Fuggled

The Answer...

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:30:00 +0000

...is an emphatic 'YES!'

The question though comes from this article on Slate.com, which poses the deep and meaningful question as to whether:

'friends let friends drink only pilsners?'

One would have thought that a person who starts an article with 'As a beer writer' would actually have some vague notion of what they are talking about, but yet again people use terms like 'lager' and 'pilsner' as lazy shorthand for boring beer.

If your friend wants to drink 'only' pilsners, then bloody well let them. It's their body, their taste buds and their money, so they can drink whatever the hell they want to. If you can't have a good time while your friends drink 'only' pilsners, then I suggest you have a deeper problem than a person's choice of beer.

On that note, I'm going to buy a six pack of Pilsner Urquell...have a good weekend people.

In Praise of Workhorses

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:13:00 +0000

Last night I did something that I hadn't in a while. Having lost track of the time whilst pottering around in my garden and realised that I wouldn't have time to get cleaned up and out to the local homebrew club monthly meeting. So, with dinner cooking in the oven (a rather fabulous potatoes au gratin, to which I will add mustard powder next time), I wandered down in the beer cellar to pick something to drink.

My beer cellar, as I am sure is pretty common, is a mixture of my own homebrew, a bevvy of strong beers which are being aged (most of which are Fuller's Vintage Ales) and what I tend to think of as my 'drinking' beers - the ones which will be polished off well before their best before date. Looking at the collection of beer, which has been dwindling gently while I have been unemployed (thankfully I start my new job on Monday), the only beer that leapt at me was a beer I had not drunk at home in a very, very long time, Starr Hill's Amber Ale.

The Amber Ale at Starr Hill is one of those beers which gets labelled an 'Irish Red Ale', a style which according to some was originally just an Irish equivalent of keg bitter, the kind of beer to strike fear into the heart of any CAMRA member. Over here in the US it is kind of sweet, with a caramel element and a touch of earthy/spicy hops, some versions of the style are overwhelmingly cloying and as such it is not something I bother with very often, though on the rare occasions I get to have O'Hara's Red on tap then I fill my boots. Unlike many an Oirish Red Ale, Starr Hill's Amber is actually nicely balanced, with neither the malt nor the hop dominating, I polished off three bottles in pretty short order - and it was at the right temperature, about 56° Fahrenheit.

This got me thinking about all the beers out there which don't get the love and praise they warrant, simply because they are not very hip, sexy or labelled as some form of IPA. Beers, like Starr Hill Amber Ale, which fulfil my very simple definition of a good beer, does it make me want another one? I like to term such beers 'workhorses', sure they might not prance around like Vienna's Spanish Riding School, but they are great at ploughing a field.

What are your local workhorse beers that deserve more praise and recognition?

The picture is from Starr Hill's website as I was too busy drinking the beer to even think about taking a photo.

Defining Passion

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:55:00 +0000

It seems to be a particularly modern malaise that it is no longer enough to be good at the work you have chosen to do, you have to 'passionate' about it. Whether we are talking about making beer, selling financial products or even cleaning the bogs in the Prague Metro, passion has become de rigueur in practically every industry.

Often, it seems, this 'passion' is presented as being excited by what it is you do (quite how one could be excited at the prospect of cleaning the bogs in the Prague Metro though escapes me), with all the attendant hoopla that seems to go with it. In the context of beer, as that is the main theme of Fuggled, every new product is greeted with the zythophilic fervour of Beatlemania, the constant pitch of the marketing efforts gets higher and higher, like the crescendo of noise which is cicada time. When a beer though fails to live up to the hype, the damning verdicts on Twitter, Ratebeer and the like is akin to the Hindenburg going down in flames.

It is time that we re-evaluate our understanding of what 'passion' means in a brewing context to bring the demand side understanding of passion for beer with one of the common attributes of every professional brewer I know, the passion to do things properly.

When I am working at the Starr Hill Brewery tasting room I quite often overhear people talking about how some breweries are 'passionate' about beer because they put all manner of stuff into their beer, making it 'innovative' and various other adjectives which I am not convinced aren't a cover term for 'a right bloody mess'. The implication in these witterings, often though not always from a spotty yoof out to impress the accompanying spotty yoofs with his deep knowledge of beer, is that the breweries that make classic beer styles, and make them well, somehow lack 'passion' for beer.

I often think of Budvar, and not just for drinking purposes. Here is a pale lager, perhaps the most disparaged beer style on the planet, which, as far as I am aware, is still made in the same way as when the legendary Mr Tolar was the master brewer. Budvar's flagship beer, as I have mentioned before, takes 102 days to make, 12 days in primary fermentation and then 90 days in the lagering tanks, that's 12 weeks, or 1 week for each degree of Plato in the beer, as was the traditional norm in Central Europe. Would most consumers know the difference if they cut the lagering time to 45 days and thus instantly doubled their capacity? I would venture that very few would, but therein lies the heart of a consumers' confidence in Budvar, they do things as they have always done. This is passion as I understand it, sticking to doing what generations of brewers have handed down to you, because it makes the beer which the consumer wants to drink. There are few finer beers in the world than Budvar, admittedly preferably on draught. On a hot day, a cold half litre of golden liquid from České Budějovice is liking drinking the nectar of the gods.

We often talk about the 'fires of passion', as if passion should be all noise, flame and smoke. To take this analogy in a little bit of a different direction, when you first light your grill, you don't cook your burgers, sausages and chicken drumsticks straight away, you wait for the flames to die down and the charcoal to be good and hot. Passion is much the same, sure the flames and noise are impressive, but until they are gone and you know the coals are burning thoroughly all you have is light and noise.

Booze and Politics

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:40:00 +0000

Yesterday I went to a conference at Montpelier, which was once the home of James Madison, the driving force behind the Constitution of the USA. Part of the setup at Montpelier is the Center for the Constitution, and they organised the conference around the theme of election campaign finance reform. It was a very interesting day of talks, panels and Q&A sessions, and I will be writing some posts about things that popped into my head during the day on one of my other blogs. What the hell though does this have to do with booze?

One of the speakers yesterday mentioned a story about James Madison's early steps into Virginian political life. In 1777 Madison was running for election to the House of Delegates, the lower house of Virginia's bicameral General Assembly and successor to the Colonial Era House of Burgesses. His opponent during the race was a tavern owner called Charles Porter. As was customary at the time, Porter plied the voters with rum and punch, while Madison refused to do so. Unsurprisingly, the electorate voted for Charles Porter, though Madison's supporters claimed that this custom was effectively corruption, a complaint which got nowhere with the political powers that be, after all, George Washington was elected to the House of Burgesses in 1758 having used exactly the same methods.

That story brought to mind a book I read a couple of summers ago whilst lounging by the pool on our annual trip to Florida. The book is called 'Plain, Honest Men', by Richard Beeman, and is an account of the drafting of the Constitution of the USA, in 1787, and it recounts a drinking session held just before the final draft of the Constitution was signed, where many of the delegates of the Convention joined with the First Troop of the City Light Horse to honour George Washington. The bar bill for the festivities was impressive:

"fifty-four bottles of Madeira, sixty bottle of claret, fifty bottles of "old stock," copious amounts of porter, beer and cider, and some large bowls of rum punch".

Given there were, apparently, about 60 people at the event, that's quite a night's drinking per person there! I am assuming that the 'old stock' mentioned there is an old or stock ale which would have been pretty strong and then aged for well over a year.

Anyway, all this got me thinking that there may just be some correlation between booze and political life, the former lubricating the latter. Apparently, many of the compromises that eventually found their way into the American Constitution were hammered out not during the formal sessions of the Convention but after hours, in the taverns of Philadelphia over bottles of wine, beer and cider. Perhaps it would be helpful for modern political leaders to get down the pub and actually talk to each other over a few pints of 'old stock' and maybe a bottle of Madeira or two?

Next to Godliness

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:27:00 +0000

It's fair to say that I am a fan of the growler, that magical 2 litre bottle which you can fill with beer at a tasting room, in a pub, or even at a petrol station. I own a few growlers, it's true, and I have settled on the style I like best - swing top, good sturdy handle. I have drunk barrel aged barleywine that had been sitting in such a growler for two years without losing condition and it tasted great.

On the days when I am working in the Starr Hill tasting room, I probably fill anywhere between 20 and 50 growlers, and while most of them are fine, we probably get about 5 or 6 every shift which are a pain in the arse to fill. Sometimes the problem comes from the shape of the growler itself, thin necks are more difficult to fill with our setup than the wider type that we use, but more often than not it is because the growler is not properly clean. Quite often it is enough to give the growler in question a quick rinse, but again, more often than I would like, it is because of a layer of caked on crap which would need a pneumatic drill to get through.

So, as a public service announcement, and in order to stop muttering to myself in Czech when behind the bar, here is the best way to keep a growler clean.

Drink the beer
Immediately rinse growler with HOT water
Fill growler with hot water
Put half a scoop of plain Oxi-Clean into the growler
Shake growler vigorously (think St Vitus Dance)
Leave overnight, with the swing top open to avoid exploding growlers
Rinse with more hot water several times
Drain upside down
If you don't use the growler for a while, leave the top open so the air doesn't go stale

Part of the pleasure of owning growlers is being able to have brewery/pub fresh beer in the comfort of your own home, keeping your growler good and clean means it will taste far better than if it sits on a layer of crud before you drink it.

Here endeth the lesson...

#IHP2013 - The Tasting

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:43:00 +0000

Finally the day arrived, the day to drink my recreation of a beer from 1877 - a beer which was commercially brewed 136 years ago. The beer in question was the Truman's No 4, from a brewery which was once the biggest in the world.

Number 4 was a Burton Ale, which in 1877 meant it was pale, bitter and sweet all at the same time. In 2013, my recreation looked like this:

The beer poured a rich amber, which surprised me given the grain bill of 100% pale malt (I wish I could get my bitter the same colour from a single grain). The nose was sweet toasted malt laced with traces of spice, toffee and a touch of boozy orange peel - think of a rum baba made with a pinch of white pepper and caramelised brown sugar and you are in the right ball park.

Tastewise, sweet malt juiciness dominates, kind of, balanced by a bitter tang that threatens to give balance to the beer but ultimately makes it like biting though the rind of an orange in your morning marmalade - marmalade was very much a theme running through this beer, specifically thick cut Seville orange marmalade, preferably from Marks and Spencer.

This is a full bodied, smooth, beer which fails to be either cloyingly sweet or overwhelmingly 'hoppy' - as in lots of late addition hops that make you feel like you are sucking your way through a grapefruit grove. As cheesy as it may sound, it really is very well balanced, the malt sweetness is there, and the hops play off it to perfection, giving a smoothness that belies its, calculated, 125 IBU.

In short, this is a very drinkable beer, especially given its strength and the amount of hops that went into it, and from a brewing perspective, one of the best beers I have made in quite some time.

This post is about another homebrewer who made the beer, thanks Derek for taking part! If you also brewed the beer, post a link in the comments, or tell us how it turned out!

Old Dark Prague

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:15:00 +0000

When we think about the history of lager brewing and the evolution of beer 'styles', for want of a better word, we usually talk about how the dark lagers like Schwarzbier have been around for centuries, while Pilsner and Helles are relatively modern creations. Lager brewing didn't really become common until the 15th century, and as malting technology improved, new, paler lagers were developed, thus the history of lager is predominantly one of dark lager preceding pale.

Except in Bohemia, where it is generally accepted that the first lagers to be brewed there were pale, based on the 1840s Pilsner phenomenon which was sweeping the brewing world (hhmmm, where does this story sound familiar from?). Up until about 1890, the dark beers of Bohemia were warm fermented, the breweries took their recipes, switched to a cold fermenting yeast and essentially created the Tmavé style which makes up about 5% of modern Czech brewing production. This story is exemplified by the legendary U Fleků beer hall in Prague, whose almost stouty 13° Tmavé was warm fermented until about 1892, if I remember rightly.

I have brewed a couple of Tmavé lagers since moving to Virginia, both homebrew and at Devils Backbone, but when my best friend suggested that we do a brewing project together, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to recreate a little bit of history - and not just in terms of he and I sitting on a balcony necking beer, like we did in Prague back in 1999/2000. I already had an idea for a recipe in my head and my friend liked the look of it, so this Saturday will be our first joint brewday when he gets down here from DC way.

The beer is being called Staropražské Tmavé Pivo, which translates as 'Old Prague Dark Beer', and the recipe is:

76% Bohemian Pilsner Malt
22% CaraMunich II
2% Carafa III
7 IBU Kazbek for 90 minutes
13 IBU Saaz for 60 minutes
10 IBU Saaz for 30 minutes
Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast

The hop schedule is based on that of my favourite Czech dark lager, Kout na Šumavě's magnificent 14° Tmavé, which was itself the inspiration for Morana, the Tmavé I brewed at Devils Backbone. When it came to deciding on the yeast strain, I knew I wanted to use a European warm fermenting strain rather than a British or American, which pretty much meant going with a Kölsch or Altbier strain, and so out of pure whimsy I plumped for Cologne rather than Düsseldorf. The recipe, assuming everything goes well, should give us a beer with the following:

OG - 12.5° P (1.050)
FG - 3.3° Plato (1.013)
ABV - 4.9%
IBU - 30
SRM - 21 Brown to Dark Brown

I haven't decided whether or not to lager the beer for a couple of weeks yet, but it should be ready sometime in June either way.

The pictures in this post were taken by Mark Stewart of Black Gecko Photography when we were working on our book - The Pocket Pub Guide to Prague.

Drinking Commercial

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:25:00 +0000

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that you are a homebrewer who has decided that the time has come to 'go professional'. One of the first things that you do is form the company that will eventually be the public front of your dreams.

During the process of making your dream a reality, you write a business plan, a marketing plan, engage in a feasibility study, study the numbers and only if you are convinced you can make a living out of the business you are starting, and pay back your investors, do you move forward.

Eventually you have your location, your equipment, your staff, and your recipes. Your opening day looms and the first customer walks into your tasting room, assuming of course that you have one, and hands over money for either a flight of samples or a pint of your beer. Welcome to the world of commerce.

The word 'commercial' seems to get a bad rap in the beer world, heavily linked, as it is, to the multinational conglomerates that churn out millions of gallons of beer a year. The reality though is that every brewery, regardless of size, is commercial, for the very aim of being in business is to make a profit, without which your bills don't get paid and you end up losing everything.

All the romance, passion and craft in the world is no replacement for solid business practices coupled with professional sales and marketing activities, an area that I tend to think ranges from bloody awful to just mediocre in a sizeable swathe of breweries. I have read many brewery business plans that simply have no marketing plan or budget from the get go, which makes me wonder how the business expects people to know they exist, and no, Twitter/Facebook/Social Media Fad of the Week do not replace proper marketing.

Let's be honest people, as beer drinkers, we all drink 'commercial beer' simply by virtue of paying for it, which allows the business making it to make more, assuming they are doing everything on the business side of things well. In reality, the only non-commercial beer is homebrew.

#IHP2013 One Week Reminder

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:52:00 +0000

It has been a while since those of us that took part in this year's International Homebrew Project actually brewed our recreations of the Truman's No.4 Burton Ale from 1877.

I am sure that many of us have sampled a bottle or two as it has conditioned, for scientific and quality assurance purposes you understand.

Well, this is just a quick remember for those that brewed the beer that next Friday is the date set for blogging about how it turned out.

Naturally I will be posting about my brews - I will also review the failed version that came in at 4.5% and bears an uncanny resemblance to early 20th Century British IPAs.

In common with previous years, other brewers and bloggers should link to their posts in the comments thread to my post, and I will also tweet your links, again using the hashtag #IHP2013.

A New Starr

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:13:00 +0000

One of the benefits of working in the Starr Hill tasting room is getting to know what new beers are coming down the line for seasonals, the brewery's 'All Access' series, and other special beers such as Pro-Am for the GABF, and the annual(ish) Brew Ridge Trail collaboration beer.

Earlier in the year, at our quarterly tasting room managers meeting, we learnt that the summer seasonal for this year would be an American Pale Ale. We had heard rumour of there being a new pale ale on the horizon, and a few of us were hoping for a revival of the old Pale Ale, which I reviewed here back in 2009 (random fact, Fuggled is now 5 years old!). I was a big fan of the old Pale Ale and, like quite a few of our regular customers, a little disappointed when it was discontinued.

Another of the benefits of working in the tasting room is being able to taste beers before they are on sale to the general public, thus I acquired some of the new pale ale, which is called Grateful, an homage to our master brewer's favourite band. But what about the beer itself I hear you ask....well, it looks like this:

More of a golden colour than the old pale ale, but still with a good half inch or so of tight, white, foam. Yep, it looks like an American Pale Ale to me. In terms of aroma, you get that punchy citrus element that you would expect from a beer brewed with Centenntial, Chinook and Cascade, and sure there is a trace of pine resin, again classic, but there is something else, something different, something funky. Also in the hopping is Topaz, an Australian hop variety which has some earthiness to it, as well as the tropical fruit thing which is apparently common in Antipodean hops. Is Topaz where the beer is getting its grassiness from? By grass I don't mean the common garden stuff that makes a lawn, I am talking about special grass. Maybe it's just me, but I think it smells a bit like marijuana. So, plenty of interesting things going on in the smell department, but nobody in their right mind only smells beer, what about drinking it?

Up front and centre is a big whack of bright, tangy, citrus flavours, I wouldn't go as far as to say grapefruit, more bitter orange in my opinion, but it is there and very much a star of the show. The backing singers though are noticeable and certainly add harmony to the main attraction with a light caramel note, blended with a light toasty element which gives it just enough of something else so as not to make this just yet another hop transportation system. The body is just on the light side of medium, which makes it nicely pintable, though not really a session beer at 4.7%. I can easily see this being a regular beer in the fridge over the summer months.

So, where can you get this lovely beer? Erm, until May 1st only at the Starr Hill tasting room. Despair not though, especially those of you living in Virginia, this Saturday (4/20) is the release party at the brewery, so if you can, get along and try a very welcome addition to the Starr Hill line up.

It's Real!

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:48:00 +0000

I noticed on Friday that Ratebeer has finally caught up with the real world and accepted that Polotmavý, which is Czech for 'half dark', is a distinct beer 'style' from Vienna lagers or the more generic 'amber lager'. They describe the 'style' as follows:

'This is the amber lager style of the Czech Republic. The character that the brewery usually aims for with this style is a hybrid between the dark lager and the pale pilsner. The result has a richer malt character than the American Dark/Amber Lager/Vienna style and more hop than the Oktoberfest/Marzen style'.

While I understand what they are trying to say here, let me just clear something up, Polotmavý is not a 'hybrid' of pale lager and tmavý, which is dark lager, it is a descendent of Vienna lager. For a better idea of these beers, this is what Evan Rail says about it in the 'Good Beer Guide - Prague and the Czech Republic':

'Unlike Pilsner-style brews, which usually require extremely soft water, half-darks can be made with a higher carbonate content and can include caramel and dark malt to various degrees, as well as Pilsner malt. Extremely clear and reddish-amber in colour, they are perhaps closest to the Vienna lager invented in the 19th Century by Anton Dreher'.

Something that is important to remember with Czech brewing though is that what we in the Anglo-American centric beer world call a style, such as polotmavý, is really just a definition of the general colour of the beer. Most examples range from a rich amber to a garnet red, as such you'll see beers marketed as 'jantar' and 'granát' respectively. Remembering that fact is important, because under the current Czech brewing laws there are 4 categories of beer based on strength, each of which can be Polotmavý:

Stolní pivo or 'table beer', up to 6° Plato OG (up to 1.024 and rarer than hen's teeth)
Výčepní pivo or 'tap beer' between 7° to 10° (1.028-1.040)
Ležák or 'lager' 11° and 12° (1.044-1.048)
Speciální pivo or 'special beer' 13° and higher (1.052+)

Another thing to be aware of is that Polotmavý is not the same as a řezané, which is a blend of dark and pale beers, both should be the same gravity, to make a Czech lager equivalent of the black and tan.

As for how a Polotmavý will taste, again let me quote Evan (admittedly for the Ležák variant but applicable across the board really):

'a lightly toasted taste and some serious malt complexity followed by a balanced hop finish'.

As with most Czech beers, the hops in question are likely to be Saaz, so expect lots of that wonderful lemony, hay, grassy thing that is so characteristic of the most noble of noble hops.

To mark Polotmavý's acceptance on Ratebeer, I cracked open some of my homebrew version, which I call Dark Island Granát, on Friday afternoon, when Mrs V got home from work....

Is it 'to style' (such a bullshit phrase)? I like to think so, is it dangerously moreish to drink? Oh yes.

Caledonia Werks!

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:19:00 +0000

As I mentioned in last Friday's post, McGrady's Irish Pub in Charlottesville was planning to have a beer called Caledonia on tap for Session Beer Day. It was a beer that I had never had before, but from its description on the Williamsburg Alewerks website, I was eager to try it:

Caledonia is a session-able IPA featuring Styrian Goldings, Willamette, and Fuggle hops balanced with pale malt and crystal malts. ABV:4.5%

Once my Sunday shift at the Starr Hill tasting room was done and dusted, I headed over to McGrady's to give it a bash. Expecting a friend to join me, I grabbed a booth rather than squeezing myself into the one spare seat at the bar, and promptly ordered. I think the server may have been a touch confused by my not wanting Samuel Adams Alpine Spring, which has been my go-to beer since February. Anyway, a few minutes later the beer was sat in front of me.

I have to admit I was expecting a slightly paler beer, what I got was an ever so slightly cloudy rich amber, like orange marmelade, though minus the thick cut peel that is my preference in the marmelade world. There was not much of a head, though given a quick swirl a half head white cap appeared. The hops in the beer are three of my favourites, so I had half an idea of what the aroma would be, but wasn't really expecting the sheer intensity of the Seville orange assault on my nostrils, back behind the oranges though was a touch of toastiness and a trace of light syrup...I was looking forward to the best bit about beer, drinking the damned stuff.

Such a delicious beer can only be described with one word, balance. Yes the hops are there, bitter, fruity, fragrant and tangy, but that is not all there is to the beer. The malt weighs in with juicy sweet sugars, more of the toasty theme and a soft toffee element which just dances with the hops and spins your head as it pirouettes round and round.

Is this stuff really only 4.5%??? Caledonia is an absolute dream of a beer, let alone a session beer, and one that my friend was equally impressed by, as was the owner of McGrady's - in fact I think it is the beer we have drunk more of this week than any other, and hopefully it will become a regular on tap.

I seem to have garnered a reputation with my friends for not being a fan of pale ales, I can't imagine where they get that idea from, but when done right, and Caledonia is done emphatically right, it is a real pleasure to down a few pints of pale.

Picture credit: taken from the Williamsburg Alewerks website.

Old Mann Brown

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:30:00 +0000

At the end of next month, my parents will be flying across the Pond to come and stay with us for a month. The last time they came was in 2010, just after I had a DVT removed from my right leg, and again they stayed for a month. The big difference this time will be that we now have a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom house rather than a somewhat pokey 1 bedroom apartment. There will be no sleeping on an airbed for 4 weeks for my wife and I, and my parents won't have to feel bad about having evicted us from our room. Oh an we have a garden for them to provide free labour for - some couples have grandchildren to foist on their parents, we will have tomato plants and bean poles. I am fairly sure they are looking forward to it!

My dad, in common with a lot of men of his generation, is a Londoner. The Griffin Brewery, home of Fuller's, would still be his local brewery if he hadn't joined up at 15 and spent the next 30 odd years in the pay of HM Queenie and Sons, PLC. Dad spent a lot of time in Germany, and has something of a love for good lagers, especially Schwarzbier. However, the one beer that Dad talks about more than any other is Mann's Brown Ale, the first (if I remember rightly) modern bottled brown ale. Again if I remember rightly, modern brown ale was essentially the bottled version of draught mild.

As you can imagine, I don't get home to the UK very often and so having my parents coming to stay is something special, more so because a couple of days after they arrive it is Dad's birthday. What better then than to attempt a recreation of Mann's Brown Ale? I am planning to brew this in the next week or so, and the recipe at the moment looks like this:

80% Maris Otter
10% Caramel 120
4% Chocolate Malt
4% Wheat Malt
2% Roasted Barley
14 IBU Kent Golding for 60 minutes
6 IBU Kent Golding for 15 minutes
Windsor yeast

I am aiming for an Original Gravity of just 8.3° Plato, or 1.033, and expecting to get an abv of 3.2%, which is slightly higher than the original 2.8%. I put the recipe together based on what I have read in various sources about brown ale in general, and a couple mentioning Mann's in particular. Hopefully, Dad will like it and it will be fairly similar to what he used to drink.

Daily Liquid Bread

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:20:00 +0000

This Sunday is a special day. Well, at least it is for us drinkers of the world, for this Sunday is Session Beer Day. For those not aware of this most worthy day, it is a day to celebrate those beers which are, in my opinion, the best in the beer world, and often the most difficult to make. I am, of course, referring to session beers. Of the various drinking establishments in Charlottesville, I know for sure that McGrady's will have a selection of session beers available this weekend.

Making a return appearance is 21st Amendment's Bitter American, which is 4.4% and boasts 42 IBUs of Warrior and Cascade. I have to admit that I was not a big fan of this beer when I first had it in cans, but on tap it was a rather moreish pint and definitely worth having several rounds of, which is kind of the point of session beers.

Closer the home, McGrady's will have Caledonia from Williamsburg Alewerks. The guys at Alewerks describe this as a 'Scottish Style IPA' and it weighs in at a thoroughly sessionable 4.5%. As a British style IPA, Caledonia uses Styrian Goldings, Willamette and Fuggles for its hopping, which makes be keen to try it as they are three of my favourite hop varieties.

Sneaking a little over the upper limit of session beer as espoused by the Session Beer Project, will be Founder's All Day IPA. As with the Bitter American, this beer has 42 IBUs of American hops and while it is just a touch on the strong side for a session beer, everything I have had from Founders before has been good, so I would expect nothing less here.

Again coming closer to home, and again a touch on the strong side, it is possible that McGrady's will have the Great Outdoors Pale Ale from Three Brothers Brewing, up in Harrisonburg. Great Outdoors is described as being a 'Virginia Pale Ale that is clean, crisp and refreshing'.

There are few better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than sat in the pub with mates enjoying a few well earned rounds before heading back to the daily grind, session beers like those available at McGrady's this weekend make that idyll almost complete..

The Brewing Business

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:00:00 +0000

Let me tell you a story of a brewery.

This brewery was in the forefront of zymurgical innovation, brewed a version of a popular pale beer style that was regarded as the classic. As time passed, in order to keep up with demand for their beer, the company opened a second brewing facility. Eventually international demand for the brewery's beer lead them to contract with other breweries to produce their beer under licence. The company was a great success, they owned an iconic brand, were synonymous with the American brewing industry and eventually they were bought out by InBev.

I am sure that you have realised that the brewery in question is Anheuser-Busch and the beer was Budweiser. There are though parallels, I think, between the history of Anheuser-Busch and current events with the big craft breweries, as they build their second breweries across the US, and in the case of Samuel Adams have their iconic beer brewed in the UK under licence to Shepherd Neame.

I sometimes wonder to myself if the early, predominantly German immigrant owned, American breweries engendered the same levels of loyalty as we see among craft beer lovers today? Clearly they were doing something right as they brought the new European pale beer style to the New World and created something unique. You could argue that the pale lagers being brewed by the likes of Anheuser-Busch were the American IPAs of their day.

At this moment in the renewal of American brewing, it is perhaps more sensible, and less given to zealous hyperbole, to remember that each brewery is ultimately a business. No-one in their right mind starts a brewery if they don't believe that they can make a living from making beer.

To put it bluntly, passion doesn't pay the bills.

Lagerboy Pride!

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:22:00 +0000

If you have been following Fuggled for a while now, you will doubtless know that I am a devotee of the lager arts.

Whether pale, amber, dark or pitch black, most of my favourite beers will have been cold fermented and then lagered before packaging. I am quite happily what some breweries like to disparagingly call a 'Lagerboy'. It therefore seriously pisses me off that 'lager' is used as shorthand for lowest common denominator beer.

Lager, as I have said many times before, is a labour of love from beginning to end, especially if a brewer is going to do a decoction mash, which makes the brewday longer. Then there is the lagering of the beer itself, tying up the brewer's capital for a long period of time, whether it be 4 weeks or 90 days - did you know that a batch of 12° Budvar takes 102 days to make, 12 days in primary fermentation followed by 3 months lagering? In a world that seems to love talking about beers being made with 'passion', it takes real passion and dedication to doing things properly and give your lager the time it needs to be ready.

I have said it before, and will continue to bang the drum, but a well made lager is, in my unhumble opinion, the height of the brewers' craft. Sure you can make your triple black IPA aged in soured gorilla snot barrels, but if a brewer is incapable of making a clean, crisp, refreshing and flavourful pale lager then are they really all that great, despite the ravings of those advocating the rating of beer?

Using the term 'lager' as a cover all for the lowest common denominator brews churned out by multinational breweries does a disservice to a family of beers as diverse and varied as ales. Whether drinking a Bohemian Pilsner packed with the flavours and aromas of Saaz, downing a pint of Schwarzbier with its clean roastiness, or supping gently on a powerful yet balanced Baltic Porter, there is little in life as satisfying as well made lager, where the brewer has nowhere to hide flaws.

So brewery marketing departments, cut it out with the lager hating, beer geeks, cut it out with phrases like 'it's good, for a pilsner'.

To paraphrase a cliche from self-help groups....my name is Velky Al, and I'm a Lagerboy.

Is It Still Worth It?

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:02:00 +0000

Wandering around one of the local supermarkets the other day, I instinctively took a detour down the booze aisle. I haven't been buying beer in the shops much lately, preferring to either have a few pints in the pub or when I am drinking at home mostly drink my homebrew and work my way through the cellar. What I saw in the beer aisle was quite the eye opener. Six packs of 'craft beer' in this neck of the woods seem to have jumped in price to $9.99. It didn't matter whether the beer was from one of our local breweries or from further afield, once you add on sales tax, a six pack of beer will now set you back more than $10.

Price, it seems, is becoming an issue in the craft beer world, with 22oz bottles of specials routinely costing between $8 and $10 by themselves, regardless of strength and ingredients, unless of course you are buying the big bottles of standard beers from the likes of Sierra Nevada, New Belgium and Samuel Adams. Of course smaller brewers can't enjoy the economies of scale that are afforded to the bigger brewers, and I really think we need to dispense with the myth that the major craft beer brands are anything but big brewers, not multinationals (yet) for sure, but still not exactly brewing on 10 barrel kits for their local markets any more.

I am perfectly open to the idea that I am more sensitive to price at the moment, given my lack of full time employment, but I wonder at times if the craft beer industry is in danger of pricing itself out of the market? I have to admit that prices are getting to the point that I seriously have to consider whether it is worth spending $10 for a 6 pack of craft beer or going Trader Joe's and getting their Gordon Biersch brewed German style beers for about $6, or their Unibroue made Belgian style ales at a third of the price.

Usually, it seems to me, when price is mentioned with regards to beer it is often in the context of the so-called 'wine-ification' of beer, because obviously bigger bottles and higher prices make it more like wine. As I discussed last week, this view, I believe, does a disservice to both beer and wine. Better, I would suggest, is to talk about the 'gentrification' of beer, like run down neighbourhoods into which artists and the like move and start making it a happening place to live, followed by the hipsters and eventually the more monied folks wanting the cachet of living there. There are certain segments of craft beer which are very much in the final phase, they have a certain level of cool which people want to be part of, and so up go the prices.

I have no problem with brewers making a living, perhaps in the US context part of the problem of price is really the three tier system, and the fact that a keg of a big hitting IPA will cost the same as a German Pilsner rather than having price based on ABV. Taking that into account though, it baffles me at times why more brewers don't push their session beers more, they are cheaper to make and the profit margin under such a single price system is much higher.

What then do you think is a sensible, fair price for a six pack of regular beer in the shops?

Brewer of the Week

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:56:00 +0000

For today's Brewer of the Week interview we are staying in the South Hemisphere, though in a part of the world distinctly warmer than the Falkland Islands. In another first for Fuggled, we head round the Pacific to New South Wales, in Australia. So without further ado, I give you Chris from 4 Pines Brewing Company...

Name: Chris Willcock
Brewery: 4 Pines

How did you get into brewing as a career?

A science degree and a healthy appreciation for alcohol. I actually really fell in love with beer whilst wagging seminars during a genetics convention in Freemantle. The Little Creatures Brewery had me hooked.

What is the most important characteristic of a brewer?

An acceptance that there is always more that can be learnt about beer and brewing, no matter your experience.

Before being a professional brewer, did you homebrew? If so, how many of your homebrew recipes have you converted to full scale production?

I did homebrew a little, but never all-grain until I learned the tricks in my first professional job. Most of my recipe development since then has been done on the job. At 4 Pines we have the fantastic luxury of a 500L pub system to complement our new 5000L brewhouse up the road in Brookvale. We have a lot of opportunities to experiment with new ingredients and recipes.

If you did homebrew, do you still?

Any homebrew I do these days tends to be just for fun. Often with friends and pretty unscientific.

What is your favourite beer to brew?

Anything new is always the most fun.

If you have worked in other breweries, which other beer did you enjoy brewing, and why?

I worked at the old and new Bluetongue Breweries in Newcastle and Warnervale. I still believe the Pilsner is an exceptional beer.

Of the beers you brew, which is your favourite to drink?

I honestly enjoy each of the 4 Pines core range equally. But if you’re making me choose between them, the Pale Ale is probably my beer of choice at this very moment. In fact, I think I’ve got a few cold in the fridge…

How important is authenticity when making a new beer, in terms of flavour, ingredients and method?

Attention to detail on method and ingredients definitely makes a huge difference to the final beer quality. I’m a big proponent of good yeast management in particular.

If you were to do a collaborative beer, which brewery would you most like to work with and why?

There are some exciting new breweries popping up around Sydney. Young & Henry’s or Riverside would both be great to get together with in the interest of promoting the up-and-coming scene here.

Which beer, other than your own, do you wish you had invented?

I had the pleasure of sampling the entire barrel-aged range at the Russian River brewpub while in California last year. Every one of those beers is genius.

Missing the Point? Twice?

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:30:00 +0000

I consider myself lucky.

As an army brat I moved around a lot, we lived in Germany for a long time, as well as various places in the United Kingdom. When I became an adult I carried on moving, first from my home in the Hebrides to Birmingham, to study, then eventually to Prague and now I am in the US, who knows where is next? I have visited many countries, Belarus, Romania, and France to name a few. I have drunk in bars and pubs in three continents and something is true in almost every culture I have experienced, alcohol is part of life.

Whether sat in a pub in Dublin, drinking stout and listening to old fellas lamenting the falling standards of bar staff, a wine bar in Bergerac, eating pig snout salad, or a club in Minsk, downing shots of vodka, booze is an essential part of being human. Some will claim that beer was an essential player in the evolution of civilisation, I tend to think it is broader than that, it was alcohol in general.

I was planning to write a post today bemoaning the wine-ification of beer and how those that advocate the gentrification of our favourite drink are missing the point of beer when it hit me, they are also missing the point of wine itself, and spirits. Let me give you an example, if you take a trip to the south eastern part of the Czech Republic, Moravia, you will find row after row of vines, sometimes it seems like everyone has their own sklep - an underground cellar for aging their wine. Wine in Moravia, just as with beer in Bohemia, is deeply unpretentious, it is just the alcohol of choice for that part of the Czech Republic.

Coming away from the Czech lands, I am reminded of being in a small bar in Sarlat-la-Canéda in the Dordogne region of France. Mrs V and I were squeezed into this room that couldn't have been much bigger than my deck (140 sq ft, or 13m2), we were drinking beer, while everyone else was drinking a local wine, I know, I know, I am terrible and uncouth. There was no deep inhaling of the aromas, swirling the glass to 'release the aromatics' or any other daft fripperies that go on, just local people drinking local wine and enjoying each other's company. Thankfully Mrs V and I have found a vineyard near us which is likewise very unpretentious and has nice wines.

Wine, just like beer, is an every man drink - enjoyed by peasants and presidents throughout the ages in those places where viticulture thrives. The problem is clearly not the drink itself, but rather the people that want to take it away from its heartland and make it something aspirational, something inspirational and ultimately invest in it a meaning that is entirely irrational. Such people have missed the point of wine and beer, much to the detriment of both.

A Day for Drinkers

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:57:00 +0000

I have a confession to make. I broke my 'no going to the pub on St Patrick's Day' rule last night. having had a fairly quiet shift at the Starr Hill tasting room, a colleague and I popped into McGrady's a quick pint - seriously, the shift was insanely quiet, apparently the lure of half price pints of America's most award winning dry stout was not strong enough. I have two main reasons for not darkening the door of a pub on March 17th each year, one of which I covered in this post, and the other being the pub is packed with people who rarely if ever go. St Patrick's Day, or International Amateur Drinkers Day as some refer to it, is like Midnight Mass for many people, the one time of the year when they actually attend.

Thankfully the beer drinking day for regular pub goers is just around the corner, because April 7th is Session Beer Day. I am sure most of you already know the definition of 'session' beer, as proposed by Lew Bryson and thoroughly approved of by me (I am sure Lew sleeps all the more soundly for knowing that), just in case though a session beer is:

4.5% alcohol by volume or less
flavorful enough to be interesting
balanced enough for multiple pints
conducive to conversation
reasonably priced

Session beers are an essential part, in my unhumble opinion, of a good pub, given that pubs are places where people go to meet friends, talk, play pool, all over a few pints of something tasty. I guess this is one of the reasons I fail to understand the mindset of people who want 'more bang for their buck' and drink several pints of imperial IPA because it gets them drunk quicker. While beer is an intoxicant, I am not convinced that beer 'culture', and especially pub culture, is about getting trashed, it's about being social, and beer lubricates the sociability of the scene.

Anyway, last year both Beer Run and McGrady's here in Charlottesville had a decent selection of session beer, including Williams Brothers simply wonderful Scottish Session Ale, which I think I drank McGrady's out of last year. Hopefully this year will see more session beers on tap as well as more pubs having something available. Although this ad is for whisky, I love one line in particular.....'all hail to drinking man!' (or woman, obviously, yes thank you Stan)

What is IPA?

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:15:00 +0000

When I managed to screw up my first attempt at the International Homebrew Project Burton Ale I was loathe to ditch all that wort and start fresh, so I chucked in a packet of Munton's yeast and decided to see what came out.

The other day I got round to bottling both that and the batch which hit the nail squarely on the head. I say the first batch was messed up, but in reality it just had less fermentable sugar from the mash than I wanted. In reality I had a 4.5% abv pale ale with an estimated IBU rating well north of 100. When I tasted the sample I took for a gravity reading I was actually quite surprised that my tongue didn't disintegrate, it was quite nice - and I say that as an avowed advocate of balance in my beer. This got me thinking, a dangerous pastime to be sure, and so I calculated that I had the equivalent of about 2.25 lbs of hops per barrel in my beer and whisked a quick email away to Ron to see if there was any precedent in history for a relatively low gravity, super hopped up beer. I am sure you have guessed already, there is.

India Pale Ale, that darling of the modern brewing industry and victim of an almost Protestantesque ignorance of a large chunk of its own history (for those not sure what I mean, for many Protestant denominations, Church History skips from about 313 AD to the late 16th Century without covering 1300 years of doctrinal development and ecclesiastical wranglings). For many in the beer world IPA was invented in the 18th century by George Hodgson to survive the long trip India, it then disappeared entirely until the nascent American brewing scene revived it and claimed it as its own. Shame the whole premise is utter bollocks, but why let facts get in the way of a good story?

One thing that gets lost in the miasma of misinformation and mythology is that IPA lingered in British brewing for a very long time before becoming the hop bomb it is today. At the turn of the 20th Century, British brewers were still making beers that they called IPA. Indeed, Whitbread brewed, in 1902, an IPA with an Original Gravity of 'just' 1.050, an ABV of 4.9%, and 2.65 pounds of hops per barrel. I am fairly sure that if a modern brewery made such a beer, it would be lauded as 'innovative' and 'ground breaking' or some such silly nonsense.

The truth of the matter is that beer styles evolve, as we saw with the development of Burton Ale, and that a modern beer like Green King IPA is no more or less of a 'traditional' IPA than Worthington White Shield or Starr Hill's Northern Lights, they are all expressions of the same tradition, just from different parts of the timeline.

Kind of makes you wonder what's the point of style guidelines and websites that advocate the rating of beer?

A Sense of Place

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:53:00 +0000

Terroir, as I sure many of you already know, is a term commonly used to describe the interaction between the geological, geographical and climatological aspects of a place and the agricultural produce that grows there. I have to admit that I am not convinced about the use of the term 'terroir' when it comes to beer, given that beer is more of an industrial product than an agricultural one.

Something that is evident though is that beer does have a sense of place. This sense of place has come into sharp relief recently with the Brewers Association announcement that Grätzer is now included in the style guidelines used for the Great American Beer Festival, and other competitions. I am not going to get into the wrongness of the defined guidelines, Ron has done a sterling work on that front already, but I have seen a few comments around the name of the beer.

Grätzer is the German name for a beer also known as Grodziskie Piwo, which is the Polish equivalent. As the town from which the beer sprang is in modern day Poland, Grodzisk Wielkopolski since you ask, quite why the German name was chosen is beyond me, perhaps the committee were intimidated by the Polish name? Either way the name means exactly the same in both languages, 'beer from Grätz/Grodzisk'.

Beer's sense of place comes not just from the climate, geography and geology of the place where the raw materials are grown, but from the people and place that convert raw materials into something drinkable, raw materials that have an infinitely small chance of becoming useful to a brewer through the course of nature (quite how chocolate malt would occur in nature is beyond me). As such, the historic beer styles which come with an appellation are mostly the products of urban life - Pilsner, Burton Ale, London Porter, Kölsch, even the new/old stlye of Adambier was once known as Dortmunder Altbier.

In defining the styles that are named for these urban centres of brewing excellence, I tend to think that the final word should always belong to the practices, ingredients and methods used in that place. Would a brewer from Grodzisk recognise the Brewers Association 'Grätzer' style as being something like that which was made in his town?

Brewer of the Week

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 12:01:00 +0000

For this first Brewer of the Week interview of 2013 we head down to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, a group of islands that whenever I see pictures of them remind me of my home back in the Hebrides, but with penguins as an added bonus. This year I want to have as many interviews as possible with brewers working in remote locations, plying their trade for their local community, so if you know of any such breweries, drop me a line. Anyway, on with the interview...

Name: Jeff Halliday
Brewery: Falkland Beerworks

How did you get into brewing as a career?

By realizing that brewing commercial quality beer can be achieved with the limited resources that I have in the Falklands.

What is the most important characteristic of a brewer?

Be open minded with your recipes and understand that what some people like may not always be what you like.

Before being a professional brewer, did you homebrew? If so, how many of your homebrew recipes have you converted to full-scale production?

I do not rate myself as a professional brewer; I have only been brewing commercially since March 2012, and in small quantities after gaining my Certificate in Practical Brewing from Brewlab in Sunderland. I have never got into home brewing and all the recipes that I use are my own designs gained from knowledge learnt at Brewlab.

If you did homebrew, do you still?

Never have done but I do keep the odd poly pin for my own consumption.

What is your favorite beer to brew?

This would be Longdon Pride best bitter. It is named after one of the mountains near Stanley where during the conflict between Britain and Argentina in 1982 there was a large battle where many members of the Third Battalion Parachute Regiment were killed or injured to help liberate us from the Argentines. Whenever I brew this beer it helps me to remember the sacrifice that many brave men and women paid so that we can live in our home under the flag that we desire.

If you have worked in other breweries, which other beer did you enjoy brewing, and why?

I have never worked in another brewery, although I spent a day while at Brewlab with the head brewer Rob from Mordue Brewery I can't remember what we were brewing, it was a fun day.

Of the beers you brew, which is your favorite to drink?

This is quite hard to answer, I like them all but I must admit that I do prefer the darker beers that I brew, so I would have to say Black Tarn, which is a 3.9% dark mild. I have yet to sample my Peat Cutter Oatmeal Stout, which will not be ready for a couple of weeks. I may have a new favorite.

How important is authenticity when making a new beer, in terms of flavour, ingredients and method?

I totally believe in authenticity throughout the entire brewing process, but do not let this blinker you into not experimenting from time to time.

If you were to do a collaborative beer, which brewery would you most like to work with and why?

I would like to do something with Shepherd Neame Brewery, as they have already designed a beer with a Falkland theme called Falkland Ale. This was brewed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the liberation of the Falklands from Argentine occupation. All profits go to two separate Falkland veteran charities, SAMA 82 and Falklands Veterans Foundation.

Which beer, other than your own, do you wish you had invented?

Budweiser. Not because I like it, but because I would be a very rich man by now.

In Praise of Core Beers

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:29:00 +0000

One of the things I like about going to places like Devils Backbone and Blue Mountain is being able to walk through the doors in full assurance that I will be able to drink a beer that I will enjoy. It's not just a question of knowing that the brewers are very good at their jobs, which most certainly they are, but also because the breweries have a very strong core line up of beers.

Imagine then a scene, if you will. You walk through the doors of Blue Mountain Brewery, take a moment to take in the view, it really is stunning, and you park yourself at the bar. As you read the beer list you realise that you don't fancy any of the special or seasonal beers that are on tap, but you are comforted because you know that the Blue Mountain Classic Lager will be available and will be excellent. I realise that in this little tale I am assuming the drinker likes lager as much as I do, though the pale ale drinker could equally be happy with Full Nelson. I also realise that the visitor in this scenario is likely to be a repeat customer, a first timer would be recommended to get a sample flight. The same scene could easily be played out at Devils Backbone, where a pint of Vienna Lager never goes amiss. Actually, I am sure that in many brewpubs and brewery tasting rooms you could see this situation occur time and time again, and to my mind it is a sign of a good brewing business.

The thing that such breweries share is a core range of beers which are always available and and always good. It is a fact of life that beer is often a comfort, and comfort is often found in the familiar, the tried and tested. More often than not I find myself in a situation where all I want is a beer to unwind with, I don't want to think about it, I don't want to ruminate on the hop aroma, the strange and exotic ingredients that get chucked in, I just want a pint that I know will satisfy. This is where the core range comes in. Sure, the seasonals and specials might garner higher ratings on those websites that advocate such behaviour, but it is the core range that are the bedrock of a brewery and without a strong core, the brewery is on sinking sand.

Devils Backbone in Blighty

noreply@blogger.com (Velky Al) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:32:00 +0000

To say I am a fan of Devils Backbone would be an understatement. I love their beer, I love going down to the brewpub, though I don't get down there as often as I would like these days, and I think Jason is a top brewer and a top, top bloke to boot.

Now all you lucky British drinkers will have the opportunity to taste Jason's beer, as part of the J.D. Wetherspoon International Real Ale Festival, which runs from April 2nd to 21st.

According to the brochure for the event, Jason is brewing an American Amber Ale, which is described as being a:

medium-bodied beer is a reddish-amber colour, with floral citrus hop aromas leading to full malt and hop flavours, underscored by a toasted malt backbone.

Knowing Jason's elan for making tasty beer, I am sure it will be a treat and well worth hunting out.