Proving an arrogance

I do like to get on with people. This blog perhaps portrays a brewery persona that exudes trouble making. However, my friends and family will attest that I only embark on a path of dissent when I believe it is really required. I don't like getting upset with people generally.

We have had various issues with SIBA over the years. We have approached the hierarchy on many occasions with various complaints. On almost no occasion has their been an attempt to reconciliate difficult positions. More often than not an arrogant "it's not our fault" and "we fail to see what you expect us to do about it" response.

When our beer was banned from the festival on Friday we did not contact SIBA direct because we knew there would be the usual arrogance. Their response is an incredulous denial of blame.

To me an organisation like SIBA is there to support its members. Therefore I fail to see how their position is defensible.

It turns out to be true that it was in fact the venue that refused to serve the stronger, but perfectly legitimate entries. SIBA must take responsibility for the fact that they were organising the competition and festival. If the venue was not going to be all inclusive then a different venue should have been chosen. We should remember that the venue is run by one of the cask and session ale centric brewing members. One has to suspect deliberate actions to quash the tide of new contemporary brewers.

Their response to the fact that we have legitimately put our complaint into the public domain proves a level of arrogance from the organisers that almost beggars belief. Where is my apology, for instance? Where is the apology to the festival goers who failed to be able to drink the beers that were advertised on the internet before the event?

Although there may not be an "automatic ‘right’ to then have the beers on display" in my view, and I am not alone in this belief, there has to be a very good reason to discriminate against a particular beer. A good reason would be that the beer is contaminated or otherwise unfit for consumption. A beer being outside the constraints of narrow minds is not a good reason, especially when the beer is an award winner.

The fact that SIBA is defending its position, rather than apologising to its members, shows an out of touch, stuffy and old fashioned approach to beer.

Hardknott is all about changing this outdated perspective of beer. We are hopeful that once this has all settled down that SIBA will embrace this small but important part of the UK brewing industry and hopefully I can help them to work out the way forward.

What we do not need is further fragmentation in the brewing world.

Queboid too strong for SIBA

There is a lot of fuss at the moment about how brewers should not criticise the UK brewing industry. Now, before I go any further, I have lots of very good friends in the UK brewing industry. These friends span the whole industry from the very biggest companies to the very smallest. There are many people who help us out with all sorts of problems, be it the loan of the odd bag of malt, advice on technical problems, sharing transport or even just being able to call people up for support.

On the customer side of things there are lots of great licensees, bar staff, bar managers and drinkers who are absolutely great and a pleasure to be acquainted with. Despite my misgivings of CAMRA policies the  majority of the members are fantastic people.

An area of the industry that I have always struggled with however is SIBA. I find the organisation generally to be bullish and to take the "well this is the way we run our organisation, so tough" kind of approach. Or even a bullish "we don't care what your opinion is, SIBA do things this way"

I had failed to see any advantage of joining, but as we grew, and as a result of what I think was proactive canvasing from various top officials, we realised that there may be some important advantages in joining. Access to their beer competitions, perhaps, or the advantage of the Direct Delivery Scheme (DDS) maybe.

DDS is something we've yet to find beneficial, and I could write a whole piece on that by itself. But what I want to discuss here is SIBA competitions; specifically, the SIBA Craft keg festival.

We entered Queboid, our 8% Belgian Style IPA. It gained bronze in the speciality beers section. Beaten by Thornbridge Versa, which won silver and gold going to Freedom for their Organic Dark Lager; Well done guys. Our friends from Stringers Beer were there and they had entered Mutiny, their 9.3% big stout, as well as a slightly more run-of-the-mill IPA called Hop Priest 6.5% - sadly for Jon and Becky they didn't win any prizes. That fact in itself puts that quality of the festival in question.

All fine and dandy, and despite my initial reaction to the organic lager winning, along the lines of "how can a lager be a speciality beer?" - I feel quite stupid now that I've found out it was a DARK lager. I am of course delighted that another of my beers has seen recognition at a competition. Even more important as this was the first batch of beer I have put into KeyKeg.

However, my outrage is not to go hungry it would seem. Despite Queboid, which was the second strongest beer there, being a medalist and Mutiny, the strongest there, although not being a medalist is still delicious, the organisers BANNED both beers from being served because they were TOO STRONG.

Apparently, so our contacts are being told, no beer over 7.5% was to be served.

I was tweeted at last night:

http://twitter.com/#!/westy9000/statuses/165541672824999936

It was later confirmed to me when the Stringers team got back. They also seem to be the only people to have confirmed the results on the interweb.

I cannot quite express how shocked I am by this. SIBA is supposed to support smaller breweries. It is smaller breweries, craft breweries like ourselves, who are both making the stronger beers and are being most affected by the introduction of HSBD. I am hopeful that this is a terrible misunderstand between SIBA and the venue. But even so I find it extremely insulting that the style of product we specialise in has been banned from being served to the public.

With the increase of craft beer bars and the number of small breweries now producing stronger, more flavourful beers that are capturing the imagination of beer connoisseurs, rather than just targeting the mass beer drinker with session blandness. It seems churlish in the extreme to ban the style of beers that are currently bucking the trends in the bigger beer market.

Craft keg lends itself to stronger beers. Many of the current craft keg beers found in the likes of The Rake, Craft Beer Co, Euston, Sheffield and York Taps and Port Street Beer house, to name just a few, are imported. Although more of us are making stronger UK beers there is an increase of home grown keg beers available. I know people who don't like session beer and prefer wine or stronger beers. I know there is a danger of stereo-typing as a result of my own narrow experience, but it is often women, with their apparent superior flavour and olfactory receptors, who are enjoying these stronger beers.

We are unsure as to whether the refusal to serve these strong beers is directly the fault of SIBA or a premises decision. However, what is clear is that SIBA chose this venue. It is the ONLY keg competition and festival that is nationally recognised. To fail to serve to the general public a beer that has been entered and listed is grossly offensive.

Jon and Becky were at the public session afterwards. Becky asked for a 1/3 pint of Mutiny and was confronted with the staff at the venue with them saying "What, a whole 1/3 of a pint?" - for the record, 1/3 pint a 9.3% beer has exactly the same number of units in it as a pint of 3.1% beer.

All the beers were donated free of charge to the venue. Obviously, part of the motivation for us giving away beer is to enter the competition. Equally, we also expecting our beer to be served to the general public as well. Hopefully we will have the remaining beer uplifted and it will be served in a pub in another location.

I am getting an increasing suspicion that a large part of the brewing industry, and that includes SIBA, is becoming unsettled by the progress of craft beer. Certainly the reports I have got back about the keg festival would indicate a lack of professionalism in its approach. Be that the fault of the venue or SIBA I have yet to find out.

Project Queboid

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.