Brewer versus Writer at The Rake -

Everyone in the beer world has different perspectives, different agendas, and different reasons to engage. Brewers are going to have a different view to the drinker. Traditional cask drinkers will have a different view to the contemporary Craft Beer Drinker. Beer writers will also have their own agendas, which will be coloured by their own view of the beer world, combined with the reward they get for writing about beer.

You will know that I am not only a member of the British Guild of Beer Writers but also sit on the committee. I take this role quite seriously as I believe in the underpinning principles of The Guild; “To improve the standards of beer writing and to extend the public's knowledge of beer.”

I’ve known Adrian Tierney-Jones for some time. He’s a great bloke and has written quite a lot about beer in many areas. He’s won several awards with The Guild Annual Awards but most importantly to me does a sterling job as secretary of The Guild, if with a slightly understandable and endearingly grumpy approach sometimes.

We don’t always agree. Indeed, I occasionally get barbed and satirical emails from him when he feels I make some remark on twitter, or in my blog, that is at odds with his world view. Or indeed, when we exchange views as committee members via email. I think it is only likely that a beer writer, one who wants to be respected for his knowledge and impartial take on the beer scene, will disagree with me.

The classic discussion is the exchanges about craft beer. I like to align myself as a Craft Brewer. I think it is useful to be able to mark Hardknott out as something different to the traditional brewer. It’s not necessarily about fighting between those factions, but more a way of highlighting the difference.

Adrian, I feel, stands above this and thinks it’s silly. I guess the experienced beer writer is bound to feel that all beer is worthy of consideration. I, on the other-hand, am a keen advocate of Craft Beer as an important part of brewing into the 21^st century and am proud to be part of that future, which is different to the staid flavours of the 20^th century.

I’ve bunged various beers to various writers. Generally it’s in the hope they might mention them in stuff they write. I once gave Adrian a bottle of Vitesse Noir. To be honest I didn’t really expect him to write about it, especially considering we sometimes seem at odds with some of our opinions. I perhaps just wanted him to like it. However, he must have thought it quite good as he put it in his new book , A 1001 Beer You Must Try Before You Die. It’s a good book. Obviously I’m right chuffed it’s in there.

Luckily, and by almost complete coincidence, we are just about to bottle and keg a new batch. It’s not available in keg often, but it is this time. Adrian and I thought it’d be fun to have a brewer versus writer event so we can try a few beers.

I'll introduce a few of my beers, finishing with Vitesse Noir. Then we'll talk a bit about, and taste a few of the other beers in 1001 Beers. There will be copies of the book on sale as well which Adrian would love people to buy. If you ask him nicely he'll even sign copies.

Perhaps, once we’ve had a few drinks Adrian and I can start a good old drunken argument about Craft Beer, or biased beer reviews, or some other contentious topic.

Oh, and Adrian says he’ll sign copies of his book, but only if you buy a copy first.

This will all happen from about 7pm in The Rake on 9th October. Be there.

Brewing up a storm at The Rake

It makes no financial sense whatsoever to take 4 firkins of beer all the way to London. Even with several cases of beer as well it is still a dubious commercial trip. It is 295 miles there and 295 miles back again. That's 2 tanks of diesel at a total cost of about £120. It's about 6 hours driving time each way and at least one nights stop over. It really is completely bonkers and only an insane idiot would consider such a stupid idea. A sensible person would consider a courier. But I'm not sensible and never have been, so we took beer to London.

The Rake was the venue at which to host my beer's debut in our great capital city. That cosy left field beer bar that never ever fails to provide me with something new every time I go in. "No Crap on Tap" it says above the bar. I always find that to be true, but a place where crap beer certainly isn't tolerated.

The night had been advertised on other blogs like RabidBarFly and Pete Brown. Reports of the night have been done by Mark Dredge and Sid Boggle. Thank you to all who helped to promote the night including the many on twitter that re-tweeted and generally communicated about the event. Cool Fusion ran out before I left and Continuum was close. The other two beers, being stronger, didn't go so fast, but I think that they still went well and I'd assume they sold the next couple of days.

We also did some tastings of Æther Blæc and even better Granite with Keen's cheddar, which we think worked well. I'd have liked to have tried it with smoked cheese after a discussion I'd seen on twitter between Barry and Tania about cigars and beer, but unfortunately none could be found on the market.

I was nervous about how my beer would be received, some influential people from the beer world would be there. I knew that a couple of the beers had been complete buggers to get to drop bright, I know why and a post on that subject will be forthcoming. I took isinglass, finings adjunct and all manner of useful concoctions with me, but failed to leave any with Glyn. In the end we still never got the beer bright, which worried me.

It seems I needn't have worried, everyone was really understanding and loved the beer anyway. Great London beer people like John Keeling and Phil Lowry turned up and even people out of town, like Pete Brissenden. I felt like I was among friends and made new friends with the beer ticking community who were there in force. I'm still left feeling like I could do better, but there will be another time and the beer will be improved. I might even introduce some Amarillo hops next time, just to please Mark.

So, am I mad? you bet, but I'm glad we did it, it was a great night. I'm not sure I have a clear memory of the end of the night however, but trying pints of each beer, with and without sparkler, might just have been my downfall. Oh and a run along the gas taps, half pint of each. I'd also failed to charge up my camera battery, so by the time I'd recharged it the evening had almost finished, most people had gone and I was not in the most creative of photography moods.

Rake out

Gee, this last week has been busy; brewed 4 times in 8 days, I've never done that before. I pressed one of my recently acquired fermenting vessels into action and so increased my potential brew-length¹. I've also had to rack beer into cask because it was sitting in fermenters, getting in the way, besides, we've also had people ringing up for beer, some we've even had to disappoint due to a lack of beer being ready. But before the reader starts thinking I'm complaining, I'm not, it's all really good fun.

Some months ago I was talking to Glyn, who manages The Rake bar on Borough Market. We had discussed the possibility of him putting our beers on at some point in time; not that easy a job as we have no real logistics network to get casks down to London or empties back. Neither was I sure I could be in a position to have enough beer, or casks, to make it possible. Just over a week ago, during twitter discussions, it became apparent that I would be in London next week and then again a few weeks later for the GBBF. I also realised that having just taken delivery of new casks and having increased fermenting capacity, I could indeed manage to get beer to The Rake. Moreover, if I can risk my delicate country boy lung tissue to the great smog, then perhaps I could hang around while the beer is stillaged, tapped and settled, just so I can be around to check its quality.

And so, on the 28th June 2010, I will be in The Rake from around 4pm, and so will my beer. I'm excited, Glyn tells me he is, I'd like to think that beer lovers in London might be too. I'm slightly wary of the possibility of a whole load of proper beer rating people there, armed with finely tuned palates, but hey, feedback is feedback.

Hope to see you there.

If all goes well with casking-up this next week we will have;

Light Cascade 3.4% - guess what? it's made with Cascade hops.

Continuum 4.0% - Our "standard" beer, dry hopped in the cask.

Fusion(?name still in thought process) 4.2% Ginger and a hint of chilli, all late hopped.

Dark Energy 4.9% - Sort of a stout, perhaps, dark and fruity dry hops.

Infra Red 6.2% - I'm not even going to try and describe this, you beery experts will tell me something different, the best description on the night gets a pint bought by me.

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¹Brew-length is the volume of beer that can be made at one time. Why it is measured in units of volume but given a title suggesting a linear dimension in space is perhaps slightly confusing.

Making Money from Beer

I managed to get hold of a hard copy of The Cask Report. I spend too much time sat at this computer, so I didn't really want to spend more time reading the on-line version, and printing out a heavily coloured PDF uses so much toner. Right, that's my grumbling about it out of the way now I can concentrate on singing it's praises. It is of course one of those good news stories amongst the drinks industry doom and gloom that seems to have dominated the press over the last few years. The basic message is; cask pubs do better, make more money and are less likely to close. The "cask beer value chain" as Pete put's it indicates a whole lot more about pubs that serve cask. I suspect if you are a regular reader of this blog you will have already found the report, if not go to the website now, the report is far better than anything written here.

It does make me think, "value chain" - value means cheap. I can tell the reader is already thinking about arguing with me. Value and good quality don't generally go together in any advertising spiel. Added value gets talked about in marketing, but that to me is something different and is about getting more money. Look around the supermarkets, "value range" what does that tell you? It spells out cheap to me.

The the economics of the industry are far more complex than the general pub observer would like to have us believe. It really is not as simple as reducing the price of a pint and the hoards will flock. In fact, I have observed that this is usually not the case, simply because dropping the price results in corners being cut and so the service drops below the acceptable level. "I wouldn't go in there, the beer is cheap but you stick to the carpet" There are some exceptions and Wetherspoons springs to mind. They focus on providing a value service and do so very well. Their quality must be satisfactory as it is a very successful chain. Of course much of their success is due to economies of scale and integrated purchasing and transport logistics.

I'll digress for a while to bring in another piece of information that has surprised me. It's taken a year for me to really understand this but it parallels the pub industry and the connection is beer. It turns out that it's also extremely hard to make money out of writing about beer. My membership of the guild has put me in touch with lots of great people in the beer writing and brewing world. I've listened to and queried about the remuneration and what I've learnt is it's not great. There are something like 150 members of the British Guild of Beer Writers. Some are employed in other work that touches on beer writing, some are brewers and do contribute to writing about beer, some are beer bloggers or even just licensees interested in supporting the work of the guild. Very few are actually just writers who make money out of writing about beer.

There is a connection here; Beer. All the members of the Guild are passionate about beer. I know a lot of publicans who are also passionate about beer. I know of very few, if anybody, who is really making a good living out of beer and I think I understand better these days why.

There is something else that ties these groups together and that is a willingness to work to deliver beer, or information about beer, with very little reward other than the very reward that beer itself gives.

I am at a stage in my career where I need to start thinking about the future. I have to start thinking about how I am going to pay for the nursing home when I'm old(er) and (more) decrepit. I have to start finding reasons to stay in the beer industry because my previous £40k a year job, with weekends off and 30 days leave a year looks a lot more tempting.

The problem is that the cask report does highlight the fact that cask beer is often cheaper by some considerable amount than it's poorer quality big cousin, the big brand lager. I'd say the average differential is around 20%. That can't be right. Cask ale is a better quality product, generally looked after by better quality people in better quality pubs. Value? if we carry on undervaluing cask ale in monetary terms it'll drive those that care about it out of the industry from shear financial necessity.

Before I leave the subject I'd like to mention one place that intrigues me; The Rake at Borough Market. I'd never been until the other day and I'd have to say I like it. I'm not sure it's that much more expensive than other similar alternatives. It was very busy when I was in there on a Wednesday evening. I did not find the staff at all rude and enjoyed my nice time there. I wonder if the staff have a second sense for identifying customers whose sole aim in life is to find cheap beer? I crumbled and paid money for Nanny State 1.1%, which was an unbalanced hop monster, but the best low alcohol beer I'd ever tried. I'll be back there tomorrow late afternoon as I have a date with a dog later that evening and will need some Dutch courage.