Dedicated to craft beer culture
Issue 4 Autumn 2015
INSIDE: Your Craft Beer Rising Glasgow guide / Mark Dredge on street food / Pete Brown on cider / CAMRGB’s Simon Williams’ top 10 beers / CBR London 2016
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WELCOME TO ISSUE 4 OF CBR MAG – WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THE FESTIVAL! It’s exciting to be back in Glasgow for a second year. The craft beer scene here continues to develop and we aim to fuel it by encouraging distribution deals on both sides of the border. Scotland has a fantastic brewing culture and it’s great that we can return to Drygate, where some of the best up-and-coming brewing stars are experimenting. Live brewing and tours of the facilities will be on offer during the weekend. What better to keep us feeling thirsty than the wonderful smell of brewing here at Drygate?! This year we’ve made a few changes to create a better layout and we’re welcoming some brand new breweries, great food producers and, as always, putting on a fantastic music line-up. We also have a new concept: the ‘Introducing Bar’. This will showcase beers and breweries less than two years old and is designed to ensure all sizes of brewery get to represent their products. Enjoy the festival! Chris Bayliss
Glasgow festival listings start on p7 About the front cover: Thanks to Nick Dwyer, Beavertown Brewery’s artist, for creating this issue’s front cover. We asked Nick to come up with an illustration that “shouted beer and street food” to complement Mark Dredge’s street-food feature on p12. Nick processed this in his own inimitable way and came up with what we’re calling ‘The Yeast Belly Cover’. Nick says he’s “influenced by Jerry Anderson TV shows, dystopian sci-fi graphic novels and Terry Gilliam.” So we were never going to get a hotdog.
THE TEAM AND TWO BREWS THEY’VE BEEN BOWLED OVER BY SINCE CBR LONDON LAST FEBRUARY Daniel Rowntree, co-founder & director 1) Slow Loris Every Day IPA, Big Hug Brewing 2) Longhorn IPA, Purity Chris Bayliss, co-founder & director 1) Mateo & Bernabé, Santiago 25 2) Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale, Boulevard Brewing Co Matt Wright, editor, CBR magazine 1) Scotch Ale, Black Isle 2) Aromatic Porter, Brewster’s Pete Brown contributor: see page 18 1) Noa Pecan Mud Cake Imperial Stout, Omnipollo 2) Re Hop, Toccalmatto Mark Dredge contributor: see page 12 1) Dry Hop Pils, Fourpure 2) Hoppy sours series, Chorlton Brewing Co
PUBLISHER: Elastic (getelastic.co.uk) EDITOR: Matt Wright (matthew.wright@greatfoodmag.co.uk) PRINTED BY: Warners. TO ENQUIRE ABOUT CRAFT BEER RISING EVENTS OR MAGAZINE, CALL 020 7639 5556
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Craft Beer Rising Magazine, Autumn 2015 3
CBR NEWS CRAFT BEER RISING TEAMS UP WITH SIBA
Society of Independent Brewers and Craft Beer Rising announce partnership
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raft Beer Rising is proud to have teamed up with SIBA, the Society of Independent Brewers. Tony Jerome, SIBA’s director of communications & membership, said: “SIBA looks forward to working with Craft Beer Rising. We need to make it clear that SIBA members are British craft brewers, brewing a range of beers in cask, keg, bottle and can. We hope this message will appeal to all independent breweries and that they will soon join us.” What is SIBA? SIBA was formed in 1980 and now represents over 825 British craft brewers. Its vision is “to deliver the future of British beer and become the voice of British brewing”. One of
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SIBA’s main priorities is to increase its membership of breweries. Why should fans of craft beer care about SIBA? Tony Jerome says: “SIBA has played a big role in today’s exciting beer market. Through tough campaigning, we influenced decision makers to introduce Progressive Beer Duty in 2002. This allows small craft brewers to get tax relief on their production and has helped many breweries launch in the last decade. Also, breweries can only join SIBA if they focus on quality. This is supported by a new initiative – the SIBA Food Safety & Quality Certificate. This means SIBA members over the next two years will gain an independent quality
accreditation that both consumers and retailers can use to know they are buying the best products.” Why should craft brewers consider joining SIBA? Tony Jerome: “SIBA offers craft brewers two main streams of support. Firstly as a trade association that will lobby on behalf of its membership; secondly as a commercial department that opens business doors. “Commercially, SIBA organises a scheme called Beerflex. This creates commercial opportunities for our members such as access to pubco, off-trade and export markets. SIBA membership also entitles members to a range of other benefits.” For more, visit siba.co.uk
PURITY WINS ECO AWARD
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arwickshire’s Purity Brewing has been named Sustainable Manufacturer of the Year at the ‘Made in the UK’ Awards. The awards took place at St George’s Hall in Liverpool, where Purity were up against four other regional winners. The award recognised the “company that has shown the greatest commitment to forging a low-carbon manufacturing future, and made the greatest commitment to reducing manufacturing impact on the environment”. Based on a working farm in the Warwickshire countryside, Purity uses a unique wetland system where waste water is filtered and returned clean to the local river. While many brewers use five pints of water for every pint brewed, Purity uses three.
A new brewing system, installed in 2013, has also allowed Purity to increase the yield derived from its raw brewing ingredients. Heat exchange and steam capture technologies have been introduced, too. Purity MD Paul Halsey said: “We strive daily to further improve our sustainability measures, always with beer quality and love for the craft at the forefront of our minds. To win this national award makes us very proud.”
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A new Brew-School has launched in Bakewell, Derbyshire, with courses including ‘Practical Commercial Brewing’, ‘Setting up a Microbrewery’, ‘Craft Beer Brewing’, ‘Beer Branding, Marketing & Packaging’ and even ‘How to Run Your Own Pub’. Tutors include Rob Evans, owner of Peak Ales, and independent brewing consultant Alex Barlow. More at brew-school.com
RENFREWSHIRE BEER TAKES UK SILVER
COURTYARD BEER FEST ales’s Green Man Festival is extending its reach into London’s King’s Cross (Lewis Cubitt Square, N1C 4AB) for a freeto-attend craft ale and cider festival from September 10-13. ‘Courtyard’ will showcase more than 100 of the best beers and ciders from independent breweries including Apple County, Brecon Brewing, Celt Experience, Cyclops, Otley Brewery, Palmers Upland
BREW-SCHOOL LAUNCHES IN BAKEWELL
Cyder, Pipes, Purple Moose, Troggi, Tudor, Waen Brewery, Williams Brothers, and Y-Bryn. Green Man has invited a feast of musical friends to perform on each day including Inbibio Sound Machine, The Wave Pictures, Stealing Sheep and Huw Stephens. Courtyard is free to attend but is likely to be a roadblock. Beer packages are available in advance at courtyard.greenman.net.
Jaguar, a 4.5% golden ale from Kelburn Brewery in Barrhead, Renfrewshire, was named Britain’s second best beer at the Great British Beer Festival at London’s Olympia in August. Overall champion is Cwtch, a 4.6% red ale from Tiny Rebel Brewery in Newport, Wales. Bronze went to Dark Drake, an oatmeal stout from Dancing Duck in Derby.
INNIS & GUNN OPENS THE BEER KITCHEN Innis & Gunn has launched The Beer Kitchen on Lothian Road, Edinburgh. It houses three 2.5 hectolitre beer tanks and serves seasonal food. Meanwhile, in Inverness, Black Isle Brewery and Cairngorm Brewery have each filed applications to open pubs in the town.
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Glasgow 2015
YOUR FESTIVAL LISTINGS
September 4-5, 2015, Drygate, Glasgow
WELCOME TO DRYGATE! Discover stunning beers, eat delicious street food and enjoy great music
We hope you have a fantastic time!
GLASGOW LISTINGS
EXHIBITORS INCLUDE... The stars of the show, from A-Z Beer52 BigHug Bottle Cap Brewery BrewDog The Brewers’ Project Budvar Caledonian Brewery Charles Wells Dunns Food & Drinks Eden Mill Grainfather Greene King/Belhaven Harviestoun Brewery Innis & Gunn Inver Almond Islay Ales
MUSIC... FRIDAY NIGHT HEADLINER:
DJ Food SATURDAY NIGHT HEADLINER:
Friendly Fires
Friendly Fires
Krafty Brew Lerwick Brewery Marston’s Beer Co Meantime Oakham Ales Samuel Adams
Stewart Brewing Thistly Cross Cider Thornbrigde Brewery Westside Drinks Williams Bros Wooha Brewing Co
GLASGOW LISTINGS
STREET FOOD Feeling peckish?
Street-food stands include... Aye Love Real Food Rare-breed Scotch eggs, pulled beef stovies, cullen skink and gourmet sausage rolls, served with an array of homemade sides including “Punk”alilli – made with BrewDog Punk IPA. Babu Bombay Street Kitchen Indian street food created from
family recipes and home-style cooking, including Punjabi masalas, potato patties, spicy chicken kebabs and roti wraps. Rabbies Highland Bothy Highland street food: the likes of pulled brisket with Drambuie BBQ sauce, and Connage Clava Highland Brie melts. Ugly Burgers A fantastic selection of top-notch burgers.
Independent Brewers
Representing over 825 independent craft brewers. OUR VISION ‘To deliver the future of British beer and become the voice of British brewing’.
MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS INCLUDE: ACCESS TO PUB CO & OFF-TRADE MARKETS THROUGH BEERFLEX QUARTERLY MEMBERS MAGAZINE EXPORT SUPPORT LOBBYING ON BEHALF OF OUR MEMBERS FREE LEGAL & BREWING HELPLINES ACCESS TO SIBA’S TOOLBOX NETWORKING AT SIBA REGIONAL MEETINGS REGULAR INDUSTRY GUIDANCE & UPDATES SIBA’S PRESTIGIOUS BEER COMPETITIONS DISCOUNTS WITH MANY BREWERY SUPPLIERS PLUS MUCH MORE SIBA ALSO OFFERS A SUPPLIER ASSOCIATE MEMBERSHIP. TO FIND OUT MORE VISIT SIBA.CO.UK
To find out more about SIBA and to join the association please visit siba.co.uk The more brewery representation we have, the more support we can give to Britains’ Craft Brewers. SocietyOfIndependentBrewers
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YIN +YANG Nothing completes the craft beer experience like street food, says Mark Dredge
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BEER & STREET FOOD
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treet food and craft beer are being brought together in Britain like never before. Whether it’s a brewery hosting a food trader, or a food market showcasing dozens of beers, this duo complement each other in wonderful ways. Street food and craft beer share an entrepreneurial spirit: both focus on handmade products and the finest ingredients, both are committed to producing the best flavours, and both have interesting stories to tell. “Part of street food and craft beer’s allure is that there’s a story behind every burger or brew,” says Adam Layton, organiser of Street Feast – a series of London night food markets that always showcase at least 30 different craft beers. “People now know a lot more about where their food and booze come from than they did five years ago,” says Layton, and whether that’s knowing the inspiration for a dish or the particulars of your pale ale, this knowledge allows us to form a different kind of relationship with producers – one we can’t form with massmarket manufacturers. Plus, the person handing us our food is likely to be the one who started the business, just as the brewers pour your pints at the best beer festivals. And that’s good because it means we can learn and interact. More than anything there’s a fun, communal element to street eating and for that reason it shares more similarities with going to the pub than with sitting in a restaurant. The street’s also where we can find some of the best beer and food matches around...
SOUVL AKI AND S AISON Kebabs usually come after the pints, but anyone who’s been to Greece or Turkey will know that souvlaki is superb with a beer. The meat takes on flavour from the flames of the grill, it then goes inside pitta and is topped with salad and tzatziki. In Greece it’d come with a cold Mythos but back home you should go for a saison. The ultimate food and beer all-rounder, saison has the mix of spicy, herbal yeast combining with a dry, quenching base, and is often high enough in alcohol to handle big flavours. Saison’s herbal quality is what makes it so good with souvlaki, giving extra spice to go with the marinated meat, while the lively fizz lifts the richer flavours. Bristol-based Eat Like a Greek, run by Michalis and Ruth Petralifi, serve up street-food souvlaki. The couple were working on the Greek island of Samos at Michalis’s restaurant and farm when they decided it was time to return to the UK, prompting them to look at different options, which is when they saw that “Greek street
Wild Beer Co.’s Epic Saison is a great match for souvlaki
food was almost non-existent,” says Ruth. They source from Samos and the south-west, with “the best Devon meats and vegetables alongside the authentic flatbread and halloumi of Greece”. They also use organic olive oil and herbs from their Samos farm. “We felt passionately that the street food movement was the right way to go,” she says. Pair Eat Like a Greek’s pork souvlaki with Wild Beer Co. Epic Saison. The beer has a brilliant, peppery depth to go with the meat, then a bright burst of lemony hops on top, which works like a squeeze of citrus over everything.
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CHEE SEBURGER AND IPA There’s no street food more ubiquitous than the burger, with an ongoing (brioche) bun-fight over who makes the best, and endless variations on meat in a roll. Assuming you’re choosing a classic cheeseburger then the unbeatable beer choice is American IPA. There’s malt sweetness to enhance the flavour of the meat, which is typically well-aged so has a great richness; the hop bitterness is softened by the salt and fat; the bold citrus aroma and flavour of the American hops shares similar fruitiness to the condiments on the patty; and there’s enough alcohol strength
to go with the full-on flavour of the burger. A stalwart at Street Feast, and always displaying one of the longest queues, Bleecker St. has become one of London’s favourites. Starting with the four wheels of their food truck in 2012, Bleecker St. added four walls and a home in Spitalfields Market in 2015, where they sell American craft beers, mostly IPAs. Adam Layton’s top pairing here is Brooklyn East IPA with Bleecker Black, which sandwiches black pudding between two burgers: “Meat, salt and fat tempered with hoppy, punchy beer – it’s a nobrainer,” says Layton, “plus
they’re both trading on a certain New York cool that we all love.” To go with Bleeker St.’s double cheeseburger, Camden Town Brewery’s IHL is the top choice. It’s bulging with resinous American hops giving orange, grapefruit and then a savoury hard herb depth that cuts right through the meat and cheese, while the clean lager base (it uses a lager yeast, not an ale yeast) of the brew keeps it quenching and light for a strong beer. The brewery, which hosts different food traders on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, was also one of the first places where the Bleecker St. truck parked up in London.
Bleeker St.’s black pudding burger, Bleeker Black
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BEER & STREET FOOD
Food from Rola Wala of Leeds goes well with smoked porters
INDIAN S TREE T FOOD AND SMOKED P OR TER Just because the ‘I’ of IPA references India doesn’t mean IPA is a good choice for Indian food. In fact, the opposite is true, because bitterness and chilli heat fight, getting angry together and leaving a losertakes-all battle on your tonsils. Instead, keep those storied years when barrels of hoppy ale travelled from Britain to India in mind but know that more porter sailed to the subcontinent than IPA because that’s what was drunk by the troops, who far outnumbered the IPA-drinking upper classes. Porter is the style that can give you some of the best matches to Indian food, especially beers
with a full body and richer, sweeter malt flavours, because their chocolately depth can wrap right around the heat and spices and add its own toasty, roasted flavour. Make it even better by getting some smoke in there, which adds even more savoury flavours in the same way a tandoor oven chars the edges of meat and bread. Rola Wala from Leeds give us twisted Indian street food with piled-high tacosized naan breads, where its chicken tikka is a top pick for a Beavertown Smog Rocket. The mini-naans are layered with meat, then
mango chutney, pickles, coriander and raita, where the smoke adds to the meat flavour and weaves easily between all the tasty toppings. Beavertown is an important brewery in the street food and craft beer scene, firstly because its beer comes in cans and is therefore ideal for outdoor eating, and secondly by having different food traders serving at its Tottenham taproom every Saturday. For Logan Plant, Beavertown’s owner, food was immediately important to the success of the taproom: “Our whole ethos is about culture and community at Beavertown,” and by working with food traders they can “bring the place to life on the culinary side and promote a wholesome experience based on great beer, food, music and fun.”
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BEER & STREET FOOD
PULLED P ORK AND BL ACK IPA Slow-cooked pulled pork, stuffed into bread rolls and lavished in any number of sauces or toppings has become one of street food’s most common sights. With a beer, we look to science and the Maillard Reaction for the best matches. The Maillard Reaction is a chemical interaction between amino acids and sugars or, put simply and in context, it’s what happens during the cooking process and gives the dark colour – and associated flavour – to the roasted pork (think about a poached steak versus a grilled one – the caramelised outside from the grill is Maillard). It’s also what gives the bread its
golden colour and what contributes to the flavour and colour in dark malt, meaning bread, roast meat and beer naturally share similar flavours. With pulled pork, dark beer is definitely the way to go. Stout is a good shout because the caramelised and roasted flavour on the outside of the pork loves the dark malt in the beer, but there’s a better beer choice: black IPA. The hop bitterness cuts right through the richness of the pork, it picks out the
spices used as a dry rub on the meat and works really well with the sauce you use. The pulled pork rolls from Edinburgh’s Jones & Son come with homemade ‘slaw and chilli jam, and with it you want a BrewDog Libertine Black Ale. It has a full body to handle the meat’s flavour and fat, and the 7.2% alcohol gives some punch to match the pork. Also, the Simcoe hops provide a herbal and orangey depth, which is great with the meat’s spicing and the sauce, while the ‘slaw wraps it all up and keeps it balanced.
MARK DREDGE’S TOP THREE WORLD PAIRINGS Bia hoi and fried pork in Vietnam Most food in Vietnam is made and eaten on the street, slurping steaming bowls of noodles as scooters speed past your toes. Bia hoi is what you drink – a fresh, light, local lager served from battered kegs stacked on the kerb. It’s unbeatable with grilled chicken skewers, crunchy spring rolls and spicy fried pork.
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‘Cheesus’ and Gigantic IPA in the USA In Portland, Oregon, you pretty much can’t cross a block without passing a food truck or craft brewery. Grilled Cheese Grill makes the outrageous ‘Cheesus’ – a burger between two grilled cheese sandwiches. Go for Gigantic IPA – a bold, blaring brew that’s a burst of bitter grapefruit and tropical fruit.
Coxinhas and Eisenbahn Dunkel in Brazil Coxinhas, the Brazilian street food that’s become a beer snack, are deep-fried dough balls stuffed with chicken and soft cheese, which basically demand you drink with them. Eisenbahn, from Blumenau in the south of the country, makes a toasty, tasty Dunkel that refreshes the coxinhas’s richness.
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as well as get drunk on it, then it’s a bona fide farm-gate bargain. I meet people all the time who think these extremes are all cider has to offer. That’s a little like coming to beer and thinking the only choice is between Foster’s and a sour, wild-yeast fermented smoked porter aged in Islay whisky barrels. Between the two, there’s a cornucopia of style and flavour that has something to delight anyone – often to their complete surprise. Most of us think of cider as an English drink – and with good reason: Bulmers is by far the biggest cider brand in the world, and the UK produces and drinks as much cider as the rest of the world put together. But cider has always been international: it was probably first created in Spain, was the drink that built the United States, and historically rivalled wine in large chunks of France. There’s an area of Austria named after it, and parts of Germany where they refuse to believe that the English have ever heard of it.
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Check ou Thistly Cro t Cider at C ss ra Beer Risin ft g Glasgow
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PHOTOS: BILL BRADSHAW
Think cider. Think sugary alcopops. Think rural drain unblocker. Pete Brown explains why this noble drink deserves better...
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F T BE E R R
CIDER
e all know what cider is, right? It’s sugary liquid, increasingly likely to be flavoured with strawberry, elderflower and mango juice, so sweet that one mouthful makes you grimace like The Joker passing a difficult stool. But if you don’t like that it’s OK, because cider is also the ‘quality’ stuff: as cloudy as cold tea, with an aroma of a cow shed on a hot day, and a potency that – if the people drinking it are any judge – rots your teeth, corrodes your skin and directly attacks your central nervous system. Certainly, these products exist. While the Swedes generally have an excellent command of English, the meaning of the word ‘cider’ seems to elude them, as they continue to apply it to alcopops that don’t contain any apple juice at all. And visit any beer and cider festival or West Country fete, and you’ll find cider casualties insisting that when it comes to their favourite tipple, “the rougher the better”. Times are hard: if you can use it to clean silver and unblock drains
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Throughout the entire history of civilisation, humans have fermented alcohol from whatever grows locally. To prosper, apple trees need cold winters and warm summers, sunshine and rain, and grow well across all the world’s temperate climates. Until the inventions of refrigeration and pasteurisation, if you pressed apples to make juice, like it or not, that juice became cider as the yeasts on the skin and in the flesh went to work. Cider has been around in some form for at least 2,000 years. But because it requires fairly bulky and expensive equipment to press juice economically in any great quantities, it didn’t really take off until the Middle Ages. In the 17th century, cider almost made it as the English rival to French wine, thanks to the passion of Herefordshire gentlemen like Lord Scudamore, who pioneered new growing and cider-making techniques. But it was too soon: quality ‘cyder’ never took off because it was too difficult to get to the fashionable markets of London. Cheaper, rough cider became a product farms made for travellers and itinerant workers, and for
A traditional wassailing ceremony to bless the trees
The Wurzels have helped to cement cider’s yokel image
‘COMMERCIAL BR ANDS CAN LEGALLY CONTAIN AS LIT TLE much of its recent history cider has been looked down on as a yokel’s drink, as beer became the beverage of the rapidly urbanising population. The good stuff has always been there if you’ve known where to look. But perhaps because of its rural roots, cider never really got itself together globally the way every other drink has. We know great sherry comes from Spain and Portugal. We know about the merits of New World versus Old World wine, American IPAs and Russian vodka. But until very recently, most people who make and drink cider thought they were the only ones who did – many still do. Cider is arguably the world’s most misunderstood drink. Seen in the UK as interchangeable with beer, it has more in common with wine in its production, and is regarded as ‘apple wine’ in countries such as Canada and Germany. Sometimes thought of as simply sweet, in fact different styles play off sweetness and acidity, like
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This is drunk instead of Champagne in the author’s house
white wine, and in the case of ciders made with cider apples (as opposed to culinary or dessert fruit), offer a big dose of tannin as with red wine. There are over 7,000 named varieties of apple in the world, and just as with wine, the blending of different varieties creates a cornucopia of character. Perhaps the one thing everyone understands about cider is that it’s made from apples. But even here, all is not what it seems. Big commercial brands can legally contain as little as 35 per cent apple juice and still call themselves ciders. The rest is water, caramel, flavourings and sugars. While there’s no absolute guarantee, and while there are some horrendous high juice ciders, the broad trend does seem to hold that the higher the juice content, the better the cider. Here, then, is an eclectic range of high-juice, high quality cider styles that you may not have known about, but are worth exploring.
REAL CIDER
FIVE OF THE BEST The beauty of artisanal cider is that often, you have to travel to discover it. But here are five great ciders that are readily available in shops or by mail order. Aspall Premier Cru (7% ABV) aspall.co.uk The best of the big cider makers (if your idea of ‘big’ is two per cent market share). Premier Cru is served in my house instead of Champagne – and has been mistaken for it.
Preparing to press the juice
AS 35% APPLE JUICE’ Traditional English farmhouse cider There’s a wide range of Somerset-style ‘scrumpy’, and the best stuff isn’t rough at all. Demonstrating whole apple fruit character and playing off sharp acidity against solid tannin, it may not look like much when served cloudy in a pint glass, but if this stuff was coming out of a monastery in Belgium it would be rightly hailed as a world classic.
Sheppy’s Oak Matured Vintage Cider (7.4% ABV) sheppyscider.com Full-bodied and complex from being aged in oak, this outstanding medium cider proves how inadequate the terms ‘medium’, ‘sweet’ and ‘dry’ are to describe cider’s variety and character. Wilkins Farmhouse Cider (6% ABV) wilkinscider.com ‘Proper’ Somerset cider, unfiltered and unpasteurised. There are hints of the farmyard here, but they’re just that – hints
rather than fruity, earthy, cheesy slaps round the face, and they work wonderfully to create a drink that’s a testament to its terroir. At The Hop (5.5% ABV) oliversciderandperry.co.uk Dry-hopped cider sounds like a bad idea – and it is in the wrong hands. But Tom Oliver is one of the best cider makers in the world, and At The Hop is a triumphant blend of the two main crops that his family farm produces. The Wonder (13% ABV) onceuponatree.co.uk Inspired by Canadian ice cider, this pear version is described by the producer as a ‘Dessert Ice Pear Wine’. The intensity of flavour and the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity make this unique product live up to its name.
French farmhouse cider This is often produced via a process known as ‘keeving’, where the yeast is starved of nutrients so it stops fermenting and leaves both natural sweetness and a natural sparkle. Full and rounded, it is perfect with soft cheese and dessert dishes. Spanish sidra Much sharper and acidic than any other style, this is often poured from a great height to aerate the liquid, giving it a soft,
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REAL CIDER Great cider is best seen as half-strength wine, not super-strength beer!
Pouring from height aerates cider and gives it a soft head
‘APPLE S ARE LEF T TO FREE ZE AT MINUS 15 CEL SIUS’ Champagne-style mousse. Designed to be drunk quickly and in small measures, it’s almost a religion in Asturias and the Basque region of northern Spain.
speciality of Normandy and Brittany. Pommeau is made by blending apple spirit with fresh apple juice before barrel ageing to create a perfect aperitif or digestif. For many orchardists, these are the highest, most noble presentations of their fruit.
American cider After prohibition America lost its orchards of bittersweet cider fruit. Now the craft beer scene is moving into cider, as orchardists race to propagate European cider apples and traditional varieties. Cider makers try their best with culinary and dessert fruit, often creating drinks that balance sweetness and acidity like a good Riesling.
Ice cider This is a recent innovation from Quebec inspired by ice wine. In its truest form, apples are left on the tree until the middle of the Canadian winter, and freeze in temperatures of minus 15 Celsius. The apple juice concentrates, becomes higher in sugar and therefore alcohol, and when fermented produces a rival to the best dessert wine. Seven kilos of apples go into a 33cl bottle, which typically retails at around £25. It’s worth every penny.
Perry Not to be confused with ‘pear cider’, which is usually apple cider flavoured with pear juice. Just as there are specific cider apples there are also perry pears. Too high in tannin to eat, troublesome to grow and hard to work with, they produce uncertain results. The worst perries smell like dog excrement coated in nail varnish remover. The best taste like angels’ tears. Calvados and pommeau Cider’s derivatives show what a diverse drink it is. Calvados is the highest form of apple brandy – distilled cider – and is a
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Calvados is apple brandy from Brittany and Normandy
Cider is about a decade behind beer in terms of awareness and availability. But examples of all these styles are becoming more available. Yes, these ciders are often high in alcohol, typically 6-8%ABV. But remember great cider is like half-strength wine rather than super-strength beer. With a high fruit content, it’s practically a health drink. Or at least, you can convince yourself it is after a bottle or two.
TAP GROG, STREET-FGD & LIVE MUSIC DAILY FRAM THE LIKES OF HUW STEPHENS, IBIBIA SAUND MACHINE, STEALING SHEEP, THE WAVE PICTURES AND MANY MARE
È C�URTYARD.GREENMAN.NET Ç LEWIS CUBITT SQUARE, KINGÕS CRASS. N1C 4AB
GUEST BEERS INCLUDE APPLE COUNTY, BRECON BREWING, CELT EXPERIENCE, CYCLOPS (CWRW IAL COMMUNITY BREWING), GEIPEL ,GRAY TREES, GWYNT-Y-DDRAIG, HALLETS CIDER, MANTLE BREWERY, OTLEY BREWERY, PALMERS UPLAND CYDER, PIPES, PURPLE MGSE, TROGGI, TUDOR BREWERY, WAEN BREWERY, WILCES, WILLIAMS BROTHERS, AND Y-BRYN
TEN BEST OF THE
CAMRGB FOUNDER SIMON WILLIAMS GUIDES YOU TO HIS TEN MOST MEMORABLE BEERS… 24 Craft Beer Rising Autumn 2015
SIMON WILLIAMS’ TOP 10 “Write about ten beers everyone needs to try,” they said. That’s easy to say, not so easy to do. I mean, where do I start? This troubled me for a few days. What if people don’t agree? But then I remembered that my choice of beer is my choice of beer. And you have your own. And we may not agree. So in no particular order, here are ten beers that changed the way I thought about beer – some have become firm favourites and others I’m glad I tried but probably won’t visit again.
SIERRA NEVADA TORPEDO (7.2%)
FANTÔME PISSENLIT (8%)
THE KERNEL TABLE BEER 3%
Put simply, this is a sensational American beer to have on a supermarket shelf. The beer is a beautiful deephoney colour with a light fizz that tingles your tongue. The flavour is very deep and very rich with scorching pine resin and warm digestive biscuit malts providing the background over which the hops hit you with lemon zest, crisp and spicy herbs, and a soft floral aroma. And if that’s not enough, the finish is long and dry and wonderful.
Pissenlit is a saison, but it’s nowhere near as simple as that. It’s an irreverent love letter to beer. A pissed-up, bolshy, charismatic drunk of a beer. The label is so bad it becomes high art, so ugly you can’t help but fall in love. The beer is a deep amber and smells of honeyed horse manure, sweet and sticky, grassy and unappetisingly delicious. Taking a swig is sucking on damp straw and toffee, a midden full of Werthers, sweet and bitter, sour in the corners, nutty and woody. There are mushrooms and pomegranate and an exquisitely dirty finish. In fact, Pissenlit is so earthy and so beautifully ugly I’m going to stop trying to describe it.
This is by far and away the best low ABV beer I’ve tasted. The flavours still taper off just a little too quickly with no alcohol to back them up and give them that extra muscle, but this golden ale smells floral and fruity, green and fresh. There’s a light honeyed caramel and a slosh of pear juice in the malting, but this beer is all about the hops. Bright and fruity, apple skins and English garden flowers burst out at you, and there’s a lavender oil perfume that drifts across your tongue. The finish is all hedgerow brambles, spiky and sharp with lemon juice.
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MIKKELLER & SIREN CRAFT BEER GEEK DAYDREAM 12% Beer Geek Daydream is a white stout with coffee, cocoa and vanilla that smells of white rum and spiced apricots and sits in your glass glowing amber. Once you take a sip you need to concentrate on what you have as it
WILD BEER CO. SHNOODLEPIP 6.5% Shnoodlepip is a dry, crisp, succulent, summery rosé wine of a beer. Sitting in my glass like pink flower petal juice, the smell is spiced fruit compote. There’s a delightful sour, lambic-lite body, it’s lithe, supple, sexy even, and the passionfruit and pepper add a round spikiness,
BROUWERIJ EMELISSE IMPERIAL RUSSIAN STOUT 11% This is an imperial Russian stout made with peated whisky malt and aged in Bowmore barrels. It pours inky black and the aroma is heavy with damp undergrowth, brandy and smoked bacon. The first sip is burned dry toast, treacle, molasses
HITACHINO NEST RED RICE ALE 7% This beer is a bit magical and I could drink it forever. It doesn’t look much under its prettily labelled bottle, just a honey-coloured beer with the slightest pink tinge. The smell is yeast and rice cakes, apples and salted peanuts. Not earth shattering perhaps,
‘IT’S FUN, NAUGHTY, EMBARRASSINGLY SEXY quickly becomes difficult to discern all the individual parts of this beer because the booze attacks your brain from the first swig. Beer Geek Daydream is espresso and red chilli, chocolate and sticky vanilla pods, apple juice, redwood resin and pear flesh and it will blow your mind.
while the hibiscus makes everything feel rather indulgent. Leaving Shnoodlepip to mature in barrels is the final stroke of genius, adding a deep woodiness that hints at red wine tannins and leaves the same tingle on your lips that you get from a really good Merlot.
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and black pepper, and with every sip – and this is a sipper – the flavours build. Crunchy woodland leaf litter, rum and raisin, dark chocolate, and bitter, pithy sapling wood. Underpinning it all is the most amazing, lightly smoked oak, damp and warm flavour that’s groaning with whisky. This is a stunning beer.
until you take a sip. There’s the most delightful spicy yeast undertone, and a sweetly gooey heather honey that’s earthy and rich, all toffee apples, candy floss and pink coconut ice. The hops are soft, leafy herbs and a squeeze of lemon, packed with spicy black pepper. A beer like no other.
SIMON WILLIAMS’ TOP 10
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BROUWERIJ DE MOLEN HEL & VERDOEMENIS 10% Pouring treacle thick and frighteningly dark, this could be a big black barley wine. This beer is so overly hopped it makes your eyes water, so while you smell delicious dark chocolate and flaky cereal malt goodness, your attention is taken away by the
BRASSERIE CANTILLON GUEUZE 100% LAMBIC BIO 5%
HOPSHACKLE BREWERY EXTRA SPECIAL BITTER 4.8%
Smelling of honey and cider apples, Lambic Bio pours a beautiful glowing gold and fizzes with life. This is a stingingly bitter beer that throws all sorts of flavours at you. There are bruised apples, cloves, thyme, toffee, blackcurrant
With an aroma packed with toffee and fruit and nuts, Extra Special Bitter pours the colour of waxed saddle leather with only a thin wisp of a head. The malting is king here, with well baked digestive biscuits, plums and damsons stewed in tea,
Simon Williams is the founder of the Campaign for Really Good Beer (camrgb.org), a group of likeminded people who believe that good beer and good breweries should be celebrated and supported no matter what their size, shape, or dispense method. The organisation began life in July 2011 as a reaction to English kegged beers not being allowed to appear at the Great British Beer Festival.
AND IT WHIPS YOU INTO SUBMISSION’ enormous brown leaf dryness, bitingly snappy chilli heat, lemongrass and blackcurrant all fighting for breath. It’s overwhelming, fun, naughty, embarrassingly sexy, and it whips you into submission before sitting on your face and making you want more. Maybe this is a stout for an evening of S&M.
leaves, silage and green grapes. Shall I go on? Flower petals, acorns, blue cheese, tin foil, bread dough, peppercorns and rosemary. All of this hits you over and over until it all becomes one big, extraordinary flavour that is so dryly bitter it curls your tongue and sears your lips.
walnuts, honey and black pepper. And then there’s tamarind and aniseed in the hops that build slowly into a rich, resinous, spicy, bitter finish tinged with brown sugar and dates. This is a super example of a traditional Best Bitter.
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Don’t miss...
CRAFT BEER RISING LONDON 2016! C raft Beer Rising London 2015 took place at The Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane on February 19-22. Over 4,500 people attended, plus over 80 breweries, 530 beers, several world-class DJs and musicians, and some brilliant street-food producers. These pictures give you a flavour. Don’t miss it in 2016, when it will be DOUBLE the size!
CBR LONDON 2016: FEBRUARY 26-27, OLD TRUMAN BREWERY, BRICK LANE – TICKETS FROM CRAFTBEERRISING.CO.UK PHOTOS: PATCH DOLAN
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MEET THE BREWER Q&A WITH RYAN WITTER-MERITHEW, HEAD BREWER AT HILL FARMSTEAD BREWERY IN VERMONT, AND EX-HEAD BREWER AT SIREN CRAFT, UK Which two or three beers do you have the most respect for and why? A hoppy pilsner called Tipopils brewed by Birrificio Italiano is perfect. Saison Dupont is another go-to beer I’ll never get sick of. The beers I usually have the most respect for are lagers and Pilsners, where any mistakes are easy to find. It’s true craftsmanship to produce such soft, delicate beer, and make it taste great every time. What does your brewing CV look like? I started brewing professionally in 2007 at Duck Rabbit Brewery in north-eastern California, which specialises in dark beers. I was there for three years and learned a lot. In 2009 I started to investigate the idea of brewing overseas and got hooked up with a brewing job on a Danish island called Fano. I did that for another three years before a friend told me about someone who wanted to open a brewery in the UK that focused on American-style brewing. That’s when I got in touch with Darron [Anley, owner of Siren Craft]. We met up and it seemed like a good idea. But in summer 2015 I decided it was time to head back to the US and joined Hill Farmstead Brewery in Vermont. At Siren Craft you helped the brewery forge a reputation for being one of the most creative in the business. How did that come about? At Siren Craft we hoped from the beginning to set ourselves apart through the beers we brewed. Our first beer was our Anniversary Ale, which went straight into barrels for a year. When we designed our four core brews we started with a breakfast stout, because no-one in the UK was doing one as a core at the time. We made an oatmeal pale ale instead of a regular pale. Then we made the red rye IPA as another attempt to differentiate ourselves. Two months after launch we started brewing random one-offs and seasonals, which we continued to do.
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Ryan Witter-Merithew
‘PUTTING BAD BEER ON THE MARKET NOT ONLY HURTS THE BREWERY THAT MADE IT – IT HURTS THIS FLEDGLING INDUSTRY AS WELL’
How do you tend to come up with ideas for new beers? Just randomly usually. Sometimes a conversation will lead to something. Other times I’ll taste something – it could be food or maybe another brewery’s beer – and all of a sudden I’ll be inspired to brew something. What is the biggest challenge that the brewing industry faces over the next few years? I think the main challenge is too many breweries opening that make bad beer. That’s the test every country is going to face. Because right now everyone wants to open a brewery. It seems cool. It’s romanticised. A lot of people just open a brewery because they think it’s a fun thing to do. But putting bad beer on the market not only hurts the brewery that made it – it also hurts this growing, fledging industry. Someone might try that bad brew as their first experience of craft beer and they’ll say: “This is stupid.”
RE ADER OPINION EXPERIMENTAL HOMEBREWERS CAN PUSH THE CRAFT BEER INDUSTRY FORWARD, SAYS PAUL DODD
T
he beer industry is becoming increasingly outlandish in its quest to find the next ‘new’ flavour. But how long can this approach last? If innovation is to keep up at this pace, where will it come from? And are we in danger of breweries reaching a size that negates experimentation? Professional brewers are limited by time and cost, no matter how much they might deny this. They can’t always risk unconstrained experimentation – financial viability will always play a part. Ultimately, their beers must sell, and as competition increases, the cost of a failed batch can – particularly for new breweries – be the difference between success and failure. This is where homebrewers Homebrewing are at an advantage. They brew is crucial to the small batches for their own craft beer industry, believes the author enjoyment, so they can afford to be as creative, experimental and stupid as they like. I’ve tried homebrewed beers that taste like Thai green curry, two separate beers that when combined taste like pina colada, beers made with cannabis, undrinkably overhopped beers, 12-month bretted beers infused with tea, beers brewed with five yeast strains, marshmallow beers, and 18% ‘turbo’ beers. Some work, some don’t, but all are testament to freedom and experimentation. It’s also true that homebrewing in general is getting better. Home brewers now have access to the same hops, grains and yeast strains as commercial breweries, and any flavour adjunct imaginable can be found online. Homebrewing is no longer limited to canned malt extract and generic dried yeast strains; domestic beer producers are taking things seriously, and the lines between commercial and homebrewing are beginning to blur. Homebrewers have long outgrown the ‘brew to make
cheap beer’ moniker and have shown willing to invest in high quality equipment. New homebrew products like the New Zealand-developed Grainfather system offer the same consistency, control and repeatability that brewers enjoy in modern commercial settings. Techniques have improved too, thanks in no small part to the availability of information online. Amateur brewers are adopting advanced techniques such as cultivating yeast strains and changing their water chemistry. You only have to look at some of the world’s leading craft breweries to see how the successful ones have embraced the homebrew mentality: Evin O’Riordain, head brewer at The Kernel – former homebrewer; Steven Dresler, head brewer at Sierra Nevada – former homebrewer; Sam Calagione, head brewer at Dogfish Head – former homebrewer; Matt Brophy, head brewer at Flying Dog – former homebrewer. It’s important that the barriers between the commercial and homebrewing communities continue to blur and the spirit of experimentation that makes the hobby so exciting is encouraged. Rather than looking upon homebrewers as the poor relation, there should be learnings going both ways – a mutual appreciation that both parties can learn from each other, and need each other. Such a relationship will allow the industry to further grow.
“SOME OF THE WORLD’S LEADING CRAFT BREWERIES HAVE EMBRACED THE HOMEBREW MENTALITY”
Paul Dodd manages the blog Port 66, an online craft brewing and homebrewing hub – port66.co.uk If you would like to share your opinion with readers of Craft Beer Rising Magazine in a future issue, please email matthew.wright@greatfoodmag.co.uk
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