views have been made and some assurances have been given that my concerns are being addressed. Most importantly I very much welcome that fact that Mike took the time to reply and agreed for his words to be published.

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Mike,

I hope you don't mind me contacting you, a commenter on my blog suggested I should talk directly to CAMRA, and it seems appropriate that I should approach you.

You may be aware that I am one of an increasing number of CAMRA sceptic "noisome" bloggers. Indeed, I suspect you are already familier with the views I wish to communicate. I should also point out that I have held CAMRA membership for some years now, and intend to retain that membership even if I disagree with some policies. I understand that CAMRA must follow policies that are for the benefit of the majority of the membership. I recognise that the organisation's aims are not to provide a blanket beer-related organisation but a cask beer and pub focused organisation.

However, I still feel that it is better to have a general consideration for the wider beer community if we wish not to see further fragmentation within the community.

CAMRA helped to introduce the progressive beer duty system along with strong help from SIBA. Without progressive beer duty it is unlikely that the beer market would be shaped the way it is. There would be significantly less microbreweries and there would very certainly be much less consumer choice.

Part of the choice that has developed is a much wider range of beer with a wider alcohol content. Many of these beers are extremely flavoursome and have revitalised the whole market. This revitalisation has also encouraged many bigger brewers to up their game significantly and further stimulating a broader choice for consumers. The fact that there has been an increase of more flavoursome beers, I would suggest, has helped to contribute to a much more responsible drinking culture amongst the consumers who have been persuaded into this market.

Unfortunately, introduction of the low and high strength beer duty bands is in danger of undoing all of this excellent work. It is effectively undermining the benefit of progressive beer duty. The discount given to small producers of beer is designed to address the fact that stagnation was occurring in the beer market. It was almost impossible to start a microbrewery and remain competitive as the larger breweries had economies of scale which cannot be achieved in the microbrewing sector.

The low strength beer duty discount is benefiting larger producers who already have a competitive edge due to economies of scale. The microbrewers cannot take advantage of any further discount. This is resulting in the very large breweries having significant advantages when producing products under the low strength threshold.

The high strength duty increase, which Government documents state is being used to pay for the low strength discount, is creating additional costs for microbrewers who choose to make beers over 7.5%. This is likely to inhibit further product development in this area. Beers in these strengths are looking likely to provide an export growth market. however, if it is uneconomic to develop for a domestic market first then this is likely to inhibit the development of this important part of the British brewing industry.Exporting is one of the potential areas to generate economic growth.

I understand that CAMRA are now asking for an increase in the low strength threshold to 3.5% and so allow big brewers to retake this bread and butter market. My sources are confident that any widening of the low strength beer duty band will be paid for with significant changes in HSBD too. I ask that CAMRA rethink this policy for the sake of the many microbrewing businesses. If this proposal goes ahead there is likely to be a decrease in the number of breweries that will remain viable.

Dave Bailey

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Dave

Thanks again for your e-mail.

The key point is that CAMRA is totally committed to the retention of small brewers relief and are keen to see the scheme extended further to assist small brewers to grow.

Additionally, we would like to find a way of ensuring small brewers can benefit from the reduction in duty on low strength beers and would be very keen to work with SIBA on this.

CAMRA opposed the levy on beers above 7.5% along with SIBA and the BBPA.

Increasing the EU cap on reduced duty for low strength beers from 2.8% to 3.5% would require a change to an EU Directive to make it possible. That is quite a challenge and wouldn’t happen overnight. CAMRA would also like to see this Directive amended so that small brewers can benefit from this concession, which I think would deal with some of your concerns.

Cheers

Mike

Today we labelled Granite 2011

2012-01-07T03:53:00.002Z

And, we also made a video of it.

Warning, general fooling around occurs for time to time.

Hairy on Walney

2012-01-04T17:50:00.001Z

Did you watch The Hairy Bikers Christmas Special that when out just before Christmas?

If you did, perhaps you noticed that they actually drank beer?

Dave and Si are great fans of beer and pubs and this has managed to get the main passions of this blog onto the TV. I am, perhaps, feeling just a little guilty for having a dig at the BBC earlier in the year.

And, just for the record, we think their nuts taste great.

And Jeff, of course, is legendary for his desire of nuts when drinking beer.

Obviously, celebrities like this do not endorse products, unless they get paid lots of dosh, but we all know what they drank. Thanks guys, we love you.

When this was filmed we all had a brilliant time. These two are no different when the camera stops rolling. Although, there were one or two bits of film that didn't make the final edit, a bit rude I suspect, they've got a wicked sense of humour.

That was 2011

2012-01-03T13:39:00.000Z

It seems such a long time now since we sold our pub. It was March 2010 when we started Hardknott as a stand alone brewery. At that time we had a tiny 2-and-a-bit barrel plant. Pushing no more than 9 firkins from a brew length made sense in a quiet country pub, but as a stand alone brewery is far, far too small. Before the first year was out we had acquired slightly larger brew vessels and could manage around 5 barrels, 7 hectolitres or around 20 firkins from a brew.

It became obvious that we had to grow a little more if we were to be financially viable. Beer, you see, is a little undervalued for very small artisan producers to be capable of making a profit from such small volumes. Additionally, as we had decided to focus on more contemporary styles of beer, dry hopped and style breaking, rather than the usual easy drinking regular traditional session beers. The major market here was always going to be with the city centre buzz rather than the quiet rural idyllic. To make transport into various cities cost-effective we simply had to increase volumes and order sizes.

Upon leaving 2010 we had somehow been demoted to one vehicle, which was a Ka. A very economical run-about, but if I remember rightly, we could only fit one firkin into the boot. Our trusty Pathfinder had been used to discover black ice just prior to the New Year and we were lucky not to have a right off on our hands. Even so, going from a less than ideal vehicle to one that was completely impractical, in that shape of the ridiculously small Ford courtesy car, while the garage took 2 months to execute repairs, forced the purchase of the Hardknott Van.

Jumping from a maximum delivery load of 12 firkins to 24 made a huge difference. Occasionally we would run out of beer, rather than time to deliver. Pushing plant capacity to the absolute limits and putting together all our brew vessels, combining gyles and hop sparging/liqouring back we were easily filling the fermenting vessels to the point of overflowing. Time, perhaps, for some bigger vessels.

Because we like dry hopped beers, and because of the problems of dry hopping in cask, we wanted tanks that could cope with the process. Additionally we wanted to bottom crop yeast and be able to carbonate in tank. Fully enclosed conical bottom tanks are the only way forward. We ordered the tanks in July from Willis European. Very competitive price, if a little long on the lead time; the tanks turned up at the beginning of December, a total of nearly 5 months after ordering. To be fair, we were told it would be a long time.

Other highlights of 2011 was to follow our passion about beer and food matching. I know some think it's a daft nonsense, but it certainly captures the imagination of others. Why not? If it gets more people interested in good beer then it has to be a good thing.

We complained about Saturday Kitchen not including beer. I believe they are now including some mention of beer. We helped at a total of three beer matching dinners this year. The first was at The Masons Arms, which was a success if a little low key. The second at The Kirkstile Inn, where the portions of food were mountainous and the third at Fayre Gardens where the food was exquisite.

Steven, from Ale Talk, bullied me into making Vitesse Noir. We launched it at the last dinner and have found that although the market for such beers might be small, it has been well received within that market. Well enough for the current batch to have been sold. We'll make some more and we hope to do a few more crazy things in 2012 that will top that one.

We joined in with a beer verses wine dinner that was partly catalysed by our Saturday Kitchen complaint. It was great fun and I believe that the whole of the hospitality industry could be given a boost by doing more themed evenings. It certainly drags the punters in at events I've seen.

Hardknott Beer from PiciFilms on Vimeo.

We made a silly film, and hope to do more sometime soon. It was fun and people still remind me of it's silliness. I have a plan to throw some casks into a Cumbrian Lake somewhere and perhaps I'll call the result Mere Beer. Or perhaps I'm kidding. You'll have to watch out for the film when we do it.

2012 looks very exciting, and quite scary too. We've got various export routes opening up and lots of new ideas. Funding it all is the scary bit; borrowing money might be possible, but with our accountant working hard to get all the information in order, we are hopeful we can fund the ideas we have. With the inevitable cash flow lag that appears to occur with growth we may be constrained by limits on bank funding, although you, the beer drinker can help by drinking more of our beers.

If you can't find our beer near you, preferably we'd like you to suggest to your local pub or shop that they stock Hardknott, otherwise, you can order it from our on-line shop, another addition in 2011.

So, I wish all my readers, whoever you are, a very happy and prosperous New Year, I for one believe that determination and imagination can help overturn all the economic gloom, and although it's not easy, keep optimistic, as pessimism only fuels a lack of confidence and further downwards spirals.

Increase in HSBD

2011-12-27T12:43:00.000Z

I got a DM yesterday on twitter regarding High Strength Beer Duty (HSBD). I was being informed that there may be more increases on the way. I can see this as being very likely. Thanks to the provider of the information, and for the kicking to get me to talk about more important stuff.

I currently have no firm information, it's a rumour. But there certainly are noises off stage left¹ regarding this issue. Let us make sure this baddy is defeated.

CAMRA are championing an increase in the low strength relief. The family brewers would also like this to happen. Beer duty reduction for the big, efficient brewers would help pubs, apparently. This is something I disagree with, but it would certainly be politically beneficial. I feel certain that if the low strength duty band is increased it will almost certainly be countered by detrimental changes in HSBD in order to balance the books for HMRC.

We, the microbrewer, will see no benefit from the low strength discount. We already get 50% discount so we are told we can't get more. Progressive Beer Duty (PBD) which is the name for the discount given to microbrewers, is what has given the microbrewing sector a much needed boost. Erosion of this taxation relief will see the microbrewing industry start to dwindle.

Failure to see that the discount given to low strength beer is going to damage the microbrewing industry is a major issue I have with CAMRA. It is undoing the one thing for which I applaud the organisation.

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¹Stage left is a thespian term to indicate the side of the stage as seen from the actor's perspective. i.e. the right from the audience. In pantomime, it is traditionally the side the baddy enters.

Goodwill to all Brewers

2011-12-26T19:47:00.000Z

I'm a day late really. This should have been written to go out yesterday, along with other Christmas Messages, from other brewers. Unfortunately, there has been a few things that have preoccupied my time, not least a festivity involving food, beer and swapping of gifts. Additionally, a minor PR faux pas, created by a number of people, and then inappropriately inflated by others, has consumed my mind for some of this time.

Publicity is an interesting thing. But firstly, I really have to remind readers that it simply isn't good enough to make great beer. It is important to make great beer of course, and it is pointed out that some breweries focus more on PR than really great beer, but great beer needs PR if it is to sell. Getting the balance right is a reality of business. A reality that is not limited to beer, although many people erroneously see beer as "different" which it is not. I understand that people who live, breathe and enthuse about beer are going to want it to be different from other products. But it is, at the end of the day, an FMCG. Pete Brown wrote last year about why he thinks it is dangerous to think of it like that, but, from a business point of view, that is exactly what beer is.

This situation is exaggerated by the fact that the vast majority of beer sells based on price and marketing success. Low value well advertised beer is what makes the best profits. This is true of beer, bread, cheese and beans. Product consistency plays a huge part and so does fashionability of tastes.

If you can accept these truths, as I do, you start to see the PR from all the brewers as exactly the same. They all try and claim to be different, but they are not. The ones that try to ignore the necessity for PR might trundle along, but ultimately survive due to a small and local word-of-mouth promotion. Although arguably this is PR of sorts and there is also nothing at all wrong with serving a small personal market.

Of course the style of PR varies, but ultimately the same game is played by all. This became very obvious to me recently when I found ourselves in the middle of two good friends of mine, on opposite sides as I see it, both looking to maximise on the situation. For me, damage limitation was the key focus. I sensed the smell of blood had enticed one PR guru outside an otherwise successful, but false, altruistic shield.

That was a little bit of a long preamble to get to the point I'm trying to illustrate. What I've tried to do is not to be too outspoken and negative just to gain publicity. There is a lot of good and interesting things going on in the beer world, some of it happening at the smallest of breweries and some happening at the very largest. I've tried to maintain contact with most of this.

I have friends at Molson Coors, Fullers, that current big baddy that is BrewDog, as well as my peers in the likes of MagicRock and Summer Wine and local brewers to me like Stringers, Cumbria Legendary Ales and Hawkshead. Apologies if you are reading this and think you should be in the list, I could make the list very long indeed and I'm sure you deserve to be there.

A special mention should be made to The Kernel. It seems that everyone has to do that. But, it would be daft of a brewery not to say that the British Guild of Beer Writers brewer of the year 2011 was a good brewer, surely?

From time to time I see a spat between some of my friends. Sometimes I even wonder if banging their heads together might be appropriate. But still, at the end of the day, I go away and remind myself that we are all playing the PR game.

There are things I have a go at, CAMRA and The Portman Group being the notable ones. I feel they sit badly with what we are trying to achieve. That doesn't mean that I see them as an enemy, or even that I can't see their perspective. CAMRA and The Portman Group are tools of the brewers PR game too and the alignment brewers choose can influence their market position. These organisations are not brewers, and as I feel these organisations aren't trying to be friends with my part of the brewing community I feel justified in challenging them sometimes.

I try to be friendly with brewers who wish to be friendly with me. This is part of the reason why I deflect criticism of any brewer. I think it is bad form for anyone who is a brewer, or involved in the brewing industry, to publicly criticise another specific person or organisation. I don't always get this right, I'll admit. As a blogging beer writer there are times it is difficult to be sure where the line is, especially if important issues of an interest to readership are to be explored.

The PR stunt that does baffle me is the position of siding against nearly every other brewer and beer organisation. Equally, it does seem to be the one that is working the very best in terms of gigantuous growth for one brewer. This particular issue is very much work in progress for me, and under constant evaluation. I am, of course, constantly warned not to align with these forces which are apparently, I'm told, evil to the beer world. I certainly often worry about the fact that I seem to be doing so, even though I've now been lumped with every other brewer in the country.

The reader will know to what I'm referring, I'm sure. However, no one was named. Go and look at it again, there is an admission to generalisation. If you dissect the text you will also find that it is easy to assume that reference to oxidised beer flows through to every brewer, but in fact this is not quite what is being said. Is it in fact not just the same thing as every advert says? "You have to buy our product because everything else is rubbish" - it's the level of subtlety, or lack there of, that's all.

It ~~disappoints~~ amuses¹ me when the PR arm of a big brewer tries to say "they mean you Dave, too" although this is, of course, just another move in the whole chequered game play anyway. Besides, there is the suspicion that jealousy, and perhaps even a little fear, is at play too. Luckily the pressure to choose between friends has been successfully ignored. I do hope to remain friends with both.

I am minded to ask the apparently bad-ass brewing friend if I'm included in the general lump of brewers that aren't the two best. Hopefully the answer will be a desirable one. Perhaps that way a mutual PR benefit can be gained.

And so, for the approaching New Year, there are many things that Hardknott needs to do. Alex has joined us this year and his passion and ability is a great benefit to Hardknott. I am confident that his role will grow with Hardknott and be a crucial part of the learning process too. For me, I hope one of the things we'll carry on doing is making more friends in the brewing industry. I can't promise that I won't criticise organisations that aren't brewers, but I'll certainly try not to take any sides with my brewing friends.

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¹I changed the to the more appropriate "amused" because actually, when looking from a distance, most PR simply amuses me, especially when people get upset.

Added value

2011-12-21T11:46:00.001Z

Beer sales overall are dropping. They are dropping much more in pubs. This is a fact that can be backed up by hard evidence. I have here a copy of the 2011 BBPA Statistical Handbook. It is very good indeed. It shows for instance that beer sales in on "On trade" was around 67% of the total in 2000. In 2010 it was just under 51%. "Off sales" by comparison was less than 32% in 2000 but in 2010 only a shade under 50%. For the first time in history beer consumption in pubs, when you bear in mind "on trade" includes restaurants, hotels and other public drinking establishments, is no longer the dominant beer market.

There are many factors that are causing this. One, of course, is the fact that the traditional pub is no longer fashionable, or at least not as much as it used to be. Eating out has become much more popular and it is very evident that fewer and fewer pubs can survive with a pure wet trade.

An increasing awareness of the health harm that can result from excessive consumption of alcohol, and an increasing social stigma being associated with "binge drinking" and "alcohol related crime" led in part by the tabloid press, further damages the industry.

While some are worried that beer is becoming pompous and somehow above itself¹, I have consistently and repeatedly argued that this is a good thing. People are turning away from beer and pubs in favour of the grape, home drinking and restaurants. Overall alcohol consumption is dropping, although having only dropped back to around the same level as the year 2000. More importantly the number of cases of drunkenness has decreased from around 20 cases per 10,000 people in it's peak in the 1970s to less than 5 per 10,000 now. The thing that does bother me a little about this figure is that the police may be less inclined to prosecute purely for drunkenness these days. Good job really, otherwise I suspect I may have been prosecuted by now, and perhaps some of my readership too.

Whilst the supermarkets and their relatively low pricing of alcohol must surely be damaging the industry, there is very little we can realistically do about this. The vast majority of the general public see the supermarket as a good thing. The pricing is perceived as good, everything is under one roof and you can park your car right outside the door. However, the supermarket does not provide for a smaller proportion of the population who want something different. I rarely buy beer in the supermarket because they rarely have the beer I want to buy. I often go to the pub and buy beer, sometimes it's even the beer produced in my own brewery. I do so for a very good reason.

Hardknott beers at Craft Beer Co - one of an emerging number of contemporary beer bars

I could set up a cask, or even a keg, in my brewery, or in my garage or kitchen and enjoy my own beer at a much lower price. And I have done on occasions. I prefer to pay a little bit more and drink it in a pub. Why?

Because the pub is warmer than the brewery. Because I can sit and talk rubbish about nothing with the friends I have at the pub. Because someone gives me my beer in a clean glass and wipes the tables down, the decore is better and overall the experience is much better than at the brewery or at home.

It bothers me a lot that there are repeated noises from many people about how the supermarkets are damaging the pub and beer industry by their cut price alcohol. Whilst this may well be true what we inadvertently do is reinforce this commonly held belief. We are telling people that beer is cheaper in the supermarkets, so people now believe that more than ever.

Pubs are special because they add value to the drinkers experience. Special beer in a growing specialist beer market providing added value because the beer is more flavoursome, stronger, shipped from lands afar or perhaps just a little bit daft only goes to strengthen the beer market and helps to grow the businesses that I hope the reader would like to see flourish.

Beer snobbishness is good for beer, not bad.

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¹I was going to link here to several posts by other bloggers, but I realise that none of them quite say that. But there does seem to be an undertone of the old "beer is the drink of the common people" and "Beer should not be too expensive or snobby"

Here are some posts, although I suspect the reader has already seen them.

Boak and Bailey and again
Tandleman

There are of course good points made, but I can't help feeling that there is a lack of joined up thinking when it comes to how we worry about how beer is sold, marketed and priced. It was the Daily Mail piece this morning that caused me to write this piece.

Cash-flow

2011-12-20T19:52:00.001Z

I'll be honest, this is an open and honest plea.

Beer is a low margin business.

A low margin business is one that might have a high turnover, might do lots of potentially profitable trade, but where the costs to profit ratio is quite poor; You have to sell lots of beer, take a lot of money, and turn it all around very quickly, if you stand any chance of making an honest living.

Of course, if you are a big brand which is wanted in a pub, you can demand that supply is only guaranteed provided the bills are paid, or that they are paid by direct debit. Unpaid bills or bounced direct debits are rewarded by the account being put on stop. No more bland mass produced lager for you, mate.

Even more secure is to operate the tied pub model.

In the microbrewery industry it is important to take the business you can. But taking that business can lead to difficulties. I don't like to say to the very well meaning pub manager who really wants to stock my beer "I'd deliver, but your head office hasn't paid the last two invoices"

Nearly everyone pays in the end. Even the one who was 10 months late and we thought we were going to have to take to court, paid in the end, although the distasteful joke made at the time left a bad taste that will ensure lasting memories.

But consider the readers salary. Consider that to make a reasonable living we would have to turn over at least 10 times our expected salary. Consider you, the reader, and whatever salary, income or other financial input you get. Consider that you might consistently be owed about 25% of the yearly payments due to you. How would you feel about that? How much would it cost you in interest?

Consider that we have 10 times that in monies owed to us.

We generally deliver beer having already paid ¹ for the hops, malt, bottles, labels, cask finance charges, van HP, tank capex loans, cleaning chemicals, wages ² and many, many other costs. Not too long after delivery we have to pay - we HAVE to pay - the beer duty.

Many pubs and bars pay cash on delivery. We love you very much indeed. A large proportion pay within 30 days. We love you by an amount that is imperceivably less than the aforementioned pubs. If everyone paid within 30 days I would not be writing this post. Paying within 30 days, or even a little bit longer, is how most businesses work. We're all in the same boat and we understand.

There are some bars who take delivery, take the money off the drinker, bank it, let us pay all the costs and still don't pay for the beer after over 60 days. If all our customers did that we would be out of business.

As it is, these bars and pubs are preventing us from growing our business.

You know who you are.

We know it's tough out there and we are all in the same boat. Money is tight for all of us and when you are in business you have to manage that cash flow as best you can. I'm sure pubs and bars have problems too, remember, we've been there too.

You could help us out here.

If you are a drinker, make sure your favourite bar or pub knows you want our beer stocked. That way we can put more pressure on these bars to pay their bills on time. A reason why it's not stocked might be because we've decided not to supply due to non-payment.

If you are one of our well-meaning bar manager customers who are at the mercy of some head office bean counter then please communicate to them that they are damaging the craft beer scene by delaying payment inappropriately.

If you are an aforementioned bean counter and are reading this then I'm very surprised, because frankly, I didn't think you cared about decent beer. But then, I suspect I'm right on this one, and you are probably not reading this.

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¹or at least have our suppliers breathing heavily down our necks threatening to stop us brewing because we haven't paid. If you're reading, Mr Supplier, we love you more than you know for being as tolerant as you are.

²Sorry Alex, I know that might not be quite true, but we love you even more.

Leaning towards extreme

2011-12-18T19:20:00.000Z

Hardknott for the faint hearted?

I can never claim to have led an ordinary life. Sunday, for instance, is not about washing the car or cutting the lawns. OK, sometimes it is, but only because it is well past needing to be done and I've not been able to squeeze those essential, but tiresomely boring jobs into my schedule at any other spare time.

An ideal Sunday for me would be something that raises the pulse rate a little¹ and might involve a little bit of outdoor sport with an element of adrenalin. Climbing is my most favourite pass-time, when I get a chance. Rock climbing in the summer and snow and ice climbing in the winter. Sadly, since leaving regular employment just over 8 years ago, the time consumed in the pursuit of a reasonable level of income from being self employed seems to have rather limited my time available for pure pleasure.

My approach to beer is somewhat similar to other aspects of my life; anything but mainstream. I could probably sell more beer if I concentrated on making low cost pale session bitter. My view is that Hardknott is about something different, something challenging, and something that sets the pulse racing. It's not for everyone. It's probably not even for the majority.

I recently wondered if Continuum was too extreme for it to be really successful. I know that due to it's very high hop loading, right from bittering hops, through late aroma hops and ending with a stupid level of dry hopping in tank, it clearly strikes fear into those meek drinkers who get vertigo when faced with high level hop compounds. My love of crystal malt as a belay for protection against unbalancing, when on the edge of top level hop exposure, often attracts criticism.

My daughter, Sarah, has just turned 14. That fact in itself only goes to strengthen my biggest fear of all; my advancing age resulting in my knees no longer being able to cope with some of my favourite activities². I was very much younger and fitter 14 years ago when that bundle of fun made an entrance into the world. Having a birthday at this time of year can be troublesome for the girl, as less attention to birthday presents are given due to everyone being consumed with the details of our ever increasingly burdensome Christmas celebrations.

She's a clever cookie, takes after her Dad, recently requesting climbing equipment for presents. That's easy, I thought, you can never spend too much money on beer or climbing equipment. Of course, the detail of exactly what to get would require a little bit of thought. Given that the weather this time of year is unpredictable, climbing gear might not get used until the summer and an all weather solution was needed.

Looking at a blank wall in the brewery and suddenly a devious plan was hatched. A quick look at the internet revealed that climbing wall holds were easily attainable. Job sorted, daughter happy, and I now have a climbing wall in the brewery that I can play on whenever I like.

"Dad?" you know, in the both cute but irritating way that only daughters can do.
"Yes Sarah?"
"Just because we now have a climbing wall, you know you can't get out of taking me proper climbing in the summer, don't you?"
"Oh, I suppose so" I say, pretending that I'm reluctant, but really, pleased that I'll probably now get bullied into spending more time away from work and doing something I really enjoy
.
Thinking about Continuum, I like it the way it is. I know other people do too. I left a well paid job to take up a career in an industry I enjoy being part of. I have always concentrated on doing things in an off-the-wall shunning-the-mainstream approach to my business. A little bit extreme, pushing into areas of risk and incurring costs that often cannot be recouped due to the very low margins that exist in the beer industry.

I've been in the bottom of a glacier crevasse, on top of many mountains, broken my leg skiing, nearly frightened myself to death more times than I care to remember being half way up a rock climb that really I shouldn't have been on.

I've run a pub³, started a brewery, sold the pub, made strong beer, week beer, well-hopped beer, had a pop at CAMRA and The Portman Group. I do these things because this is who I am, what I do. I make the beers I want to drink, and I shouldn't have to apologise for that. I write about the things I want to write about, I don't think I should have to apologise for that either. Inevitably this blog is now shaped by the fact that I run a brewery which is trying to make money out of brewing the very beers I like to brew. Getting to the markets that might return sufficient margin for me to continue to make these beers does require a rather extreme approach to marketing and this is always going to upset a few. And sometimes I get a little scared as a result.

But, a little bit of what scares me is what keeps me feeling alive.

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¹Now look, there really wasn't any need for you to think that.

²There you go again. But, although the fear of ceasing to be able to manage that is also there, I am told there are little blue pills that might keep everything in that department functional long after it ought to be.

³And really, that in itself I could fill a book with those stories.

Just The Tonic

2011-12-05T12:06:00.001Z

We received a letter from The Portman Group the other day regarding a complaint made against Vitesse Noir by a member of the public......

I've just written the response.

Portman Group
4^th Floor
20 Conduit Street
London W1S 2XW

ByPost, Email
and Open letter published on Dave’s Blog

05 December 2011

COMPLAINT AGAINST VITESSE NOIR

Sirs,

We note your letter dated 2 December 2011 regardinga complaint from a member of the public. We note your nine member companies,who between them represent a major contributor to the alcohol market. Werecognise the need for pacification of the unreasonable pressure put on ourindustry by neo-prohibitionists who fail to recognise that the vast majority ofdrinkers are responsible and moderate. We note that the clever marketingcampaigns conducted by your member companies, with their benefit of majormarketing budgets, often subtly tread a fine line of your code. We note thatmajor lager brands for instance often sponsor sport implying that by drinkingthat product you automatically become a sportier person. Additionally, advertson the T.V. that suggest by drinking a product one’s party will be wild andraunchy must surely sail close to The Portman Group’s code of conduct.

We note that the majority of the volume ofthe products your members companies make are easy drinking, manufactured to abudget and a quality that is unlikely to challenge the taste buds of thedrinker and sold in a manner that is designed to maximise volumes of sales. Werespect this position and understand that this is what the majority of the lawabiding drinking public is happy with.

We note that The Portman Group has nojurisdiction over us and is unlikely to be able to take action over thisparticular product, namely Vitesse Noir, as it is predominantly sold direct byus to a very small specialist market. The product is highly unlikely to be soldthrough supermarkets, which is where the majority of risk to public healthwould be.

We are a very small company. Our productsare designed very much for a small, niche, and discerning customer base. Toenable us to get to our target market we require a strong marketing message andit is disappointing that an organisation which is funded by major alcoholproducers is seeking to interfere with real innovation and enterprisingcommerce. In the current economic environment it is the small producers likeHardknott who are likely to lead an economic recovery. Seeking to inhibit oursuccess is inappropriate and unreasonable.

This particular product is inspired by anAmerican Craft Beer the likes of which is very rare in the UK. It is partof a Craft Beer movement in the UK which is showing drinkers that a few wellchosen drinks at a higher price is more responsible than looking for the lowestcost deal and drinking it in large quantities. It is highly flavoured andpriced as a premium product and as such is recommended by us to be consumed onlyas a digestif. If the label is read in context it is clear that this is thecase, and furthermore the label carries a warning, which the complaint haschosen to ignore.

It appears that it is the word “tonic”which is being picked out as the offending word. It is worth pointing out thatpre-packaged “Gin and Tonic” is now a regular product in many supermarkets andis manufactured by at least one of your members. Additionally, several of yourmembers regularly feature adverts in mass media citing gin and tonic as arefreshing pick-me-up.

We believe the risk to the general publicof the innocent and obviously tongue in cheek wording on the labels of ourbottles is insignificant. Indeed, we expect that our customer base will haveall the intelligence needed to control their own health and wellbeing and areunlikely to believe that our little quip has any basis in truth. We believe ourcustomers are intelligent and discerning and we market as such.

The product is manufactured in very smallbatches and we are unlikely to ever reach the manufacturing capacity that wouldcause this product to represent a public health risk.

We believe that for small artisan producerslike ourselves a different approach to marketing is required. We will thereforewish to be allowed to progress with our business without interference from anorganisation who is funded by major alcohol producers.

I note that this is not the first time ThePortman Group has antagonised producers in the Craft Beer Sector. Hardknottrecognises the importance of a regulatory body within the industry to preventinappropriate Government legislation hindering the lawful and responsibleactions of all of our industry. However, it is clear to me that The PortmanGroup is unable to consider the needs of the small artisan producer. Should arepresentative of small producers be required then we would be happy to helpand thereby avoid further uncomfortable confrontations.

Dave Bailey

Brewer, Doer, Force Majeure.

Vitesse Noir at Port Street

2011-11-20T13:06:00.002Z

We're off to Manchester later today, partly because my American-brewpub-owner-friend has to climb aboard a plane back to his colony tomorrow. He also hasn't been to Port Street Beer House and I wanted to show him that before he leaves.

We will also be delivering a pin of Vitesse Noir to Port Street ready for a meet the brewer/beer launch. If you haven't had a chance to try Vitesse Noir yet then get to Manchester on Wednesday. It is the first time we've provided this beer in cask form and I'm not sure when it might happen again.

Tanks a lot

2011-11-19T09:00:00.000Z

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. To start with Ted, from Oregon, flew over our brewery early on the Monday before last on his way to Manchester. That very same afternoon, whilst Ted was being ignored by Simon in The Marble Arch, some tanks arrived. We've been waiting for them for such a long time that we now feel some sort of loss that we can't now say "when the new tanks arrive"

After much scurrying around for a forklift truck that had forks long enough, we finally got them off-loaded just in time for yet another radio interview with BBC Cumbria. They are good to us, the local BBC, but their timing could have been better.

The last week has been about interfacing SMS, Tri-clamp and RJT fittings. Despite my best attempts to avoid it we now have a ridiculous combination of pipe fittings in the brewery. The week has also been about putting as much wort into these tanks as possible. There is a risk that quite a lot of it now classes as beer.

These new tanks open up so many possibilities for us. We can now brew, condition, lager, dry hop and carbonate all in the same tank. The primary fermentation is close to being finished on both the inaugural beers and I'm now playing with the pressure versus temperature allowing the natural CO2 to be absorbed into the beer. No force carbonation. A question for the future is: if I drop the beer bright in tank and fill cask under counter-pressure is it still real ale? Would anyone care?

Either way, these babies are a significant step forward for Hardknott. To the best of my knowledge we are the only Cumbrian brewery using such technology on the main production beers. Early indications are that they will significantly improve our ability to get more beer out to more people more often.

Above is the Hardknott team. I'm the handsome one on the left. In the middle is the youngster of the gang, Alex. Ann, of course, is on the right, getting worryingly close to Alex.

The tanks are 2000l total volume and 1650l working volume. One currently holds about 12hl of Code Black which we brewed on Tuesday and the other very close to capacity of Continuum, which we brewed on Wednesday. Thursday Ted brewed a double imperial red beer which got crammed into one of our old 5 barrel tanks.

Beer lovers scran

2011-11-18T10:16:00.005Z

I didn't want to be involved from the start. I'd been last year and been quite appalled at how badly the beers had been matched to the food. This year I'd been asked to contribute beer free of charge, two firkins no less. I insisted on the beer I would present being Infra Red at the very least. Of course, I'd have been happier to match something even stronger with the food, but this was a CAMRA dinner and it just HAD to be cask.

The event was the Cumbrian CAMRA branches annual awards and beer lovers dinner. Last year it was very clear that almost universally the beers chosen were session beers, which are rarely very good at matching with food. The one beer that was, if I remember rightly, about 6% gained inappropriate and over-the-top warnings from the jug runner about how strong it was.

Having been persuaded to attend this year, and having received no real benefits from the fact that we had donated beer, not even a free seat, and payment demands for the 4 tickets we had agreed to buy being somewhat less than tactful, I was below optimum mood for the event anyway. Being a person who works, lives and breaths beer nearly every waking hour of the day and being extremely busy with it, a Friday night in front of the TV was then, a week ago, very much overdue. I could still do with scheduling it in right now. A beer dinner like that is work you see, it has to be absolutely splendid to fire me into enthusiasm¹.

I'm not against session beer. I've made the point many times before that I drink a lot of it. However, when it comes to beer and food matching, session beer just does not cut the mustard, or for that matter any other condiment.

The menu was fairly dire. OK, it's hard to cater for 200 people, but what was presented seemed ill thought through and lacked flair, imagination or any substantial quality. The technical complacence of the cooking was fine, but overall it lacked any decent interest.

The first course was a "Cumbrian canapé Breakfast on a plate" Please, what was that? A miniature breakfast essentially. Clever maybe, but the only flavours were salt. black pudding and prune. The only positive thing I could say was that the pale session beer it was matched with helped to quench the thirst that the salt created. It did not go at all well with the dominant flavours of the black pudding and the prune.

The second course was more salt. Ham hock and potato terrine and this was possibly the best of a poor bunch of session beer matches. However, the food was bland other than the salt and overall failed to impress me.

Beef, which was actually the best food, was matched with an otherwise superb and very popular pale session beer. The result was a little bit like trying to get morris dancers to perform to Punk Rock. Never before have I ever tried a food and beverage match that was so clearly influenced by organisational needs over and above flavour.

By the time I got to the dessert, matched with my beer, I was already very unhappy that I had spent £120 of my money on tickets and also donated around £200 worth of beer. I was by this time quite convinced I should have gone with my original gut feelings of having nothing whatsoever to do with the event. The Infra Red would have been a far more suitable match for the beef, and I was expecting complete failure of a match it had been chosen for, which was the dessert.

Damson and almond tart. This would have gone well with Stringers Damson beer, for instance, or perhaps a Kriek. I believe Hawkshead do a damson beer too. But, Infra Red, I was sure, was not the best match. I'll be honest, out of the whole menu it probably was the best beer/food paring, but in my view this only goes to highlight just how bad this beer dinner was.

The beer with the cheeses was OK. Sorry, the beer is one of my favourite Cumbrian Beers after Infra Red and would have gone well with the beef perhaps slightly better than Infra Red. But still, it was only just OK with the cheese.

On top of the matching issues the whole event suffered from the major problem of delivering beer in jugs to tables. Decanting beer into jugs knocks out condition by the double decant. All the beers were flat, completely. I nearly ordered a bottle of wine.

All the very best beer matching events I've been to either use beer in bottles, or where logistics are practical, the beers are dispensed on draught directly into the glass. However, this is a concern I have with beer judging where beer is often dispensed with a double decant to ensure quite rightly that blind tasting is ensured.

Quite apart from the fact that this event effectively cost us over £320 to support, which I regret deeply, I also despair at the entrenched ideas of some beer "lovers" How on earth are we ever going to overcome the preconceived ideas of the like of Saturday Kitchen if the organisers of beer diners like this fail to understand that session beers are for drinking in the pub and beer and food matching needs a different approach? If this is the standard of beer and food presentation we will always fail to overturn the general public's view that wine goes better with food.

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¹I need to point out that many very good beer events do inspire me. We recently organised a beer dinner at Fayrer Gardens for instance. Also, we had an absolutely splendid time at Thatchers Arms with Tim Atkin and Adrian Tierney-Jones where beer and wine went head-to-head and proved that either, when done well, can be equally as good with food. Indeed, it is cooperation between menu design and drinks matching, along with bucking against influences for political reasons that make these events a success.

Flavour, taste, preconception and fashion

2011-10-31T09:00:00.000Z

It was the SIBA North competition on Thursday followed by it's festival. The reader should already know this, unless a casual browser of random blogs; it's a major event that all beer enthusiasts ought to at least know about, even if they are unable to attend. We helped out by being runners during the judging, which was fun, if a little tiring.

The day had two very notable aspects which were particularly pleasing. The first was that we won silver in the Premium Strong Bitters category for Infra Red, which of course we were very pleased about. The second and possibly far more pleasing was the fact that we had a chance to meet up with many great people, some old friends, some new friends and some people I've only ever previously communicated with via twitter or blogging. It was great to see you all.

Competitions like this always throw up questions in the minds of individual beer enthusiasts. One very notable winner, just prior to the announcements being made and therefore in complete ignorance of the results, commented to me that these things are always a lottery. I'm not sure I completely agree, although clearly there are going to be a number of variables associated that will very surely throw up a different result on a different day.

As a brewer, and a business man, I have to consider what the outcome of such a competition really means. The 130 assembled judges obviously came from a variety of different backgrounds. Some beer bloggers, some brewers from other SIBA regions and presumably some publicans and perhaps some of the general public. The result of such a competition should at least represent the opinions of a spectrum of people.

While waiting for the final judging to finish I had a half of Magic Rocks Rapture 4.6% (Premium bitters) which I thought to be so good that I thought to myself "The bastards, I think I like this better than Infra Red" full of over-the-top dry hopped flavours that over-shadow my own attempts at progressive beer. Afterwards I got to taste Continuum, which risked failing to register on the hop-o-meter due to palate overload, despite normally fully satisfying my humulus desires.

We settled down to wait for the results of the competition. In the preamble to the announcements it was pointed out that everyone's perception of what is good is different. That fact is not only true but left sufficient impact on the assembled audience for a number of people to point this out later, and perhaps supports the view mentioned above that the outcome is to some extent subject to variables beyond the beer.

The Best Bitters category came and went and Continuum failed to get a medal. Equally, the premium bitters category came and went without Rapture gaining any recognition. I had been suffering from the fact that I had had a couple of beers and had not yet found the little boys room despite having been there 5 hours. Infra Red clearly wasn't going to get anything if Rapture and Continuum didn't. Too many hops, too narrow an appeal, too flavoursome I assumed. I took a comfort break fairly happy I wasn't going to miss anything important.

I happened to get back from dispensing with the aqueous proportion of previously consumed beer in time for the premium strong beers category to be announced. Hawkshead NZ Pale Ale got Bronze.

"Oh well" thought I "Hope yet for properly hopped beers"

Then came Silver. "Hardknott Infra Red"

I think that my thought process at that point included a proportion of profanities of delight that rarely get used in my writing, but oft enter my head. I had been convinced that Continuum would be more likely to win than Infra Red. Needless to say the evening that followed would have been difficult to spoil as I floated on a cushion of very comfortable euphoria.

The next day we set off early from Manchester to deliver beer and pick up empties from London. We were due in Essex in the evening to attend a beer verses wine dinner hosted by The Thatchers Arms with the beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones and wine writer and Saturday Kitchen presenter Tim Atkin.

If you've been following our blog you will be aware of our attempts to change a little bit the perception that beer is unworthy to drink with quality food. The dinner was a great success and in the end was more about like minded people getting together with great food and great drink than about any real contest. The results concluded that both beer and wine are equally worthy at the table when good company is in plentiful supply.

It is intriguing to me that various people at the dinner did have some preconceived ideas about which beverage should work better. I tried very hard to put aside my own. In the end the best match of the evening was, in my view, a wine, although I still think that beer came out slightly on top overall from my perspective.

Irrespective of what I thought, there were clearly some differences of opinion. How much that is influenced by peers, media, ancestors and more is debatable. It is very common for people to go to the pub and order a pint before a meal, but then swap to more robust wine for a meal. In my view this is mainly due to preconceived ideas, but also because the beer industry fails to do enough to change that.

Both the dinner and the competition from the day before have interesting enlightenment for me. Hawkshead Windermere Pale won the SIBA competition. It is very popular and I know the team at the brewery work very hard to make it a good, solid and consistent product. It has wide appeal and certainly enjoys commercial success. This is clearly because this beer is suitable for the regular beer drinker in the regular pub where quite rightly the majority of beer is consumed.

Infra Red and perhaps even Continuum might just have too narrow appeal for the wide range of judges that are quite rightly assembled for such competitions. Indeed, my suspicion is that Infra Red won partly because the number of beers in the strong premium beers category is somewhat less than in the best bitter category.

If Hardknott made a beer that tried to have as wide an appeal as Windermere Pale, or perhaps another very popular Cumbrian beer, Loweswater Gold, I could sell a lot more beer. But then, I'd only be copying what these very good breweries have done. Instead, our aim is to carry on making beers that are different, have narrower appeal, and some I hope that can further lever into the quality dining arena.

Having tasted Magic Rock's Rapture, I now feel Infra Red is somehow inferior. No doubt if I tried to ram more hops into it, quite apart from no longer being the beer that gained silver, might also be even less popular with a wider audience. Equally, Light Cascade, which I consider to be the runt of my litter, perhaps should have been entered into the competition, and does continue to enjoy good sales on cask.

In conclusion, I am left thinking that the only thing I can continue to do is ensure Hardknott makes the beers that define us. If we win a few prizes along the way, then so much the better. If we can convince a few more people to focus on trying beer as an alternative to wine with food, then better still.

Money for old rope

2011-10-25T22:26:00.003+01:00

It's a busy time at Hardknott, I've been busy with all sorts of important jobs, like getting rid of stuff I don't want in exchange for stuff I do. Today I sold and delivered 3 tonnes of Lake District roofing slate that was taken off the pub before we left. It's OK, it was replaced with new, which actually made the roof better. Better than that the old fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock still had value, it's just that the lazy builder I used seemed reluctant to engage in the old art of roofing with random slate. He proclaimed that I'd get enough money for selling the old slate to pay for the job of putting the new, inferior quality, regular sized slate on the roof. Needless to say I was offered diddily-squat for the slate from the builders "man", too late for me to change my mind.

I could tell you far more about this story, but I can sense that the reader may already have lost interest and moved on to another blog. So, to cut a long story short, I sold the slate today for less than I wanted, but for a reasonable amount more than I was originally offered. This has helped us to finish paying for our new tanks which will be delivered, so I'm told, around the middle of next week.

The other thing I have been busy with is sorting out an on-line shop. It's been in beta test mode hiding behind a password log-on. 12 kind souls have been buying beer through this medium, just to test everything is OK. The little bit of money from this, because payment via PayPal is virtually immediate, has also helped cash-flow a little. Selling to pubs and shops invariably means we get paid days, weeks or even months after you, the customer, has drunk the beer.

I imagine the reader who is still engaged is wondering why I don't take the password protection off the web-shop and sort out our cash-flow a little bit more. Mainly, the answer would be that I believe it is necessary to have a licence to sell alcohol to the general public. Don't worry though, the licence just came through and the shop will be online next week.

However, gaining this licence is not without it's difficulties and, more importantly, costs. Not only is the licence fee itself linked to the rateable value of the building, which you might think is fair enough. I don't think it is. If we had a little stand alone shop, say 16 square metres floor space, the rateable value would mean our licence would be in the lowest band. However, our shop is 16 square metres within a building that is over 200 square metres. The rateable value of all of that building puts us in a higher band. Money for nothing. On top of these costs are the costs of placing the statutory adverts, photocopying the forms and getting plans drawn up. Applying for a premises licence is not an insignificant activity.

It all makes me think about licences in general. The list of licences and permits for operating any pub or other on licence establishment are fairly extensive. PRS, TV licence, Satellite subscription, environmental health registration, premises licence, data protection registration.... the list goes on and on. The costs of gaining and maintaining these runs into thousands of pounds a year. It's not just the direct costs, which are often paid to the local authority in return for nothing other than permission to trade. There is also the administration costs of supplying and maintaining relevant documents or ensuring compliance with ever increasingly stringent and irrelevant rules made up by unnecessarily employed graduates who wouldn't otherwise have a meaningful part in the economy of the country.

Many people cite beer duty as the killer to the licensed trade. Indeed, it is a cost that is significant. But I firmly believe that blaming beer duty for the downfall of the pub is focussing too closely on only one part of the costs that can be attributed to our political leaders. Local authorities raking in fees for licences, and in return simply dreaming up more ways to make our lives complicated, are not only forcing us to pay good money for old rope, but are also asking us to hang ourselves by that very same cord and no doubt flog ourselves with it before we do.

I hope that my slate sale has enabled a charming gentleman to finish his barn conversion. It might have been old slate, but it was good and serviceable and of use to him. We did a deal, shook hands and everyone is happy. Hardknott gets a couple of nice tanks and our customers will get more of our beer.

Licences and permits are needed to ensure unscrupulous dealers can't sell cut price beer to kids. Looking at some places I'm not convinced it really does achieve that aim, but regardless, for the small, honest and responsible trader the costs caused and complexity imposed are completely unreasonable. And, we get absolutely nothing in return that is of value.

Go on, do it if you haven't already

2011-10-17T19:22:00.009+01:00

We're just about to release a very big beer. It's a triple imperial stout with lots of stuff in it. It's full of beans, just to give you a clue, three different types in fact. It's 11% and black. You wouldn't neck it very fast, it will be seriously expensive for one thing. Also, you wouldn't drink much of it because of the intense flavours. It is unlikely to cause major drunken behaviour mainly because it is aimed at beer geeks rather than tramps.

There will be several events, including twissup, where it will show up.

However, it will be a little more expensive than it needs to be because the Government have put a High Strength Beer Duty on it. Sadly we didn't get it into bottles, keg and cask quite quick enough so couldn't pay up the duty for last month, which was the last chance to move beer out of "duty suspense" before the new tax comes in.

There is an e-pertition that is asking the Government to consider reversing this tax. Yes, it might be true, as Jeff Pickthall points out, that we are unlikely to get the tax revoked, but if we don't make our voices heard then beer duty is going to keep on increasing.

If you haven't read and signed this e-petition then you need to read more beer blogs, I must be the last of the beer bloggers to have posted about this.

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If you'd like to get hold of this beer as soon as it is released you could do worse than apply to be a beta tester for our shop.

Three years on

2011-10-12T09:28:00.007+01:00

It was cold, wet and dark when I woke this morning; it turns out that this might be something to do with the fact that summer has well and truly gone. Already the advantages of longer days in northern climes at June's solstice have been negated and those southerners already have about 6 minutes more daylight¹ than us. As yet another year moves into the final quarter it has suddenly made me realise how much has changed for me in the last 3 years.

It was on this day 3 years ago that I started Dave's Beer Blog. I was reminded by the author of this blog's twin, Pencil and Spoon, of the anniversary, and without Mark prodding me I'd have certainly forgotten this important date. Although there are many influences that have got me to this point in my life I, this blog is the most significant catalyst to have made it happen. It is perhaps perverse that the main reason for starting to write this blog was a frustration in having insufficient control over my own destiny. At that time I was running a pub in a remote corner of the country and had simply run out of ideas for making the business sustainable. Moreover, there was a real risk of a nervous breakdown, a relationship failure or even my physical health being severely compromised. I am now happily in the position that, although these risks are still present, far more control is achievable and I have a business that is developing without the constraints imposed by a 16th century building in an inaccessible part of Cumbria. However, I now write much less, and when I do it feels less creative which is a fact that upsets me quite a lot.

More than all of that, this blog has put me in touch with many great people. This blog has won me a nice tankard that sits on my mantle piece. I now sit on the committee of The British Guild of Beer Writers giving me an excuse to visit London far more often than I'd otherwise have reason to. Probably most importantly it has given me a significantly broader knowledge of beer, through those many people I have met, than I would otherwise have gained.

I now run a growing brewing business that is exploring new and diverse areas of the beer market. These developing and exciting prospects are unnerving many, but for us we know it is the right tack to follow. To us, to make beer that is no different to the many hundreds of others that are out there makes little sense.

8 years ago I loved good food, good pubs, drank Guinness, had a reasonably well paid job with holidays and everything. I sought to remove myself from the humdrum and pension certainty by looking for a business. I chose to buy a pub, which as it happened served a lot of cask beer. I changed from Guinness drinker to cask beer drinker to brewer and finally, mainly as a result of this blog, to fully confirmed beer geek.

The combined effect of being a little more contented about my fate, and being really quite absorbed with the task of building this brewery, reduces my time and inclination to write. Despite this I do like writing, so here's to another year of this blog and me finding the temporal flexibility and cerebral stimulus to punch the keyboard a little more often.

Meanwhile, I do hope we have a white winter again. I know you guys in the south hate the snow but up here we love it. A bright snow laden fellside is a perfect offset for the slightly shorter days compared to the grey-brown slush that clogs up the capital. Besides, the sledges just don't get out often enough.

Cheers

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¹In the summer we get about 45 minutes more daytime than Londoners. In the middle of winter it goes the other way. Whether or not that is a good thing is a matter of perspective.

Low ABV, low duty, low IQ

2011-10-01T11:10:00.006+01:00

Duty on beer has been slashed. Unless you are a micro-brewer that is, in which case beer duty goes up.

I blogged about it more than once when it was first announced. Unfortunately, the arguments I put seemed a little to complex for most of you to get on your high horse about it then.

I'll put it simply:

The low ABV duty discount can only be claimed by brewers who do not get small brewers discount.
CAMRA campaigned for the low ABV discount.
Below 2.8% cask beer is not practical as it has low demand and goes off faster.
The duty rise on 7.5% beer is to pay for the low ABV discount.
Low ABV discount can only be claimed by supermarket own brands, large brewery "mid strength" lagers and perhaps some large cask beer producers.
At present, we are unsure how the high ABV is to be calculated¹, but there is a suggestion that micro-brewers making beer over 7.5% might be charged 150% more due to us loosing our small brewers discount on these beers.
Until now beer duty was completely fair - duty was charged per unit volume of alcohol. Not any more.

Overall, CAMRA are claiming it as good news. IT IS NOT.

Chasing a discount on beers under 3.5%, which CAMRA are doing, will only cause the Government to put up beer duty somewhere else - you have been warned.

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Magic Rock also have some stuff to say on the subject.

¹Since I first published this post I looked into the facts. HMRC have never sent any information, but I did research when the budget announcement was made. As I suspected it is confirmed that we are still permitted the discount on the regular part of beer duty but not the High Strength Beer Duty. Our duty will go up by 50% on all beers above 7.5%

"Small Brewer's Relief is still available on the general beer duty element of beer above 7.5% abv. However, it does not apply to HSBD and no further relief will be applied to the reduced rate for lower strength beers."

There is information on the HMRC site for those concerned.

Cool Snake

2011-08-10T11:17:00.006+01:00

If you follow me on twitter you might occasionally see me arguing with Tandleman over various issues. In many ways this is a bit bizarre because I have on more than one occasion had a very enjoyable sociable experience drinking with someone with the name Peter Alexander. Recent discussions have been over naming and shaming individual establishments over their beer serve temperature. Although I remain unconvinced about the value of public naming and shaming on twitter, I agree that there are some shocking examples of poor beer dispense.

Beer should be served at the correct temperature. For cask beer this is generally considered as being around 12 degrees centigrade¹. Too cold and flavours can be masked as well as inevitable problems with chill haze. Much worse is the crime of serving beer too warm; the drinking experience is not enjoyable and an otherwise well brewed beer can be ruined as a result.

There is unfortunately a pattern; tied pub estates often have significant care given to the quality of installed equipment. OK, the beer range may not be particularly varied or imaginative, but you can be more certain that the beer is better looked after. There is very good reason for this.

With a tied house the beer sold is entirely supplied through one route to market. It might be a single regional brewer or it may be a PubCo but there is at least a central purchasing route and maximising sales is crucial to the profitability of the owning business. Cellar support is inevitably very good with great care given to maximising the quality of the beer.

By contrast many free houses have poorer investment in cellar equipment and dispense technology. A very noticeable but in my view completely unacceptable omission is, as I think Tandleman put it, "python² cooling to the point of dispense". This should include jacketed handpulls and carefully regulated circulating cooling water from a dedicated cooler, i.e. NOT from the keg cooling circuit.

OK, the investment might well be significant for a free-house without benefit of a large brewery to supply the technical support and equipment investment, but it will reduce wastage in "pulled through" beer and also inevitably increase the quality of the beer therefore improving the customer experience. I suspect the payback time will be very much shorter than most establishments expect.

Moreover, some of my very favourite beer outlets do suffer from beer serve temperature problems. This results in public naming and shaming of the very places I love. So, perhaps these places could help to prevent Tandleman and I from falling out by thinking about investing a little in dispense equipment?

On Beer, Birra, Bier there is an interesting reflective post on my most recent twitter discussion with Tandleman.

Expensive but very good handpulls can be bought here. Pythons and other such wonderful things can be bought here. Personally I find the technicalities of putting these things together very straightforward, but if your practical skills aren't up to it a good cellar technician shouldn't cost too much.

If any cellar technician tries to tell you that it's OK, it's "trad beer" and doesn't need python cooling, look for someone else.

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¹personally I think there is an argument for some very light and hoppy beers being served a little cooler and things like strong stouts and barley wines a little warmer. 12 degrees is a good compromise however and I totally reject the excuse some dinosaur cellar-men use to say cask beer should be warm. Cask Marque is one organisation that has set some parameters and this cannot be a bad thing.

²A python is a thermally lagged bundle of pipes that includes a flow and return cooling circuit. It's really good at keeping beer at the right temperature from the cellar right to your glass. Generally, if beer is too warm, it is highly likely that this technology is not in use, or it's broken.

The making of the Hardknott film

2011-08-07T18:08:00.003+01:00

I have a beard. Some people think I'm quite weird¹. I drink beer, quite a lot of it, but despite all of that I also like to remain fit and healthy. My beard is kept short, I avoid wearing sandals unless it's very hot and I'm on holiday, and hope to remain in good shape by occasionally partaking in a little light exercise other than the simple act of raising around 700g with my right hand.

In one of our local pubs there are many regulars who remain fit and healthy, despite my suspicion that they drink more than the government recommendation. I believe they remain healthy due to an interest in the great outdoors; climbing, walking, caving, that sort of weird nonsense. Their irritating youthfulness may also help. Some of them may have weird beards and occasionally wear sandals, but we'll gloss over that point. CAMRA membership status is unknown, I'd actually hope some of them are members, however, they rarely use the term Real Ale and prefer to talk about cask beer instead.

It turns out that they all like Hardknott beer, which is handy because despite the pub being a managed house and having an owner who doesn't give the manager quite enough free-reign as we'd like, we have negotiated hard and offered volume discount and now have our beer on-sale reasonably regularly. The pub does not sell craft keg and I suspect it is likely to be a long time until they do, if ever.

I like the pub a lot. It ranks as one of my top 10 in the area and we spend far more time in it drinking than we should.

Planning the film

With the above as background, when we were offered a rare opportunity for a very low cost but high quality promotional film we had to think of an idea for a "script". Mark, from PiciFilms, who was to be camera man, director and editor, came to see me at the brewery to try and work up ideas for the film. We started talking about target demographics and the local beer market, tourism, extreme sports, younger drinkers and the image of Ale.

There are two main styles of attraction in The Lake Dirstict. One is the very traditional picture postcard scenery, fudge, gingerbread, sticky toffee pudding, local traditional ale, Wordsworth, Beatrix Potter, lake steamer rides and gentle walks on the fells. This one is very strong and successful and I have far more affection for it than much of my writing would betray.

There is another attraction style that is much less popular and with international travel becoming an ever smaller reason for visiting The Lakes. Perhaps they are niche activities and not at all popular with the mainstream, but still, I have an affinity with people who enjoy extreme sports, partly perhaps because the very best times in my life have been when I have been high in mountains, deep in a cave, or perhaps momentarily stuck in a crevasse in an Alpine glacier, sliding down a slippery icy slope on a couple of planks or, as in the film, just larking about on a sunny day on a lump of Borrowdale volcanic rock scaring myself silly.

My beery activities have taken me further away from such a lifestyle than I am happy about. However, I know a great many people who engage in such outdoor activities and many are very physically fit beer drinkers. Many also search for much more exciting activities than the generally perceived safety of Cumbria. Alpine peaks, Himalayan foothills, trekking in the Andes, white water rafting down the Amazon or an assault on Kilimanjaro are much more likely to excite this contemporary looking demographic. Their tastes in beverages are much more likely to be Rioja than Dusky Old Ferrets Jock Strap. For that matter, because it seems to be cleaner and fresher, there is a proportion of this demographic who choose lager over ale. Their tastes are much more likely to be contemporary and international than traditionally British.

I am aiming at people who are more likely to holiday in Zermatt, Chamonix, Kathmandu or even explore Latin America, Africa or Asia. These people are far too broad minded to simply buy the traditional drink, one made with British hops and barley to the same old recipe that has been handed down from brewer to brewer. The demographic I'm thinking about know that making great beer needs a firm sight on new varieties of hops from further afield than Kent, and technology that involves more than just traditional open square fermenters. But what we were not pushing was keg beer. Indeed the bar transformation scene shows our concept for contemporary handpulls, in the main, and only has one keg font shown.

We wanted a film that would be funny, poke a little bit of fun at the traditional unhealthy British beer drinker image and suggest that drinking beer is not necessarily an exclusive pass-time of the unfit. I would hope that some of the demographic I describe, the progressive, outgoing, fit and healthy extreme sport activist, or even casual observer of such activities, might find the film more entertaining than if I just rambled on about hops and malt.

Moreover, I hoped that it would be amusing to a broader cross-section of people. It's supposed to be funny, light hearted and even to some extent self-deprecating. As I said when opening this piece, I AM a beardy weirdie, and proud to be so. The fact that in the original post, the one in which I launched the film, there are comments that seem to not get this is a little worrying. As I say, I'm objecting to the image that seems to be attached to micro-brewed beer and the insistence that this image has to stay is divisive.

At Hardknott we are very keen to promote food and beer matching. I'll be returning to my Saturday Kitchen objection and related activities. We wanted to not only include extreme sports but also food and beer matching in our film. Extreme cheese boarding might be included in the Olympics one day, you never know. Actually, it came as a bit of interesting revelation that despite the concentration required during filming, the Granite I drank really does go with cheese especially well.

The Music

During planning it became evident that music would be required. Mark had suggested that stock music could be used at a cost. We talked about genre and how it might tie into the demographic we imagined. Rightly or wrongly we chose 90s rock as a model.

I messed a little with a lesser well known song "Don't look back in anger" and found it to fit reasonably well. At this point I was not expecting my rusty musical skills to be adequate. However, what I did find was that involving real musicians was likely to be expensive and troublesome. After talking to several significantly better artists than myself it became apparent that pro-activeness was to be hindered by differences of artistic opinion.

I dug out my little recording studio and started messing around. That turned out to be a pleasure all on its own. Writing, be it words or music, are one of the few pleasures I can have by myself. All of the music on the film was produced by me with a little bit of help from my step-son to make some rhythmic bashing sounds.

Is it good music? I don't know, but I enjoyed making it.

The full track is here in case the reader is daft enough to want to listen to it.

The Filming

Filming on the day was both fun and tiring. Mark, Ann, Andrew and I met at the brewery just after 9am. We headed off to do the main "stunt" which involved me abseiling off a crag. I chose what I thought was a reasonable location combining good scenery with a sense of exposure. Unfortunately, in rash puritanical action by The British Mountaineering Council, this particular crag has been un-bolted. I have always viewed this crag as a training crag and good solid bolt anchors totally appropriate when teaching young people to climb. The BMC oppose any artificial anchors on Lake District crags even those, like this one, that have historically had them for decades. But, I suppose it's one of them thin end of the wedge things that allows for no grey areas.

I spent some time setting up traditional anchors. If I had some Rawl bolts I'd have used them in the still clearly visible holes. Still, having two lengths of rope and there being some hefty rock blocks, I made fairly safe anchors ensuring, to the disappointment of some, my continued existence.

Unfortunately the sun was casting shadow across the crag face. We had to wait until well after 12 noon (11 GMT) before the sun was high enough in the sky to work on the near vertical, north-facing cliff. Practising the abseil was useful, but walking back up the 25 metre more than a dozen times left me more fatigued than I'd have liked. Also, our late afternoon studio session was going to get knocked back.

Finally we got the main shot "in the can" and proceeded to the riverside location. Unfortunately I had forgotten about the inevitable tourists. It would have been fine but for the fact that the few people around the river turned out to think they owned it. A rather wet dog threatened to eat my cheese and knock my bottles of beer in the river. My gentle nudge with my lower leg was incorrectly interpreted and Andrew overheard the objectionable woman say "don't kick MY dog" - bless that dog, not its fault, it was having a nice time in the river but the owner was a little unaware that it should be kept under control. Aforementioned woman also dumped a used nappy by the river. The little girl who had been responsible for the contents of the nappy was quite charming. Mark heroically removed the nappy, which I feel was not his responsibility.

Back at the brewery we had mocked up a "marquee" borrowed from the pub mentioned earlier. I began to realise my hairless crown was feeling the effects of a glorious day out in the sun. Luckily it doesn't seem to show on the video.

Tiredness reduced my ability to hang on a rope and perform the final cheese board filming was less than ideal. Keen viewers will notice involvement of people both in shot and out of shot passing the cheese board etc.

However, Jeff Pickthall² got right into character and seemed to revel in his various roles. Looking particularly cool as bass player we are all wondering if he might branch out into a new career.

The final edit and release

Mark went away and cut together the film. I bit of editing of the soundtrack requested of me to give the "before" sound and halting. After a few comments from me the final version went online at Vimeo

Hardknott Beer from PiciFilms on Vimeo. or alternatively view on YouTube

The local paper picked up the story and did a nice little piece which made page 3. They are good to us, although the original version put online had a rather badly hacked download which Mark had to request they change.

All in all we are happy with the results. OK, there has ensued the usual CAMRA verses anti-CAMRA debate on my previous posts and some people in real life have accused it of being embarrassing, but generally I think it's been received with the level of amusement I'd hoped for, including some local beer drinkers.

We really did try and avoid accusations of anti-CAMRA and are simply highlighting what we believe is bad about the image that some people portray. I'd like to continue to make progressive beer much of which is either bottle conditioned or cask. Those that don't like our style because it jars with some of the traditionalists views doth protest too much, methinks.

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¹It is unclear as to the overall proportion of people who know me who also think I'm weird. It seems to be that as a person increases in age they also become significantly less concerned about their own eccentricities. Having always been a person who preferred to follow off-the-wall trends anyway, things don't look good for my future.

²Yes, I know including Jeff only increases the suspicion of anti-CAMRA activity. But he's a good friend and lets face it, the film wouldn't have been half as good without him.

This is NOT anti-CAMRA

2011-07-29T20:23:00.002+01:00

This is NOT anti-CAMRA, it's just against the facade of traditional Real Ale as a means of selling beer. How many times have we heard "brewed using traditional recipes, English barley and English hops" and we find that the beer is anything but inspiring. It might be cheap. It might be a brand name that has been around for decades, but no one deserves to be able to sell beer that fails to inspire. Cask, keg, chill filtered and bottled or properly bottle conditioned, we love them all providing they have some flavour.

We think the brand group of Real Ale is looking tired and old. What the alternative is for the 21st century we don't know, perhaps just good beer.

Meanwhile we've been busy making some video. When I get some time I'm going to blog about the making of this.

Hardknott Beer from PiciFilms on Vimeo.

Music, incidentally, is composed by me and almost entirely performed by me. @WithoutaVision did the hitting things with sticks.

Cast is:

@HardknottAnn

@JeffPickthall

@HardknottAlfie

@HardknottSarah

@BarmanAlex soon to be @HardknottAlex

@WithoutaVision

Marketing and Position

2011-07-20T16:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we had quite a busy day racking, doing some CIP improvements, training my new secret production technician, transferring beer and getting ready to bottle today. It wasn't until quite late I found out that BrewDog and CAMRA had fallen out.

Upon learning this HardknottAnn immediately insisted on commandeering my MacBook for the purposes of writing a blog.

Last night and this morning we got carried away with discussions on twitter regarding GBBF and how beers are selected. I touched on the subject last year as it happens, and it is interesting for me to look back at what beers were actually on. I'll admit to being surprised to see that Punk IPA was there. The fact that it was on the same bar as Cumbrian beer is a little baffling.

It may be that I have a few facts wrong about various specifics regarding GBBF, but despite that I maintain that there are interesting selection influences at play. It might well be that various officials can attempt to reassure that it is all fair and transparent. The impression I am left with is very different; There is a massive disparity between local breweries who appeal to local markets and those of us who are more successful further afield.

Besides all that, the fact that BrewDog will not be at GBBF is no great surprise to me. This was a win-win situation for them in many ways. If they got their beer there in KeyKeg it would have been a result, the fact that it eventually fell through is also a result. PR win again. I seem to remember several people, including me, forecasting that this would be what would happen.

It has been pointed out to me that BrewDog are no different to any other brewery in as much as they want to sell more beer. Spot on there, we all do. What we all have to work out is if CAMRA, and indeed cask beer, are important to us or if they are more useful in opposition.

I'm still working that one out, but it appears to me that the latter might be more successful if a brewer is looking for a gap in the market. Also, it could very well be a useful marketing and positional ploy to be quite public about the fact.

New BrewDog B Share issue

2011-07-17T16:00:00.002+01:00

For some reason my blog statistics are showing it is being found using search terms like "BrewDog share price" and "BrewDog AGM" - That might be because I was the very first person to sign up to their "Ordinary B" shares and blogged about it. It might also have something to do with a new share issue by BrewDog.

I've decided not to extend my investment in BrewDog, I need all the money I have to invest in my own stainless steel. It does however enable me to look back at what my share has been doing. At first sight it doesn't look good. The new shares cost £95 for 4. I paid £230 for one. Hang on, what's going on?

Looking at 4.3.2 in the offer document tells us:

the existing issued share capital (following the re-classification referred above), being £51,609.50 divided into 100,298 "A‟ Ordinary Shares of £0.50 each and 2921 "B‟ Shares of £0.50 each, will be sub-divided into 1,002,980 "A‟ Ordinary Shares of £0.05 each and 29,210 "B‟ Shares of £0.05 each;

(Lets ignore what appears to be a typo in the glossary under "existing B share")

So, my one share gets divided into 10 each worth £23.75 - I've made £7.50 then as it would now cost me £237.50 to buy more of the same. The down side could be that I currently own 0.00097% of BrewDog, but because of the new share issue it will drop to 0.00089%. However, this should help the company grow still further. I'll have a slightly smaller share of a much bigger beast.

Since I invested in BrewDog the sales have increased by around 8 times. The current share issue price values the company at nearly £27m. Is that an appropriate value for a company that turns over £6.5m, looks like being able to make in excess of 10% profit on turnover and has net assets of £3.4m?

I don't know, I'm not an expert on these things, and perhaps the value is currently a little optimistic. If the plans work out, and so far I feel that everything promised (apart from my Equity for Punks password) has been more-or-less realised.

If the plan carries on with the same level of success that has already been achieved then a further 12 fold increase in the size of the business is possible. I've had people criticise me for calling my purchase of shares an investment; Call it what you want, I still see it as an investment and if I didn't need to invest in my own brewery I would certainly have considered buying more of BrewDog.

And it's far more than just looking for a financial return. I strongly believe there is a stagnation in the British brewing industry. Sure, there are many more breweries than there used to be, but many of them are putting out beer that could do with a lot more interest. We went out last night and the only decent beer we found was Stringers Victoria IPA, we should have patronised one of the pubs that serves Hardknott, I know, but we like a bit of variety. The rest of the beer we found was nothing more than micro-brewed beer made and sold to a price rather than quality and with very poor brand image. BrewDog is one of a number of breweries that are leading the British brewing scene away from stuffy, stagnation generating tradition and into the 21st century. Indeed, without BrewDog as an example, I doubt I'd have had the gumption to do what I have done with Hardknott. I also suspect that there are other breweries who have been similarly significantly inspired, even if they prefer not to be as overt about it as me.

Call it copying if you like, call it band-wagon jumping if it makes you feel better, or just view it as a realisation of where the real market expansion in beer lies. Beer revolution or just appealing to a potential market? it matters not when comercial success is important to keeping your brewery alive.

So, if you have some spare cash, why not buy some shares? you might lose the lot, but then, you could just keep your money in the hands of the bankers if you prefer.

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Another view on the subject is written by Neil and there is also the one from The Beer Monkey

Terroir

2011-07-15T12:01:00.008+01:00

Our activities to raise the profile of food and beer matching have attracted some interesting responses. I am pleased with the way it has gone in general, but there are some underlying issues to resolve. In particular, the question of beer and its "sense of place", as Tim Atkin likes to call it, is a nagging point.

Fine wine is almost exclusively made from grapes grown in a single vineyard, crushed, fermented, matured and possibly even bottles by the same artisan organisation within a particular village. That, we are told, makes fine wine better for food matching than beer ever can.

The best bottle of wine I ever consumed was on my 40th birthday, in a 3 rosette restaurant, in which, a few weeks later, the Queen dined. The wine was really was very good, but at around £45 for 750ml I'm unsure if I could claim it was better than some of the very best beer I have ever drunk. I can think of a few grand beers, of equal complexity and of better value for money than that wine example. Furthermore, I strongly suspect that the wine in question would be much more now; I've tried to buy it since and failed to do so for any less than around £60 a bottle, even at wholesale prices.

Despite knowing that some exceptional quality beers can equal fine wine, how do we counter the accusation that beer has no "sense of place", no terroir? Furthermore, I decided to enter into my "campaign" by citing the fact that British Beer is an indigenous product of our country and that aspect has been undermined a little by various people, not incorrectly of course, pointing out that some of the very best beers do in fact use imported hops. Chris King writes a constructive appraisal of where we are which brings up that question, and is one of a number of articles I need to address before moving forward.

So, what does this treasured terroir mean? Is it really that valuable? How does it make wine better than beer and able to command ridiculous prices? Can beer ever compete?

Let's look first at the meaning of the word:

terroir (tɛrwar)

— n
winemaking

the combination of factors, including soil, climate, and environment, that gives a wine its distinctive character.

-dictionary.com

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A " terroir " is a group of vineyards (or even vines) from the same region, belonging to a specific appellation, and sharing the same type of soil, weather conditions, grapes and wine making savoir-faire, which contribute to give its specific personality to the wine.

-terroir-france.com

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Of course, if we directly try to parallel wine terroir to beer we will fail. The bulk ingredient in beer is water. Many will try to argue that you can tell the difference when a brewery changes its water supply, and I've tried to do so myself in the past. Wine, of course, is entirely grape juice and so all the water in wine has come through the soil and into the vine before being squeezed out of the grape. In beer the science behind liquor treatment almost entirely blows away the idea that water necessarily has to influence the beer production.

The grain is the next bulk ingredient. For a product like a good barley wine the bulk weight input might very well equal the mass of the finished product. Barley, and most of the other grist ingredients, are grown in the UK. They are then normally by a handful of fine and experienced malsters, also in the UK.

Hops, which are an ingredient that arguably most effects the flavour and aroma of some of the very best beers may very well not be grown in this country. Indeed, although I accept this is a matter of opinion and a controversial point, the finest beers are made with heavy doses of New World hops. However, I do not believe this undermines my point that beer is an indigenous UK product.

To counter the accusation of hops being imported it is important to note that the hops represent less than 1% by weight of the finished product. Value wise it is a little more complicated, and seasonally variable, but generally less than 1% of the price you pay for your beer actually contributes to a none UK economy. Hops are a low mass product, shipped by sea and of relatively low value compared to the overall value of the beer.

It is true that the flavour of hops is significantly effected by the climate of area the hops are grown. This does truly inhibit our ability to focus on one single terroir for beer, but in reality many brewers are highlighting the New World influence on beer making the drink much less stuffy and aloof than the pretentious wine parallel. Beer is a product that crosses many boundaries including national frontiers - I think that makes it better than wine. For that reason it can also be argued that beer is a better match for world cuisine. Beer is a much better beverage for the modern, all-embracing, cosmopolitan and democratic people.

Human controlled elements

The definition of terroir can be expanded to include elements that are controlled or influenced by human decisions. This can include the decision of which grape variety to plant, though whether or not that grape variety will produce quality wine is an innate element of terroir that may be beyond human influence. Some grape varieties thrive better in certain areas than they do in others. The winemaking decision of using wild or ambient yeast in fermentation instead of cultured or laboratory produced yeast can be a reflection of terroir. The use of oak is a controversial element since some will advocate that its use is beneficial in bringing out the natural terroir characteristics while others will argue that its use can mask the influences of the terroir.

-wikipeadia.com

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Yeast, of course, has a significant effect on beer. I've recently been trying a few beers crafted by long-standing brewers that I have previously overlooked. There is a quite distinctive flavour that is created by some brewers as a result of careful selection of ingredients but more specifically the cultivation of yeast.

Where beer comes into its own is the human influence, selection of ingredients, cultivation of yeast and a panache for creating complexity, depth of flavour and aroma. Dexterous monitoring and control of the whole process from mash, boil, through fermentation and maturation is critical to a top class beer that has a house feel all of its own. It may very well not be important where the beer is made, and a "sense of place" more vague, but beer from a particular brewery has character and personality very special and often only surpassed by the personalities of the brewers.

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The summer recess for Saturday Kitchen provides a useful time of reflection for our campaign to raise the awareness of food and beer matching. A post to follow concerns the fact that food and beer matching, when done well, would necessarily have to include beers from various countries, further undermining my "beer is the indigenous British drink" angle - this point needs to be addressed for the continuation of the "movement"

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The image of beer - brand image

2011-07-10T14:57:00.007+01:00

I should really be doing an update on our Saturday Kitchen attack and further considerations for a general attack on the media for not covering beer. It's been an interesting week that's for sure, and when an activity starts to raise a few questions about its appropriateness then you know it's starting to have an effect. There have been various discussions on twitter and blogs about the whole subject and I'm going to take stock in good time. Watch for a further post soon.

Meanwhile, I like to drill deeper into these things; Why is beer seen as such an unworthy subject for many of the major media productions? The answer to this I'm sure is complex and too much for my tiny brain. Still, I do have some ideas, and I'd like to explore them further.

My friends over at Pumpclip Parade did bemuse me slightly when it started; I still bought into the "well, it's just a laugh......." argument put forward in defence of childish puns, irritating alliteration, and bawdy Viz style jokes on pumpclips. The main ringleader of Pumpclip Parade, Jeff Pickthall, had a direct attack at me because of my amusement at Wychwood branding a short time after I started writing on this blog.

Despite that on-line poke at my good character, I have remained good friends with Jeff, and he has slowly whittled away at what has turned out to be a nerdy bias towards certain things¹, like for instance the best beer can only ever be served from a cask. Or for that matter, that micro-brewed beer is inherently better than that made in a bigger brewery.

What I am very interested in is how beer can be given better stature across a broader cross section of demographics and there are a lot of things that let beer down in that respect. Branding is just one of them. The branding and image of "Real Ale" in particular is suffering with alarming contemptibility. For this reason we have avoided using "Ale" as a descriptor for our beer and will shortly be engaging in some publicity that more overtly promotes our cask beer as anything but old fashioned and stuffy "Ale"

I'm sure this will cause some shouting about how we are anti CAMRA, which is not true. What we are is pro-beer. We want all beer to succeed, and for it to do so we have to recognise that there might be some things that don't advertise beer that well.

I'll leave you with something that did amuse me, but at the same time worries me. A pumpclip by the well respected Mordue brewery. "A'l Wheat Pet" - I did laugh, out loud too. But on reflection I thought it also localised silliness, which if contained within the geeky pubs I love over in the North East might do no harm. I do think this sort of thing does have a continual and indelible subliminal impact on quality food and drink writers, newspaper editors or broadcast producers alike.

This pumpclip stirred something in my brain. It started to irritate me, despite the NE accent and dialect being my favourite regional vocal sound. I tweeted the image for the attention of @Pumpclip parade as I thought, despite Mordue's good branding image, it was just on the wrong side of the line for the overall good of beer. I got a couple of replies suggesting that it was generally clever and amusing, suggesting perhaps I overreacted. An interesting debate to have, where does the line exist? After all, I used to like Goblins, especially if they mocked lager drinkers, but not now, partly because I've found that given the right lager, I drink it.

In summary, the wider world thinks beer is either mass produced lager for drunken hooligans or "Real Ale" of invariably poor quality, brewed by good people with the right intentions, but with little flair or imagination, doing things on a shoe string, in sheds, for old fashioned, penny pinching, poor joke loving, deliberately fashion snubbing, anti-commerce ageing hippies². Perhaps it is no wonder beer doesn't appear on the TV.

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¹He has failed to convince me that ketchup is a good accompaniment for double fried chips any more than anyone could convince me that shandy is a worthy beer cocktail, but there you go.

²and I realised, I probably fit into some of those descriptions too.

Saturday Kitchen Attack

2011-07-02T22:00:00.002+01:00

OK, so it was only twitter; it's not real life and nothing will change if it just ends here. However, bigger things have started with less, and it's hard to believe that at least a few cages haven't been rattled¹.

It all started a week ago when Neil Bowness tweeted² that it was strange that Saturday Kitchen regularly plugs imported wines that can be bought in major supermarkets but regularly fails to mention British Beer. A mutual twitter friend, Vickie Hunter, asked if there was anyone we could complain to. This set me thinking that there probably was. To me, the obvious snub given to the beverage that is indigenous to Britain, seems to be broadcasting bias, so I complained to OfCom.

I also decided to write a press release, which was helpfully edited and distributed by Tim Hampson, the chairman of the Guild of Beer Writers. This generated some further publicity on local radio and papers as well as a sniff from the Independent, although for the latter I expect it will get no further than their blog.

This morning we flooded the Saturday Kitchen hashtag with beer matches and various other beer and food related comments. Although difficult to measure as all the previous records for Saturday Kitchen tweets seem too unimportant for the search tools to find, we can be sure we made a difference. We created over 1500 tweets and I am certain that the production team now know we are here.

There is a Facebook page now dedicated to the cause of raising the profile of good beer in the media, please like it and contribute with comments, or links to blog posts etc. I'm hoping this will not be the end of the matter. It's called Libeeration, which I'm told is a play on words. Libation is the act of partaking in alcoholic beverages, beer is an alcoholic beverage and liberation is the act of freeing from previous constraints. It wasn't my idea, it was the brainchild of The Director of vituperation, @AKA_Franklin.

However, I am concerned that this will just be a flash in the pan. Hopefully we'll do the same next Saturday, but I expect the novelty will wear off and it would take a significantly greater event to get us noticed enough to change the way major media people think about beer. I expect it is going to take a real life publicity stunt. Beer and food picnic outside the studio anyone?

Meanwhile I've been accused of this being a publicity stunt for Hardknott. I would hope that my readers are clever enough to feel that their intelligence is being called into question if I tried to deny that this is part of my motive. However, I hope that this shows our whole publicity ethos is one of playing to the all-inclusive nature of beer. Yes, we will occasionally have a pop at things that are in conflict with what we do, and that includes other sectors of the beer market on occasions, but we do firmly buy into the concept that we must all consider what is good for beer in the long run.

Other perceptions on the morning's events have been chronicled by Beer Beauty, Pub Champion and Thatchers Arms.

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¹The series producer is quite obviously ignoring us on twitter. Several of us have tweeted directly at him. Mind you, I also know that abuse is thrown at the program because a few people don't like some of the presenters. I'm guessing that success is often accompanied by abuse and it might be worth remembering that what we did today could be cited as abuse.

²I'm slightly miffed that searches have failed to find the original tweets.

#SaturdayKitchen #Beer

2011-07-01T10:17:00.003+01:00

It's been a busy week, and we're nearly round to Saturday again. Our campaign to raise the profile of beer and food matching had gained almost universal support in the beer world and I'm moved by the genuine messages of encouragement from a wide range of people from brewers, beer writers and beer enthusiasts alike.

Tomorrow we will be attempting to flood the SaturdayKitchen hashtag with beer matches for food presented. We would welcome all to join in, suggest beers that might work, discuss and generally show that there is great support for beer in this country.

Please include #SaturdayKitchen and #Beer in your tweets.

In other news, you can listen to me talking about beer and food matching on my local BBC Radio Cumbria breakfast show on Jeff Pickthall's blog.

Saturday Kitchen

2011-06-25T19:04:00.005+01:00

CAMRA do it, some good food pubs do it, at the annual British Guild of Beer Writers awards dinner it is done for an audience of over 200 people, even some Michelin Stared chefs do it; Beer and Food matching.

Why then does the BBC not do it? No, we don't know either. Saturday Kitchen is a very good food program, but it does not feature beer, almost never. I think this should change and I'm hoping my good blog readers will agree and help us out.

Hardknott today launched a campain today to change that. I've sent a complaint to OfCom, here is what I said to them:

Beer is the national indigenous drink of Great Britain
Beer is deliberately omitted from Saturday Kitchen
Wine is almost completely an imported product
Beer can be matched with food very successfully
By omitting beer in favour of wine, the BBC is deliberately and unreasonably biasing its content to a foreign import
The BBC, our national broadcasting authority, which is paid for by a tax on television ownership, is deliberately and recklessly damaging the UK economy by its unreasonable and deliberate rejection of beer as a beverage to drink with food. The vast majority of beer consumed in the UK is brewed in the UK using British grown ingredients
Drinking alcohol when eating is a much more responsible activity than heavy drinking sessions when no food is consumed. The BBC, in omitting beer from one of its prime time food programs is alienating beer drinkers from the healthy activity of moderate drinking whilst eating; therefore the BBC is being reckless with the nations health
With many eating and family pubs it is disingenuous to suggest that beer does not form part of the British dining culture
Promoting brands of wine in named supermarkets without also giving air time to quality British beer brands is unacceptable bias for a public funded organisation
Beer is an inclusive beverage. Choosing wine in favour of beer is divisive and deliberately seeks to engage with a much narrower section of society than is acceptable in todays cosmopolitan and liberal Britain.

You can also send in a complaint from the OfCom web site. Imagine the effect this could have if we all sent in a complaint about this one program? The reader is welcome to use the words here, their own or a combination. Please be aware that the complaint must be limited to 1500 characters, so you need to be careful you don't cut and paste hidden control characters.

Depending on your browser you can either select the program or enter the details below:

Programme title:
Saturday Kitchen

Date and time of broadcast(e.g. 01 January 2009 23:00):
25 Jun 2011 10:00

Channel / station:
BBC 1

If you are less antagonistic than me then you might like to write to Points of View.

My good friend, and also our design consultant, Neil Bowness, has written a nice letter to them.

If we all do our bit then perhaps we can properly get beer on the telly.

Attempting to end Heath Robinsonness

2011-06-13T19:18:00.006+01:00

When we first moved to our current brewery location, to enable us to continue to brew with minimum delay and expense, the kit was somewhat cobbled together. Things have remained in a similar state of Heath Robinsonness for some time despite extra kit being added.

I'm intending on buying some new, bigger tanks soon. We're currently brewing to capacity and need more tanks in which to put beer to ferment and mature, on bucket loads of dry hops, obviously.

I want to get the rest of the brew house in order before the tanks arrive. Today saw a major step forward with delivery of two nice heavy and strong RSJs to support my mezzanine floor. This will eliminate the scaffolding that supports my grist cases and cold liquor tank.

Additionally the walls that we have been building will help me to tidy up the pipe-work and cabling, essential as I hope it won't be too long before I can start employing someone to do some of the brewing. Right now a degree in bodging along is required to be able to brew on my kit.

Doing the PR bit

2011-06-11T19:32:00.008+01:00

A couple of weeks ago the local network centre held an interesting event which invited local businesses to impress local dignitaries, such as my favourite MP Jamie Reed, and convince them that Millom is a great town.

There is a great community spirit in our town, and with some reluctance I pitched up at the event to show some support for the altruistic outlook of the organisers. I doubted if the event would provide return on investment for the time, and free beer that was provided although I do like the people involved. As it happened I had a couple of hours free and pitched up.

It was fun, I even convinced one notary attendee that despite her assurance that she didn't like beer, barley wine in the form of Granite, was indeed worthy of her 800 year lineage.

However, this local Cumbrian excellence is all very well, but is barely relevant to my business. When the local paper phoned me to ask my views on the event I didn't want to miss the opportunity for some local exposure. I thought quickly and, perhaps rather rashly, decided to challenge the barriers to my operation in the town as more than 50% of our sales are out of the county. More than 95% of our deliveries are over 20 miles away from our base.

I pointed out transport is a big issue to us and that local government has no intention of improving road structures which could encourage economic growth and employment. I also pointed out that there was effectively saturation of a locally stale traditional market that is suffering due to the number of breweries, and an inability to accept more progressive flavours in beer.

The result of the interview made the front page of the local paper.

I didn't expect this to hit the front page of our edition, but it did. The attention grabbing headline doesn't quite match my sentiments, but getting our name on the front page is well worth it. The quotes really are what I said, but it is interesting the way it has been embellished by the reporter.

Incidentally, a local CAMRA active member, Steven Walker is also quoted. It could be assumed from this that I'm at odds with local CAMRA. Steven is a grand guy and it would certainly be untrue to suggest that I find the majority of the Cumbrian branch members at odds with us.

A bit of perspective

2011-06-11T10:10:00.001+01:00

Beer is a highly scalable product. It is highly industrialiseable. It can be made in large quantities, in big breweries, with inevitable economies of scale. It can be made really economically, by faceless multinational corporations, by cutting costs on ingredients so that the result is a bland, fizzy, cold product, sold to numpties who know no better. Oh wait, I'm denigrating 90% of beer. Never mind, that's what CAMRA started with 40 years ago, it was OK to do it then.

Beer can also be made in small sheds, hand crafted by passionate artisanal brewers who care more about the flavour of the beer rather than saving a few pennies on the production costs. The consistency of the resultant beer can often be highly variable and the experimental nature often produces beers with dubious palatability. Additionally, they are mainly Real Ales which might turn out to be flat, warm and vinegary.

These two examples of denigration of various beers are still all too rife. Some commentators are prophesying that this is damaging the world of beer in general. We should all just get on with making good beer and let the beer do the talking, apparently.

Now, I like the sound of that, I really do. I'd love it if I could just get on and make beer, make sure my phone number is in the telephone directory¹ and wait for the phone to ring red hot with enquiries. This just doesn't work.

I saw recently, somewhere, someone stating that the only beer which is not marketed is made in your garage. In other words beer, or any product for that matter, cannot sell without it being marketed. Sometimes that marketing can be low key. Sometimes it can just be a micro-brewer going around a few pubs and convincing them to buy his beer. That can work, but I can tell you from experience that this does not produce sales of any significant amount compared to the effort that is put in.

I'd like to consider something, something that concerns me a great deal but doesn't come to light very often; The majority of beer that is sold in this country is lager made in relatively large quantities and marketed at the masses. The majority of it is targeted at the football supporting males of the population. I know the vast majority of football supporters are sensible, law abiding and non-violent. The mainstream press do not view football supporters in this way. The stereotype football supporter is often portrayed as a mindless thug whose choice of alcoholic beverage is dirty lout drunk until he² vomits in the street. Consider, do the large brewers do the beer industry any favours by aligning themselves with this market?

Craft beer, and in this context I include the majority of cask beer, bottle conditioned beers, various imported foreign beers and some notable non-bottle conditioned and keg beers alike, are not mentioned in main stream media to any great extent. Wine gets talked about a great deal in the mainstream media. In fact, beer is barely mentioned much at all on TV, radio or in the papers, except to point out that it gets people drunk, makes them violent and causes disorder in city centres, especially if there is a football match occurring at the same time.

Do we really think that the current spats occurring between bloggers and CAMRA, CAMRA and BrewDog, or BrewDog and beer geeks who didn't get their beer, is really making much of an impact on the overall creditability of beer? No, I don't think it's making much impact at all.

Most of the general public know about big beer brands, mainly because of sport related advertising. Most of the general public are aware of the value of cask beer and to some extent that is down to CAMRA and the quiet work done by micro-brewers and regional brewers alike along with organisations like SIBA.

How then does a brewer who wishes to make in-roads to what he/she sees as a gap in the market? With existing polarised views that beer consists either of fizzy cold keg for football supporters or cask beer for middle aged gentlemen, how does a brewer make the point that his beer is different? How does a brewer who wants to target his beers at people who don't want to drink mainstream lager or cask session beer if the brewer doesn't actually point out that their product is neither of these things?

Well, we know the answer to that one.

Meanwhile, I have been getting a little bit bemused by various notary people in the beer world being concerned about the bad image being given to beer by various marketing campaigns. Referring to the football link, I can't help feeling that nearly any marketing activity associated with beer is going to be seen by someone, somewhere, as a bad thing for beer.

Moreover, why do we think beer is different? Why do we think that it is the only market that suffers from promotion via highlighting the differences between products? I'm convinced it's not.

I asked a friend on twitter, who runs a software technology company, if the same sort of teacup based storms occur in the software industry:

"@HardKnottDave the world of Beer is a polite tea party compared to the ongoing brawl that is the software industry." - @JunkLight

Come on everyone, get a bit of perspective.

---------

¹Do telephone directories still exist? Do people still use them?

²Yes, he is always male.

Justifiable Extreme or Hyperbole?

2011-06-05T22:00:00.003+01:00

I'm sat here drinking a Bitch Please. It's the second time I've drunk this beer. The first time was after I'd seen some comments about it, including a few complaining that it tasted phenolic. I had not actually realised that it was whisky cask aged, and neither had Ann when she ordered a case from BrewDog. It's a barley wine, and she likes barley wine, she thought she'd like this one. She most certainly does not like Paradox, but I do. I was keen to try it.

On this particular occasion I'd been to the pub already, so my taste buds, and perhaps synapses, were not operating at full potential. Yup it smelled and tasted of phenols, so what? I tweeted the fact to the world in general.

That got a few replies, mostly questioning the sense in making a beer taste so horrible. There is part of me wonders if that was part of the understandable BrewDog backlash that is a current theme around the beer-related social network. But I still maintain that if you put a beer in a cask that previously held a phenolic whisky then the beer is very probably going to be phenolic. It's a bit like complaining that a vindaloo is 'king hot.

And to carry on that food analogy one has to realise that most people don't like over-the-top spicy food. Indeed, I cannot remember the last time I heard anyone order such silly dishes as Vindaloo. Likewise, it is expected that most beer drinkers won't like this beer.

In any case, I've decided to drink another bottle of Bitch Please, to suffer so I can give a more considered view on what is admittedly a stupidly boundary pushing beer.

Smell: strong charcoal, smoke, TCP, typical malt whisky aromas. Dissipates as the glass is swilled around and allowed to breathe. Gives way to barley wine aromas of dried fruit, but only after some time to let the whisky dissipate.

Taste: Overpowering magic marker, solvent, alcoholic. The base barley wine has been beaten to a quiet whimper, those Scots have bloody well nigh on killed any subtlety. Sure, the base beer is still there, fighting its last breath smothered by the big clout of Jura, but I have difficulty discerning anything I can find flavour descriptors for.

So, what's the point? It is just a crazy idea designed to do nothing more than send the beer geeks crazy and raise the profile of an already over-hyped brewery. Isn't it?

And yes, I'd agree, but I still like it for some bizarre reason. But then I like phenols and I like those mad extreme single malts. To be fair, there are plenty of people that don't. Paradox works because the base stout still works in balance and isn't nearly beaten to death in the process. Bitch Please starts to question the sense in spirit cask ageing, and I'm drawn to love it just for that, despite its faults.

What really interests me is not so much how successful the beer is in its execution; there are plenty of reasons to say that there are flaws. What really interests me is how it fits with the developing esoteric beer market.

It is our view that the traditional cask market is becoming somewhat stagnant and saturated. With an ever increasing number of breweries, and with us all fighting for front-bar font space, back-bar fridge space and off-sales shelf space we all have to fight for a part of that market.

Looking at keg, crazy stunts, fun poking, deliberate institution unsettling and the odd bit of stepping-over-the-boundary might well be something we will all have to do more of.

Bitch Please might be over-hyped, but over-hyping is the way to get your brewery noticed and grow up into a success. Furthermore, despite the current backlash, BrewDog continues to grow.

Right, now we've got that out of the way, I'm going to finish the glass..... and as I do, it's growing on me and the barley wine is fighting back.

Fizzy is FUN!!!! :)

2011-06-03T15:23:00.003+01:00

One of the reasons I like cask beer is because it's not generally too carbonated. I actually don't care too much for over-carbonated beer, or any drink that is too fizzy for that matter. Some soft drinks can be very refreshing on a hot day, but the gassy bloated feeling created when you feel like sinking a pint of cola can be particularly unpleasant.

When I was a kid it was a real treat to have fizzy pop. Often, being in a large family, squash would be the option provided. If we were really lucky Mum would put an ice tray in the freezer compartment, but lemonade or coke was reserved for parties and was a little bit of a treat.

The vast majority of draught beer served in this country is fizzy keg. I don't care for it much, although on a very hot day a pint of good lager is very refreshingly cold and the tongue scrubbing effect of the carbonation can be just the ticket.

I try to produce my keg, which I have to point out is currently very much in development, with a low level of carbonation and with minimal, if any filtering. I've been told by some craft beer people that it's not fizzy enough. Perhaps the new generation of craft keg lovers are looking for fizzy beer with flavour, because fizzy is fun.

It's an interesting conundrum; people expect keg to be colder and more carbonated. Indeed, some beer drinkers like kegged lager because it is cold and fizzy. Cask beer is flabby in comparison and is not cold enough. Some people like fizzy beer, and it is possible that at least a proportion of drinkers will engage with keg, especially the younger population. There is significant evidence to show that this is exactly what BrewDog are doing.

Of course, a potential problem of craft keg, even if it leaves the brewery at optimum carbonation levels, is ensuring it does not pick-up carbonation in the cellar of the pub. It's a fair concern and I'll be the first to admit that as more bars, like Port Street, Euston Tap, Sheffield Tap and many others start dispensing keg from small producers, we have to work with them to ensure gas settings and mixtures are correct for the product.

Oh, and guys, make sure your cellar is at 12 degrees and turn the gas off when the bar is closed.

Bad definition

2011-06-02T16:42:00.004+01:00

Continuing the theme of blogeratti and craft keg, I noticed in The Cask Report the following definition;

"Keg beer:
Beer that has been pasteurized and/or filtered to remove any yeast, before being sealed in a pressurized container.
It is then dispensed with the aide of CO2, nitrogen or a mix of the two to give fizz or ‘smoothflow’ texture."

The author, Pete Brown, is well known for his broad appreciation of beer, including both keg and cask. Shame the definition is wrong, my keg beer is neither filtered nor pasteurised.

Hops and Craft Brewing

2011-06-01T21:23:00.004+01:00

There seems to be a lot of fuss about keg beer at the moment. Some think it's great and others don't. Some think that cask is the only good beer and some think that some cask is good and some keg is good. Most of these people tend to agree that some beer really isn't good.

Generally most beer that finds favour with progressive beer enthusiasts use progressive hopping. Often using hops that come all the way from a place called America. The problem is, these hops are only harvested in Autumn and often aren't available until perhaps December. Of course there are places over here in the UK where the hops are stored and people like us buy them from time to time, but if they run out we have to wait until December to get them.

They just ran out.

Today Ann tried to order hops. "There is some good news" she reported back to me, with the hint in her voice that I should brace for the inevitable bad news. "Faram's are saying that their trade is up 50% this year, more people are brewing more progressive beer with more hops"

Coooool, I thought. "But?"

"They've run out of Willamette, Centennial, Citra and Amarillo"

"Buggery"

So, while you lot have been worrying about who might or might not like extraneous CO2, the biggest threat to craft brewing just happened. If you are a brewer, have products that use these hops and haven't forward bought you might have problems.

However, the New Zealand harvest is in next week, so it's not all lost.

My talk at the Beer Bloggers Conference

2011-05-21T11:41:00.003+01:00

My name is Dave Bailey, I run Hardknott Brewery, write a beer blog and sell my beer mostly via Twitter.

I feel a little bit of a fraud stood here before you all today; this has all happened a little bit by accident. We used to run a pub, in a remote Lakeland valley called Eskdale. As part of our attempt to provide a unique selling proposition for our customers, and so hopefully increase footfall, we started to brew beer. This worked fairly well, but not quite enough to ensure a viable business. A local business advisor suggested, as part of our strategy, and as an easy way to update information about our pub, that we should start a blog. Very quickly I realised that my writing touched on subjects much further than our own pub, so I started my own Woolpack Dave’s blog and the rest, as they say, is history.

We’ve sold the pub now, as you probably know, and concentrate on brewing and selling beer. What is important for me to highlight is that without social networking via blogging and twitter our business would be very different. We have effectively built, off the back of social networking, and with the help of people like yourselves, one of the smallest National beer brands in the Country. At Hardknott we’re passionate about great beer and I know you all are too; none of use would be here if we weren’t. The Internet is shaping many things in the world from entertainment to politics and beer is no different in this respect.

From a brewers perspective, at least from the perspective of a brewer who is looking at more selective, discerning and intelligent market, call it the Craft Beer sector if you like, social networking is a powerful and important tool to creating a market for our product. The interaction between us and the communication medium provided by valuable people like you is key to making this work. I’d like to explore how this interaction works and how this important partnership can be nurtured for the overall promotion of great beer.

Firstly I shall describe what we do and why I think we are reasonably successful in promoting our business via social networking. Many businesses in many different sectors attempt to engage with potential markets through this medium with various degrees of success. The most important thing to consider is how the target audience is engaged. It does not achieve very much by simply sending friend requests on Facebook or following lots of people on twitter. Equally, simply writing a blog that states what you are brewing today is unlikely to attract much attention.

I believe it is important to include content that might be a little bit of a tangent to the core activities. In blogs, the ones that work best are the ones that provoke thought, perhaps are amusing or are informing of information about real earth shattering beer revelations. Engaging in comments encourages the reader that the blog author is interested in the views of the reader.

Twitter works best when there is interaction between users. Discussions can sometimes be lively and even controversial. Not withstanding a recent heated intellectual discussion Tandleman and I had on twitter, I think people become more engaged when there is plenty of interaction with other users.

When the on-line interaction turns into real life sociable drinking with a nice mix of bloggers and brewing industry people this can forge extremely useful links, which I hope is beneficial in both directions. Twissup being a wonderful invention, and I’d like to relate some stories to you, but my best anecdote, apparently, is not to be mentioned.

Our social media interaction is exactly what it says; social interaction. I can’t claim that what we do is a deliberate plan, hence my statement about feeling like a fraud, but what I have described seems to work for us.

It is important to note that the small community of online bloggers and tweeters is in no way big enough to support even a small part of the beer industry. Beer is a multimillion pound industry that is wide and diverse. Much of that volume might well be in the form that most of the people in this room would see as unworthy of consideration. However, without that important bulk foundation to our industry beer would be nothing, and moreover, this conference would not have achieved sufficient funding to ensure it happened.

At my end of the market, without the economies of scale enjoyed by bigger players, margins are tight and every penny counts. I’m not likely to get rich at this job, although beer enriches my life in ways that money just can’t, so this is in no way a complaint. What I’m doing here is trying to excuse myself if you think I don’t give away enough beer to bloggers; I’m not tight really, just skint.

I want explore the relationship between active social media beer enthusiasts and brewers. How you guys help promote my wares and where often you are doing so completely unpaid and often even after you have paid for the very product you are promoting. How can we make this a fair exchange and retain credibility for your impartial and important online critique?

I’ve noticed conversations on Twitter regarding the relationship between brewers and bloggers. Melissa also mentioned this yesterday. It seems that there are two main areas of concern;

The first is the fact that some bloggers are a little more forward than others about asking for free beer in return for an online review. My thoughts on this are fairly simple. It’s like any transaction, if the brewer feels that the blogger can provide, what I believe is known as a good return on investment, then what is wrong with blatant self promotion of your blog or twitter account?

A far more important question is how can the relationship between the brewer and blogger can be made to have value? This comes down to credibility and fairness, which to some extent contradict each other a little. If a blogger has been sent free beer is there a compulsion for the blogger to be kind to the beer, even if in truth the beer wasn’t to their taste?

Equally, is it fair for the blogger to go online and denigrate a beer when there might be the possibility that it was just a one off bad bottle or batch? It certainly sometimes happens to me and I worry about a single bottle or batch problem undermining my credibility. One chambermaid, as the head of the IMF will testify, can wreak your whole life’s work.

But you do have to think about how seriously you are considered. Quite clearly if you consistently praise beer just because you got it free you are likely to reduce your own credibility. Of course there is one notable blogger, who uses the pseudonym of Cooking Lager, who very successfully supports brands most of us might consider too boring to be bothered with. Of course, the satire is obvious and if you read carefully you’ll find he enjoys many forms of beer.

My point about Cookie is that we all have our own style; I don’t normally review beer at all, which means I don’t get much sent to me. Of course, I’m an industry blogger and so my focus is different. For some bloggers a supply of free beer is the reward.

Many bloggers go out, buy a beer they really want to try and write about it in a completely unbiased way. Most of the good reports of my own beer occur in this way and I’m very grateful for that. For this reason I can be sure that those bloggers have a high degree of credibility. Other bloggers might well depend on free beer being sent, and I have no way of knowing how many. You all have to consider your own style and what you want out of beer blogging and how you might like to deal with it.

Of course, if your aim of blogging is to gain some notoriety, and I’d be surprised if that isn’t the main reason most of you blog, then credibility is very important indeed. I sit on the committee of the British Guild of Beer writers and one of the reasons I put in time to that is because I believe in the Guild awards for beer writing and the corresponding impetus for the improvement in beer writing. Winning an award might not be the only way to gain notoriety, but I can confirm that it certainly helps.

What I am trying to indicate is that if we want online beer critique, be it via twitter, blogger, facebook or any other medium, I personally think that there has to be some standards. On the other-hand I also see evidence of those standards being self regulated and it is the discussions I’ve seen online, and had off-line with people that suggests this is already happening.

From a brewers perspective I’d prefer it if you only ever said my beer was great if it really is great.

However, how do we deal with beer you don’t like, or is in someway defective? If you pour it out, smell it, taste it and then pour it down the sink, do you go right on and blog that it’s rubbish or is it better to just stay schtum? Perhaps it’s better to report the fact privately to the brewer, in case it’s a faulty batch or bottle; a one off unfortunate production problem in an otherwise fantastic product.

As a brewer, I’d like to say that you should always tell me first about problems, but go ahead and slag everyone else’s beer, I need the sales.

However, when a brewer engages in on-line promotion there has to be an acceptance that there will be negative feedback. There is part of me wonders, with a fast growing Scottish brewer getting serious criticism right now, but still maintaining incredible demand, that being sociably connected as personalities will always be good, even when things are going a little off kilter.

I think, like BrewDog, being on-line and having a personality, and the fact that the personality is perhaps flawed, is what works for us.

There is no doubt that my beer is being demanded all over the country and our production, albeit a measly 10 brewers barrels a week, has hit capacity and so requiring investment we can’t currently afford. I’m very grateful to you all for your online support as I’m sure all the brewers who have provided time and money to this conference will agree.

Is it REAL?

2011-05-11T19:39:00.000+01:00

There is a continuing debate surrounding CAMRA and keg beer. Some say that CAMRA should embrace craft keg beer and others say that they most certainly should not. I'm not, in this instance, expressing a view on this debate, or perhaps I am by proxy, but either way it does seem that the vast majority of people calling for CAMRA to embrace craft keg are not members of CAMRA and those who have no truck with such a concept are members.

Whatever, the debate has highlighted an interesting question for me, one that I have oft mulled; do we really think that "real ale" is as definable as we believe?

One of the arguments against "craft keg" is the problem of defining "craft". This is indeed a problem. Mudgie, in the comments on this post, has stated not for the first time that;

"....you end up with the problem of defining exactly what "craft" beer is. "Real ale" has a clear, black-and-white definition, whereas "craft beer" can mean anything you want it to mean, and can all too easily boil down to "breweries we like".

I can't disagree with that observation with respect to "craft beer" - many of us are happy with our own idea of what is craft, but with a wide variety of different breweries on something of a continuum from very small and artisan to really quite large and everything in-between. Personally I like some very big breweries much more than some small mediocre ones and would assign the term craft accordingly. Exactly the point Mudgie makes.

That is all well and good, but lets turn to "real ale". It is defined by CAMRA thus;

"Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation. It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide."¹

Now, there is quite a lot of cask beer that is produced that conforms to this, but there is also quite a lot that certainly does not. Much cask beer is in fact conditioned in tanks under extraneous CO2, racked with nearly no yeast in it but with a reasonable amount of carbonation, sealed in the cask, rolled out of the brewery door and delivered to a pub. Within hours this beer can be served without any conditioning and very little settling time.

True cask conditioned beer is racked direct from fermenting vessel into cask and will have a very healthy yeast count. The down side of this is that it will not drop bright so quickly and takes considerably more care from the cellarman. Also, the beer should really be kept at the brewery for a week or so to allow the secondary fermentation to occur. Many breweries much prefer to fill the cask the day before delivery or even on the very same day. Many breweries have neither got the spare casks or space to store them at the correct conditioning temperature.

I would postulate that a large proportion of cask beer really is not "real ale" as defined by CAMRA and I certainly think that the whole issue is far more muddy than some would like to assert.

As for CAMRA and keg I'm not at all sure it makes much difference. Cask beer will be around for some time as will CAMRA. "Craft keg" or whatever you want to call it seems to have a growing acceptance amongst a younger group of beer drinkers. If perhaps the "no" camp, as represented by Pete Alexander's piece in Beer², is happy to continue to "foster good relations" then why should CAMRA do anything more?

Having said that, I'm also a fan of keg as an option, this does mean I'm sensitive to the inevitable anti-keg factions that really do exist. I'm still considering the very good article in Beer and am likely to have more to say. Whatever side of this particular thought process you might be, it's a grand debate that is unlikely to go away either.

---------------

¹Taken from the CAMARA web site on http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=100330">this page

²The picture in this post is stolen from CAMRA's very good Beer magazine. I suspect I'm breaking a copyright law somewhere, sorry guys.

Beer Dinner at The Kirkstile Inn

2011-05-08T12:00:00.001+01:00

There are a number of pubs around Cumbria which I have always held in high esteem. The Kirkstile Inn is one such establishment. They manage to retain a high turnover by delivering quality food and drink with a competent level of service. There are none of the usual distractions of gaming machines, juke boxes or pool tables as an attempt to draw in extra trade. It's true that the location is somewhat idyllic and in contrast to our own experiences of pub ownership, this one is easily accessible from major cosmopolitan¹ conurbations.

At our last beer dinner we had a number of Cumbrian beer industry movers and shakers. One such individual was the modest and highly likeable Roger Humphries, who owns both The Kirkstile Inn and Cumbrian Legendary Ales. He was so impressed at our first dinner that he asked us to do something similar on the first night of his beer festival.

So, under the banner of Cumbrian Beer Appreciation Group we organised our second beer and food matching dinner. This time Roger's remit gave us a little more trouble with the matching as he presented us with a menu and we had to match the food. Last time we chose the beer and told the chef what food we wanted him to produce. The challenge turned out to be a powerful learning experience the result of which was a great beer and food matched menu and a great leap forward in the groups abilities to create such events.

The Menu

BEER TASTERS DINNER

Jeff Pickthall and Roger Humphries

Salmon en croute – salmon fillet wrapped in filo pastry – roasted asparagus – Hollandaise sauce
Bavarian Heffe Weis No3 5% (Mitchell Krause)

This was perfect. The delicate yet highly aromatic effect of this style of beer worked well with the salmon but still had enough punch to hold its own with the hollandaise. The spicy notes harmonise with the asparagus beautifully.

Roasted sweet potato and leek soup – served with hop bread
Loweswater Gold 4.3% (Cumbrian Legendary Ales)

Again, this was a perfect match. The soup was served with a scoop of creme fraich in the centre which matches the slight buttery feel of the beer and of course the food heaven of butter on warm bread. The beer is carefully hopped leaving the grain to do all the talking, the sweet malt of which hits the spot with this delicious soup.

Sautéed button mushrooms stuffed with Crofton goats’ cheese ‘stumpy’ and Woodall’s air-dried ham – coated in herb breadcrumbs – homemade pesto
Jaipur 5.9% (Thornbridge)

If I were honest I'd say this match was the poorest of the lot; the food was delicious and of course we all know Jaipur to be a classic contemporary² IPA well worthy of its status as a superb beer. However, this dish we knew would be tricky to get right. The pesto somehow wasn't quite the right spiciness to stand up to the strong citrus tropical fruits in the beer and somehow the bitterness jarred with the mushrooms. However, I'm probably being hypercritical and I seem to remember finishing my plateful, even though I was starting to worry that I was over half-full but not yet halfway.

Rabbit, pheasant and duck terrine – toasted rye bread – pineapple and orange chutney
Red Bull Terrier 4.8% (Barngates)

Red Bull Terrier is one of my favourite Cumbrian beers. It is perhaps not what most beer geeks would call progressive, but when on good form it's great combination of malt power along with a citrus hop bite gives undertones of chocolate and orange.

The terrine was exceptional and the chef must have put tremendous effort into this dish showing off just how skilled many pub chefs can be. The strong game meats matched well with the robust meaty beer and the orange and pineapple chutney.

Fanned cantaloupe melon – Champagne sorbet – strawberry purée
Organic strawberry fruit beer 5% (Samuel Smiths)

I'll be truthful, Jeff and I had a little bit of an argument about this one during planning. I didn't know the beer and wanted to use a Belgian fruit beer where I felt the acidity of a true lambic would work well. I was overruled, a little to my disgust, but this is a team effort and the majority rules.

I was wrong, this beer was absolutely perfect. Surprisingly tart but with enough sweetness to work with the sweet fruitiness of the food. All in all a brilliant palette cleanser to set us up for the home straight.

Cottage pie – Cumbrian beef slowly braised in Langdale beer and roasted vegetables – topped with creamy mashed potatoes
Special Oatmeal Stout 4.5% (Coniston Brewing Co)

Bearing in mind that this was the 6th course a huge portion of comfort food was perhaps not quite what was required. But it was somewhat delicious. Firstly it is nice that the cottage pie was made with chunks of meat rather than the ubiquitous mince. The superbly executed slow braised beef paired wonderfully with the silky velvet stout and this course would have made a hearty lunch stood alone.

Cumberland Rum Nicky – A traditional 17th Century hot Cumbrian sweet made with dates, orange, ginger and Jefferson Whitehaven rum with a lattice pastry topping – served with rum and raisin ice-cream
Queboid 8% (Hardknott Brewery)

How can I say this match was perfect without seeming to be biased? Queboid, being fermented with a Belgian yeast, has a fruity spicy nose. The desert is something similar to an open mince pie, spices and dark fruit dominating. The very spirity feel, sweet malts and the tart spicy hops produce a golden syrup taste typical of a double IPA and paired very well indeed.

Personally I think this beer goes with many classic British puddings; suet, egg custard and dried fruits all work well.

Local cheeses, Maris Otter malt biscuits and Melbreak chutney
Croglin Vampire 8% (Cumbrian Legendary Ales)

Croglin Vampire is a delicious dopple bock with flavours of nutty apple and a gentle texture that helps hide its strength well. Full bodied but also gentle at the same time.

The fruity nature of what is technically a lager works tremendously well with full flavour cheeses.

Surprise

One of the objectives of the Cumbrian Beer Appreciation Group is to help dismiss preconceptions about beer. We chose beers to match circumstances based on appropriateness. Although we love cask beer, and three of the beers above were served this way. Two of the beers are bottle conditioned and in my view very much better for that. The remaining three, to the best of my knowledge, were served from beers that have been chill filtered and re-carbonated.

I'd have liked Queboid to have been from keg, where I think my version works particularly well, but it just wasn't practical on this occasion.

At least one of our beers would have been much better from cask rather than the bottled version. However, to provide a variety of beers at economic costs some compromises had to be made. But, just because a beer isn't cask, or isn't bottle conditioned, or perhaps is served with extraneous gas does not render the beer unworthy of consideration. Indeed, with packaged beer there is little to suggest that the container has much effect on the beer. Why does good quality packaged beer only come from bottle? Isn't a cask just a great big can? And what about those mini casks many brewers provide? They are just 70's party 9's re-launched after all.

Actually, Punk IPA and cheese works too.

Or, beer and cheese, any beer, just select the right cheese.

We decided to let the guests leave with a little bit of a surprise. Bottles might well provide a nice way to present beer but the overhead of glass adds weight and cost. If you are camping or having a picnic perhaps cans are more appropriate. One notable brewery is now controversially putting Punk IPA into cans. We thought it was a nice little touch to present each diner with a can of said beer.

I got so carried away talking about and eating that I forgot to take pictures of the best courses, sorry.

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¹The term cosmopolitan in the Cumbrian context is somewhat watered down. Compared to the remote Cumbrian valleys, Whitehaven, Workington and Cockermouth have managed to drag themselves out of the 19th century and stand some change of passing the mid point of the 20th century sometime soon.

²Is "contemporary" and "classic" used together an oxymoron? I don't think so in this context.

Beer Duty and AV

2011-05-03T21:30:00.002+01:00

I try not to let it, but my intense interest in politics encroaches into this blog from time to time. I'm not one of these silly political animals who think that Conservative policies are all twaddle just because Maggie shut our pits or that all Labour policies are crazy just because of a few social security layabouts. Neither do I think that Liberal Democrats are amateur politicians who wouldn't know what to do if they did end up running the country¹. For that matter I have some empathy with the Green movement and I'm not convinced about Brussels taking over quite so much, so there is a little bit of me agrees with some of UKIP's ideas, even the BNP...... no, wait, they really are tossers, you're right.

Beer duty is an interesting issue. There is an argument for saying that it is a regressive tax, much more regressive than VAT. People on low incomes are paying a greater proportion of their alcohol costs in tax. People like me, and I'd consider myself reasonably fortunate, spend a little more on alcohol rather than being forced to depend upon cheap slabs of cooking lager for a fix of the most acceptable type of recreational drug. After all, if you work hard for a meagre crust then you deserve a cost effective form of relaxation. Just because you like a few tins of beer in the evening does not mean you are evil and should be punished with punitive taxation.

But, I've argued before that beer duty punishes The Pub less than the off trade. Surely that is a good thing? Also, if someone is a heavy drinker they are paying higher taxes than someone who doesn't drink a lot and so are paying for what we are told is the inevitable increase in costs to the NHS as a result of alcohol related heath costs. Costs of policing alcohol related crime and paying for damage to public property in town centres is perhaps another strong argument for alcohol duty in general.

Consider a drinker who is more discerning, one who is looking for a drink that has a higher value due to better quality ingredients - A drinker who is perhaps prepared to pay more for an artisanal product where more of the money paid goes to hard working people like us microbrewers and licensees, rather than into the back pockets of multinational brewers and supermarket shareholders. A smaller proportion of the money paid by such a discerning drinker goes to the government than for a drinker who is simply out to get pissed for as little as possible. Perhaps this is fair.

Whatever your thoughts are on beer duty, and of course I would expect the readers of this blog to be generally against the principle of beer duty, it is clear that neither the last nor the current government had or has any intention of reducing it. The previous government created the alcohol duty escalator and the current government have no intention what so ever of abolishing it any time soon. Indeed, the whole issue just gets lost in the current party politics based election system that we have.

Although, as stated above, I have a very keen interest in politics, I am very disillusioned with party politics. I like to take each issue on its merits. I get very frustrated at political rhetoric that consists of nothing more than trying to discredit the other party's ideas, irrespective of whether the idea has merit or not. Moreover, minority opinions have a right to be involved in the direction governments take, even when they are apparently wrong. I see no reason for them not to have a say in a democratic country.

We have a referendum this week. It is the first time I can remember that we have actually been permitted to have a significant say in what our government is going to do; Normally all we can do is put one simple cross on a piece of paper every once in a while. I don't feel very empowered by our present first-past-the-post system.

Moreover, if the "No" camp win I fear that not only will it stop the debate on political reform but it will also prevent further referendums. "We gave you a referendum on AV, you said "No", so clearly that was a waste of time" - I like the idea of referendums, I like the idea of us all being empowered and being able to choose on more issues more often. I like the idea of a voting system that gets more people to vote.

Running the country is complex, I do not think that permitting a single minority first-past-the-post winner to have complete control, and for them to stay in control, is the way to conduct politics into the 21st century. Hung parliaments, coalitions and power sharing is simply a grown-up way of doing things, I do not see it as political instability but as a means of being more intelligent and running the country on an issue based footing rather than the current ideology focused system.

For these reasons, and many, many more besides, I'm voting "Yes to AV" on Thursday. It might not be the perfect system, but I do not want the discussion on political change to end.

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¹...... yes, there is a case for saying they should have more say now they form part of our current government. But still, they are part of our current government, I see that as better than it being all Conservative, even if they are less effectual than we'd all like.

Mild? In May? or any time for that matter?

2011-05-03T11:55:00.004+01:00

It has always been something that has intrigued me; the fact that the beer world likes to defend traditional quirks that seem to be in decline. The Pub, for instance, that long established British tradition of the local is under threat as we well know. I view these things as an unfortunate inevitability. Large establishments like Wetherspoons who provide cost effective drinking places and ever more competition for the spare pounds in our pocket, shout as we will, pubs will continue to close.

It's May, apparently. We should all be drinking mild, apparently. I ought to be brewing mild if I listened to the supporters of that particular beer style. But I haven't brewed a mild for ages, and I'm certainly unlikely to brew it again any time soon. It's not out of defiance of the concept of mild or to attempt to antagonise the mild supporters, they are entitled to champion their preferred beer if that is their wish, I just don't really want to be part of it.

I have brewed mild, and some have even commented that it was one of the very best milds they have ever tasted. Unfortunately, whenever anyone who was an expert¹ on mild tasted mine they re-classified it as a porter. You see, I like to brew progressive beer with flavour rather than to conform to some traditional stylistic ideal that is better consigned to the dustbin.

It is possible to brew a truly fantastic mild. Further more, some very exceptional, award-winning pale beers classify as light milds and don't need a special month to promote them.

However, most people think of mild as a low gravity dark beer that tastes of nothing very much, doesn't keep well and just isn't worth the bother. Moreover, the style is much better suited to winter months rather than the typically nice weather that we tend to get in May.

Now, you'll have to excuse me, I have some beer to transfer to conditioning tank where it will mingle with a large amount of American varieties of dry hops.

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¹Expert = Ex Spurt - a former drip under pressure. Just don't start thinking in terms of bodily fluids......

Keg Watch

2011-04-27T14:35:00.007+01:00

We bought our pub in February 2004. It had been closed over the winter, we realised that being located, at the top of a remote Lake District valley, winter opening was unlikely to be profitable. As we eagerly relished the challenge of dusting off the cobwebs and filling the cellar we realised there were a number of empty casks and kegs which had not been collected by breweries. They were a little in the way but we knew they belonged to someone. Sure, some were owned by big multinational brewers, and there is a temptation to disregard the value of these containers. None the less, they all have value and the owners deserve care to be taken with their property.

During this time I became aware of Keg Watch. It had been suggested that I could call them in and all the containers would be taken away, as if by magic, and repatriated with their owners. I’m not naive and I enquired about the funding for the Keg Watch scheme. Apparently, once Keg Watch have the containers, they are at liberty to charge the brewery for the service, apparently without any checks on the necessity for Keg Watch to be involved. If the brewer does not agree to the charge he doesn't get his casks back - that sounds a little bit like theft to me.

I decided that I owed it to the brewers to continue to look after the casks for around 6 months. In that time many breweries did drop by and collect their casks. Some other breweries we contacted and gave them the opportunity to collect. I believe some indicated that they were happy for Keg Watch to clear up the matter. The remainder of unclaimed casks amounted to around a third of the original number. We eventually called in Keg Watch who removed what was left.

We recently made a delivery of beer to a rural pub in Kent. Being the other side of London to our brewery this was quite a trek, as London is already a very long way from Cumbria. However, we had arranged a full van to go to the capital and it was a nice little trip out for us Northern country folk to get into the city and try some great beers; you see, places like Euston Tap, The Rake Bar and many other places in the smoke are still something special to us. A beery trip to London with the excuse of delivering just about makes it viable.

It was all getting quite interesting. The pub in question had asked us to do a meet the brewer night for which we would send a whole pallet down ahead of time, a much more financially viable option. We would then fill the van with more beer for London, dropping off on the way to the meet the brewer night. We were even on the point of arranging a further pallet to be delivered north of London. We could bring many more empties back in the van at a later date and the whole arrangement was looking very viable.

Sadly, the tenant of the pub we were due to attend for the meet the brewer left very suddenly. The pub closed with very little notice just as we were about to send the pallet of beer. We were very fortunate that the beer twitter world alerted us to this fact very quickly indeed. Of course we did not send the beer and quickly rearranged the trip to London so that we could maximise on deliveries already arranged with other very good customers.

We delivered to The White Horse at Parsons Green and the Utobeer warehouse for The Rake as well as The Southampton Arms in Kentish Town and The Land of Liberty Peace and Plenty in Rickmansworth. A diverse and spread-out collection of some of our favourite outlets. They are all very good to us and take very special care of our casks.

We knew that we had casks in Kent at the aforementioned sans licensee; the remote country pub that was undergoing a change of management. We had been given reliable information from other brewers that our casks were still in the beer garden so we undertook the approximately 2 hour diversion to collect. We expected to rock up and spend a while sifting through a significant number of containers looking for our own.

On arrival the pub was a hive of activity but the beer garden was strangely empty of any casks whatsoever. Keg Watch, it seems, had been and scavenged everything completely indiscriminately.

Our journey was wasted. Not only was our journey wasted but Keg Watch had taken our casks and we would, it seemed, have to travel some distance to recover them.

It seems that the pub owner wanted the backyard clear of casks before the new lessee took up residence but was not prepared to put in any effort finding out if the rightful owners were going to collect themselves. We had spent time trying to find out if our casks were there, who was going to be taking over and what the overall situation was.

We believe that Keg Watch were far too hasty in recovering the containers and those concerned at the pub too lazy to find out who owned what. It isn’t difficult, the casks have the brewery phone number on them.

It has left us with a very bad feeling about both Keg Watch and the pub in question.

I would ask that all pub operators consider the grief that is caused by calling in Keg Watch too soon. I also believe Keg Watch is far too hasty at collecting without allowing breweries to make their own arrangements. My sceptical reaction is to believe that Keg Watch reward their agents too easily for recovering casks that don’t really need to be recovered.

It is difficult for the small brewer as Keg Watch squarely avoid blame. They point the finger at the pub expecting the brewery to be too scared to round on the pub operator in fear of upsetting a potential customer.

I believe Keg Watch do a good job at preventing container stealing when bigger breweries are involved, but I also believe there are insufficient controls in place for avoiding the small brewer like me from facing unnecessary costs and wasted journeys. It has to be remembered that we deliver all our casks and we know exactly where all of our casks are. We know all our customers and their premisses.

The closest Keg Watch originally offered to move our own property was their depot in Warrington, which is a 5 hour round trip from here and a likely cost of £70 of fuel. We had already been to try and pick up our property where we believed they should have been and failed to see why we should have to make this extra journey.

Once we pointed out the reality - the fact that the casks were in no significant danger of theft; the property was only under a short closure for refurbishment and was well attended with personnel, it was agreed that the casks should be returned to us at no further charge.

Having talked to many brewers it seems that it is not an unusual practice for pubs to call in Keg Watch as soon as there is a change of ownership, often without any attempt being made to contact the breweries. This practice then entitles Keg Watch to charge for a service which was never required in the first place.

Although Keg Watch have agreed to return my casks without charge I am deeply concerned that the eagerness of Keg Watch is costing small brewers like me a significant amount of money. There are no requirements for Keg Watch to prove that there was a necessity for the containers to be picked up.

I hesitated to publish this post as Keg Watch have cleared up this particular incidence. However, there seems to be no intention of ensuring it does not happen again to me, and it is certainly happening to a number of other breweries I know.

If you are a brewer and are unhappy about the actions of Keg Watch I would be very interested in knowing, I believe action needs to be taken against this money making racket.

Not Chemical Fizz

2011-04-20T17:00:00.000+01:00

I've been playing around with keg. I'm a CAMRA member and a micro-brewer, what on earth would I want to do that for?

British style "traditional"¹ beer is often best represented in cask. It is as simple as that. I don't think I know a single beer enthusiast who would have an argument with that. Not even my very good friend Jeff Pickthall, who is a confirmed and uninhibited CAMRA basher. I share some of his concerns, but to use the phrase often used, it would be a shame to throw out the baby with the bath-water. CAMRA is not all bad and cask beer is good.

Much contemporary beer is great from cask. There are plenty of modern beers that are fantastic served through hand-pull and I hope that some of mine classify in this group. There are also in my view, a number of beers that are generally better in keg. They are generally the stronger "craft" beers that have, up until recently, been responsible for some beer enthusiasts to drink more at home than in pubs or bars. The progressive craft keg market might well be small, it might well never overtake cask in volume, but it is growing and I'm interested in that as a brewer and a drinker.

The irony is that beer served from cask often contains more processed material than beer that is mass produced. Chemicals, you see, cost money. The main addition that is used in cask beer is Isinglass, which is made from processed fish guts and also contains chemicals like sulphur dioxide and citric acid.

Most brand keg beer by contrast is chill filtered and although I cannot guarantee these substances are not used at all, I know for a fact they are used in significantly lower quantities. Filtering, or separation of solids by centrifuge uses less chemicals and therefore costs less money to make. They are, therefore, not chemical beers at all.

I have been interested in kegging for some time. I've tried some trial kegs and found mixed success. I like the idea of completely unfiltered beer and beer that does not use isinglass. This seems just about impossible to do unless you can afford to leave it in a conditioning tank chilled to -1°C for six weeks.

I've recently racked some Infra Red into 20l kegs and there is a second trial keg of Queboid which is loaded right now into the van for delivery to the Rake Bar. The Infra Red has light filtering and the Queboid just chill conditioning. Both are likely to have haze to some degree, but I hope to acceptable levels.

I am a supporter of the idea of kegging beer over 6%. There is no reason for keg beer to be overly fizzy and indeed, I expect some keg enthusiasts will proclaim my interpretation to be under-carbonated, as the carbonation is likely to be very similar to cask. Of course I have no control over the take up of carbon dioxide in the pub and as most keg set-ups will quickly introduce extra carbonation I expect this might be a problem. In any case, for beers at this strength the sale time makes cask impractical except for high turnover pubs and beer festivals.

With luck we will be rolling out our kegs over the next few weeks. We would love you to try them and let us know what you think, good or bad.

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¹OK Jeff, just shoot me now.

Started with a kiss

2011-04-19T20:40:00.005+01:00

It was a dark and windy winters evening. It was Friday and one would expect it to be busy in the pub, but at the end of a long West Cumbrian valley even weekend nights are quiet. We were not expecting to do more than four or six covers and if the GP on the beer sales paid for the barman to be there I'd have been very shocked indeed. We staffed appropriately.

At the time I smoked, and was still allowed to do so in my own home that happened to be a pub. The kitchen was sort of ready, myself and the small staff team had already resigned ourselves to settle in the bar, I had rolled a tab and was just entering that Hamlet moment content in the knowledge that it would be an easy service and I would shortly settle into a gentle evening of drinking. A fine and polite gentleman entered the bar, asked if we were doing food and proclaimed that there was a huge group in the Youth Hostel for the weekend who would be shortly attending for dinner.

There was a short Basil moment when my realisation that I'd be run off my feet, and an early beer was not going to be for me, as I curtly enquired why they had not given me any nice. "We cook from fresh here you know, no zip and ping here, we might not have enough fresh meat in stock" sharp retort from Ann sent me scuttling into the kitchen ready to cook for these kindly people.

It was all running nice and smoothly in the kitchen. At the time the menu was reasonably simple and we had copious amounts of Cumberland sausage in the freezer, handily individually prepared straight and proud, not these silly curled up versions that seem to have an inbuilt coyness. They cook much easier from frozen than the curled up type.

I had a kitchen porter/waiter who was a great Aussie Bloke. A Proper Bloke, the type who would fit in well in A Fosters advert. He was starting to return to the kitchen, having delivered a number of fine 18 inch long local schlongs to some appreciative chaps. "They are all a bit weird" he reported "One of them is dressed as a Sheila"

Hmmmm, that'll shock the local bigots I thought, after all, this isn't a pub in Soho. Still, they are probably just on a stag do or something. Little did it cross my mind that the guy in question regularly liked to dress up as a woman. "A lot of them seem a little camp" reports my Antipodean pot sanitation operative. But I thought nothing of it, he seemed to have a view that English rugby players were all of dubious gender, so I just got on with cooking.

As the checks came to an end, I decided, as I often did, to carry the last order out and leave the kitchen cleaning to the other staff. There was something of a touch of irony in the fact that the rough guy from the outback was being left in the kitchen wearing apron and marigolds.

A huge length of meat in each hand, carefully arranged provokativly on the oval plates complete with juicy gravy, two veg and a good dollop of white mash. "Two Cumberland Sausages" I called out as I walked into the bar; there was no order and our normal table number system had gone by the wayside on this evening long ago. "Oooh, yeesss, that must be mine" one bloke called in the most pleasant of camp voices "Just put it down there dear" to which an amorous observer felt the need to comment, with equal, if not greater femininity. "Oh, what lovely sausage you have there Nigel" OK, so perhaps the KP had a point, many of these men were gay, and extremely happy with the fact.

They were a gay outdoor club, visiting The Lakes for some fell walking, and more importantly a bloody good laugh.

We had one of the best nights of our time at the pub. I even got chatted up, but of course, being totally comfortable with my own sexuality, Ann's insistence on reminding me of the fact has never bothered me. Not once has it bothered me. Really. Indeed, it was Linda, it turned out, who had decided to hit on me; the guy, all 6 foot plus of him, who was dressed in a very fetching dress, high heels, and wanted a man to treat him as a woman, whatever that means.

None of them kissed. Or perhaps they did, and I didn't notice. Perhaps I was too busy trying to explain to Linda that she wasn't my type. I think I let her down gently enough. I suspect I wouldn't have been offended if any of them were kissing, unless Linda had tried to kiss me. Perhaps it would only have been Crocodile Dundee who might have been upset, although I'm fairly sure he was seeing the funny side of everything anyway.

But, it's not Soho up here. There are people who would find it obscene to see two guys snogging. I would have had the right to eject anyone from my pub, without reason, providing it was not on any grounds of prejudice.

We have had same sex couples staying in our rooms. To be perfectly frank, they have simply been the most polite and agreeable people. I suspect we've had many more staying who have been more coy and not been open.

The worst thing about taking a booking for a double room, from a hoteliers point of view, and finding that the customers are same sex, is checking that this is what they want and that in fact we haven't made a huge mistake. To do that without drawing attention to the fact is somewhat interesting. Ann is significantly better than me at checking that without causing embarrassment.

It does seem completely daft that in the heart of what is generally considered the most liberal district of our country two gay men can be kicked out of a pub just for showing a little bit of affection. Moreover, it shows that in the majority the general population find it abhorrent that anyone can be ejected from a pub because of their sexuality. I'm sure that 20 years ago the attitudes of the general public would have been quite different.

Having said all of this, there are still people who are genuinely offended by same sex affection. Thankfully they are few in number and I suspect, and hope, these people will vanish completely at some point in the future.

There is an underpinning principle of operating a licensed premises that permits the operator of the establishment to eject any person without reason. Indeed, it is often advised that reasons are not given to avoid accusations of prejudice. The need for this is very simple and permits the licensee to prevent unpleasant situations occurring.

I'd be surprised if anyone in Soho would be offended by a little bit of kissing, but what if the pub had been in a reserved area and someone was offended? Should a licensee be permitted to ask someone to leave if another customer was offended?

Despite the fact that I support the continual removal of bigotry, I worry that there has been little mention in the mainstream press of the importance of the licensees right, and indeed necessity, to sometimes ask people to leave a licensed property and the fact that anyone who fails to leave when asked is breaking the law. It would seem that Jonathan Williams was somewhat confrontational during the incident when he was asked to leave.

Having said all of that, the publican in this particular case clearly did not handle the situation well and I suspect is having a huge amount of regret right now.

Logistics

2011-04-05T22:30:00.001+01:00

Beer is generally over 90% water. Indeed, many pale hoppy session beers might well be more than 95% water. Water, and therefore beer, is quite heavy. The containers we use to move beer around in, be it stainless steel casks or glass bottles, add to that weight. The issues associated with moving all this mass about is significant for any commercial brewer.

We were using our domestic car for deliveries, it is a big fuel guzzling 4x4 and very capable of hauling around heavy loads, but in reality not ideal. I had been thinking about the fact that I could get around twice the amount of beer in a van. I'd been thinking this for some time. I think our car will take around 12 firkins plus a few cases of beer. Both on payload and volume it was full at this point. I knew that a van would most likely be more economical per firkin-mile.

Sadly, Ann managed to find some black ice on Christmas day. Our nice big car was significantly damaged as was a length of fencing and a big road sign. However, perhaps due to modern electronic stability control, Ann's skill or maybe just plain good luck, the car missed the icy tidal stretch of the river Esk just the other side of said fence. The salt water would surely have ruined the engine turning an expensive repair into a write-off. Ann might not have come off with just mere fright for that matter, as a dip in the river may well have had significant consequences.

The car was reasonably quickly taken away for repair, all sorted by the insurance. Better than that we were also promised a courtesy car while ours was being repaired.

A Ka. A flippin' Ford Ka.

So, we went out to find a van. Some nice people at Poulton near Blackpool had a nice big T350 Transit. Volume wise, being a long wheelbase high roof, it is bigger than we need, but as previously stated, beer is heavy and at least, with a payload of up to 1.5 tonnes it is possible to carry around 30 firkins without overloading. Great for dragging loads of beer long distances.

Our market seems to be developing in major city specialist beer bars. Our local market is somewhat saturated. There are many breweries in Cumbria. Too many it could be argued. The only really sensible option is to export most of our beer out of the county. Big cities are good where we can deliver to a few specialist bars and pubs who are within a short distance of each other.

This raises cost problems. Even with a full van, travelling several hundred miles has a significant transport cost per unit for each firkin. This is something we have to monitor very carefully indeed.

When we ran our remote pub, in the middle of nowhere, we became acutely aware of the impact of transport costs. So much so that the onset, in my view, of the current economic crisis, has been in part created by fuel costs. Sub-prime mortgages and irresponsible lending aside, which have indeed been a problem, the fuel costs rises saw our suppliers pulling out from our area citing transport costs as the issue; This inevitable contraction of business catalysed the onset of the banking crisis. I believe that fuel costs will continue to form a significant barrier to many businesses as the economy improves. Businesses that fail to cover transport costs will inevitably fail.

Our answer to this is to be careful about ensuring our van is full on long trips, perhaps combining pallet delivery and collection of empties by van¹. To help all of this we will forward publish our delivery dates and ask that beer drinkers who like to see our beer can help us by encouraging pub and bar managers to order generously.

Equally, it is essential that we maintain our return on investing on such journeys and as such, with the current duty rises, cost of fuel, and many other financial pressures, we will have to look at maintaining the price we ask and resisting the many calls for deep discounting that is sure to eventually result in brewery casualties.

To help out, look at our newsletter, which lists our current committed delivery dates, along with a few other snippets of Hardknott News. We've already received helpful support and on-the-ground information from beer drinkers. Thank you to you all, it's all very much appreciated.

If you are interested, we now have our car back, after something of a pageant. It now does significantly less miles which I'm sure is good both for our pocket and the environment.

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¹We can get more than 70 empties in the van, they only weigh about 10kg each. We are happy to pallet out in advance to any venue taking reasonable numbers. We also have other breweries in the area that we share pallet space with. There is a Cumbrian brewery festival planned at The Rake Bar for instance.

The taxing duty of adding value

2011-03-26T13:00:00.002Z

It was the budget on Wednesday. Oh, you know. Beer duty went up by quite a lot. You know that too I guess. You may also know that there is an extra tax on high ABV beers above 7.5%. But, according to you, that's OK because the duty on low ABV beer, below 2.8%, has been halved. Unfortunately, what you haven't realised, is that this will only be useful to brewers who produce over 5000hl per year; People like Molson Coors, InBev, Fullers, Marstons and BrewDog. You see, they will get the same discount on beer duty we do for beers under 2.8%, but as we already get that discount the revenue is not prepared to give us anymore. This is effectively the start of a reversal of progressive beer duty. To pay for this extra perk, which will only be applicable to things like supermarket own brand beers and C2, those of us who make quality beers, some of which are over the 7.5% threshold, will most certainly lose out. No microbrewer who is brewing below 5000hl will benefit. NOT A SINGLE ONE.

Some time ago I wrote that I didn't think beer duty was a significant problem to the pub industry. At the time I was running a pub with high overheads and brewing my own beer. Evaluating things across the board, at that time, my perspective was that beer duty was only a relatively small cost of serving beer in a pub. Indeed, as a proportion of the overall taxation I was paying, beer duty was relatively small. Pubs pay a significant amount of VAT for instance. Staff PAYE and NI contributions is significant. On top of that there are taxes like employers NI contributions, a hidden tax on employing people, and these are shockingly high.

The overall picture of alcohol taxation, as shown in the above chart, is certainly very complex. The vast majority of beer is still taxed lower than wine, whisky, alcopops and the margin between them does not appear to have significantly changed. What has changed is that major brewers have now been given an incentive to make more lower ABV beer and quality high ABV beer is being treated as a high quality, high value commodity, a bit like wine and whisky.

"Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed" - Daniel Defoe, The Political History of the Devil, 1726

I don't like taxation. I do like some of the benefits it brings. I quite like the fact that the NHS saved my life at least once. I like the fact that they fixed my broken leg and both my hernias have been repaired without any need for me to have medical insurance or dip into savings I haven't got.

I like the fact that my children are receiving a good education, the police, ambulances and fire brigade respond quickly when called, and yes, I've had reason to call all of them.

I do worry that we send too many people through higher education only to have to invent bureaucracy so we can find suitable pen pushing jobs that the country really doesn't need. I think more people should be prepared to get their hands dirty, rather than pretending that an economy can somehow exist purely on a population of graduates and no migrant workers. And there, that betrays an opinion in me that feels that although taxation is necessary in a civilised society, I do wonder if generally it is a little high right now, and high because the populous has an unrealistic utopia in mind. I do think the tax burden is too high in this country and on the day there are marchers in London I wonder how those who condemn beer duty can then take part in such marches. I support the government's cost-cutting, it's the only way we will see taxation reduced. The only alternative is to support increases in taxation.

Still, we elected the government, this one and the last, and we must all accept the policies, spending decisions and taxation regimes imposed. I do think that they are influenced by overall public opinion, even if you and I feel that they don't match our ideals, but then they never will, because like all of us, our ideas are quite rightly different. Most of all I am grateful I can help vote out the buggers in charge, many people in the world can't.

It was recently pointed out to me that going to the pub is a luxury, drinking beer is a luxury. I remember my mother telling me so many years ago. VAT and duty are applied to things the government think are luxuries. Duty is applied specifically to things that are bad for us or society. Unfortunately, public opinion would agree that the government is generally right on these points. Most of the public would agree that alcohol is bad for us and moreover bad for society. The fact that you and I don't see it that way is unlikely to change public opinion.

Conversely, VAT is not charged on things that are good for us or are essential for us to live. Bread, potatoes, safety equipment, books, cakes, cheese, meat and vegetables are exempt from VAT. Biscuits, ready meals, fast-food, fizzy drinks, TVs, DVDs, computers, motor cars all attract VAT because you do not need them to live. Fuel for cars, alcohol and tobacco attract extra duty because they are bad for us, society or the environment and arguably if you spend lots on these products you have more money than sense. All of this counteracts the common accusation of purchase taxation and duty being regressive.

There is significantly less money coming from tobacco, and as a result of healthier society more people are living longer, costing social services, hospitals and care homes more. Perhaps this is the real reason alcohol duty is on the increase. I don't really buy the whole "alcohol is costing the NHS millions" argument - we are all getting healthier and living longer, the tax burden of that is immense.

Some years ago a very knowledgeable publican and successful business man pointed out, by way of up-selling I suspect, that buying a slightly more expensive bottle of wine was gaining significantly better quality.

"This basic wine has a lot of duty on it" he explained "This slightly more expensive wine has exactly the same amount of duty on it, the extra all goes into quality"

I suspect this is what James Watt is eluding at in comments to the MA, not too eloquently I'm afraid, in his usual out spoken style. He does it rather better on the BrewDog blog. However, if you consider for a moment that underneath this there is a valid point, quality beer is a quality product. Drinking beer in a pub, bar or restaurant is a luxury. Consider the total percentage tax (VAT plus duty) on a pint in a pub, which is about 32%¹, and compared that to a pint tin in a supermarket where VAT plus duty is 59%².

As the price you pay for your beer goes up a greater proportion of the price goes to the upkeep of the pub, better ingredients in the beer and investment in the brewery. In the supermarket cheap slabs of beer are almost entirely revenue for the tax man. Conversely, higher cost craft³ brewed beer represents significantly better value than macro-brewed beer.

I'm still outraged that beer duty has increased 43% since I started brewing in 2005. I'm extremely outraged by the fact that I will have to pay 50% more duty on my beers above 7.5%, beers that were a significant part of my business plan. I'm also outrages that the low ABV duty relief will do me no go whatsoever, but others are claiming it a success. However, there is an argument that the quality end of the market should be less financially sensitive to the extra tax burden, compared to bigger brewers.

SIBA sent out a circular very shortly after the budget was announced. There is a key issue surrounding the use of progressive beer duty for discounting beer from small producers. PBD is not supposed to allow small producers of beer to undercut the big boys, but there is an element of this going on.

"While no changes were made in the Budget to Small Brewers Relief (Progressive Beer Duty) it is incumbent on all brewers to realize that the relief is intended for investment in jobs and capital in the industry and to relieve the dis-economies of scale of the smaller brewers. Duty increases should be applied in full to prevent any accusations that small brewers are using the relief to discount prices."

That plays to the argument that small brewers should be concentrating on quality and investment, not fighting a pointless battle of price cutting. I know every drinker wants their beer to be reasonably priced, there is nothing wrong with that, but there are sectors of the market where price is driving down quality, and that is not what I want good beer to be about.

I believe that is what BrewDog are also trying to say, even if they are trying to simply get free publicity out of saying it.

Right, best go and adjust my price-list then.

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¹Assuming 4% beer sold at £2.70 a pint.

²Assuming 4% beer sold at £1.00 a pint.

³Yes, I know the jury is out on what defines "craft" and I get the issues with this, but for me craft beer is any beer that is brewed with a mind to quality rather than price. It's a sliding scale of course and I do not draw a solid line.

Hardknott tapping it out.

2011-03-19T21:00:00.000Z

A year and a half ago I was shown, along with other members of the British Guild of Beer Writers, a room off Sheffield Station. It was a bit of mess to be honest; dusty, full of scaffolding and generally giving the impression of a building site.

Nearly exactly a year ago Sheffield Tap opened it's doors to the public, a world beer freehouse and the brainchild of James Hawksworth. After having significant problems restoring the building to it's early 20th centuary glory, the ceiling itself cost £27,000. Thankfully he had the guts to trust his judgement and agreed to fund the restoration, else we would be without this great place.

Not being particularly superstitious I should not let myself find significance with the fact that we have been running Hardknott as a stand alone brewery for just about the same time. Never the less, striving to be different is something I've always cherished and in this I can find synergy with Sheffield Tap.

Last Tuesday night we ran a meet the brewer night in this rather excellent platform refreshment room. On the bar was Light Cascade, Atomic Narcissus, Cool Fusion and Infra Red on cask and project Queboid on prototype keg. This is an unfiltered, isinglass free keg beer and as such a little on the hazy side, which was a worry to me. I worry about filtering changing the flavour of beer and isinglass is of course a concern for people regarding the fact that it is made from fish. It seemed to go down well despite its murky appearance.

More importantly this was the first time we had our new release Æther Blæc 2010¹ and Granite 2010. There are two versions of Æther Blæc determined by the containers they were matured in. For various reasons I'm not commenting on the exact containers but despite them both being from exactly the same gyle, the only differences being the maturation, there is very distinct differences. Details are in small print on the bottle so to find out you'll just have to buy one of each.

All in all it was a fantastic evening and I'd like to extend a very grateful thanks to Jamie and all his staff for their hospitality.

If you would like to buy my new release beers in bottle you can do so via myBreweryTap.com

We will be distributing to as many good beer shops in the next few weeks, please let us know if there is a shop near you that you'd like to see stock my beers.

And now, some pictures.

These pictures were all taken by Ben Steel and can be found on facebook.

And because he is upset that he hasn't got a picture of himself with the lovely Rosie, here is one Ann took.

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¹I define the vintage of my limited edition beers based on the year in which they are originally brewed. Both of these have been maturing for around 3-4 months and were originally brewed last autumn.

Hardknott at Sheffield Tap

2011-03-15T07:51:00.005Z

Just incase you don't follow me on Twitter, or have somehow missed it, tonight we will be in Sheffield Tap. We will be launching our Granite barley wine, which we brewed in 2010, and also two different brand new versions of Æther Blæc. Ask me nicely and you'll get a free taster. We will also be trialing a keg beer alongside a full range of cask beers, including our very tasty Infra Red.

We hope to see you all there.

A look to the future

2011-03-13T14:08:00.003Z

On Thursday I helped to organise a beer dinner at The Masons Arms. It was great fun and I hope at least a few of the people present were as impressed as I was at the quality of the beer and food presented.

It was the inaugural event of a loose organisation of people we are calling the Cumbrian Beer Appreciation Group. It includes, amongst others, myself, the great beer critic; Jeff Pickthall, the ever increasing light in support of great beer in Cumbria; Neil Bowness and one of the key management of aforementioned pub; Alex Routledge.

We currently have no formal structure, no constitution and no membership criteria. Indeed, if you like beer and live in Cumbria, or like Cumbrian beer, or visit Cumbria and drink beer, or perhaps just observe beery goings on in Cumbria then perhaps you have a right to be involved, if you want.

We stand for beer appreciation in Cumbria. Any beer really. We try not to have preconceived ideas about beer, other than we know what we like. Neither is there any real reason to be geographically constrained, other than for reasons that all the current "members" are Cumbrian residents. We like cask, keg, bottle conditioned, chill filtered and canned beer alike. We have even talked about doing a serious mainstream beer review video. We consider a well executed version of a traditional brown bitter to be just as worthy as a modern pale mild, a mainstream interpretation of classic IPA to be just as notable as a 9% hopbomb and indeed, for my own sake must admit that nitrokeg stout is a sound fall-back where that couple of pints are required in unwind mode should beer esoteria be unavailable.

I know that scorn has been poured on the concept of beer and food matching in some quarters. Perhaps it's my upbringing, but I feel that there is much milage in matching beer and food. Don't get me wrong, in my youth I have consumed my fair share of economy foods, and still do when quick calorific intake is required. From an early age I was taught the value of quality, even though we could rarely afford it. Quality events with my relatives, work colleagues, business associates and friends have often involved good food and perhaps wine of some sort of superior value. I never could get the hang of wine connoisseurship but I am certainly influenced by the fact that many good people I know have it mastered and are often revered by their peers for their knowledge, even if I suspect there is an element of male bovine excreta present.

Because I believe that beer deserves an element of progressive appreciation I have willingly, and I believe successfully, been involved in this sterling effort to bring a little bit of this to the Cumbrian beer world. It is just one of the many things that is bringing me great joy and hope about the 21st century beer world.

I notice that The Pub Curmudgeon has started a poll on his blog asking what decade the reader would most like to drink in. I voted unashamedly for 2011, mainly because 2021 and 2031 were not made available. I can't remember drinking in 1971, but in 1981 the beer wasn't that good and it's been progressively improving since. Yes, perhaps some things have got worse, less pubs for instance, but I'm not convinced that many of the losses will be greatly missed. Mudgie recounts his view of the way things were, just to give us a reminder. He asserts that the future is gloomy. Although I like Mudgie's approach generally, I do feel that today is a good time to drink beer and it's getting better, there is plenty to look forward to.

The opportunity to present beer in the way we did on Thursday is a great leap forward. We've been asked to do the same thing again in a few weeks at a different venue and so we hope the momentum will continue.

The evening itself was attended by a good mix of people. Some were confirmed beer enthusiasts like me, people who were looking for real beer inspiration. Others were interested industry people from Cumbria, brewers, licensees and the like. The rest were ordinary punters with no great beer aspirations, but looking for a good night of food and drink.

I found it interesting that some thought the early beers a little uninspiring, but conversely, the latter beers to others far too overwhelming. Overall, we believe we got the balance right and I hope that the Crafterati present understood that the exceptional balanced subtlety of the craft brewed pilsner and pale ales went extremely well with the soup and fish courses. Equally, to match beer with a rich chocolate desert or strongly flavoured cheese requires robust beer that would normally fail to find any appeal in a normal drinking session. If we sent one person away with a greater enthusiasm for progressive beer then I'd consider that a success.

This sort of dinner is a specialist event. Most beer drinkers will be unimpressed with the idea of sitting down in a posh joint and pontificating about flavour descriptors of the beer and food in question. I think it can only be good that there is a progression towards respectability for what I believe to be our core alcoholic beverage of the UK. Long may it continue to gain pace, as this is part, if only a small part, of what some are calling a beer revolution.

I'm raising a glass to the great future of beer.

In defence of the Crafterati

2011-03-13T12:00:00.001Z

I generally agree with the comments made recently by Pete Brown and a related subject by Zak Avery regarding divisions in the beer world. This is all followed up by Tandleman who very nicely points out that we should all be able to comment where we like whilst still calling for a united front for British beer. Within these pieces there are links to other very salient observations by other bloggers. I do get all of this; there is a danger of us being far too negative rather than maintaining general positiveness about beer. There is indeed much to celebrate about beer in the UK, it's very diverse with a fantastic mix of progressive and traditional.

However, this also leads me to wonder. In the cities there are some great places to get great beer. There are specialist beer bars springing up all over the place and they all seem to be doing very well indeed. For this "craft beer revolution" to work it does need a cosmopolitan environment. Here in Cumbria there might well be some things to celebrate, but for the growing number of beer Crafterati within the county, it can be frustratingly difficult to improve enthusiasm for craft beer, whatever your definition of craft might be.

I can see the folly of criticising what people choose to drink, but equally there are areas of the country where the beer world view is still very narrow. I cannot get to most of the pubs that serve the beers I enjoy without driving, or getting Ann to drive. Most of my beer sales are a significant distance from where I have chosen to set up my brewery.

Imagine you can't get any beer that you really enjoy. Imagine you live in a county where everything is terribly parochial. Imagine you very rarely get anything other than boring brown beer, or even perhaps pale beer, but barely with much hop character to write about. Imagine that you are the sort of person who realises that drinking 6 pints of session ale does nothing for you other than damaging liver cells and putting a little more unwanted fat around your waist.

Imagine you are a brewer who is operating from that county and finds that most of your market is, in fact, outside the county because people inside don't really like the beers you make, despite them being awarded beer of the festival at least three times.

We know that there are people who like my beer. We also know that there are people who don't. Sometimes, when we follow up a sale to a pub, in the hope of repeat custom, the reply is an honest "my customers didn't really like it". Of course, I worry that it might have been a fault with that particular cask, and sometimes that might be so, in which case we try our best to address that situation. However, it is clear that certain outlets find that our approach to beer does not match the very stale traditional outlook which prevails.

When I send my beer to more progressive beer outlets I worry that it isn't progressive enough. I worry that I need to pack more flavour into the beer and ensure I can impress the Crafterati.

I know fine well that a massive 8% hop bomb is never going to be mainstream, and nor should it be. I know that imperial wood aged stouts are specialist beers of which most drinkers will be rightly sceptical.

I must hereby state my absolute right to slag off attitudes and choices of beer that prevent me from enjoying my own beer world, either from a brewer's or a drinker's perspective. By proxy of course this has to extend to supporting the right of people to deride chemical fizzy beer, even though I have now come to realise the error of that course of action.

It is interesting that Pete Brown's muse was triggered by Cookie's point that the wine world never slags off poor wine. Excuse me, after only the briefest of looks I found quite a few wine blogs where there are similar topics to be found. OK, wine buffs might be a bit more subtle about how they deride lower quality, or the use of such things as sulphites, for instance. We could discuss the fact that wine writers appear to be more erudite if you like, that would be more appropriate, but of course that would sit very uncomfortably with most beer enthusiasts.

Wine critic, art critic, music critic? Just the same as the beer critic surely? We can't all just write about that last great beer we tried in that new beer bar can we? If all beer writing is just about awesome beer we like we'll get criticised for not talking about the issues.

I can't help feeling that we are going around in ever decreasing circles.

The price of a pint (of strong beer)

2011-03-06T12:14:00.004Z

“How much a pint?” He was middle aged, respectable and probably had a good job. Dressed smart casual he gave the impression he had a nice house and a nice car. “£3.40 a pint? That’s ridiculous!” I suspect he probably does some sort of engineering job. You know, he might well have earned his current position where he sits in his office looking over technical specifications and project timescales because he has worked up from the bottom and gaining his experience the hard way. He could probably still swing a hammer if he had to. Probably well paid but still has his feet firmly in that opinion that beer should not lose sight of its roots. It is the drink of the working classes, drunk in pints and should be priced by the pint.

In the same pub the big brand lager and a well known, and if I were honest, not too bad a representation of a stout, were about the same price as his 6% beer. Bearing in mind the mainstream beers were around 4% ABV I was failing to understand why the gentleman was complaining about the price of the 6% plus craft brewed beer he had ordered.

Very roughly, the cost of making a beer is proportional to the ABV. A stronger beer needs more malt, more hops and the beer duty, for the time being, is very proportional. Actually, from a brewing perspective, I think there is need for even more hops in a balanced strong beer; not only is a stronger hop character needed but the utilization of hops decreases with greater gravities in the copper. Mash efficiencies for that matter drop off as the OG increases.

It is true that there are some base costs that stay the same; Energy perhaps and other key overheads. However, typically a stronger beer needs more time in maturation, wherever that might be. Stronger beer ties up crucial brewery equipment for longer reducing the throughput of the brewery. There is good demand for some of my stronger beers but the time in tank holds up my bread and butter brewing schedule. Strong beer has to pay its share of the overheads to be commercially viable. Time IS money and all that.

“But the pub probably pays less than half the pump price for the beer” I had been trying to communicate to the irate drinker, who in return was trying to defend his right for cheap beer, irrespective of strength. “They can afford to sell me it a bit cheaper than that”.

Well, no. I don’t think that pubs can. Many do because licensees find that they get objections from the likes of our friend here. Pubs that heed the desires of the bargain booze drinkers often get into trouble because they find their overall profitability is cut. The reason is very simple.

Strong beer gets people drunk quicker. No shit Sherlock. Either that or they drink less. I’d like to think that most responsible craft beer drinkers will pace themselves. Perhaps even choose a half. Indeed, I think that beers over 6% are much better presented in an oversized curve bottomed tulip anyway. The standard nonic or straight tapered glass fails to show these beers at their best.

So, let’s assume the licensee is being good to us. Lets suppose he simply puts a straight cash markup on the pint at, say, £1 a pint. Having been a licensee I can categorically state that this is a very charitable mark-up for the pub to be charging on a typical 4% beer. Less and the pub will go out of business. I could expand on this point, but please, for the purpose of this piece, trust me on this one. Remember, this represents the low end budget style pub, the type most reasonable people wouldn’t enjoy anyway. This is the type of pub where they avoid high overheads by cutting back on cleaning staff, avoiding decorating and doing minimum maintenance.

At this cash markup, our 4% beer might be costing the pub £0.90¹ per pint to buy in, excluding VAT. That’s £1.90 per pint to the punter, excluding VAT. That is £2.30 a pint including VAT and once we round the price to get rid of ghastly copper coins out of the change. Cheap? yeah, but I did say this is in a slum of a pub.

Our 6% beer probably costs the pub £1.22 a pint. £2.22 before we put on the VAT making the retail price £2.65. Remember, this is where the pub is only making the same gross profit amount per pint as they are from a weaker beer. And remember we are still in our bargain basement slum pub.

Lets rework that for a more realistic pub, one that spends a bit more on keeping the décor nice. One where they pay a little more in staff wages to make sure the toilets are clean. The ones where they will call out a plumber if need be to make sure all the toilets flush. The ones that have paid to replace those really crap seats with something a bit more comfortable. Where you might pay £2.60 a pint for session beer.

On a cash markup the 6% beer would retail at £3.05 and an 8% beer, for example, would retail at £3.40. What astounds me is that there are pubs that actually make less mark-up on strong beers and recently I noted my Queboid, 8%, was priced at only £3.00 a pint when 4% beers were around £2.60 a pint.

I would like to think that most readers would think these prices are at best very reasonable. I would also like to think that some enlightened readers will realize the flaw in this pricing structure. Remember, each pint of the beers is contributing exactly the same to the financial viability of the property.

Every bum on every seat of a pub is valuable. Every customer is an asset to a business. Well, until they get so drunk that they piss everyone off. Equally, the establishments that are the more financially healthy are the ones that are busy and maximize the revenue from every bum that sits on the seats and every pair of feet that crosses the threshold.

I was recently told a story by a very experienced world beer bar manager. A customer, it seemed, had been drinking a fairly strong fruit beer all afternoon. This particular customer was negotiating an open stairway, probably with some difficulty, when the aforementioned fruit beer felt it time to make a bid for freedom. Bright red beer made the return journey up oesophagus and then proceeded to cascade through the open stairway onto a nice couple who had only just entered the building for a quiet evening’s drink.

The bar manager felt the only reasonable course of action was to organise a taxi for the unfortunate innocent bystanders, give them a free bottle of something very expensive and apologise with as much humbleness and grovelling as could be mustered by a busy barkeeper. I failed to find out what happened to the drunk, but one can only hope it hurt.

Although the above example is an extreme case of what can go wrong when people drink too much, it has to be said that drunk people are a problem to the very businesses that create them. We all think we are charming when we are actually drunk. The better of us realise the next day that we weren’t, but at the time we fail to acknowledge that to the bar staff, and often other customers, we can be a liability.

In conclusion, drinkers who drink stronger beer probably drink less and so on my cash mark-up model explained above spend less money or alternatively they spend the same amount of money but are more trouble.

But of course, you’re charming when you are out drinking, aren’t you?

For the reason I have given here, I would not expect a 6% beer to retail in any reasonable pub for less than £3.60 a pint. I would not expect an 8% beer to retail for less than £4.20 a pint.

I like strong beer. I like it too much. I like it so much that it gets me into trouble. The last time it got me into trouble I blamed Kwak, and some other Belgian thing that might have been Kasteel Rouge Kriek, I think. Well, it was a Kriek anyway. Apparently, I failed to drink Jaipur and White Shield in the following pub due to my by then intoxicated nature.

I like strong beer but fail to find it often enough. Licensees don’t really like to stock it. Why should they? It doesn’t gain them the same GP per footfall. But I’d be prepared to pay a little more than the standard considered price to ensure I could get it.

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As a side note; strong cask beer also sells slower. Although it also keeps a little better and I've know good cellar men to keep 8% beer in good condition for up to 3 weeks, it is not unusual for greater quantities of stronger beers to be thrown away, further reducing profitability of strong beers.

¹All the supply prices used for this illustration are based on Hardknott list prices. Obviously different breweries have different prices and nearly all breweries offer various discounts depending on distance, order volume, overall volume and other delivery variables.

Proud of Beer

2011-03-01T16:55:00.004Z

We recently joined SIBA.

I'm sure I could find a reason to make some publicity out of how I felt I had to and it's just a business choice. Some folks might. Actually, it was a combined effort of a lot of people who convinced me it was the right thing to do. I'm glad we did join.

And today, well, good job well done. We're proud of beer at Hardknott. We're proud to now be part of an organisation that is doing something.

And I'm proud of that top bloke Pete Brown and all the cast of the film.

Proud of British Beer from Society of Independent Brewers on Vimeo.

OK, yeah, perhaps you could critique it's style. But really, is there anything out there that does anything like as good a job? Could you make a film that goes anywhere near it? If so, why haven't you done it?

What is craft beer?

2011-02-13T18:30:00.002Z

I don't know. I know even less now I've read some of the posts surrounding this issue. I think it is very difficult to define what it is exactly.

A week gone Friday there was The Session hosted by Reluctant Scooper which asks about the various methods of beer dispense. I'm sorry that I've not had time to even read most of what has been written on the subject, let alone write something about it.

There has been further critiques of CAMRA recently. SWBrewery published a letter that stirred the blogosphere a little. Pete Brown also pointed out that one of the founder members of CAMRA regrets recruiting certain people to the organisation. Nicely balanced by Cooking Lager who points out in the comments that CAMRA are entitled to campaign for whatever they like¹.

I am very happy to put a little bit of money into an organisation that champions cask beer. What I am not happy to do is carry on thinking that cask beer is simply the best way to serve every beer in every situation. It may well be the best for many beers. It may well be best for many pubs. It is certainly the case that there are a significant minority of the population who drink it routinely. I'm very happy for CAMRA to continue to defend this. Although we should remember that it is a form of snobbery all of its own.

I'm getting somewhat frustrated by the conviction that beer cannot and should not be snobby or elitist. That very facet of the beer world is starting to make me feel that there really is a political agenda still simmering away under the surface.

Being snobby and elitist does not mean you wish to eradicate what you feel is beneath you. Indeed, in my case I'd argue it simply means I appreciate a broad spectrum of many good things. I'm snobby about food for instance. I have enjoyed, as special treats, many good restaurant meals. I have also plumped on occasions for the consistency, convenience and all-round calorific good value of McDonalds⁴.

Why is there a fear of a beer world which is striving for something more exciting than the array of indistinguishable session ales that now adorn many pub bars? Many of them which might as well, if we were honest, have been brewed on some big industrial plant anyway.

I like many types of beer. I like cask beer a lot. I drink and brew a lot of cask beer. The remainder of the beer I brew, for the time being, gets bottle conditioned. I have only ever had a small amount of my beer chill filtered and re-carbonated. I'm not convinced the results were as good as my own bottle conditioned beer. But watch this space, "never say never" is what I'd say, chill filtering can be done right.

I do drink a little bit of beer that is not "CAMRA calls this beer Real Ale". Because I try to choose wisely I enjoy pretty much all of it. I've even tried cask up against keg and for some beers there is no doubt that keg beats cask. The other day, when the local pub had been let down by their normal supplier² of cask beer I was forced to drink Guinness and enjoyed it quite a lot.

We all know cask beer. We understand it can be great. We also understand that it needs care and attention and not all circumstances are best for it. We also know that there are some pretty dull cask beers out there. Some are so dull that to be honest I'd rather have a Guinness, or perhaps a Carling.

So, this thing about Craft Beer? Well, whatever you want to say, there is a void, a vacuum, an esoteria that is trying to find some substance. To me it is irrelevant if it is burgeoning or not. This proudly snobbish, geeky and elitist void is currently fighting to form solid mass. This visionary cloud exists both here in the virtual world and in an increasing number of beer bars and progressive breweries.

Is Craft Beer the right term to help us fill the void? I think it could be. Although there are some very, very good arguments why we should approach the concept with some trepidation. Specifically, it would seem that in USA, craft beer is defined as made in a brewery that produces less than 6 million barrels of beer a year. Very few UK breweries produce more than this I'd hazard. Molson Coors? AB-InBev? Diagio? anymore? Besides, for what it's worth, I believe Molson Coors do brew some craft beer in the shape of White Shield and P2 as well as others.

I could go on and disassemble concepts such as "Traditional methods"³ "adjuncts to add rather than detract from flavour"⁵ etc.

The point is that there is an increasing cry for something, especially as we've just had the first SIBA Craft Keg festival. This cry sometimes blames CAMRA for standing in the way. I think there is some validity to that as I hear all to often that keg can't be as good or that we're being too elitist. So, let CAMRA get on with its good work at defending cask, why not? It's a good cause. Perhaps, in return, CAMRA activists could stop criticising, people using American hops or elitism that is trying to bring a refreshing new look to the beer world or even people asking a price that might make their brewery or pub a sustainable venture.

For me there has probably never been a better time to be involved in the British beer scene. We have a great array of fantastic beers out there. Some micro-brewed cask, some imported bottles, some craft keg, even stuff in cans that to be honest I'm dubious about, but we'll wait and see. Then there is the macro-brewed keg. We have to realise that this is what keeps many pubs trading. Yes, we'd all like every pub to have cask beer on the bar, that in itself is an elitist utopia. But it's not going to happen anymore than craft keg will usurp cask anytime soon.

Diversity is good and I'm happy to try and embrace it all.

Here in Cumbria a few merry folk are banding together to try and help fill the void in our part of the world. We've got no specialist beer bars in Cumbria you see. Craft Beer may not mean much to some folk, but to others it is a void that simply has to be filled.

Watch this space, there is more to come one this.

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¹"we" I should say. I'm a CAMRA member. Contrary to rumours, I have absolutely no intention of giving up my membership either.

²Their normal supplier is, of course, us. They can only take pins at the moment and we'd run out. Besides, they have a good flow of Guinness, best pint of the stuff I'd had for sometime as it happens.

³Where does a mash tun become a mash filter? Is it still craft if hop pellets are used? How far is it acceptable to process the hops?

⁴Yes, it's true. I've even been known to put ketchup on the chips although I'm more likely to if forced to the even lower depravity of Burger King, whose food is truly dreadful.

⁵I know of one very small microbrewery that uses sugar to increase fermentables. The only good reason I can see is that it is cheaper than malt. I'd probably be tempted to include them in the Craft Beer subset, although their beer isn't brilliant.

The Art of Last Orders

2011-02-05T22:00:00.002Z

It's 2am. I have to be up at 6:30 so that I can be awake enough by 7:30, and have the grill, hot cupboard and oven hot enough to cook breakfast for these bastards. They drove up from London, got stuck in awful traffic on the M6, have had a busy week at their desk jobs and want to unwind. They did phone ahead to warn us they would be late and to ensure they could get a few drinks in; it's a stag weekend after all and many beers is one of the things they want to do.

The crack is good. These guys are respectable beer appreciators and are even drinking the 5%+ beers that our local reserved clientèle steer clear of; they have time to make up. I'm enjoying it too and ignore the voice that declares that I will regret this in the morning and will be far too grumpy with my kitchen staff for anyone's good. "Any chance of another?" they are residents and I could serve them all night, quite legally, although I could rightly refuse too. What harm would it do? We're all having fun, I can sleep in on Monday when they have all gone home.

I now no longer have the responsibility for closing a bar. As an ex-licensee I often feel guilty about any criticism levelled at a bar or pub when it decides to stop serving. It can be frustrating for punters when they fancy a drink to be refused service even when it is known what time the bar closes.

The other evening I was in a bar, a bar I am very fond of, drinking some very nice beer. It was getting late and I knew this. My assembled friends pointed out that if I didn't hurry up the bar would shut. It was about 5 minutes to eleven, my glass was empty and I did fancy just one more before I left. The bar staff had been cleaning and intermittently serving for around the last half an hour. I stood patiently at the bar hoping the bar staff would notice me.

Information, I am told, is what helps difficult situations. I was told this by a counsellor who happened to be staying at our pub on one occasion. He was a sort of headologist listening type person, rather than an ineffectual local politician type person. I had been talking to said psychologist practitioner about the stress of delivering hospitality and in particular the utter dread I had started to feel before service when we expected a busy night. Everyone wants food quickly and they always all turn up at once. An hour waiting for food becomes unacceptable in these days of fast food. "Explain up front that it's busy and most people will be happy to wait"

I'm not sure we ever got our food service the way I thought it should be, and on the evening I had been given the gem of advice to chill out and just tell people they might have to wait I had been happily chatting with my customer come shrink. I suddenly realised it was close to service time and must have visibly panicked.

Dealing with last orders when the bar needs to shut can be equally as traumatic. It's not a skill that comes easily, especially to one who likes to drink a few and also dislikes being told to stop. Often I'd casually mention that I'd like to go to bed and the current purchase would be the last. A common trick by my locals turned friends was for one to point out that the speed so-and-so was drinking he would easily finish a half. "while your at it, might as well make it a pint" and so it would go on.

You have to be brutal if you want to go to bed before you have to get up. When it's the last one it has to be the last one. It is important to make sure they know, before the bar closes, that it is now time to put in the last order. Everyone in the bar has to know this. They really, really do have to know this. Upset drunks is the alternative. Drunk people tend not to be reasonable. Not even a little bit.

So, the other night, when the staff seemed unable to make eye contact with my patient puppy dog look I finally, after several minutes, asked "have you stopped serving?", "Sorry, yes" came the reply. It was a reasonably polite and firm reply. My ex-licensee voice told me that it was OK and I shouldn't get upset. It didn't work. I hadn't been told that I needed to buy my last drink. No bell, no "Last orders at the bar please", not even a quiet word to the few people left. I have to admit to being quite annoyed. I was annoyed because I wasn't warned that the bar would close.

The good news is that the next day, when talked to the manager, he confirmed that a quiet word should have been said to each table before the bar closed. I'd have been happy with that, even if closing before advertised time; providing I managed to make my last purchase, no problem. I am assured that it will not happen again. All's well that ends well.

I'm told that in beer specialist beer bars there does tend to be an expectation that the punters will know what time the bar closes. I think this is a poor show.

People need information, we all do, let us not unlearn how to deal with last orders.

Cumbrian Beer Geeks

2011-01-18T20:30:00.000Z

Cumbria has lots of breweries. We've lost count now but we believe it might be up at around 30. It is rumoured that Yorkshire has more, but then there are more people in Yorkshire. Sheffield is in Yorkshire and the city is an excellent beer town. The Sheffield Tap is an excellent beer geek bar that always has some excellent beers.

Cumbria has quite a few very good food places. Some even have rosettes or stars for their food. L'Enclume is one; I've eaten there and it's very poncy and very expensive. I liked it, but there was no beer at all. There is also The Drunken Duck which houses Barngates Brewery. The food and the beer are good, although I've never really known them to do any proper beer and food matching. Generally, the best places for food don't give beer much of a consideration and the best places for beer can be a let down on the food side of things.

Recently there was a very enjoyable CAMRA organised beer dinner in Kendal. A very successful and well attended event. Pete Brown was guest speaker and it brought together 200 or so of the most enthusiastic beer people in the county. The main criterior for the selection of beer was it's LocAle credentials. A brave effort was made to match largely session beers with food, an activity that can only have limited success; I believe that for a good beer and food matching event there is a need for stronger flavours in the beer, this can never be achieved with even the best session beers¹.

There are places in that big place right down south, I believe it is known as London, that really do quite a good job of both. My favourite is The White Horse at Parsons Green. There might be better places, but for now it remains the best place I've found that serves really good food and a wide selection of esoteric beers. Some people think it's overpriced and full of la-di-da-toffs, but it's only the crazy imported stuff that is pricey and you can treat the toffs with the contempt they deserve, unless you've already used up all your contempt on the beer tickers.

When it comes to beer geekery there really is very little in Cumbria to satisfy the more adventurous beer explorer. It is getting better, The Swan for instance in Ulverston is quite good, they even sometimes have Hardknott, BrewDog, Stringers and others, when the PubCo is feeling relaxed about stuff. It was the only place in Cumbria that dared have a go with our Queboid on cask. In the very same town there is The Mill, its cask beer is a little tame, if well kept, but they do have the best bottled beer selection I've yet to find in our sparsely populated expansive county.

A few months ago Ann called on a nice pub out near the tourist honey-pot area of Windermere. She reported back that I'd probably like it - and that she had sold them some of our beer. I was lucky enough to be allowed to go there on one of her delivery trips and I was not to be disappointed. Both the food and beer selection is interesting, varied and of a good standard.

Having been to various beer dinners, some better than others, the idea of getting involved with one was becoming something of an ambition. Also, I have been keen to try and promote some of my stronger beers as good food matches. After all, stuff like Infra Red and Queboid are unlikely to do well as a regular session beers, but I do believe that a market can be generated for them as accompaniments for food. Equally, I'm generally keen to see beer promoted more in various foodie establishments, for far too long wine has been seen as the drink to have with food.

The pub mentioned above, the one that now sells our beer, also sells BrewDog beers and some foreign beers from James Clay, is the Masons Arms at Strawberry Bank. I am assured that this pub has been a strong beer pub for many years. Its food is top notch pub food too having recently won Lake District Dining Pub of the Year for 2010/11 awarded by Lancashire Life. The management team: Alex, Adam and Helen have been thinking about beer events and we seem to have found kindred spirits here.

Last night a few of us Cumbrian Beer Geeks met up there with a view to organising a beer and food matching evening. It seems it might well be the inaugural event for a likely Cumbrian Beer Geek Club. It's all very new and we're hopeful that it will bring some variety to the beer world in Cumbria. You see, we don't have anything quite as good as The Sheffield Tap or The White Horse or even The Rake.

Our first event is to be a Contemporary British Beer and Classic British Food dinner. 7 beers have been picked and we are going to match with 7 taster courses of classic British dishes, possibly with our own twist where we feel it is useful for the food.

At the very least the infamous Jeff Pickthall will be there as will Neil Bowness and of course, yours truly. We will be enthusing about the beers and explaining why we have matched them with the particular foods. I am hoping there will also be a new beer launched at the evening and perhaps other little surprises.

This will all happen on Thursday 10th March. The Masons Arms has rooms, so if you live in the North and can't get yourself as far as the deep south where all these things normally happen, get yourself booked in.

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¹I'd go further and point out that a beer which matches well with food is probably going to be far too much for most drinking sessions. I have got nothing against session beer and most of the beer I drink is of that ilk.

Beer is giving way to wine....

2011-01-10T21:10:00.012Z

....whisky, vodka and rum.

Perhaps even to martini, shaken, not stirred.

Or champagne, or at least an affordable bubbly grape derived intoxicant; anyone can afford to hire a stretch limo these days if they want to, and anyone who does wants the drink to match that image.

Of course we don't want to believe it. Beer is for the masses. It should be accessible to all. We don't want to believe that the standard of living for the masses is greatly improved on what it was 100 years ago. We don't want to believe that even people who can't afford it still blow their credit card limit on silly status symbol purchases, but the number of numpties who do are becoming an increasing proportion of the population.

Now, of course, beer is for drinking at the pub with mates. There is absolutely no doubt that this is the very best way to drink beer. I drink beer in this mode several times a week. In fact, I probably drink far more beer in this format than is good for me. Sometimes I drink beer that is so dire it just doesn't deserve to be drunk, but when the crack is good, one has to suffer for the sake of one's mates. To be fair, my mates generally suggest moving to another pub in that situation, but then they are beer snobs, both of them.

It is an unfortunate fact that less people are drinking in the traditional pub. I'm no happier about that than the reader might be. More drinking is done at home or in restaurants or wine bars than in years gone by. Although it is a worthy and admirable cause to champion the pub and traditional beer drinking, it remains a fact that it is slowly decreasing. We can ponder why that might be, we can rally to the cause and try to stand in the way of change of use of our favourite pub, but ultimately there is little we can do about the fact.

I remain convinced that one of the contributory factors causing this trend is the ever increasing aspirations of an ever increasing proportion of the population. Most people want a nice car¹, a big TV, a nice leather sofa, fitted kitchens and Jacuzzi baths. I've even heard tell that some common people even have bidets, whatever they are; gone are the days of the earth closet at the bottom of the yard.

I'm often told by beery people that we shouldn't try to compete with wine - there lies a path of disaster. Well, wine is competing with beer and I suggest we should lay down our denied inverted snobbery and fight back with our heads held high.

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¹To the extent that BMW drivers are more likely to drink Carling² than decent beer these days.

²Yes, I expect to be threatened with being put over a certain Molson Coors Communications Partner's knee, that's why I mentioned the drink, but the threats, sadly, have yet to be realised.

Note: Data for the chart was extracted from the BBPA handbook 2008. Currently there is an error on the chart vertical scale. Should be 1000s hl%. I'll correct later.....

Project Queboid

2011-01-03T14:30:00.002Z

Some time ago a great brewer inspired me, it's not unusual for a brewer to inspire me, in fact, it's one of the nice things about brewers; we like to egg each other on. A great brewer can only be a great brewer by caring about beer, not just his/her own but about the wider beer world. John Keeling of Fullers is a likeable and well respected brewer. Within the boundaries his bean-counters and marketing suits allow, he engages with the beer world in its entirety and enthusiastically shares knowledge.

Fullers are one of very few breweries that use parti-gyle techniques. It's not difficult for me to see the advantages for a brewer like me who wants to make a range of beers from highly quaffable and approachable session beers through to high ABV flavour-bombs. For a number of reasons low ABV beers have various production efficiency benefits per unit of alcohol compared to higher ABV beers. Parti-gyling enables some of these efficiency benefits to be applied to higher ABV beers too. I immediately understood these benefits from John's enthusiastic explanations.

Although my brewery isn't big, it does have two mash tuns¹ and two coppers. I can transfer the first runnings, which may well be in excess of 1100 degrees gravity, into a high gravity copper, and the second runnings into a low gravity copper at perhaps 1050 degrees gravity.

I did this recently, and made two beers; Queboid, a double IPA at OG1080 and Katalyst at OG1038. They are both concepts in development, although I'm happy that they have great potential. Personally I prefer Continuum over Katalyst but I've had feedback from a number of people whose preferences are the other way around. Perhaps Katalyst is more approachable.

Queboid, which was the prime motivation for this particular project, had slightly disappointing hop profile when tasted on racking after primary fermentation. The simple answer to this was to increase the dry hopping rate in cask.

The first cask, served at Dudley beer festival, was good, but could have been better. It had only had about a week in cask and was nowhere near long enough to maximise condition or for the dry hopping to really kick in.

The second cask was put on in The Rake. I think there were mixed reviews on this, but again, it was a few weeks ago now and I think a little longer in cask still would have been great.

The third and final cask, for now, is currently on sale in a quiet Cumbrian pub near here. Sadly, I think its sale will be slow, although the licensee is a master of his cellar craft and considering it's 8% and dry hopped into submission, I suspect with judicious hard pegging the cask might be good for a couple of weeks or more. The beer is a true candidate for that niche real keg market.

I have fretted a little about this little baby. I didn't think the hop utilisation in the copper was sufficient. I was worrying that the finished beer might not quite hit the mark. I was keen to taste the finished result in a pub, through a hand pull, appropriately clear and conditioned.

Meanwhile, we have bottled the remainder of the batch, which had been conditioning in kilderkins on the dry hops, and gave us 330 bottles of this first run. I'm currently waiting for the tadge of priming sugar and re-seeded yeast to add some carbonation before they are released. Oh, and I need to get some labels printed.

But the good news is that the assembled crowd last night, which included the irritatingly hyper-critical Jeff Pickthall², pronounced it to be a marvellous beer. 6 weeks on dry hops seems to be just about right.

There may well be some improvements to be made; moving a little of the dry hops into bittering for instance will make it a little more balanced in my view. However, the key thing is, you can't rush a really good strong beer.

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¹It isn't necessary for parti-gyling to have two mash tuns. Indeed, I don't believe Fullers mash differently in their two mash tuns; both run in parallel with the same grist in each.

²I owe a huge amount to this irritation for my ever increasingly tuned palate. I fear one day I might become as irritatingly critical as him, for now I shall remain a novice irritant.

Growing a Brewery to be viable

2011-01-02T18:30:00.002Z

The beer market is incredibly sensitive to price. It might well be possible to sell a very limited amount of beer at an increased price, but basically, the vast majority of beer can only command a price that falls within fairly tight limits. The off-sales market seems to show significantly greater variation as a rule, than the on-sales market, but even so, these limits are in my view quite tight. For the purpose of this discussion I'm not intending to criticise that position. It is a fact, and one that has an influence over the economics of businesses that make beer; the breweries.

I guess beer is a bit like bread, they are both made from grain and yeast is an inherently important part of the processes. But they also share other traits on an economic level; bread is a staple food and as such its price has upper limits beyond which demand drops to zero. Of course the same could be said of potatoes, carrots, onions, rice, milk.....

Beer has one great benefit, much the same as bread; it can be made at industrial scales. Massive plants, with massive tanks, in huge buildings can ensure highly efficient processes. This has always put micro-brewers at a disadvantage. We have small brewers beer duty to help us out in that respect. The key reason for the proliferation of micro-brewers is as a result of the small brewery beer duty. Without it a brewery of the size of Hardknott would just not be economically viable.

Actually, as we currently stand, our brewery isn't really viable anyway. To make enough beer to earn an honest living we need to make more beer. We don't actually need to do very much to what we already have, but we still need to make and sell more beer if we are to make any profit. It's all to do with overheads.

Progressive beer duty starts to reduce rapidly when a brewery starts to sell more than 5000hl of beer. That's about 3000 barrels a year or about 230 firkins a week. Putting it into context that's an exclusive VAT turnover for the brewery of around £700k per year. About 24% of the turnover goes out in beer duty - £170k, and an equal or greater amount goes on raw materials. There are then some variable overheads in the form of energy, costs of ownership of the building and plant¹, rates, transport and for a brewery of the size indicated there would have to be employees and so a wage bill. To achieve and maintain the level of beer sales there would be essential cost of marketing the products. It is highly likely that net profit would be less than 10% of turnover. Perhaps a £50k per annum profit is reasonably achievable, and is an above average salary, although conversely it is unlikely that a business of this size is owned by a sole individual. By today's standards this is in no way a large business. Indeed, many successful town centre pubs turn over much more and probably make much more profit than a brewery under 5000hl production.

This probably represents a sweet-spot of operating size. Above this there is a steep drop off as Progressive Beer Duty is increased steeply. Below this size overall margins can shrink due to dropping efficiencies of scale and simply because percentage net profit for any brewery is unlikely to increase above the 10% mentioned above. Reduced turnover represents reduced profit.

With the stainless steel I have in my brew house I probably have a maximum achievable turnover of around £100k. At an overall net profit of 10%, the maximum we can reasonably expect to achieve, we might earn £10k a year between us. I don't know about the reader, but I think this is insufficient for a reasonable standard of living in the 21st century. This is dependant on us successfully and efficiently brewing to capacity and selling every last drop. Bearing in mind the fact that any business person is risking financial ruin should it all go very wrong, the fact that actual disposable income available is achieved due to a determined and consistent dedication to the operation rather than just turning up 9 to 5 and doing a bit.

I don't want to appear to be complaining too much; running a business has many rewards beyond financial recompense. Some of us do it because we have tried the working-for-someone-else game and don't get on with the concept. Additionally, brewing beer is extremely rewarding. Positive comments from people who drink my beer almost, and note I say "almost", compensates for the poor rewards that today's modern competitive market creates.

It does baffle me, as a result of the key financial issues above, why there is an inherent misunderstanding of the need for breweries to grow. When I have discussed the BrewDog growth or our own plans for growth there seems to be objection to the plans.

I'm aiming for the 5000hl sweet-spot. Going above that would require world-domination plans of BrewDog proportions. However, at that level there are key problems that could reduce the overall profitability. I want to use more hops. If I increase my hopping rate by 1kg per hl, ~~which is not overall a great increase~~ which may seem a lot to the reader, but is what I need to do to compete with the best breweries, at current prices it would represent an increased cost of £40k per annum at this proposed level of trading. That would eat away at my profitability. The only way to negate this would be to increase production and sales, by quite some quantity, overcome the initial disadvantage of the hump caused by the onset of variable beer duty.

My chart here has a logarithmic scale for production. It makes it easier to show the full range of sizes of brewery from nano to regional breweries. It does however mean that the effect of the variable duty rate across the range 500hl - about 2000hl looks less steep than if shown on a linear scale. Either way it can be seen that any increase of capacity above 500hl is going to be incredibly significant for any expanding brewery.

BrewDog are now in this range. In a recent document, sent to me by James Watt, they state that their prices are going to have to increase to account for this increase of beer duty.

"In 2010 our production increased from 8700 HL to 14500 HL meaning the beer duty we have to pay increased by, for example, £5.50 on a 50L keg of Punk IPA."²

As the company gets bigger the increases of beer duty will become less significant therefore I would expect further economies of scale to cut in and help to counter the effects of the duty. From a business point of view, having broken the 5000hl barrier it makes sense to carry on growing.

When talking about specfic problems with the operation over the last year; things that I've also heard customers complain about, BrewDog state:

"The positive thing is that all of these is caused by the demand for our beers."

Again, more reason to carry on growing their enterprise.

So, I hope the reader might now see why the most successful breweries have to grow.

In fact, if Adnam's have their way, those that don't grow will fall foul of proposed changes to progressive beer duty anyway. However, that particular issue is another blog subject.

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¹I don't owe any money on the stainless steel I currently own, however, it represents capital tied up. If I had not bought the plant and put money in an ISA instead then I'd earn some interest. We rent the building and so there is a cost there. We are likely to have to borrow money if we are to grow, this will have a cost implication.

²If my readership is as clever as I expect you all are you will realise that BrewDog turnover for that level of brewing doesn't match my earlier figures. At 14500hl, from my model, they should be turning over less than £2m rather than the £3.7m. I expect the main reason for this is that a large volume of their beer is stronger and bottled, both putting an acceptable increased price on the product.

Additionally the company also now has retail outlets, further increasing gross margins.

A Christmas Message

2010-12-24T14:06:00.001Z

It's about Christ isn't it? Christmas that is. This is an uncomfortable aspect of the feast for the atheists. On the other hand, we are only just past the shortest day; We can look forward to summer being on its way. A festival at this time of year has been part of human society for much longer than even the age of Stonehenge.

I started watching Jesus Christ Superstar last night. It was being aired on ITV and is one of those performing arts pieces that define my youth. Being brought up as Catholic, it is actually interesting to me that my mother encouraged its presence in our house when one considers the controversy surrounding this rock opera. This is not so surprising when I think back to her support over such subjects as my own sexual development, and her open and outright opposition to the Catholic churches doctrines over contraception and sexual health. I suspect that without her deliberate and considered scepticism I'd have ended up a much more troubled person than I have actually turned out to be.

The film was being screened late in the evening, I'd been to the pub and on returning home opened a bottle of one of my all time favourite beers; Theakston's Old Peculier. The bottle doesn't say if it is bottle conditioned or not. There didn't seem to be any sediment and to be honest it's not as good as the cask version. I suspect it is chill filtered and re-carbonated and I'm disappointed that this traditional classic is not better in the bottle. However, I will still buy more of it in the future if for no other reason than it was the very first beer I really enjoyed nearly 30 years ago. I'd drunk many others, all poor keg version of what were probably once great beers. Theakston managed to hit the spot and that cask beer is what started me on my road of evangelistic beer geekdom.

It could have been the beer, or the late hour, but I failed to finish watching the film; it didn't matter, I've been involved in staged versions of the musical and know it quite well.

The story portrayed in the Rice-Webber composition are the simple facts as best we can distil from the propaganda of the late Christian Roman Empire. There are no claims of Christ's miracle powers or any confirmation that he might have been God-made-man. It could simply be seen as a story about a freedom fighter standing up against an occupying Roman administration. The fact that he uses, so the story goes, religious rhetoric to get his point across is no unusual occurrence in the ancient world.

Of course the Roman Empire almost certainly helped to spread good technology, fiscal systems, law and order and cultural refinement alike. Their apparent barbaric feudal-like society might well be abhorrent to us and the early Christians alike, but it almost certainly helped develop our modern society and culture. The alphabet contained in my writing is largely the same as the Romans used in their written Latin language. Perhaps Christ was a necessary development, a challenge to what was wrong with the then current human order. Whether the Christian religion can still play a useful part in helping our society is a debatable point, although Psalm 23 helped me at my mothers funeral; something life-long atheists may struggle to understand.

I like the fact that JC Superstar is a simple, almost believable story of what might actually have happened to Jesus. No religious interpretation, just a narrative of the struggle of a local man against the burgeoning administration of the Romans. The cinematography and soundtrack editing could have been smoother and that irritates me, but it's nearly 40 years old and bound to look like a 1970's film.

The challenge to the beer world back in the early 1970's was certainly needed. The founders of CAMRA certainly started something powerful. The organisation was originally called the Campaign for Revitalisation of Ale and has now grown to an organisation boasting over 115,000 members. There is no doubt it has helped to shape the beer world we now see in the UK.

Certainly there is a desire to buck against mass homogenisation of the beer world. That desire is still here nearly 40 years since CAMRA was founded.

Two thousand years after the birth of Jesus our modern world still hangs onto the story of Christ. We also hang onto the story of Mr Claus. We're afraid that the magic of the season will somehow vanish if we turn our backs on the stories. Many young people are told that if they don't believe in Santa he won't come. We know they are not true. We know really that it was the end of the Roman Empire that shaped what we now have as the Christian religion. Modern scientific research has constantly found major faults with The New Testament, but still, we base our holidays on the festivals chronicled in these stories that are almost certainly distortions of what actually happened.

The reader could be excused for thinking from the above that I am an atheist. The truth is that I am not. I dislike anyone telling me that I am not allowed to think about, or for that matter write about what I really think. What I believe is that humanity has an omnipresent power that can manifest itself in either good or evil, and many shades in between. I believe we can make ourselves live in the minds of others for many years after our death. Hitler has and Jesus have. How we are remembered will be shaped by what we do when we are alive. Unfortunately, to be able to call myself a Christian I must believe that Christ was God made man - I am no longer prepared to believe that. What I do believe is that we can learn from ancient fables such as those written by the Greek philosophers and those written by Jesus' Disciples later edited by the Romans. Perhaps the Qu'ran could also help us, were it not for that fact that it seems to have been elevated to the same status as the Christian Gospels. Good stories don't have to be true to help us. Making them doctrines in the modern free-thinking world is what spoils their value.

I love beer. I love cask beer. I love bottle conditioned beer. Cask Old Peculier is my Psalm 23 of the beer world. The bottle version doesn't seem to be "Real Ale" but remains one of my drinks of choice, perhaps in this form it might not be worthy, but I can wander down to the local shop and get a 4 pack for a reasonable price.

I consider myself a Christian, despite the fact that I don't believe that Jesus was God-made-man. I still have an affection for the fables contained in the Bible, despite the fact that the models of Heaven and Hell are, in my mind, just that; models. I do not see why I can't be a Christian without being a believer and retain my right to free thought. Besides, I don't feel comfortable believing in Christmas without it. If nothing else, Christmas is an excuse to drink more beer than one usually does, I'm not sure how I'm going to manage that, but it's worth a try. Is it useful to make young children believe in Father Christmas any more than it is to make them believe in Baby Jesus? Are these things essential to make Christmas work?

It could be said that Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, has grown too powerful, when scientific and technological developments make the dogmas of such ancient organisations outdated and out of touch. In a world where population and disease control need contraception and in my view any organisation that claims to be compassionate is irresponsible to condemn such things.

Chill-filtering of beer helps to make it more approachable, less variable and more economic to produce. The science of bottling shows me that bottle conditioning is fraught with difficulties. Despite that I still believe there is much to learn from the ideal that cask beer or bottle conditioned beer is simply the best. I really do believe that this is the case and the founding principles of CAMRA are based on that.

The science of beer making has been bolstered by the bigger brewers who we often feel the need to fight against. Without big industry research would not be funded, this is true of any industry and is no less true in our beer-world. Just like The Romans brought aqueducts, underfloor heating, our alphabet and crucifixion. Christianity has shaped much of our society, but is perhaps now looking very outdated. Santa is just as believable and we now worship him with as much vigour, even if he is a Coca-cola red.

CAMRA remains the guiding light for many who are passionate about good beer. I am, and expect to remain a member of CAMRA for a good while yet. Recent persuasion by many within SIBA have convinced me that I really ought to join and enjoy some of the benefits of being a member of such an organisation. I suspect that my membership of any organisation will inspire me to consider many aspects of that organisation, I suspect that I am unlikely to change in that respect. I don't doubt many hang onto their unswaying belief in their beer organisation of choice.

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"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY."

— Terry Pratchett (Hogfather)

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Personally my all-time favourite Pratchett quote is:

"..... writing is the most fun anyone can have by themselves"

I intend to have much more fun by myself next year. Meanwhile, here's wishing all the readers of this blog a Very Hoppy Christmas and Prosperous New Beers

Dear Santa - I want a brewery like Steve Wellington

2010-12-18T10:20:00.007Z

Dear Santa,

I have been a really good boy this year, honest. I only got very drunk once, and I blame the Ola Dubh, surely you can forgive me that? I've worked really very hard indeed to build my brewery up and get good beer out to more people. My pressie list isn't really that long at all.

My friend Steve Wellington has been given a really nice shiny new £1 million brewery to take over from his splendidly and romantically old fashioned but ageing White Shield brewery. He's really very excited about it and I'm happy for him, after all he is a shining example of how major brewing corporations can be persuaded to invest in tasty and interesting beer.

I'd like to pretend not to be jealous of Steve, but I can't. Actually, I'm completely green. Is that wrong? Probably, but I still want one too.

I haven't got a big multinational brewery to fund my little project. I'd love to have a 22.5 barrel brew length, but I can't afford it yet. I'd like to have an external calandria a on my copper, a separate hop-back and a mash tun that digs itself.

It is also very pretty. I'll admit that all that gleaming stainless stirs physical reactions that should be reserved for the sight of bare flesh, but I'm a brewer and every brewer understands that reaction.

Please can I have a shiny new brewery too? I promise not to get drunk again next year, well, not too often, really, honest, and if I do, it's the beers fault.

If I can't have one then I suppose I'll just have to go and brew with Steve again in the New Year, he said he'd let me play with his new toy. See, that's what mates are for.

Lots of Christmas Love

HardKnott Dave

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I nearly forgot, thanks to Reluctant Scooper for the idea for this post. He talks about the opening do for the brewery here.

My Christmas Dinner

2010-12-16T23:00:00.000Z

I'm making a New Years resolution. I don't normally go for this sort of stuff, you know, superhuman promising, mainly because when it involves ridiculous nonsense like giving up chocolate, or even worse, beer or coffee or some other stimulation substance, I know I'll crumble around 6pm on the first of January. Even when I decided to give up smoking, which was a sort of resolution that was made around about the turn of some year or other, it didn't actually happen until about March, well not properly anyway.

Next year I am properly going to write about beer and food. I might turn out to be fairly rubbish at it, but if I am, then at least I've tried. I'm not going to start practising behind closed doors, that sort of thing should be reserved for other activities, so I'll just dive in at the deep end; I'll eat some food, pick some beer that I think might work with it and write about what I thought.

To start the whole thing off I've already tried to make my own match. What better meal to start with than Christmas dinner? Interestingly I seem to disagree with my friend Jeff Pickthall, in his appearance in The Hairy Bikers 12 Days of Christmas he suggests a beer with low hop bitterness as turkey is not the most assertive of meats. He is right about the turkey, but there are reasons why I think the meat is not the most important thing when it comes to matching a beer with this meal. Still, its great to see Jeff's words in the book and fantastic that such well known foodie stars are giving a nod to beer. Moreover, just because I disagree with Jeff doesn't mean he's wrong, I'm realising that there are great disagreements often occur over the subject of beer food food matching.

I would go slightly further than Jeff in his comments about turkey. Frankly, it is virtually tasteless. It is notoriously difficult to cook through thoroughly without it becoming completely dried out. Although turkey and stuffing sandwiches for three weeks might well be the best thing about Christmas for some, but for me it is probably the thing that put me off turkey during December many years ago. Seriously, they are just to big for most families. If I convince the reader of anything else then ditching the turkey has to be my main goal.

I cook a mean roast meal. I like to deal with it completely traditionally, no silly Auntie Bessie and no unnecessary "Aah Bisto". There are plenty of fabulous flavours in the food if it is done right. A bit of seasoning and a few herbs are all that are really needed.

I like goose for Christmas dinner and duck would be a second choice. With a larger family two or three birds could be used. I think one Christmas I cooked a goose, a duck and a guinea fowl, or something similar. The variation of meat is great for a festive feast.

The other day I was in a cosy little village shop and I spied a pheasant. It was perfect for three of us for dinner the next day. A bit of Cumberland Sausage meat stuffing and there we have a tasty, but by no means overpowering white meat. A small onion chopped up and mixed with the sausage meat helps add a natural flavour enhancer and the delicate nutmeg and mace in the sausage mix is perfect for poultry and game birds. No seasoning is needed for the bird as this is already in the stuffing.

As pheasant is a small bird I carefully peeled a cavity under the breast skin to enable more force meat into this area. I also stuffed the rear cavity with the same stuffing. I find breadcrumb based stuffing just goes to a horrible mushy mess inside the bird, so if I provide this with the meal I would cook this separately.

I always roast meat with some root vegetables in the same tray. Carrots washed and split lengthways, an onion or two skinned and quartered and a few peeled garlic cloves. Parsnips, swede or turnip might also be used. It is best not to overload the tray as this will prevent essential caramelisation, which is the key to a good roast meal.

I never cook a roast meal covered with foil. That is mainly because I would never roast such a large joint that requires more than about 2 hours of oven time. A short blast of heat to seal and colour the meat, perhaps 10 minutes at 220^oC for a bird this size¹, then down to 180⁰C for a further 40-50 minutes. A meat thermometer is very useful to check the core temperature. But careful not to over-cook; this is the biggest cause of dry and tacky breast meat. It is essential, to ensure that the roast bird remains moist, that it is removed from the oven just as the core temperature is getting to the correct level and left to rest for 10 - 20 minutes. I cover it with a cloth to help keep the heat in. It will finish cooking to perfection in this final stage, but also frees up the roasting tin for the most important part of the cooking process; the gravy.

The only way to finish a roast dinner is by making gravy from the juices and roasted vegetables in the roasting tin. Largely the remaining fluid will be fat but will also carry caramelised and carbonised sediment that adds colour and flavour to the finished gravy. With our pheasant there was just about the right amount of fat, but sometimes it is necessary to decant some of the fat to prevent greasy gravy.

I used a little plain flour to soak up the fat and make a roux base over a gentle heat on the hob. To this paste, water, beer, wine or stock² is added a little at a time and incorporated into the roux. This is continued until a simmering sauce of the required consistency results. Crucially the roasted vegetables³ are left in the roasting tray while the gravy is made. These add flavours to the gravy that are really important to a good home-made version. They can be sieved out, or blitzed in as desired. In this instance I removed them to leave a smooth rich and delicious accompaniment to the meal. Season to taste and keep warm until required.

I served this with simple roast carrots, parsnip and potatoes. I used a separate tin with reclaimed sausage fat from breakfast, delicious. A few sprouts of course are essential, cooked just el dente - boiled vegetables shouldn't be cooked until the rest of the meal is ready and just about to be served.

That's the food. You saw it in the picture above didn't you? Infra Red. Even with Turkey I'm going to argue that this beer works perfectly. Turkey is so bland and uninteresting that the main flavours in my Christmas dinner are the roast vegetables and the roast garlic in the gravy.

In the wine world it is often thought that white wine goes with fish and white meat and red wine with beef and venison. Although this is a good rule of thumb and can be transferred to beer and food matching; a darker beer with darker meats, lighter beer with white meats, you also have to look at the accompaniments and sauces too.

Sometime ago I recognised the bitter sweet flavours in Infra Red to be similar to those that came from roast vegetables and combine that with the rich strong flavours of my gravy I thought this worked very well indeed. I'd probably incorporate some chestnuts in my Christmas day force meat, this would match well with the sweet nutty features in the beer and the tangy bite in the beer helps cut through the richness in a way that a delicate beer could not.

After the main course we tried a palate cleanser of a glass of Cantillon Gueuze. I have Jeff to thank for this too, not only because he supplied the bottle, but also because he first opened my mind to this fantastic use of this beer. We felt it worked perfectly at helping us to start afresh with desert.

Turkey is one of many things that irritate me about christmas, it, and most of the other things, like the fact that it seems to start immediately after bonfire night, are overshadowed by excessive use of dried fruit. I don't mind the odd mince pie, and Christmas cake is OK in small doses, but by the time I get to the day itself I'm quite fed up of the damn stuff. I like suet pudding however, so for my little experiment I decided to do a pear pudding with mocha creme anglaise.

I hoped that the chocolate and coffee might work with Æther Blæc or Paradox. I'd used a bit of vanilla in the sauce and I have detected this flavour in my cask aged beer. Sadly the creaminess of the sauce and the dumpling like comfort of the pudding fought against the smoky burnt harsh edge of the whisky. I'd suggest it would be perfect with a traditional plum pudding and whisky sauce.

I had racked off a little Queboid which is waiting to be bottled. To our great surprise this worked very well. The strong fruity hop flavours and the Belgian character worked well with the sweet custard and the pears with the malt sweetness matching with the suet steamed sponge.

All in all a success as far as matching beer with food is concerned. One of a number of such experiences I've had, mostly I'll admit organised by other people so far. I am convinced that there is much more could be done to show that beer can work very well in the traditionally wine dominated areas of quality food. I intend to explore this much more.

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¹About 700g plus 500g of force meat.

²Making stock is a whole separate subject. If you want to know how this is done then you'll have to ask me nicely by adding a friendly comment. In this case I just used the water from the potatoes and a splash of Dark Energy. It was quite good enough, although stock helps to make an even better gravy.

³I do hope you have worked out by now that I had already removed our bird.