Travel – Chris Hall

#EBBC15 – Belgian Family Brewers and the Future of Belgian Beer Culture

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At the European Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference (EBBC) in Brussels today, glasses of gueuze, tripel and blond clink and gurgle as they are filled. Conversation rolls in waves, and each one covers the same issue: the Belgian Family Brewers (BFB) have announced a new campaign to define Belgian brewing as a family tradition on a par to those around the world. The campaign will include print and online advertising and in-trade events, seeking to educate consumers about just how seriously the profession of brewing is seen in Belgium, but also seeks to secure, in a roundabout way, a common understanding of what a ‘proper’ Belgian brewer is: one that is a BFB member – an historic, family-owned business.

Slides comparing brewing in Belgium to salsa dancing in Cuba, rodeo in the United States, bullfighting in Spain and even the Carnival dancers of Brazil reveal a slightly limited, awkward and stereotypical worldview, but the intention is clear. It’s a single-minded campaign, trying to show the heart and soul in Belgian brewing in way the country has not seen before, but one that raises many questions about the BFB’s long-term intentions.

So what is the BFB and how is this a change from its current campaigning? The BFB is a non-profit organisation and represents 22 Belgian, family-owned breweries and has existed since 2007, created with the aim of ‘passing on knowledge’, in real terms protecting the status of its members and marketing their credibility to consumers (in a way not dissimilar to the Authentic Trappist Product stamp on Trappist brewery beers). Most crucially, its members must have brewed beer in Belgium for at least 50 years.

This time criteria fascinates me, and it sets the BFB apart from many other such organisations of which I’m aware. The aim to preserve heritage has been made abundantly clear to EBBC attendees, but like any brewery in the past 20 years, many of them have adopted a number of recent fashionable styles and methods to benefit from the increased interest from consumers in speciality beer styles. Much of this heritage, whilst thought be many hundreds of years old, is often based on styles from the 20th century at the earliest. ‘Authenticity’ is another term which they are defining with their own set of criteria – unsurprisingly they choose that it means a family business owning its own brewery.

The conference has seen the BFB set its own narrative; explain in unmistakeable terms that it is the champion of ‘proper’ Belgian beer. The curiously grandiose phrase ‘Heritage Guardians’ has been injected quite deliberately into panel discussions, presentations and beer tastings. The phrase reminds me, in a strange sort of way, of something BrewDog might announce if was a 7th generation blond and oud bruin brewer. There can be no doubt that we have been carefully warmed up for this announcement: a smattering of words such as ‘preservation’, ‘innovation’, ‘passion’ and – inevitably – ‘craft’, have been deployed with press-release-like precision, put into the mouths of commercial directors and brewmasters with rehearsed annunciation and repetition.

Of course, as the leading Belgian organisation representing beer that bloggers would likely be interested in, the BFB’s headline sponsorship of the EBBC in Brussels is far from surprising. A representative attended last year’s conference in Dublin with the express intention of gauging the likelihood of 2015’s taking place in Brussels. But more interestingly, the BFB has timed its press conference for the conference attendees arrival. An obvious choice if they wish to best communicate their message, undoubtedly, but the events taking place throughout the conference have been designed to help convince attendees of the BFB member breweries’ artisan and craft credentials. The almost breathless pace of the conference so far has astonished many attendees, but also hinted at an agenda to represent the maximum number of BFB members and their beers in a shortest possible time for a specific reason; to make a specific case in time for the announcement of its new campaign.

Has the case been made successfully? My own personal understanding of the organisation and the Belgian beer industry has been greatly expanded, but the more I have learned, the more questions I have. There’s definitely a sense of banding together to preserve heritage, a laudable aim, but also a feeling that these are proud, inflexible dynasties clinging on to businesses that stretch back hundreds of years. They have every right to preserve what they have built, and they seem to feel they are being open by showing us their beers and their brewmasters, but there’s a clear discomfort about the growing popularity of brewers in Belgium who are not BFB members. ‘Gypsy’ or cuckoo brewers who contract brew on other brewers’ equipment, and those who make great beer but lack the 50-year-heritage to be members, are starting to gain acclaim, and are benefiting at home and overseas from the credentials and reputation of being Belgian.

This clearly riles the BFB, and this new campaign to enforce the ‘family tradition’ message may be the beginnings of a longer-term strategy to preserve their place among self-consciously ‘craft brewers’ in Belgium.

The pride in its achievements – and fear of being forgotten – motivating this organisation is a curious thing to observe and understand. BFBF members delight in reeling off the awards and history of one of their beers, but they clearly struggle to see how they fit into what is currently happening in the world of beer. If the BFB wants to convince the world that their version of Belgian brewing culture is primary, they must learn that traditions do not simply spring out of the ground. They are grown, and acting more inclusively towards newer brewers is an absolute must if they wish to be taken seriously, and if they wish for their traditions to survive, and thrive in the future.

The Golden Tiger

u Zlateho Tygra

Another pint of Pilsner lands on the table and another mark is made on our card. The server plonks down further pints wherever a glass is in danger of becoming empty, or rather, less than 1/4 full. He then returns to his place at the bar and starts pouring again. Every now and again a tourist will enter and try to order at the bar, only to be told in Czech to ‘sit the f*** down’ (if, indeed, a seat is available). This is more than table service, this is fresh pints on demand before you even ask for them, at Prague’s U Zlatého tygra (The Golden Tiger).

Once more, our mugs of fresh Pilsner clunk together with the satisfyingly hefty sound of marble statues butting heads. Syllabub-like foam packed with fragrant hop oils gives way to the bright, sweet and sharp palate, and conversation fills in the gaps between mouthfuls of beer. The Golden Tiger is pure beer culture, and whilst it is quintessentially Czech, it is a pub that anyone in Northern Europe will find both immediately familiar and refreshingly simple.

As it’s such a singular pub in Prague, it’s fitting that there’s only a single beer available: Pilsner Urquell (40 Czech krone or about £1.15 for 0.5l). In the UK, such an arrangement would typically indicate a heavily branded corporate lounge, the kind typically seen in lager adverts on TV. In reality, The Golden Tiger has more in common with my dad’s village boozer, including its grudging acceptance of non-locals proving they don’t take up too much room. It’s almost exclusively populated by men, sat shoulder to shoulder around long tables on long benches. The walls are decked with Pilsner breweriana and coat hooks at frequent intervals. Vaulted ceilings, stained glass and golden iconography suggest a religious following, but it just feels so pubby. You come in, you take your coat off, you sit, you drink. Eventually, you might leave, but the beer is just so good.

Unlike so many before it, Pilsner Urquell itself has been left largely untouched by the takeover of a multi-national. Here in its homeland, it is enjoyed by the half-litre with a good inch of head, and drank fairly briskly. Czechs believe the beer’s character dies the second its head recedes to expose the beer beneath to light (about twenty minutes), and would rather order another pint than sup the imperfect dregs. That zealous attitude towards beer, appreciating it through drinking it, is truly Czech.

The building the pub is in dates back to the 14th or 15th century, and there is record of it as a beer hall from 1816, thought it is likely to have been in similar use earlier than that, since it gained its distinctive wall relief of a tiger in 1702. It has gained a storied history and a reputation for truly ‘democratic’ drinking (the mayor sits beside a common labourer, who sits beside a famous writer, who is chatting to a visiting Bill Clinton and so on). But unlike many other extremely old pubs I’ve visited, The Golden Tiger feels like a real pub, not just an interactive museum exhibit. I try to judge these historic places in much the same way as a pub built yesterday: not on what it’s supposed to be like, or what its history is, but what it’s like right now, that very moment as a take my seat with a beer.

Pubs after all are buildings that generate atmosphere, whether they intend to or not. Controlling that atmosphere can be difficult and depend on myriad criteria, but that tangible sense of vibe and energy and other such words is what defines the place. The Golden Tiger, with no eclectic beer range or unusual concept relies almost solely on its atmosphere, which is incredible. It actually seems to breathe somehow, with life and noise and beer, and I think that has a lot to do with the rhythm of the place.

As a party arrives and takes seats, the server arrives with a sufficient number of pints of Pilsner and places a piece of card with the equivalent number of marks on it on the table. As more pints arrive, more marks are made on the card. To end the cycle, one must almost physically arrest the bartender in the act, and make it clear that you want your bill settled. Yet most of the time, when the chap returns, looks that say “one more?” are exchanged, answered by the thunk of more mugs of beer. That rhythm of beers hitting the table and the burble of conversation becomes a sort of music, a soundtrack to a flawless scene played over and over for everyone’s enjoyment.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man arrive and hang his shiny, multi-coloured tracksuit jacket on the coat hook. On the hook next to it he hangs a thin, flimsy red-and-white striped plastic bag, universally a symbol of a market purchase. He nods greeting to his friend, then looks over his shoulder as if to check his freshly-bought treasures are still there. I can see them through the thin bag: several vinyls, the one at the front bearing the logo of Def Leppard. This is probably one of the chaps Bill Clinton chatted to. I can just tell. I look back to my beer, and on cue the barman arrives with more mugs of Pilsner.

That moment left a strong imprint on my mind. When I reach the last few gulps of a great pint of Pilsner now, wherever I might be, I wonder if I’ll see a golden tiger at the bottom, a glimpse of a Def Leppard record, and look to see if someone is bringing me a fresh glass.

U Zlatého tygra

Husova 17
110 00 Praha 1
Česká republika

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My trip to Prague was sponsored by the generous hospitality of Pilsner Urquell and Mark Dredge, their Beer Correspondent.

Buried Deep: Pilsen and Pilsner Urquell

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Back in September, I was invited to visit the Pilsner Urquell brewery by Mark Dredge. Whilst there I had a number of Beer Moments, and one of the biggest was had at the brewery itself in Plzeň, Česká republika (from here on: Pilsen, Czech Republic).

The cellars below the Pilsner Urquell brewery seem to go on forever. Some are collapsed, some chained off, others perfectly intact. One cavernous room once held tonnes of ice, the meltwater flowing through the cellars and the air recirculating to maintain the ideal lagering temperature. These cellars, covering the same area as the town-sized brewery complex itself above ground, would have been just as busy if not busier than the brewery above. A hundred years ago, the thunder of rolling oaken vats would have been the soundtrack to the work of 7000 coopers making 5000 wooden barrels a day below the earth.

Back in 2014, it feels like walking through the bones of some dead leviathan. There are five miles of these tunnels, twenty metres below the ground at their deepest. It’s so easy to think of breweries as a living thing – their veins and arteries pumping lifeblood from one metal organ to the next, procreating in its own unique way – but down here in the cellars, there’s something more crypt-like and supernatural in the atmosphere. Not a sense of death, but of life after death, returning ever stronger, keeping some spirit of what it means to be Pilsner alive in the soul of every oaken timber of every 40 hectolitre barrel. We are warned about the Devil In The Cellars – a ghoulish rock formation down here that’s currently chained off for undisclosed safety reasons.

Our group is led through the darkness by Robert Lobovsky, a native of Pilsen who, after spending his formative years abroad, returned to his homeland and petitioned Pilsner Urquell to give him a job. His job now (Beer Master) is to tell the beer’s story around the world, the story of a beer that to him was part of his Czech identity when he was growing up in Australia. To be Czech means to be from a nation of brewing, and the creation of Pilsner is the Czech’s gift to the world.

On a hill at the highest point of the brewery site, and the city itself, stands a 100 metre high water tower, containing two vast metal tanks that once held the brewery’s water. Below that tower, the ground is seeped with ancient blood. As the highest point in the city, it was the favoured spot for public executions in bygone ages. The brewery’s water is still drawn from the same 100 metre deep well nearby. We joke that the blood and bones of traitors gives the beer its distinct taste but it was that simple, soft water, drawn from 100 metres below ground to sit 100 metres above it, which became the body of one of the world’s most important beers.

Pilsner’s beginning is an unusually precise one in comparison to many other beer styles. I’m so used to bookending historical accounts of beer’s origins with ‘Sources indicate…’ and ‘…or so it is believed’ that Pilsner Urquell’s story seems starkly rigid and underlined in fact by comparison. For one, we have an official origin story for our opening scene: the burghers (property owning citizens) of Pilsen pouring away 36 barrels of beer in the town square in protest against the poor quality brews being made, and forming a co-operative venture that built the brewery used by Joseph Groll to brew the first pale lager beer. We even have an exact date when the first batch was ready and tasted: 11 November 1842. It all seems so black and white – and I have read criticism of this origin story – but as stories go it remains compelling.

Back in the cellars, it’s with barely concealed excitement that I pour myself a glass of unpasteurised, unfiltered Pilsner from the 40 hectolitre wooden vat. These things weigh a few tonnes even when they’re empty, and every gram of that weight and every year of this beer’s history is weighing down on my mind and on my fingers as I turn that tap handle. It pours like frothy milk at first, eventually churning into a hazy, golden syrup-coloured liquid bright with life. I hold the glass to the dim lights in the cellar, peering into its thick, cloudy, burnished gold colour, topped with an ice-cream scoop of foam the texture of whipped egg whites. I’m expecting something special. Of course I am. Its silky, luscious palate disarms me, that dab of butterscotch so important to its character becomes caramel, then lemon tart, but there’s also a gripping, oily, herbal bitterness that lifts the entire palate up to meet it. It’s raw and alive. It’s perfect.

So much is said about the authenticity of the beer, how closely it compares to its original iterations, with the same culture of yeast, triple decoction, wooden vat maturation and so on. Up until the moment I tasted the beer, it was all I could think about: I wanted to be sent back in time with a sip, to understand and truly comprehend a moment of flavour from a bygone age.

When I tasted it, all those daydreams were shattered, blown to pieces by the sheer excellence of the beer in the glass. We returned later for more, and all I could think about that second time was not how amazing that beer must have seemed the first time it was made, but just how amazing it tastes right now. That’s why a portion of Pilsner Urquell is still matured this way, to taste-match the conventional batches matured in metal, so that they know it still tastes the same.

Like the cellars, this beer’s legacy seems to go on forever. It was the first pale lager beer, so it had little competition at the time, but in the lager-soaked present, it remains head and shoulders above so many lesser Světlý Ležáks (other Czech pale lagers) it shares a country with and the hundreds of foreign imitators. It remains The Pilsner. It’s buried deep.

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Of course, there’s a great deal more to Czech beer culture than just one beer, and I’ll try to cover more of it in a couple of future posts. Thanks to Mark Dredge and Pilsner Urquell for their hospitality.

Four Nations of Beer: Epilogue

In June, I decided to write about the beer culture in four countries based on my visits to four very different events. The resulting posts (starring the W-Ales Beer Festival, the Bermondsey Beer Mile, BrewDog’s Punk AGM 2014 and the European Beer Bloggers Conference in Dublin) left me with fascinating glimpses into a period of change in each place. Afterwards, I tried to piece it all together. What did it all mean?

I went into Four Nations of Beer willingly blind, and wrote four posts with a theme that should have seemed obvious to me from the outset: transition (note those forward-leaning letters, grasping at the future). Whether it was Wales outgrowing its current phase of ‘craft’ growth, London stepping into a more established period, BrewDog maturing while struggling to shake off the difficulties of growing so quickly, or the rapid and prosperous blooming of Irish craft beer, I saw cities and beer scenes with beer DNA mutating and evolving into something new, and usually something better.

It’s been an exciting series of experiences. Exciting is a word I use too often – but damn it if there isn’t emotional electricity in the beer scene right now. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing four countries worth of drinking in a month to anyone, though. Returning to the humdrum of an office day job after the euphoria of Dublin left me listless and frustrated, but it’s certainly educated me a great deal.

Reassuringly, I had similar conversations with people in each of these places, about brewing being artistry rather than manufacturing, and the values of honesty and perseverance. In Dublin, I even heard Dean McGuiness mention these words, and others besides, in what he deemed to be a set of values that Irish craft brewers should adhere to. It feels like the nebulous beginnings to a definition for ‘craft beer’, but nothing so modish or self-serving, more of an aspirational charter maybe. It has to be something that is of benefit to people first, industry second, or we will quickly get into a Some Beers Are More Equal Than Others situation.

With all of that hope came more than a little of The Fear, of losing what we love so much, of reach exceeding grasp and of rogue elements bringing the whole house of cards down upon itself. If a rich, diverse and exciting beer scene across the British Isles is worth fighting for, then it’s worth working for too, to build something that will last. That something doesn’t need to be a crowd-funding initiative, a state of the art brewery, a new word for ‘craft’ or a even a successful, long-running beer festival. It could simply be a beer that becomes an idea, a symbol that lasts the test of time.

My month of beer travel ended in the Mad Bishop and Bear in Paddington station. It was there that I bade farewell to Craig Heap, who was present at the beginning and ending chapters of my tour. If there was any noticeable change in me in the intervening month (presumably a paunch, sallow skin and a thousand yard stare), he didn’t mention it. We sat in a corner at a small table by the bar, occasionally interrupted by the cries and shouts of football fans watching the projector screen. We drank pints of cask beer, pale golden ales of bright, zippy flavours that reminded us of our time in Yorkshire as students, where the real ale microbrewery revolution had preceded its craft cousin by several years.

As comforting as this was, after the chocolate porters, DIPAs and varieties of saisons blasting my palate left, right and diagonally over thirty days, the simple charms of a hand-pulled pale ale disarmed me. I’d become accustomed to picking out the effects of barrel ageing, hopping in different stages of brewing, the blending of styles and so on. The once-obvious mineral, chalky note of Portobello Pale was a flavour with no name at first, and I had to confer with Craig to retrieve the word from my brain.

I felt suddenly uncertain, unstuck like Billy Pilgrim, unsure of myself and everything that had happened to me. The British Isles had done their zymurgical utmost to me. I felt spent, yet energised; pummelled internally, yet externally still thirsty for more. Wild-eyed, baffled, each eyeball moving independently of the other, each half of brain ignorant of its neighbour, I felt adrift. I needed an anchor.

It occurred to me then, glancing at the chalkboard that explained when each cask ale had been put on to serve (more of this sort of thing, please), that only one beer could ground me. I needed a hard factory reset to put me back in the time space continuum.

When Craig placed the pint of ESB in front of me, I could already feel it working on my synapses. My retinas adjusted to the burning amber hue, tightly formed bubbles and total clarity. My olfactory receptors began to recalibrate, detecting the characteristic note of ever-so-slight-oxidation (a soft bit of sherry), warm orange marmalade on toast and a summer hedgerow.

There was no messing about – to sip it would be an unforgiveable injustice – this was deadly serious. It was incredibly important to get the beer inside me and knock the dents out from within like a malty hammer, so in it went. A hearty mouthful of it sat there, poking about, shovelling out biscuits, pepper, toffee, orange pith, making itself at home. Craig perhaps noticed my pupils dilate, colour return to my cheeks, a soft glossiness returning to my coat. Revivification.

I gulped more of this full-bodied, jumper-wearing, calloused-knuckled ale, re-acclimatising myself to London, back to Earth, back to reality with it. The Matrix contained in its utterly British DNA re-taught me how to stand up straight, take life on the chin, remember my umbrella, and hold the door open for others. That pint of ESB put my head back on, gave it a good twist, and called me a plonker for wearing those bloody white and blue WordPress sunglasses.

Does all this change, evolution, expansion, reinvention actually mean anything if we can’t build something to stand the test of time like a pint of ESB? Sometimes we need a reality check to give us the perspective we need. We need to be able to hold it in our hands, look forward, backward and know our place in the world from it. The challenge is no longer to brew the beer that can’t be replicated, but to brew the beer of the age, that everyone will wish they had brewed first. A beer that in thirty years’ time, someone can taste, and understand, and through that beer look forward and backward with the clarity that only a glass of beer can bring. So go on then, brewers. Brew it.

#EBBC14 – What Did We Learn?

No time to read yesterday’s 1800-word long read? Forgotten what it said anyway? Here are some rapid-fire highlights from EBBC14 in Dublin. DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!

Galway Bay have nailed both the heavily-tapped-slightly-gastro-friendly-local with The Black Sheep and the louder, faster, stood up and stamping bar with Brew Dock. DOUBLE THREAT.

Beer, and not food production, could be why grain was cultivated and therefore why human civilisation exists. Rofl.

Ancient mounds thought to be used as food stores in ancient Ireland were more likely to be pits used for the making of beer. Wahey!

We were told a story about an African tribe still make a beer using a similar method, known as ‘Seven Days’, as it takes seven days to gather the ingredients, seven days to make it, and seven days to recover from the hangover. #lads

This quote about Irish beer will make you stop what you are doing and wonder aimlessly for a few minutes. So poetry. Much sláinte. Wow.

Keg vs Cask and Bottle vs Can is so 2009. Let’s argue about Can vs Keg and Bottle vs Cask. #yolo

St James’ Gate had its own worker accommodation, pubs, fire brigade, hospital, ambulance service and railway network. Home is for jerks.

Oysters and stout: like drowning a tiny drunken octopus in your throat. Fun!

Pilsner Urquell’s proper pint mugs – the heavier versions of ones in the UK – make the most satisfying na zdraví clink (or rather clunk) sound in the known universe. It’s like marble gods headbutting.

Of Foam and Fury was the first commercially available DIPA in the Republic of Ireland, and is at least as good as any in the UK. HOP DIGGITY.

The reason none of the fantastic beers we tasted in Dublin have made it to the UK is because the Irish are drinking it all. Selfish.

The people at WordPress made their freebie sunglasses’ lenses to be tinted at ‘hangover-strength’. So, so helpful. Seriously, thank you, WordPress.

Noticeably absent from the social media talk, Vine might be the best or worst thing to ever happen to beer blogging. In any case, it seems that if you get into a serious Vine collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can:

Of Craft and Craic (Four Nations of Beer – Part 4)

In a series of four features, I have been examining the beer culture in four countries through the lens of a particular event. This fourth and final part explores the thrilling growth of craft beer in Ireland, observed whilst attending the European Beer Bloggers Conference in Dublin. Here are links to Part 1, featuring the W-Ales Beer Festival; Part 2, on the Bermondsey Beer Mile; and Part 3, about BrewDog’s Punk AGM 2014.

Four Nations of Beer has come to an end, and I cannot think of a more climactic and satisfying conclusion than this year’s European Beer Bloggers Conference in Dublin. Over the course of June I visited four very different cities, with diverse beer cultures in different stages of development, but it has been in Ireland where I found the most to learn about and arguably the most to enjoy.

My trip to Dublin had everything – visits to incredible pubs, a glimpse at breweries both tiny and mind-bogglingly large, and glass after glass of excellent beer. Thursday evening’s optional pub crawl, hosted by eminent Irish beer blogger, Beoir chairman and (if we’re being honest) EBBC14 co-organiser Reuben Gray, was as eye-opening as it was thirst-quenching. The wet, mild evening was brightened with glorious beers in a variety of styles, enjoyed in pubs and bars with tangible atmosphere and a crackle of excitement in the air. This was more than just Dublin’s famous craic – this was a city’s beer culture in euphoric transcendence.

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I’m not suggesting that until we got there, Dubliners were just throwing back pints of muck with nary a thought to what good beer was, far from it. In the UK, the growth of microbreweries, self-identified ‘craft beer’ and the evolution of pubs into ‘beer destinations’ all seem to have happened gradually over several decades. In Ireland, it seems to be all happening at once, or at least, in the space of a few years, lending an intensity and purpose to the beer scene that is deeply infectious. I had a broad sense of this happening in Ireland before we arrived, having read blogs from the likes of Reuben and the Beer Nut, but seeing this in the flesh made it not only real, but alive. We were treated to an intensive crash course in everything that those of us on the other side of the Irish Sea had been missing out on. But did Dublin really have so much to offer to the already jaded palates of bloggers from the craft-fatigued UK and beyond? Unquestionably so.

Many of us (myself included) found a new favourite DIPA in Galway Bay’s Of Foam and Fury, a blisteringly bold and bright lupulin monster, its hop character so muscular and accomplished that the ultimate compliment was paid: reverent, whispered comparisons to Pliny the Elder. Drinking it was an experience all the more bittersweet for knowing that those of us not based in Ireland may not taste it again for some time (more on that later). With their growing chain of popular bars and American-influenced craft beers, the brewer of that delectable beer, Galway Bay Brewery, seems set to be the Republic of Ireland’s more subdued answer to something like BrewDog. Note that emphasis, though. Their beers are for the most part US or Irish styles by-the-numbers but done well, and the bars vary from the gastropub-esque Black Sheep to the more vertical-drinking-orientated and lively Brew Dock (which even sounds like… never mind). But there’s a spirit there, an active participation in the changing of the local beer landscape, that reminded me somewhat of BrewDog. Whether Galway Bay grow at anything approaching a similar rate would be interesting to see.

There are of course many other skilled brewers among this new, younger breed, brewing beers with distinctive character and, in many cases, a sense of humour that is essential to a profession so challenging and fraught with hardship. We had the opportunity to meet many of these brave people at different showcases of Irish beer at The Church, the venue where much of EBBC was held, and there were some truly exemplary beers on display. Rascals Brewing Co, of Rathcoole in Co Dublin, impressed many of us with both their sweetly subtle and spicily nuanced Wit Woo Belgian-style witbier, and their extremely accomplished Ginger Porter, which showed judicious restraint in its ginger character, using just enough to heighten the sharper and sweeter edges of the beer. There was something very assertive about the beers brought along by Blacks of Kinsale: among them a Kinsale Pale Ale (above) with a light, just-sweet-enough body and bitterness like the fast jabs of a boxer; and a Black IPA that was rich, sexy and seemed to know it. Trouble Brewing brought a lovely Lazy Sunday Saison, which prickled the palate with tropical fruit juice in a crisply spicy body, and Big Bear brown ale, which was like a warming slice of coffee cake served with a hug. N17, started by Ireland’s ~~only~~ [first – see this comment from The Beer Nut] female beer sommelier Sarah Roarty in January this year, got a lot of appreciative nods and respectful noises for its Oatmeal Stout served on cask, a deeply decadent and sumptuously smooth example of the style to rival the best. On the Thursday night pub crawl, N17’s neatly balanced Rye ale was enjoyed at the Norseman pub in Temple Bar, where it was served in the most ‘craft’ of methods: through a Randall packed with American hops.

Whilst many of these breweries were new, each were producing a range that suggested an eagerness to expand. With so many delicious new Irish beers being enjoyed over the weekend, those of us based in the UK were at a loss to understand why we hadn’t seen any cross the Irish Sea. I asked this at the Irish brewers’ panel Q&A at the conference and was told that, quite simply, they can barely make enough to supply Irish demand, never mind the ravenous craft-thirsty palates of the UK. Reuben pointed out that Carlow, brewers of the Goliath-beating O’Hara’s Stout, used to export the vast majority of their beer to foreign markets, but that now that position is reversed, as the Irish appetite for craft beer has rapidly increased. Hopefully, with the help of organisations like Beoir (Ireland’s beer consumer group) and the Vanguard Beer Collective (which helps small Irish brewers get their beer on sale in more outlets), the growing reputation of Irish craft beer will get UK importers interested, and change the perception of Irish beer being only one brand.

Speaking of which, bloggers attending the conference were invited by Guinness to visit St James’ Gate on the Friday evening for a tour of the new brewhouse and an evening of food and beer. Brewhouse #4, intended to take the place of Brewhouses 2 and 3 in terms of capacity, was a spectacle few of us were expecting. Having been escorted through the city-within-a-city that is St James’ Gate, through tunnels and between titanic vessels and buildings, we eventually found ourselves in a building with a clean, clinical white interior. A door, or rather, part of a wall opened, and we were faced with Brewhouse #4 in all its glory. As guided bloggers stood, mouths agape, in a room about the size of a football pitch (or three), I tried to place some sense of scale on it. The biggest brewery I’ve seen recently is BrewDog’s new site at Ellon, where they recently proudly announced a fifth brewhouse vessel. Here, the coppers and kettles seem to run on and on to the horizon, in a space that looked like the first brewery on the Moon. We were politely asked not to take photos of it, but even those that did failed to capture its panoramic size and scale.

Being shown something that size made Guinness seem all the more vast, alien and robotic, and they obviously were aware of this. We were then escorted into a large function bar at the Storehouse and treated to pairings of various beers with different foods, each with a local Irish ingredient. Here, the brewers we were introduced to in the gigantic brewhouse mingled freely with bloggers, took questions, and asked us just who we were exactly, to get treated to all this food and drink? “Good question,” many replied. “I just write a blog.” “I’ve written some bits and pieces.” “A couple of books.” “All about beer, yes.” The idea of beer writers, at least, is still something of a foreign (extra) concept to them. Whilst there were FES marinated burgers, oysters, pale ale battered fish and more besides, some of us were taken with things far less obvious. Guinness had recently run a competition among the brewing staff to brew a new beer, and one of the entries, Night Porter, was very impressive indeed – a really chocolaty, crisply bitter porter that made Guinness Extra Stout, Draught and even FES seem rather sluggish by comparison.

Still, while Guinness’ attempts at openness seemed heartfelt, talk of their tap-covering stunts on Arthur’s Day and the like persisted over the course of the weekend. This was a global brand, managed by one of the world’s biggest drinks companies, and whilst the marketing and hospitality we witnessed was of the highest possible standard, ultimately that’s all it was: marketing and hospitality. As for changes in their beer lineup, the Smithwick’s Pale Ale, hopped with Amarillo we are told, was decent enough, but must surely be aimed at knocking off the Galway Hooker taps that have fought tooth-and-nail to be alongside the mainstream draught brands in Irish bars. If the Diageo Empire is trying to strike back, does that then spell doom for the rag-tag rebel alliance of Irish microbrewers? Almost certainly not.

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Breweries the size of Guinness obviously turn as slowly as ocean liners in tar, and if they are only now getting behind the idea of a hoppy pale ale, it will be years before it occurs to them to make saisons or DIPAs, by which time the craft brewers will have mastered barrel-ageing, blending, wild fermentation and so on. Given what they have achieved in the past few years, and in some cases, the past few months, it’s difficult not to be excited. What I expect, and hope, to see is the continuing redefining of Irish beer’s identity, whether that means reinventing traditional beer styles, unearthing and mastering ancient ones, or pioneering something entirely new. The recent crowd-funded brew between Beoir members and Blacks of Kinsale – ‘Beoir #1’, a juicy, buzzing and belligerent DIPA – is an extremely promising example of a beer community growing, and prospering, together. Beoir #1 would have been the first commercially-brewed DIPA in Ireland, were it not for a certain Pliny-esque beer from Galway Bay.

And so, when I returned home to London, I found myself thinking about Of Foam and Fury once more, and what it represents. That artwork, reminiscent of both a stained glass window and the sailor tattoos of twinkly-eyed old barfly, is evocative of the booming waves of these new beers washing clean the Guinness-stained soul of Ireland’s beer culture. With those waves comes a sound: a powerful, resonating note, of voices raised in euphoria in Temple Bar at midnight; of the heavy clunk of mugs full of bright beer in dim light; of victory over the old and the stale; of craft and craic.

BrewDog #PunkAGM2014 (Four Nations of Beer – Part 3)

This isn’t exactly the blog post I thought I was going to write. I have been very firm in my conviction that BrewDog is entering Phase 2, and shrugging off so much that has stopped them from being respected by so many people. Instead, last weekend I saw a conflicting image of the brewery that has left such an indelible mark on the British brewing landscape.

The AGM 2012 was a messy but fun sort of riot. Massively underestimating demand was as much a part of BrewDog as any notions of ‘punk’ back then, so it was expected that their first go at an event that size would be hit and miss. The hits outweighed the misses though, and it was still a great weekend. In 2013, there were noticeable improvements in every area, a sign that they were listening as much as they were shouting. It was a far slicker, better organised event that got just about everything right. Seeing the new Ellon brewery, and the profound sense of gratitude from the people who work for BrewDog, said a lot. The company was ready not just to grow, but also to grow up.

This year, that slickness became over-confidence, and organisational problems that many assumed BrewDog had outgrown once more reared their heads with a vengeance. 2012’s cries of QueueDog once more became the bon mot exchanged in the line for the bar, of which there were only two. It wasn’t all bad though. After 6pm, a lot of people left of their own accord, either because they were bored to death, or because Idlewild finished playing and that’s all they were there for (or mostly what they were there for). Still, that’s not exactly what I would call ‘everything going to plan’. I understand that BrewDog are limited by the AECC in the number of bars they can have and where they can be, but this might be the year they realise the AECC just isn’t the venue they need anymore.

If it’s becoming difficult to have enough bars and taps to keep 4000+ people from being thirsty, BrewDog want to consider a different approach – such as taking the AGM on the road, a BrewDog Tour if you will. There are now BrewDog bars across the length and breadth of the land, just as well-spread as the shareholders themselves. Doing four, smaller events in say, Aberdeen, Manchester, Birmingham and London, would ease the pressure on the bars, allow more brewers and bands local to each event to be involved and help out, and make it a real spectacle. Having said that, they could easily end up with 4000+ people coming to the London one alone. Still, the way BrewDog is going, they will have to either massively expand the AGM or take it on tour eventually.

So what did go right? Well, all the beers were in great condition, a wide range of stuff hit the taps from other brewers such as Mikkeller, Stone, Magic Rock, Cromarty and Gypsy Inc, and it was as fairly priced as it has been in the past (£8 for 5 tokens, average pint cost 2 tokens, depending on strength). The problem was, when a new beer came on (invariably a highly-sought-after, one-off rare beer), everyone queuing at the bar ordered four of them, and seven staff themselves would then have to queue for access to just a single tap. When there’s upwards of a hundred people at the bar waiting, you can imagine how long it took to get served – too long, way too long. More often than not, the beer you were queuing to get would be finished, replaced by another beer, which then ran out by the time you managed to be served. It was frustrating.

That isn’t to say that some of those beers weren’t worth waiting for – far from it. Among a stellar cast of Stone, Magic Rock, Mikkeller and so on, it was actually many of BrewDog’s beers that really blew me away. Jackhammer was on predictably excellent form, and Dog C was a more refined beast than its previous incarnations, a smoother body that blended its heavy, thick and spicy flavours with real panache. This year’s #Mashtag, and imperial red ale, was balanced to the point of being dangerous at 9% abv, its fruity, malty depths balanced by subtle spiciness and a long hop finish. Black Eyed King Imp, a test brew of Cocoa Psycho with chocolate and coffee, barrel aged for 2 years, was a marvel, somehow both juicy with stewed fruit and darkly bitter, with the barrel casting a long shadow over the palate. It was Everyday Anarchy that impressed me the most, a very on-trend French white wine barrel-aged imperial saison that positively danced on the palate, rich and vinous with stone fruit yet bright and sharp and clean in purpose. These were all hugely accomplished beers, the kind that keep BrewDog right at the top of the scene.

While the organisation of the AGM itself was still lacking in several important areas, the updates and plans of the company itself were far more impressive. For one thing, BrewDog is now in a position to fully expand the Ellon brewery site to its full potential, meaning they will effectively more that double capacity over the course of the next 12 months. Furthermore, full-time tasting panels and a comprehensive lab setup will ensure quality remains a constant during this period of further expansion, and new automated packaging lines will help ensure that they can get things into the supply chain faster. The new onsite bar, DogTap, is close to completion, and more BrewDog bars have been announced for Birmingham, Leeds, Brighton, Clapham. BottleDogs will also be coming to Birmingham and Leeds (in the case of Leeds, being converted into one from the current tiny bar).

By far the most significant announcement was the BrewDog Investment Fund, which will see BrewDog provide funding to new breweries to support their growth. James Watt announced at the AGM that Brew By Numbers is the first beneficiary of this fund, ~~with £100,000 being invested in their brewery (this was tweeted and then deleted by the BrewDog twitter account, suggesting the announcement may have been slightly ahead of schedule)~~ [UPDATE 30/6: see here for full details of the BrewDog Investment Fund]. As I said in my last post, BBNo are hitting all the right notes lately. They could easily be the new Kernel, and it’s impressive and heartening that BrewDog is interested in contribution to the beer scene in this way. It’s been something I’ve discussed with people more and more lately – that the time has come for certain breweries to take a position of leadership and help sustain this thing we’re all enjoying so much. BrewDog, among others, are capable of doing so much good, and I was really pleased to see this Fund being set up.

So, what to make of all this? There’s no way to judge Scotland’s brewing scene on the BrewDog AGM alone, but BrewDog always seem to be at the front of things in the UK overall. BrewDog are more than just a Scottish brewery, they’re an international bar business, importer and now fundraiser for craft brewing. There are still disconcerting signs of them taking their eye off the ball occasionally. Being kindly asked by James and Martin to enjoy the AGM responsibly, then having to join an hour-long queue for food, seemed ridiculous. But there are too many good things to ignore here, and I maintain that there was more than enough evidence of BrewDog growing up as a brewer and a company. Their recent blog post acknowledge the long queues, and they have also emailed attendees with a feedback form about the AGM. Ultimately, they are still the best brewery in the UK at inspiring a younger generation of craft beer drinkers and bottling that enthusiasm, no one else even comes close. I think BrewDog are finally coming to terms not just with how big or fast or important they are, but also the responsibility that this places on their shoulders. Their ability to capture people’s imaginations is at the heart of that, and there is no questioning their impact on British brewing. I’ll end with a quote from Greg Koch of Stone, who crystallised that neatly in the AGM’s opening speech:

“Without everybody’s enthusiasm, we couldn’t have got to where we are today – and the change is amazing, is it not?”

A Murky Mile (Four Nations of Beer Part 2)

In a series of four features, I will be examining the beer culture in four countries through the lens of a particular event. This second part looks at the all-new craft beer institution that is the Bermondsey Beer Mile and just how varied and mature the London beer scene has become. Read Part 1, featuring the W-Ales Beer Festival, here.

The Bermondsey Beer Mile is so craft it hurts. Five microbreweries, ranging from the fresh-faced Anspach and Hobday to the more established like Brew By Numbers and Partizan to the already legendary like The Kernel, are dotted along a line (easily over a mile if we’re being pedantic, especially if you travel in an irregular fashion) in east London. I joke to people that in the future, archaeologists will incorrectly reason that railways were built to connect all the capital’s breweries. In Bermondsey, you would be forgiven for thinking just that.

No sooner had ‘The Mile’ become A Thing than people were complaining about how busy it was at every brewery. Beer geeks could be seen plotting innovative strategies of ‘tackling’ the Mile on Twitter, trying to outwit the hordes and be front of the line for a fresh 2/3rds at each brewery. The reality is that it is a bit difficult to do it in a straightforward way, but I think that for some people that’s part of the fun.

So what’s the appeal? Well, generally speaking, the Bermondsey Beer Mile offers some of the best beer in London, at relatively low cost (£3 for 2/3rds of a pint, unless otherwise indicated) and the opportunity to drink as fresh as is feasibly possible. When done in a ~~mob~~ group of fellow ~~wankers~~ seasoned beer enthusiasts, it can make for a wonderful day. Also, naturally, it gives one a rather profound insight into how ‘craft’ is doing in London right now, so on 14th June I made the journey to Bermondsey and did the mile with some excellent drinking partners.

In Brew By Numbers, where our Mile began, we have a brewery rapidly graduating into that ‘2011-2012 Kernel’ sort of phase, where almost everything they do is brand new and quite exemplary. I love the branding, but the actual numbering system is a bit annoying to me still (who asks for the number at the bar and not the beer ‘s name?). After an exhilaratingly crisp and juicy Motueka and Lime Saison, I ask for a Session IPA Mosaic and, like my fellow Milers, am simply blown away by it. The aroma is a spectacular bouquet of tropical fruits that comfortably makes the case for ‘fresh is best’. The beer’s palate is like an electric conduit of lime, orange and mango jacked right into your tongue, ripe with pith and bitterness. The vibe at BBNo is very laid-back, with a very simple layout of benches outside that encouraged a sociable drinking atmosphere. Given how great their beers are tasting at the moment, they may need to work out how accommodate far greater numbers of people.

Meanwhile, at The Kernel, now closing early (at 2pm) due to its arch-busting popularity, we are greeted by nothing less than a fort of iconic brown paper-clad bottles. The last time I was inside The Kernel, it was a cave of pallets, bottles, boxes and just stuff. Now it seems sharper, more organised, not corporate but certainly a professional appearance honed by a growing legion of fans and regular custom. One cavernous arch is given over entirely to customers, seated or otherwise. Some fantastic beers were on draught, including the collaboration with Camden Town Brewery, Gentleman’s Agreement, a barrel-aged blend of Camden Gentleman’s Wit and Kernel London Sour. It’s a truly stunning beer, its apple-skin and sharply sour edges injected with lemon and grapefruit juiciness and rounded by tannic, oaky notes. It’s a technical marvel – enormously flavoursome and complex for a beer at 4.3% abv.

There is a very promising trend in blending and barrel-aging at the moment, something that really shows a maturation (no pun intended) of the British beer scene. Sure, we still love to throw hops at beers like there’s no tomorrow, but we’re also experimenting in esoteric methods and using real skill to – and I mean this as a verb – craft beer. I expect to see more of this in the next year, as the more accomplished new breweries each seek to up their game in this area.

After The Kernel came Partizan, which was tricky to find. It required traversing an active (and very noisy) building site and following an extremely ‘craft’ hand drawn cardboard sign. There were more cardboard signs inside, at the tiny bar in front of Partizan (formerly The Kernel’s) brewkit. The beers on offer included some delectable-looking saisons and IPAs. Another trend I’ve noticed of late is beers infused with different types of tea, and I’ve enjoyed pretty much every one I’ve had. The one on offer at Partizan, an Iced Tea Saison, was too tempting to resist, especially at its sensible strength of 3.9% abv. Unfortunately, it was just a bit too thin, with not enough tea flavour to justify its name. When I think of the best tea-infused beers I’ve had, they tended to be bigger bodied styles – IPAs and porters, so perhaps a different approach to the saison recipe is needed as well as using more tea. Still, it was further evidence that the more established breweries on the Mile are Thinking In New Ways. Partizan are great brewery and I’ve no doubt that, with their track record, they’ll master this style in no time.

At the next stop, Fourpure, tucked away in an industrial estate at the other end of The Mile, we have a glimpse of the future, or at least an alternate version of the present. This is an example of The American Way: a shiny new brewery with towers of brightly-coloured cans, a brewery tap bar slinging schooners of the freshest draught beer and, naturally, a ping pong table next to the canning line. The friendly bubbling of beery conversation around long tables is occasionally punctuated by a ping pong ball bouncing off a piece of brewing equipment or a tower of hollow aluminium cans. Special mention must also be given to the pulled pork sausage rolls available at the bar, which were nothing short of majestic. It’s a warm and welcoming place, but then it has to be, given that it’s the furthest flung of the Bermondsey Mile breweries.

Here, many of us partook of another Session IPA, though Fourpure’s example was a subtler and smoother beast designed to be enjoyed by the six-pack. Still, it was refreshingly crisp and had some nicely nuanced depths to its hop character, though it’s certainly not the fireworks of the Session IPA Mosaic we had at Brew By Numbers earlier that day. There’s certainly a lot of ‘Session IPA’ going about in London now, which is a very American take on something we already do quite well – fresh, bright hoppy pale ales. I don’t have a problem with the name exactly, and it doesn’t matter what we, and I mean beer geeks, think of the name. Ultimately, if consumers as a whole find it useful, it will stick around, just like so many beer style names in the past.

My Mile ended somewhat inauspiciously at the opposite end from Fourpure, in the arch shared by Bullfinch and Anspach & Hobday, a brewery of which I am rather fond. I hold A&H’s Smoked Brown, Table Porter and IPA in high regard, particularly for a such a new brewery. Whenever I have had their beers from the bottle or at a Craft Beer Co, they’ve been sublime. Their Smoked Tea Porter, a recent collaboration with Melissa Cole, hit all the right notes and was impressively balanced – one of the best tea-infused beers I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, this particular visit saw some fellow Milers given some below-average beers that seemed not entirely ready to serve, and there was one glass of The Pale which took London Murky to its extreme. The beer was everything that unfined beer critics would just love to be served: an opaque liquid the colour of a manilla envelope that couldn’t have finished fermenting. The beer was exchanged but not taken off sale. Concerns were raised with the brewers and were duly noted, but it was still a low point on which to end the Mile.

There’s a lot of spite and anger about unfined and unfiltered beer at the moment, much of it directed at new brewers, some of whom are even accused of deliberately ‘murky’-ing their beer to be ‘cool’. The fact is that many of these newer brewers simply do not have the technology to stop their beers being as hazy (and I mean hazy, not murky) as they are, and many are often trying to meet exceedingly high demand for their beers. However, there is no excuse for charging money for a beer that should simply not be served, and this was one of those instances. This time A&H fell short, but I have no doubt that on another visit, I’ll have a great beer from them. It’s just a matter of being more patient with their beers, and being absolutely certain they are ready for sale. They can only lose out by trying to serve beer that will harm their reputation, just in an effort to be part of The Mile’s buzz.

You might think that this all adds up to a very mixed review of The Mile, and you’d be right. As a measure of where craft beer in London is right now, the Bermondsey Beer Mile is perhaps more indicative of the ‘bleeding edge’ – barrel-aged blends, tea-infused saisons, session IPAs and gleaming canning lines – but it’s an edge that cuts both ways. The fact is, The Bermondsey Beer Mile, this dazzling rainbow of London craft beer in its many forms, approaches, intentions and futures, is a murky beast indeed. The Mile needs time and a stronger sense of cohesion to become the finely-honed showcase of the best beer in London. A nice start might be a collaboration brew from the five breweries involved. I hope that over the summer the Mile is shaped into something we can proud of. As it is right now, I’m willing to be patient. Great beer deserves patience and London deserves great beer.

In the next part of Four Nations of Beer, I review the controlled chaos of BrewDog’s shareholder AGM 2014, and see if Scotland’s ~~squeakiest wheel~~ brightest burning light is still at the front of the ‘craft beer revolution’.

Sleeping Dragon (Four Nations of Beer Part 1)

In a series of four features, I will be examining the beer culture in four countries through the lens of a particular event. This first part looks at Wales, and how the recent W-Ales Beer Festival showed a city entering a beer renaissance.

Whilst it’s not unusual to be in a place where a culture is changing, it’s a strange and interesting thing indeed to be present at the moment when it changes. When I attended the Great Welsh Beer Festival last year, I and many others saw the signs of a sea change in Welsh beer. There had been indications for some time, but the country’s national beer exhibition was the best barometer to measure such a change. The ‘inciting incident’ was when Newport’s decidedly ‘craft’ brewery Tiny Rebel swept the board at the Champion Beer of Wales competition at the festival, claiming gold, silver and bronze with smoked porters and IPAs, beers markedly different to what many other brewers had made.

Whilst this certainly set the scene for a future of serious changes, in the Welsh beer history book of the near future, the W-Ales Beer Festival 2014 will be the event marked as a turning point. Last year’s saw Tiny Rebel make their presence truly felt, change the game and how it is played. A fascinating prologue for certain, a hook into the story proper, but it was this year’s beer festival that saw the first chapter of the future of Welsh craft beer. That isn’t to say that it was by any means triumphant or perfect. There are still organisational niggles (too few food stands, no third-pint markings on glassware, charging for programmes on the first day, fiddly tokens), but the festival itself was still a great event. It was also, again, a fascinating barometer for the Welsh beer scene.

WRU (Welsh Rubgy Union), which owns the Millenium Stadium, charged a hefty price for stands at the festival, a price some were unwilling to pay. On top of that, the stadium’s official alcohol supplier, Heineken, wanted its own stands too. Instead of an integrated approach similar to Craft Beer Rising, where cask and keg beers are served alongside each other, here the method of dispense remained a dividing barrier. CAMRA ran the central island bar of cask taps, whilst those pouring beers on kegs were forced to provide their own stands on the outer edges of the field. It felt disconnected, especially when some brewers had beers pouring both on the CAMRA island and a separate keg bar. It showed that the traditional CAMRA model is no longer the best way to showcase the country’s beers, but also that a piecemeal approach isn’t effective either.

Having said that, the beer on sale at the festival was some of the best I’ve ever had at a beer festival. Every drop was in great condition, well-kept and tasting fresh. The diversity of Welsh beer was no longer in question. Celt’s 614 Années, an 8.5% chocolate rye porter brewed with Brasserie St Germain, was the standout (and knock-you-down) beer of the festival for me, but I also enjoyed the juicy Nelson’s Eye pale ale from Heavy Industry, a fantastic Black IPA from Grey Trees Brewery, the young Handmade Beer Co’s cracking American IPA (which had more than a touch of Torpedo to it), and a pounding Pioneer Double IPA from Zero Degrees, among others. These were all great beers, showing Welsh craft beer to be in rude health and getting better by the year.

As for the festival, whether next year will see a smoother integration of the component parts, or an even more exploded, disparate event in its place, is difficult to know. The festival this year showed that the beer community wants, and needs, something representative of all the great beer being brewed in Wales, but struggled to make a cohesive event out of it. Things will no doubt be very different next year, but how, exactly?

In a matter of weeks, Cardiff’s BrewDog will be open, just down the road from the City Arms, Urban Tap House and Zero Degrees. The city’s Craft Beer District, once a running joke between me and my gracious host Craig Heap (inspired by the ‘Hammock District’ gag in The Simpsons episode You Only Move Twice), will be all but official. Some local dignitary will probably have a bubbly amber stripe painted down the streets to mark it out, and why not? Perhaps this where the answer to the beer festival conundrum lies. Perhaps a beer festival set across Cardiff’s craft beer pubs and bars (not so much a Bermondsey Beer Mile as a Cardiff Beer Square Mile), with each pouring between 12 and 30 keg and cask beers over the course of a weekend, is a better way to represent what Welsh beer has to offer.

In any case, the change to the Welsh beer scene isn’t just coming, it’s already here.

Four Nations of Beer

I'll be needing one of these this month. — I could do with a HopJet this month…

June, June, June. How intent you seem on slaying me.

I’ve a fair few things lined up this month, all of which I’ve been really looking forward to, but it only occurred to me the other day that these events are not just in different cities, but different countries too (ooh get me). I’m not boasting – far from it; it’s probably going to put me in a horizontal state for most of July – but I have been pondering just what I should write about it.

For example, I’ve just spent the weekend in Cardiff, attending the W-Ales Beer Festival at the Millennium Stadium and revisiting some of the city’s excellent pubs. Each time I return to Cardiff, its beer scene has grown exponentially, and this year’s beer festival was markedly different to last year’s at the Motorpoint Arena. Craig Heap and I used to joke about the city’s Craft Beer District, but it’s now very much a reality.

This coming weekend I’ll be doing at least some of the Bermondsey Beer Mile before visiting the new Beavertown Brewery site in Tottenham Hale, a brewery which has truly ‘graduated’ to the big leagues. Of course, I already live in London, but I think this weekend will help to crystallise a lot of my thoughts about what’s happening here.

The weekend after that, I’m in Aberdeen for BrewDog’s shareholder AGM, a now-permanent fixture in my calendar that marries beer, music and BrewDog’s ‘culture’ increasingly neatly. With Greg Koch of Stone Brewing Co visiting, ever more bands on the line-up and the certainty of new beers and madcap schemes, it’s sure to be a blast of a weekend. BrewDog are of course far from being all that’s happening in Scotland’s beer scene, but the AGM has been an interesting indicator of which way the wind is blowing.

I’ll end the month in Dublin for the European Beer Bloggers Conference. I’ve already written about how much I’m looking forward to this, but it’s worth restating that Ireland’s craft beer scene is mostly a mystery to me, so I can’t wait to get amongst the new beers, breweries and pubs that are driving the change there.

Quite a month then, and the fact that each event is in a different country presents me with a rare opportunity. I’ve decided to use each event as a way of examining that country’s beer scene in whatever way I can. It’s not going to be perfect, or wholly representative, but through the lenses that each of these places provides I hope to discover and share what’s happening in beer right now.

Too much is written about this booming beer scene in the past tense (post-craft etc). For people to understand this undeniably important time, I’m going to do my damnedest to record as much information of relevance as I can. There’s amazing things happening everywhere, and it’s our duty to experience as much of it as we can.

This project might help me make The Beer Diary the blog that it should be. Worst case scenario, there will be lots of details of my drunken exploits on the internet.

(PS. It’d obviously be great if I had time to do Belfast too. That would really help round this out/truly destroy me.)

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