Drinkability

I've always been a fan of stronger ales, ever since I first tasted Old Peculier many years ago. For me the fuller richer flavours of these beers are far more satisfying than standard beers. Strangely, I can stomach more volume of such beers without feeling bloated and uncomfortable than a standard bitter for instance, although admittedly I've never actually measured that, so the reader would be best advised to take my assertions with a large pinch of salt.

I entered into a debate on twitter earlier this day. I believe there were several contributors to the debate and although we probably reached a satisfactory conclusion, it is perhaps a shame that by the nature of twitter it is fast to be lost into some unreachable archive very rapidly indeed. So, I'm going to poke that one back into life again in the hope that the contributors might post some comments here, and finally help to put this one to rest.

Of course everyone is different. Everybody has different preferences in their tastes. For me I like to try something different, something that challenges my perceptions, perhaps I just get bored easily. What ever the reason I do often despair when people talk about the drinkability of a beer. It would seem some want to defend a boring bland beer because it has drinkability and moreover this is a facet of a beer often overlooked, or so we are told. I'll have to confess I normally switch off as soon as a writer decides to give a beer that accolade. To me it immediately tells me the person is trying to defend a beer that is actually boring and unimaginative. A beer that in fact I'd drink if I had to, but I'd find so boring that I wouldn't drink more if I could find an excuse.

But then the crowd on twitter got me thinking. What is drinkable for me? Sure, there are some eminently drinkable session beers. My own Light Cascade at 3.4% might just hit the bill, although I find it a little bit thin and watery to be honest. But it has been accused of being drinkable. How could I argue with that? But I do get disinterested if all I have is 4%, or there about beers. For me drinkability is about satisfaction and enjoyment. I could go down the supermarket and get a few cans of lout, for goodness sake, if I wanted drinkability. If I wanted to do my internal organs in that fast, with binge style consumption, then why bother looking for interesting beer?

I've just bottled my most recent and strongest ever beers. One is a stout that has been in a second hand oak cask. I'm not entirely sure what was in the cask before I put beer in it, but its come out tasting a lot like a good Islay whisky. If I knew it had a good islay whisky in it then there could be all sorts of trouble due to some such process called grogging. I didn't think it mattered, so apologies to Zak Avery because I didn't believe him and thanks to John Keeling for shattering my illusion.

I'm not sure how to deal with this small problem as it seems HMRC tie themselves in knots if you try to be honest about the fact. However, a hypothetical beer that was made in such a way would possibly taste really nice. I believe my ÆtherBlæc has a flavour similar to a beer that would have spent 4 and a half months in a Caol Ila cask.

The Barley Wine, called Granite, I'm also pleased with. I find both beers eminently drinkable, although I suspect many other people wouldn't. Still, I also like Paradox, Tokyo* and Tactical Nuclear Penguin. I've got another beer, with an unmentionable name, on it's way. I expect some drinking to occur on Friday when Andy is here. We will probably find many of these beers drinkable. There really is no accounting for taste.

And would you believe it, whilst going over to Andy's site to copy and paste the URL, there is another post on the subject. I do hope he brings a spare liver when he visits me, apparently he can't drink barley wine all night, light weight.

Barley Wine Number Two

OK, here it is, the second instalment of the barley wine seminar. Excuses like having to work in the kitchen now out of the way I realise that there is another hindrance to me relating the proceedings of the second half of the event; that of the beer and crack being good so my note taking seems to have faded. It normally does once I start drinking beer, it's more the social aspect of it rather than the drunken effect, and I'm sticking to that story. Drinking is a social activity after all.

We tasted barley wines with cheeses. I remember the cheeses clearly, mature Cheddar, Stilton and Brie, but forget which beers were paired with them. I'm considering self flagellation by way of punishment for this serious lapse of diligence. I can however remember the effects of this food and beer matching session and there was a different beer presented to match each cheese.

Mature Cheddar with it's nice bite works well with a moderately bitter beer however the one we had was slightly overpowered by the Cheddar. Still, the creaminess of the cheese worked well with the toffee caramel flavours in the beer.

Moving to the Stilton clearly a more powerful hop presence was needed and in this case I felt we had a good choice of beer. I like Stilton and there is a chance that my perception is coloured here, but the experience worked well.

Finally, the creamy Brie works fantastically with a more malty caramel beer. Brie could so easily be overpowered by a beer with too much hop presence, but this one was perfect. I like Brie as well - hang on, what am I talking about? I like cheese, period.

Of course the dried fruits, big body and powerful liqueur flavours present in all the beers help the cheese and indeed I suspect would with a number of other foods. The overall experience is one of the best beer and food matchings I've ever enjoyed and much better than the one from the Tate Sommelier I experienced about a year ago. Perhaps as a guild we could do more to promote good beer and food pairings.

There were many barley wines to try and Adrian Tierney-Jones lists them in his blog. I'm really not one to give a great list of beers and critique each one. Every single beer was fantastic and the danger for any contender would be that the overall quality was so high that everyday fantastic might loose out to sublime. Several had vintages and in particular the 1999 Fuller Vintage Ale stood out as something special, not just because the beer is good but because of the overall ethos that goes along with it. I had tried the 2009 at the GBBF and the fresh compared to the aged was very interesting indeed. I smuggled a bottle home which currently has an imaginary "drink me" label tempting me every day. Ann particularly liked the Harveys Elizabethan Ale. Big Foot was too hoppy to be a barley wine in my view, but that's the way the Americans do things. Conversely Lovibonds Wheat Wine would be great with some more hops.

So, things starting to get a little more relaxed and with the danger of memory failure we sat down again to listen to the second batch of speakers. Barry Pepper kicked off with a light after dinner style piece on Yorkshire Stingo, which it turns out I had difficulty pronouncing correctly. I blame the lack of a Yorkshire accent rather than any effect from the beers.

Steve Gibbs of Durham Brewery gave a talk on the micro brewers perspective of making barley wine. As a micro brewer myself I felt it was all obvious. That must mean he was telling the truth but it does leave difficulties in me finding the surprising revelation to pass on.

Jeff Rosenmeier gave a very informative talk on his Wheat Wine, which I mentioned needed more hops, but he himself had already come to this conclusion. Mash hopping is used, rare in this country but useful in this beer due to the high level of wheat malt. Wheat mashes tend to be very sticky and can result in a stuck sparge. Hops in the mash help to break up the malt and replace the lack of barley husks. Honey is used in the beer's production and there was some question about when to add the honey. In the boil the honey can loose much of the aromatics that are the very point of using honey. The problem is that honey is not sterile. The high sugar content stops any bacteria from growing when honey is stored, which is why it can keep for years, but adding it to wort without any boiling might encourage these bacteria to multiply once in the ideal growing medium of fermenting beer. Jeff puts the honey in at the end of the boil, at flame out. However, he is considering putting it in after cooling and hoping the yeast will compete and so play to the numbers game of brewing microbiology. Honey in beer is a controversial one. I like mead and so I liked this. If you don't like honey then you'd be disappointed.

Jeff talked about waxing the bottle top. This has been proven to help ageing in beers. As a secondary seal it is used to prevent oxygen getting at the beer and maintain condition. It's even possible, apparently, to hear a hiss as the wax is broken proving that it does really have an effect. It is interesting that the example bottle of a very old beer indeed was also waxed. Steve Wellington had brought along one of only a few bottles left of Ratcliff ale. Pete Brown was lucky enough to try some just before his epic journey to India. Apparently we were not worthy enough to try it, but there is an excellent description of the ceremony surrounding the opening of the bottle and the flavours encountered in Pete's book Three Sheets to the Wind pp73-74.

Which I hope brings me on neatly to Pete's little bit of the day; Selling barley wine. Of course most people who have read Pete's books will know his roots lie firmly in marketing. His words don't need to be repeated here as he has kindly copied them onto his own blog. They make tons of sense to me. The key thing is that we have to rethink beer when we get to the premium market. Barley wine and other strong beers like double imperial stouts, imperial IPAs and the like deserve a different approach. Packaging and glassware are part of that.

A key point though is that it was stated "Drinking is about ritual", and the example came back of the opening of Ratcliffs ale in Pete's book and how everybody was transfixed around this very special bottle. Part of the ritual of removing the wax on a corked bottle gives another reason to consider this packaging addition, further adding to the ritual of drinking. Anyway, just read Pete's blog, he makes more sense than me.

The floor was open for questions and comments. Earlier I had heard a comment from somebody that questioned the place of barley wine. Claiming to really like the beers we were trying the gentleman also declared "I would never go to the pub and drink this". I asked myself why not? We will drink wine and whisky and gin and vodka and rum and port but not barley wine. No, because we are stuck in the thought that beer needs to be between 3.5% and 4.5% and served in pints, anything else is just stupid, apparently. I really feel that we should consider taking a leaf out of the Belgians book on this one. Different styles of beer deserve different glasses and different measures. The more that I explore the premium beer world the more I realise that we are missing out on promoting them due to blinkered, dare I say it, flat earth approach.

Melissa Cole sparked controversy by having a dig at brewers for only using technical descriptions for the flavours in beers. Hoppy, malty and estery don't really inspire the lay person. An irritated retort ensued from somebody seemly insulted but I'd have to agree that we could be more descriptive rather than technical with our beer tasting notes.

Finally free reign was given to the marvellous array of beers to try. I was expecting great things and was sure I would enjoy the experience. Whilst I loved them all there were some that were simply outstanding. I opened my first post claiming that barley wine was for old women. That seems to be the perception but I'd say this is a style that could be modernised, not by way of changing the style, it stands as a robust drink in it's own right, but it's crying out to be made trendy and I've a feeling we're on the cusp of it. It also seems that the style is worthy of the maturation fine wine receives. If a well made beer can still be drinkable after 140 years then perhaps we can consider expanding on Fullers excellent idea of vintage ale and give beer it's much needed step up out of the mass media gutter. Maybe beer might be the drink of the nation, the drink that cuts across classes, but we're still in danger of alienating greatness with a form of inverted snobbery that still clings to the drinking classes.

Sadly the coach was ready to leave bound back for Sheffield and the promise of a pint. I was strangely looking forward to sinking a regular 18oz plus proper northern head. Unfortunately, the few that were left wanted to visit several pubs so halves were in order. Mind you, I'm glad we did get to a few, Sheffield is looking good for a beery trip in the future.

I can't finish this post without a mention of the hotel we stayed in that night. The Hillsborough Hotel is a brew hotel, there are not many in the country and of course every single one is special. This one is no exception, or perhaps it is, seeing as it is exceptional. Stu is a top brewer and is not afraid to push the boundaries a little. His Unpronounceable IPA at 7% Indian Pale Ale 7.2% brewed with Pete Brown¹ was on tap "Are you sure you want a pint? Do you know how strong it is?" I was asked. I didn't care, I was getting desperate to get my hands around a proper one, yeah, I'm disagreeing with every thing I've said above but just sometimes only a pint will do. We were brought a special jug of Ring of Fire from the cellar, newly tapped and "dry chillied". I've never had chilli beer and was not quite sure whether I would like it. A nice fresh chilli nose that threatens a bite that will blow your mind, I expect this comes from the whole chillies in the cask, but it turns out that it's bouquet is worse than it's bite with this beer working surprisingly well. I think I had around a pint of the chilli beer as well, which was probably good going after the day I'd just had. Eventually I found my bed, contented after a thoroughly enjoyable day.

A smashing breakfast next morning was followed by a grand tour of The Hillsborough Cellars, which is where the Crown Brewery lives. I was in a rush because I'd left my BlackBerry charger at home and I wanted to find a shop that could sell me a new one. Unfortunately in my rush I left my bottles of Celebration Ale behind, which Stu had kindly procured for me. Sadly that means I'll have to visit the Hillsborough again and probably be tempted into another beer exploration around the steel city of Sheffield. Ann thinks I left them deliberately so that I'd have to go back - as if.

I think I've drivelled on a little too long already about barley wine; Time to move on - onward to the great capital of our little island. Time for more beery exploration to engage in and a treat in first class on the train to get there. Interestingly I ended up thinking that I'd rather travel standard class on a Virgin Pendalino as the ride is so much smoother, the East Midlands Trains rattle and tilt terribly, now I know why it's only £6 more for first class.

Incidentally, my search for a charger turned out to be a frustrating but eventually successful escapade. It was in a Virgin shop that I managed to find my phone charger, the Branson empire managed to regain a little kudos with me again after a complete and utter fiasco trying to buy a parking ticket at Oxenholme.

Next I need to cover an event hosted by Lagers Of the British Isles. Yes, that's right, I had an evening of lager drinking. Have my beer explorations found me a lager I like? You'll just have to wait until the next post.

Meanwhile, there is also a post on The Beer Justice blog about the event, in case I haven't bored you quite enough.

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¹You see, this is what happens if you try and cram too much beer and blogging into too few days, the accuracy starts to deteriorate.....see blog comments.

Barley Wine Number One

Barley Wine, it's something of an old ladies drink. Nobody really gives it much thought these days. Often at beer festivals something turns up that is strong enough for people to declare it as a barley wine, simply on the grounds that it is too strong to be beer. I have Tokyo* on sale in my pub and it's easiest to sell by using the description of barley wine, after all, we can understand the concept of a strong fruity drink when related to the fruit of the vine¹. Do we really understand the difference between barley wine, old ale and intergalactic fantastic stout?

On Monday this week I attended the British Guild of Beer Writers barley wine seminar as the start of a beer exploration week. Perhaps I would understand barley wine better.

Arriving at Sheffield station ahead of schedule I met up with guild members and was introduced to the head brewer of a slightly bigger brewery. It's nice to be recognised as "Woolpack Dave" by key people in the brewing industry, and more so by their interest in the beer blogging world. People in the industry do read beer blogs, at least some do, and they like the information it gives them about grass root beer drinkers and their thoughts. The point that came through was that it is the comments as much as the posts themselves that can be most illuminating. A lesson for me to appreciate those who comment but with whom I might not agree. Opinion, after all, is just opinion.

More people arrived and we had a quick tour of an interesting project for a brewery tap of our hosts, Thornbridge. In 1904, or there about, a building was erected as part of the station. The waiting room included a bar with echoes of a disappearing Victorian splendour, the bar front long since destroyed but the back bar, dusty and neglected, threatened to once again shine through with polished mahogany and large shiny mirrors. Apparently the new bar front is being manufactured elsewhere. The 1350 bottle beer range should cap off for an interesting bar and a fantastic beer gateway for what turns out to be a great beer city.

From here to the delightful setting of Thornbridge Hall for the seminar. Many people serious about the subject of beer in all its various forms, were in attendance to try and "make sense of barley wine". Although the subject makes sense to me now, I'm not sure as a writer, brewer or beer drinker, I can communicate that sense as well as I'd like to. Part of the reason is perhaps because the subject was covered in good depth and with great interest, but in a polite and democratic way that failed to reach any firm conclusions. For me this adds to the charm of the event, but might detract from it's usefulness to the greater beer world. Here I will try my best to single out the key important things I learnt, but suffice to say this is probably scratching the surface of the subject.

The style that is barley wine seems a little confused. Our first speaker, Mark Dorber, did an excellent job of helping to focus on the style. The first point of course is the very question of style itself. There are a few organisations² who try to define style, and there are often discrepancies between these definitions. The inevitable arguments about what is "true to style" are bound to ensue. As Mark pointed out "beer does not make itself" and style guidelines are useful for brewers as a spring board for progression and a hook to help define a product. The arguments about what style a beer actually is might never go away and frankly is a superfluous distraction. Mark did help us to understand the basis for this style, and therefore helps me to further develop what I think is an under developed drink, from a commercial point of view.

An exploration of the various attributes ensued; There is little point trying to sumerise what Mark said, because he's done it so well himself, so I will quote verbatium his own summary from the powerpoint presentation.

Amber to deep copper in colour

Intense, estery fruity aromas and higher alcohols present – big brassy hop aromas on US inspired beers - more restrained in UK

Full-bodied - 8.5-12% abv, monuments to pale malt and single barley varieties with firm, balancing bitterness in UK

Residual sweetness capable of attenuation during months/years of maturation in oak cask (rum, bourbon etc) or bottle

Liquorous, fortified vinous, silky texture and smooth mouthfeel

UK barley wines will have no tannins from grain and in the past tended to use low alpha noble hops – now changing

US barley wines have high alpha primary hop flavours and tannins in youth – mellowing with age

Aftertaste should not be characterised by Burtonising mineral salt dryness – key textural contrast with Imperial IPAs

A key interest for me was the astringency caused by tannins from the grain. Considered by some as a fault in beer but it's presence in grape wine, if carefully controlled, can act as an antioxidant and enhance it's maturation process. Wines with higher astringencies when young are harsh and unpleasant but mature better. I am keen to understand how this could effect barley wine during maturation and indeed if it could be controlled to good effect to produce outstanding matured strong beer.

John Keeling, head brewer at Fullers talked about parti-gyle beer. Apparently much of the beer produced by Fullers is made this way. As the sparge progresses, the wort is diverted into different coppers to produce the various production strength beers. One copper would be at 1080 and one at 1020. The cooled worts then being blended into the fermenter to produce the final products. An interesting advantage is that alpha acids polymerise better in the copper at lower gravity giving a better hop utilisation. John was keen to point out that this is not high gravity brewing, which is a different concept again, with parti-gyle, beer fermentation occurs at product gravity.

Brewing in this way enables a strong wort to be used for barley wine, such as Golden Pride and Fullers Vintage while still utilising the second runnings, blended with some of the first for the main stream ales.

Of course the unique characteristic of Fullers yeast was mentioned. A Golden Pride brew sheet was shown from 1966 where the yeast was on it's 926th generation. It does make me wonder how we can be sure the yeast was the same as it was nearly 1000 generations earlier, but of course that's the point; yeast evolves and is changed by the environment it lives in. Equally the ingredients of beer have to be varied as the yield from the grain changes or the alpha acid content of the hops changes. It is the job of the experienced brewer to adjust quantities and even possibly varieties to acheve a consistant result. "Marketing and management think that to get consistent beer you do the same thing every time" but John, at least I think it was John rather than the next speaker as my notes get confused here, asserts it is all about taste and experience. There, that makes these guys craft brewers in my view.

Despite the attraction of traditional techniques the use of the old square fermenters often don't produce good results. It was pointed out that the use of newer cylindrical-conical fermenters often increase the chances of winning CAMRA awards. Clearly good beer and traditional methods don't always go together. Just because this form of vessel is used to make mass produced poor quality lager does not mean it will make poor beer generally.

The next speaker was Steve Wellington of the White Shield brewery, the guy who looks after the "Old Lady" and so keeping Coors just about acceptable. He was keen to point out the need for saying hello to such an austere and aged old brewhouse as if you forget, you are sure to have a bad brew day. Pete Brown talks about this brewery in his book Three Sheets to the Wind, so it was nice to hear a little more about it.

Here he talked about what I understand to be Bass No1 but I'm left a little confused about it's status. Coors seem to own the brewery that Bass No1 was brewed on but AB InBev own the Bass brand. Still, Steve seems to know an awful lot about how it could be brewed, although my understand is that it is not currently being made. Maybe this seminar will produce a new interest in barley wine and the White Shield brewery will once again make barley wine.

The key notable point was the difficulty of getting more than around 1060 - 1070 wort from all grain mash methods. Bass N01 was sparged to produce this gravity and then boiled to reduce the volume and concentrate the sugars. The boiled wort would have an S.G. of 1105 and take many hours. Often done overnight the brewer would creep back into the brewery next morning, without forgetting to say hello, and hope there wasn't just black tar in the bottom of the copper. A dark concentrate that originally contained no coloured malts is the result. 6 brewery barrels, or close to 1000 litres, is reduced to half of that volume.

Conversions of sugars into other compounds colour the wort and no doubt add to the final characteristics of the product. With a hop loading 6 times what you'd expect compared to an ordinary beer due to the low uptake of hop flavours the end result is a glorious rich dark malty beverage with just enough hopping to offset the sweetness.

To round off the first session Steve Grossman of Sierra Nevada explained a little about the production of Big Foot which is their 9.6% ABV barley wine. It is interesting in the craft beer scene in America how big and bold is favoured. Extremes of flavours and alcohol marks out the differences more than considerations of cask against keg or authenticity to anything previous. Consequently their barley wine is also very hoppy and bitter.

If you've got this far in reading you've done well. It was an interesting day and I've only covered about half of the proceedings. I could have written more detail so far, but even more of you would have got bored. I haven't even covered the most interesting things for me, which is the cultural issues surrounding stronger beers. Hopefully in my next post I'll cover what some of the other speakers say and hint at where the British beer industry and pubs alike could gain from barley wine.

If you want more information on the barley wine seminar then Malt Worms and Beer Justice have also covered the event.

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¹The name wine of course is linked to vine, the plant type that grows the fruit used to produce the regular vintners beverage. In French this link is much more obvious by their name of vin. Of course everybody already knows this, so this foot note is pointless.

²Mark uses The Brewers Association and The Beer Judge Program as examples of barley wine style descriptions. The CAMRA descriptions are also available but not mentioned. There seemed to be some irritation towards CAMRA's attitude to styles, which I'll confess I didn't quite grasp.