Original Gravity% – Issue 18

issue 18

GOOD NEWS FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE GOOD BEER

F R EE

CRAFT BEER REAL ALES GOOD PUBS TASTING NOTES TRAVEL + other nice stuff

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BREWING THE LIGHT ISSUE

SOUR BEERS / CALIFORNIA / LOST PUBS / BAVARIAN BEER GARDENS

Issue 18 | Contents

The Mash /p04 • Shining lights /p10 • Photo essay /p14 Bamberg beer gardens /p15 • Essay /p19 • Sacramento /p21 • Tasting notes /p22

Cover illustration exclusively for Original Gravity by Meags Fitzgerald. / meagsfitzgerald.com

LET THERE BE LIGHT With those four words...

....you will find yourself in a beer garden where the weather is warm and the sun beams down with all the benevolence of a kindly great-aunt; the beer in the glass in your hand will be cool and refreshing, glint like the golden crown of an ancient king who died beneath the mountain millennia ago.

We’ve gone for light as the theme of our latest issue, but you’ll be disappointed if you hunt for tributes towards lite beer or memories of light ale. Our light shines on different aspects of beer, with the intention of illumination, elucidation and,

in the case of Katie Taylor’s debut piece for OG, celebrating the joys of drinking a cold crisp lager on a holiday beach actually a patio at home where the sun might be a bit unsure about emerging today).

Des De Moor is another writer making his debut for us. As well as being an award-winning beer writer, Des leads walking tours in search of the brewing heritage of London. We asked him why it was important to retrace the steps of London brewing and he’s shed light on the reasons (why not go on one of his walks to get the whole experience?). Mind you, not all

light is good for beer as Pete Brown explains (clear glass bottles are the enemy of beer) in his usual masterful way.

We’ve also got stuff on Bamberg beer gardens, Sacramento (Brut IPA anyone?) and an essay that mentions glitter beer; there are the usual reviews and a Q&A with cult Franconian brewer Andreas Gänstaller. We hope you enjoy it, preferably in a well-lit beer garden with a non-lightstruck beer.

Adrian Tierney-Jones, Editor

ORIGINAL GRAVITY You’ve just drunk a beer blindfolded, what is it?

Contact daniel@originalgravitymag.com 01323 370430 Advertising originalgravitymag@gmail.com 01323 370430 Website: originalgravitymag.com Twitter: OGBeerMag Facebook: /originalgravitymag Instagram: ORIGINAL_GRAVITY Editor-at-large: Pete Brown Editor: Adrian Tierney-Jones Design & illustration: lindoneast.com Publisher: Daniel Neilson © 2018 Original Gravity is published

by Don’t Look Down Media. All rights reserved. All material in this publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without the written permission of Don’t Look Down Media. Views expressed in Original Gravity are those of the respective contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publication nor its staff.

Pete Brown

Meags Fitzgerald

Des de Moor

Katie Taylor

Editor and Beer Writer of the Year Adrian Tierney-Jones is a journalist who writes about beer, pubs, food and travel and how they all get on. / maltworms. blogspot.co.uk

Editor-at-Large Pete Brown is an author, journalist and broadcaster specialising in food and drink, especially beer and cider. / petebrown.net

Meags Fitzgerald is a Montreal-based artist and an awardwinning illustrator, graphic novelist and animator. / meagsfitzgerald. com

Des de Moor is a beer writer, tour guide, walk leader, tutored tasting host and Accredited Beer Sommelier based in London. / desdemoor.co.uk

Katie Taylor writes about drinking culture, and talks local beer on Radio Lancashire. She also writes a blog. / thesnapandthehiss. blogspot.co.uk

A brimming Maß of Keesmann Herren Pils, a Bamberg classic, with more to follow.

The sense of smell is heightened, so I’m going to indulge in the hop symphony of Bale Breaker’s Topcutter.

The first beer that popped into my head is St-Ambroise's Apricot Beer (made here in Quebec).

A well-balanced cask bitter that tastes way better than its Untappd rating.

Tentatively tropical, even from my tiny sip.

Another gulp. Fruit salad. Heart and Soul, Vocation

Adrian Tierney-Jones

P3

THE MASH

The ART OF BEER CIRO BICUDO

You’ll recognise Ciro Bicudo’s work on Verdant Brewing’s cans and also a handful of covers for Original Gravity.

The Brazilian has since expanded with his brother into a singular brand of beery art and merchandise under the name Only Hops Can Break Your Heart. We love his work, so it was about time we caught up with him to learn about his inspirations and why beer.

How did you first get into illustrating in the first place?

I am the son of an interior designer and an automotive engineer. My house always had a lot of art, colours, objects and car designs on the walls; in a way that influenced me. Since childhood, my favourite hobby has always been to draw. As I grew older, some toys were left behind, but drawing never left my life. The greatest moment of my life was in adolescence when three pillars of my life appeared: surfing, skateboarding and music. I found out that Jim Phillips had designed the Santa Cruz Screaming

P4

Hand, that Rick Griffin was drawing some things for Surfer Magazine, and the Ramones album Rocket to Russia back cover was designed by John Holmstrom.

When these three things came into my life, I discovered that my hobby could be my life and my trade. Since then I have run after my dream of being an illustrator.

You have such a distinct style, where does your inspiration come from?

At first, my influence was independent art street culture of the 1990s, later I got to know the school of Art Nouveau and the generation of counterculture illustrators of 1960s and 1970s. All this influences me a lot.

You've done labels for a variety of breweries in Brazil and UK, notably Verdant Brewing and of course, covers for Original Gravity. How did beer become your primary focus?

I've always had contact with beer, and the labels have always caught my eye.

As a child, I collected cans from all over the world that my father brought for me from trips. By the time I was involved with independent art and worked with surf and skate brands, the opportunity arose for me to develop artwork for Mikkeller on Sort Gul Black IPA. To have my art on a bottle was a dream come true, at the same time the Brazilian market was flourishing and I started to make many labels in the country, and the around the world.

How do you go about approaching each beer label?

The art part is always very free, and challenging. But the principle of any project is to study references and forms of production. I have always created a study of sensations through colours, sounds and palate.

Tell us how 'Only Hops Can Break Your Heart' brand came around?

I worked a lot of time with streetwear, and as always I liked brands from the LA

x NY axis (Los Angeles to New York).

One day, drinking beer with my brother and co-creator of OHCB.YH, we talked about the first brand we set up, the Folk Ink Label, and the idea came from making a brand inspired in design and 1990s streetwear, with the theme being craft beer. Today, the brand has hit not only people who drink beer but people who like design and cool products.

What new projects are you working on that you're excited about?

I have been working on a branding project for a beer. The Only Hops Can Break Your Heart is walking a pretty cool path, and we have spent some time on the Folk Ink Label for its expansion.

I have been working on some projects outside of the beer market, but still related to drinks, wines and craft spirits. / onlyhopscanbreakyourheart.com / cirobicudo.com

THE MASH

The 6 PACK

LAMBIC AND GUEUZE STYLES

Beer meets...

SUNSETS Does a beer that evokes the dying rays of a settling sun have to be golden, as pale as the ghosts that will soon walk the earth or should it be a soothinghand-on-the-brow shade of bronze or amber that acts a bridge between night and day? After all, this is the end of the day and you can toast what has gone with a beer that is any colour, for night is coming. On the other hand, a sunset is a stage of many colours, the slow death of the day in several stages, and with that in mind, here is a trio of beers that you can drink whilst watching the light vanish and the hopelessness of the night emerge. ATJ

/ Verdant Bloom IPA, 6.5% Falmouth calling and if you want to see the sun set over the River Fal, then this unseeable juicy IPA should be to hand. Citrus and sweet orange on the nose, mid-palate juiciness with a bracing dryness on the finish make for a cutting-edge combination as the first stage of the sunset starts to reveal itself as if it were an actor slowly getting into gear.

When I drank my first lambic, at Cantillon sometime in the late 1990s, I made the kind of face Edvard Munch would have been proud of. I persevered, and I am now inordinately fond of gueuze and lambic-style beers. I only mention this, because I think many drinkers go through a similar journey with these beers, as, unless you’ve been living in the Senne Valley all your life or you are the king or queen of beer geeks, they are challenging. In some ways they overturn our conceptions of what a beer is with their tartness and bright beam of grapefruit.

On the other hand, they are grown-up elegant aristocrats of the beer world, brought into vigorous life through spontaneous fermentation in wide shallow coolships, barrel ageing, blending of young and old, bottle-conditioning and the general application of time.

They are beers that will age in your cellar and surprise and delight when opened; they are also a link to an older way of Brussels café life, which has nearly vanished.

These are romantic beers that move and sway some beer-lovers in an indescribable way. They are also beers that nearly died

out, as Belgian beer-drinkers’ palates became more used to sweeter beers. On the other hand, let’s not be too dismal about these beers, as in the last couple of decades gueuze and lambic have been brought more into the limelight; the magic of the production process has been maintained but they are in daylight now rather than the shades.

Inevitably, brewers from across the world are making lambic- and gueuze-style beers, so for our six-pack we have mixed up the products of the Senne alongside British beers which are obvious nods towards the style. ATJ

/ Fyne Ales Origins Brewing Baroque, 8.3% Using local Argyll microflora along with some borrowed yeast from Wallonia, this elegant blend of three, aged, mixed fermentation beers has slept the sleep of the just in oak for 24 months.

/ Elgood's Brewery, Coolship, 6% A coolship (or cooler) is a wide, open vessel where the wort sits to be fermented by wild microflora.

This Cambridgeshire brewer takes an English style and wild ferments it for a sharp and mildly fruity beer.

/ Brouwerij Frank Boon, Moriau Geuze, 7% The first of two beers from the Lambic experts Boon. Brasserie Moriau, founded in 1880, has now closed and Boon has taken up the mantle. This lively beer has hints of gooseberry and savoury hay.

/ Burning Sky, Cuvée 2017, 7.5% With the arrival of a brand new coolship last year, we can expect some lambic-style beers to emerge soon. For this 2017 Cuvée, Belgian Lambic was blended with woodaged saisons and aged in Sussex.

/ Wild Beer Co, The Blend 2017, 4.9% These beers are about the art of blending, something which Wild Beer Co are masters of. This 2017 vintage is inspired by gueuze beers, a blend of beers fermented with wild yeasts, young and old.

/ Brouwerij Frank Boon, Oude Geuze Boon, 7% Now available in Waitrose (really), this classic Lambic is one of the finest examples of spontaneously fermented blends which have been aged and refermented in the bottle to round off some of the sharpness.

/ Green Flash, West Coast IPA, 8.1% After recent problems we thought that Green Flash had vanished, but thanks to new investors this Californian brewery is still making beer. This classic tropically fruity, piney, floral, zesty IPA of the West Coast variety both bombards and placates the palate with its hop character. Oh and the green flash is that light seen on the horizon before the light of the sun totally tips beneath the horizon.

/ Signature Brewing, Imperial Stout, 10% You cannot see through this beer; it is deeper than the most moonless of nights, though the promise of another day comes with the lasting collar of cream coloured foam on the head. A mighty beer bringing together treacle, leather, cherry, tobacco box, white pepper, chocolate coated coffee beans, ripe dark plums, dried fruit and a long dry finish.

P5

GET FREE DELIVERY ON A CRAFT BEER INTRO CASE WITH CODE GRAVITY*

*Over 18 and UK only. Offer expires 30th July 2018. See website for full t’s and c’s

https://www.beerhawk.co.uk/introrange

THE MASH

The big PICTURE The Big Picture is a series that focuses on one single shot that tells a story.

We've just launched an edtion of Original Gravity in Toronto and were taken aback by the unique taproom scene. This picture

by Canadian editor Stephen Beaumont sums it up perfectly.

Beer

BOOKS

As much as craft breweries have proliferated, one aspect that hasn’t changed much over the years is the camaraderie shared between brewers and owners. While enjoying a glass of Oberkassel, brewer Luc Lafontaine’s note-perfect homage to Uerige Altbier, I was able to witness this beer-born

Will Travel for Beer / Stephen Beaumont

On the surface, this book by Original Gravity’s Canadian Editor-in-Chief offers 101 of the world’s best beer experiences. Fascinating, fun and worthy in itself. But read through Stephen’s prose and you’ll see it’s just as much a comment and insight on beer culture from around the world. Interesting and essential. DN / octopusbooks.co.uk

solidarity yet again when Jeff Talmey of Whitby’s Town Brewery showed up with a few bottles of his Planet Caravan Double IPA for the owner-brewer of east Toronto’s Godspeed Brewery. Talmey later told me it was his first time both visiting Godspeed and meeting Lafontaine, although the

Good Beer Guide Belgium / Tim Webb and Joe Stange Now here's a book we wouldn't consider going to Belgium without, and now it has been updated to its 8th edition, the first since 2014. It is an indespensible guide to all aspects of the Belgian beer scene from the best bars to which beers are on point, all written in the inimitable style of Tim Webb and Joe Stange. DN / camra.org.uk

two acted like old friends. It was also the convergence of youngsters, with Godspeed a mere nine months old at the time, Town even younger at six months, and Talmey’s daughter, in the pink hoodie, the senior of the group at ten and a half months.

Stephen Beaumont

The Beer Bucket List / Mark Dredge

Mark Dredge's latest book features amazing beer experiences from around the world. In this sumptuously-produced book, you'll find breweries to hit across the planet, mini travel guides, the histories of breweries and the best places to eat. It's all written in Mark's easygoing and enthusiastic tone. DN / cicobooks.co.uk

P7

10 Years 10 Collaborations

Strongroom/Shoreditch/August25

your liquid delicatessen wine, craft beer, cider, spirits regular tasting events REALALE.COM

02072862244

4 Formosa Street, little venice, W9 1EE 0 207 28 6 2244 @realale_ltd

371 richmond road, twickenham, tw1 2ef 0208 892 3710

www.realale.com

@ rea lale_ com

THE MASH

The Q&A

Andreas Gänstaller, head brewer, founder, Gänstaller Brau, Schnaid, Franconia

What’s your background?

I worked at Mahr’s Brau in Bamberg for over 21 years as a manager, but I was always in love with brewing, in fact I’d started home-brewing at 14. In 2007 I left and decided to have my own brewery. I have been here since 2011, before that it was a brewhouse that closed 2007/8. Between 2011-14 we only brewed for a gasthaus, but now we are very busy and our beers go around both Franconia and the world.

What’s the best thing about being a brewer in Franconia?

Knowing that you brew beer in the most traditional area with all that amazing beer culture! Modern craft beer is not a big hype in our area because the people like the tradition and they are not so really willing to move this way, so that can be a minus.

Tell the readers about your love for double decoction.

I believe in double decoction and also in the

Reinheitsgebot! You can brew so many different ways within the Reinheitsgebot, the ideas never stop and the customer gets a production process that has rules and they know that the beer is just water, malt, hop and yeast... but I also really like also to brew beer with different ingredients like fruit, herbs and spices! So if I like to brew this way I travel to brewing friends such as de Molen and Birra del Borgo and make a collab brew together… I also believe in lagering. My kellerbier gets four weeks, though others such as the Russian Imperial Stout get 12.

It’s a bottom-fermented Russian Imperial Stout, but it still has all the attributes of a classic one.

You use a coolship, but you’re not making lambic.

I use a coolship for the beer before boiling it. It is only there for 20 minutes but the beer is much more clear, it also gets rid of DMS and the hot trub settles as well.

You’re in a beer garden, with great beer and all is well and then it starts raining…

If I have a good beer in a good place I take a cover for my beer mug so the beer doesn’t get watery and drink away in cosy mood until it’s empty!

If you weren’t a brewer what would you be?

That’s also very clear, I would be ‘only a beer drinker but no more both'.

Knock knock, it’s Dr. Oetker at the door with a big pot of money…

We’re not getting any younger and I have responsibility to my wife and my daughter who works for us, so I believe I would decide to take the money and build up my own brewery and produce products of the highest quality I could make! But I’m happy to believe that I would never have to take this decision because I don’t think Dr. Oetker would ever arrive at our door…hahaaaha.

ATJ /ganstallerbrau.de

Anatomy of... GOSE Gose is the sour wheat beer style that nearly passed on, that almost joined the ranks of the dead, only to be commemorated in old posters and brewing books or on cranky, obscure blogs. I didn’t even hear of it until I was looking through the second edition of Michael Jackson’s Beer Compendium (published 1997), which shoe-horned in several paragraphs on a strange beer made with salt and coriander. I was intrigued

STRENGTH

but didn’t get to taste one until a visit to Leipzig in late 2010. Since then, it’s become one of the fittings and fixtures of many a brewery’s ‘sour’ offering, often with all kinds of additions, something that can offend purists. On the other hand, it’s rather magnificent that brewers care enough to make something of this obscure beer style that has returned from the dead. ATJ

AKA

Typically around 4.5%, though some go down to around 4% and others up to 4.8%; inevitably we have had imperial variants, a novelty that seems to defeat the idea of Gose as a crisp and thirst-quenching style.

Sour wheat beer, which is arguably part of the same beer family as grodziskie and lichtenhainer, and maybe even closely enough related to Berliner Weisse to exchange Christmas cards.

FLAVOUR Coriander adds a spiciness to the beer, while the salt gives a salinity and a medium body to the mouth feel; there’s usually a lemony sweetness with more salt and spice in the finish. Tartness is also self-evident.

FOOD

APPEARANCE Slightly hazy, orangey-golden in colour, with a bright white head of form. Well-carbonated, which means a continuous ladder of bubbles reaching for the surface.

HISTORY Roots in the middle ages when it apparently emerged in Goslar on the River Gose; more famously associated with Leipzig. Two world wars and political upheaval saw production stop in the 1960s until the 1980s.

Crispy leg of roast pork with potato dumplings was my choice on the menu at the Bayerischer Bahnhof brewpub in Leipzig.

WHERE TO DRINK No doubt about it, go to Leipzig and spend time at Ohne Bedenken, where I was told Putin used to visit when he was the KGB guy in the city; then to Bayerischer Bahnhof.

WEIRD FACT If you say to your average Leipziger that you have come to their city to hunt for Gose, chances are you’ll get a funny look.

THREE OF THE BEST

/ Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei Bayerischer Bahnhof, 4.5% Delicately spicy and ozonelike nose with a spicy, tart and gently salty palate; it’s thirst-quenching and light in its mouth feel.

/ Magic Rock, Salty Kiss 4.1% Gose gets gooseberried and also sees sea buckthorn being added and the result is a ringing, chiming beer reminiscent of a briny day by the sea. / Passion Fruit Gose Hawkshead Brewery, 4.5% Tart and refreshing on the palate, alongside a salinity; the passionfruit adds a lustrous fruitiness that suggests this might be a good breakfast beer.

P9

F E AT U R E

Dual in the sun WHEN IT COMES TO BEER, SUNLIGHT HAS TWO ROLES TO PLAY, ONE GOOD AND ONE BAD, AS PETE BROWN EXPLAINS

L

ight and dark.

Black and white.

Yin and yang. We like to think of the world in terms of paired opposites.

But sunlight needs no opposite number when it comes to beer. It is both beer’s truest friend, and its greatest enemy.

Say ‘sunlight’ to a brewer and they’ll probably grimace. Of all the off-flavours that can ruin beer, ‘lightstrike’ can be one of the worst, and yet it’s one of the most easily avoided. Also known as ‘skunking’, it occurs when sunlight hits beer and causes a photochemical reaction which converts the isomerized alpha acids from the hops into a compound with very similar characteristics to the anal secretions skunks emit when they feel threatened (in this case, skunk has nothing to do with the ‘dank’, weedy aromas hopheads love).

That clear glass bottle may make the beer look like liquid sunshine in Corona ads,

P10

but it’s killing the beer. Ever wondered why they serve it ice cold, straight from the bottle with a wedge of lime in the top?

Beers — especially hoppy beers — need to be protected from the sun. If you see a beer in a clear glass bottle, it’s almost certainly suffered. Green is slightly better.

Brown much more so. But lightstrike is the reason that stylish can you’re holding keeps your beer fresher than any bottle.

Sunlight may be bad for finished, bottled beer. But go further back up the brewing chain, and sunlight is, of course, the centre of everything.

Researching my last book Miracle Brew made me really wish I’d paid more attention during biology lessons. Alcohol in nature comes from the fermentation of sugars by yeast. Ferment fruit and you get wine; ferment grain and you get beer. But where does the sugar come from? This, I felt, was almost as miraculous as the transformation of sugar into alcohol: plants absorb water

and carbon dioxide, and when the sun shines its energy on them, they turn these into glucose and oxygen, allowing us to breathe, and literally creating food out of water and thin air. At school I’d thought photosynthesis was just the thing that turns plants green. Turns out that ultimately, it’s the source of all food and fuel on the planet.

The sugar in grain is stored behind a series of defences to prevent predators stealing food meant for baby plants. To modify it so yeast can ferment it, the grain goes through a process where it is soaked in water, sprouts, and is then dried so the embryo is killed and doesn’t grow. This drying requires a heat source. And in much early brewing, that source was the sun, with grain being laid out on rocks or flat roofs to slowly bake.

The degree of heat in the malting process influences the colour and flavour of the finished grains — more heat, and they go darker, with richer flavours. When Pilsner Urquell claims to the world’s first golden

lager, or beer historians say pale malt was invented in the 1600s, they’re missing the fact that some of the earliest beers ever brewed would have been gently sun-dried, and therefore pale and golden in colour.

As we explore elsewhere in this issue, when the sun comes out, beer comes into its own. Beer works on beaches and at barbecues in ways no other drink can. It’s perfect when cold and refreshing, and given that there’s nothing worse than being prematurely drunk in hot sun, beer’s gentle curve of inebriation is perfect for summer weather.

Thinking about how the sun helps barley grow and develop sugar, and how golden barley can be turned into pale malt under the sun’s gentle oversight, it’s tempting to go further and say that in beer, more than any other drink, you can actually taste sunlight. Unfortunately though, if you ever are unlucky enough to really taste the sun in your beer, it’s going to remind you more of sulphur and BO than seashores and sunscreen.

F E AT U R E

An illuminating walk through the past THE FLÂNEUR SEES BEYOND THE SURFACE, LOOKS INTO THE PAST AND PONDERS THE FUTURE. A LOST BREWERY SIGN, THE NOISE OF A ONCE BUSY PUB, THE GHOSTLY WAFT OF BREWING HOPS. DES DE MOOR TAKES A SLOW WALK INTO THE PAST

By Des De Moor

H

human history lays down strata, society’s geology.

Our habit of constantly remaking our surroundings effaces most of what went before, but scattered fragments still peek through, even if only in street patterns or the footprints buildings leave.

Occasionally demolition and rebuilding scratch enough of the surface to bring a patch of the earlier landscape to light.

To glimpse the past, you need to move slowly and let this luminosity in and you can do this by walking. It immerses you in the detail, gives you the time and the brain-space to absorb it, provides access to hidden corners and makes it easy to stop and look.

Pacing out our

surroundings is a cognitive process, helping us to reveal their sense of place.

Roads and buildings might obscure the original contours of a city, but your feet will soon tell you if you’re surmounting a hill or descending into the valley of a river

that vanished beneath the onslaught of Victorian concrete.

grisly rotting human heads spiked atop the bridge.

Brewing and beer are a part of this culture and heritage too. As one of the earliest large-scale industries, brewing has left deep scars. Its legacy is immense: breweries rapidly grew into leviathan-like industrial complexes in the 18th century.

It also imprinted itself on the agricultural landscape: vast plains of swaying barley, gardens spiked with hop poles, an architecture of barns and brick cowls.

Even if you’re cycling, you are likely to whizz through the Borough and miss the splendid sculpture of hop pickers adorning the

Back in the city, London’s streets are soaked in beer and walking them is the best

way to hear it splash beneath your feet. The city’s role as a port is one key to its pre-eminence in brewing, which in turn was facilitated by the Thames. However, you need to walk one of its bridges to understand how the river was also a barrier that bent the city into its current shape. You might then consider how during those many centuries when London Bridge was the only fixed crossing, people and goods — including hops from Kent — converged on Borough High Street within sight and smell of the

former LeMay hop factor’s building or the way the bines creep through the wrought iron and corbels of the Hop Exchange.

Elsewhere, the inquisitive flâneur ducking off Edinburgh’s Chambers Street will be rewarded with a view of the former maltings of Campbell Hope & King’s Argyle Brewery overlooking a disused weighbridge, a reminder of the days when the Cowgate below was regularly thick with the stink of multiple brewhouses mashing in.

Walking Burton-upon-Trent gives a sense of sheer scale as well as underlining the role of the Trent itself. Leaving the river, you trudge for miles past vast complexes

of brewing-related buildings, many still in use, then stumble unexpectedly on a late Victorian

municipal centre, forced to the periphery by a core already thickly colonised by Bass, Worthington, Allsopp among many others.

It’s a similar experience in Brick Lane where Truman’s Black Eagle Brewery occupies 4.5 hectares. Consider its beginnings as a one-room brewhouse when the lane was a country track leading to brickfields, then imagine your favourite brewpub expanding like the girth of a self-satisfied alderman to consume several surrounding blocks.

Brewing is still the same basic process, and these apparently remote remnants are connected to the present by multiple threads, even as the proliferation of micro-brewing appears to return the industry to a mediaeval scale. And between contemporary brewing’s twin poles of anything-goes diversity and the globalised homogeneity of both mainstream lager and ‘American’ pale ale, I’ll continue to shine a light on beer’s evolutionary pathways.

P11

F E AT U R E

Pils-thrills and ferry aches THE HOLIDAY BEER IS A MOMENT TO SAVOUR, IT’S RECREATING IT AT HOME THAT IS THE CHALLENGE. STEP 1: GET A LAGER

I

t’s after 12 o’clock somewhere in the world, and where we are right now is exactly what time it is. The sun has risen to a glorious peak in an impeccable sky and under a Perrier parasol you’re relaxed and shaded.

The heat of the day warms you through to the bones. Breathing deep, there’s an ozonic scent of salt and sardines in the air, lifting the gentle hum of hot terracotta, coconut suncream and charred seafood — calamari? — being grilled somewhere out of sight. On the table in front of you, bathed in the sunlit glare of whitewashed walls, is a stemmed and frosty half-glass of local lager, bubbling with the anticipation of being your first holiday beer.

Welcome to one of my happy places. I escape there during the cruel wastelands of January and February and on the darkest days I cling to the memory of it like a lilo

P12

swept out in a riptide. When the nights grasp tight, squeezing winter’s weak, greywhite days into a desperate four or five hours, strong, blinding sunlight becomes mythical. I keep my happy reserve of it safe in my head until summer comes back around, and against all odds, it always does.

But you never know. Seasonal Affective

By Katie Taylor

When swallows appear between the rooftops and you start feeling peckish, throw an appropriate glass in the freezer and dawdle to the shops. Pick up the beers that most suit your appetite.

‘Holiday beer’ can be any lager, as long as its underwhelming taste is totally compensated for by the joyful scenes

Dorada, Birra Moretti, Cruzcampo, Tropical, Sagres, Mythos… These beers represent something special to me that’s about much more than how they taste.

Their colour reminds me of how whole the world feels when the sun comes out again.

How time slows while you watch their tiny bubbles rise, and how everything starts making sense again.

Return home, light a barbecue, and pour.

Ignore the chilly breeze. Those were not spots of rain. Pour another. Relax.

But let’s get back to the happy place.

The café table and the parasol, the glass of beer. Beside it, a bowl of torn focaccia, or crumbling cubes of cheese. Perhaps chicharones, if you’re lucky. The sun is shining through your little beer, and you can hear bells from an ancient cathedral clanging in the distance. Maybe you’re with somebody, or maybe you’re contentedly alone with your thoughts. There might be a plaza to watch the world pass by, or the horizon to contemplate out at sea but the beer, at least for me, will be the same. Local lager, poured foamy and cold.

A glowing glass of sunshine.

Disorder is no joke.

Recreating the happy place at home requires a few specific ingredients. You need a rare afternoon when the English clouds part for a few hours, heating up the patio to accommodate bare feet.

of beaches and olive groves and legs of ibérico ham it beams directly into your head. Pick food to suit the beer you’ve chosen. Return home, light a barbecue, and pour. Ignore the chilly breeze.

Those were not spots of rain.

Pour another. Relax.

#MEAN IT

P H O T O E S S AY

Black Horse, Newport Gwent

Bromley Arms, Marylebone London

Cambrian, Newport Gwent

Cattle Market Tavern, Bristol

Coach House, Bristol

Commercial Inn, Walsall

Cricketers Arms, Swindon

Duke of Wellington, Swindon

Farriers Arms, Bristol

Grand Junction Arms, Paddington London

Hope and Anchor, Camden London

Lord Nelson, Bristol

P14

P H O T O E S S AY

LOST PUBS Now a year old, the lost pubs Instagram account shares pictures of ex-pubs – some converted to flats or supermarkets, some lying empty while the local community fights a developer, some just left to rot.

Printers Devil, Bristol

Russell Arms, Bristol

Prince of Wales, Bristol

Scotchman And His Pack, Bristol

Market Tavern, Walsall

Pack Horse, Frome, Somerset

Seahorse, Bristol

Masons Arms ,Wolverhampton

Merchants Arms, Bristol

Swan and Edgar, Marylebone

There aren’t many rules – a building has to still look like a pub, retaining some original external features. A few former off-licences are featured. Some of the pictures have prompted others to share fond – and not so fond – memories of nights out, works dos, or being taken to that pub by their dad for the first time.

The project has taken me to new parts of cities I thought I knew well, sometimes to discover that a pub is longdemolished or converted beyond recognition. But at other times, to stumble upon @lostpubs gold – an abandoned pub with weeds growing out of gaping cracks in the walls, while all of its pub signage somehow remains intact. By Liz Christie If you’re on Instagram, take a look at @lostpubs.

P15

F E AT U R E

The secret garten WHEN MAY COMES, FRANCONIAN BEER GARDENS DAZZLE WITH SUNLIGHT AND THE GLEAM OF DELICIOUS LOCALLY-BREWED KELLERBIERS

By Adrian Tierney-Jones

C

haucer liked April because this was when folk felt the need to go on pilgrimage.

It also gave him the excuse to write one of the most enduring works in English literature.

April’s a bit wet and often quite cold (and it’s also the cruellest month according to TS Eliot), so for me May is the month when I feel the need to go on pilgrimage — and this year it was to the beer gardens of Bamberg and the surrounding Franconian countryside.

Beer gardens are my idea of a heaven on earth. They are places where I feel free, spaces that light up the senses with a divine combination of the kind of beer that angels would drink and bold swipes of golden sunlight, with the odd cloud drifting by as if checking up on what it is missing. I have a particularly pleasing memory of a beer garden in a Cambridge pub nearly 30 years ago, when the world was young and the beer journey that I would take was equally in its infancy. I recall a lunchtime session with friends that seemed to last forever and, which later in the day, I would try and capture in a journal I kept at the time. I wanted to stop time.

Despite my attempt to use words to bend the laws of the universe a lot of time has passed and much beer been drunk since that insoluble day. So here I was in Bamberg rather than Cambridge, during my blessed month of May and the beer gardens (or kellers) were open. So here I was at Wilde-Rose-Brau, just up the road from Schlenkerla’s brewery, as sunlight dappled the fluttering lime-green leaves of chestnut trees, nervous dots and dashes of light, a morse code of delight.

P16

Voices murmured, glasses of darkly golden kellerbier were clinked and downed with the avidity of a traveller at an oasis; children ran around the play area, occasionally joined by a parent with glass in hand; the sound of birdsong rose and fell like a steady heartbeat; the sweetish smell of sauerkraut crossed with the sterner aroma of grilled sausage drifted through the air. This was my happy place, my happy time, a sunlit, beerfocused community (I was with a couple of friends), where good beer was drunk, bullshit on life and beer and the rest was spoken and, above all, I felt enveloped by a serene gladness to have made this journey.

What a contrast to lunchtime’s light this was. Then I had experienced the reverse of the beer garden’s sunny disposition by diving into Schlenkerla’s dimly lit, gothically inclined tavern in the heart of the old city. Being lunchtime, the mood of the place was social, gregarious, open-minded, beery, friendly and jokey.

Stories were told, pictures on phones shared, confidences tapped out; plates of Herculean onions stuffed with minced pork landed on the wooden tables soon to be followed by the clank of knife and fork against plate as hungry people dived in; I witnessed and was impressed by the tireless promenade of the food server as she balanced plates and glasses between the tables, while above her the vaulted ceiling, patterned with whorls and images of animals, pressed down as if the centuries wanted to tell the diners something special.

Meanwhile, metal lampshades hung down like ornate crowns for some untold king of the winter months.

There was something about the twilight aspect of this tavern that stoked my mitteleuropa fantasies, the middle of Europe, where poets and writers sit in beer gardens and taverns and beer has a central

role to play. However, looking around the tavern, I started to realise, as I have done in many other beer-inclined legends around the world (Leipzig, Portland OR, Bruges, České Budějovice), that for people here a glass of the smokey, full-bodied, darkly caramel Märzen is as commonplace as the daily view of the Thames and the Tower of London is for someone who has spent their life in Tower Hamlets. As I took another gulp of beer, I noted a slight acidity alongside a crispness, a snap and a bite on the mid palate. If Game of Thrones did beer this would be it and the tavern its home — a place of eternal twilight through which we would move as if in a fog, eternal autumn, a cave, a vault in which the echoes of the past resonated and reverberated.

Back in the light, in another beer garden, this time at Brauerei Greifenklau, the early evening sunlight infiltrated through the leaves, and brought to life another aspect of the happy aspect of drinking outside: the beer. Here the Kellerbier was clean and malty, minerally and earthy, while its Rauchbier was mild compared to Schlenkerla’s. I could have spent the evening in this garden, but the earth and the sky grumbled and rumbled to the north, and thunder hammered its way through the mountains. Next day, whilst we sat in Kreuzbergkeller Lieberth’s beer garden, a few miles outside Bamberg, the rain was biblical but until umbrellas starting collapsing people remained with their kellerbiers and drank and chatted as if nothing was happening. And this time the light was reminiscent of the dimness in the Schlenkerla Tavern, all of which suggested to me that Franconia is a place of light, of different degrees of light, a place where the beer garden achieves a heavenly status and its drinkers know this as they continue to clink glasses and drink an equally heavenly beer.

F E AT U R E

When the sun shines and the beer flows, the beer gardens of Franconia, such as Wilde-Rose-Brau (top right) are a heavenly, celestial place to be

Dappled shade at Hofmanns Keller, Forchheim and Spezial Keller in Bamberg, Germany, where afternoons are shared along with smokey Rauchbier.

P17

TALES FROM THE WOOD A SHOWCASE OF BARRELS AND BLENDING

TALKS TASTINGS TOURS RARITIES SPECIAL GUESTS Saturday

7th JULY 2018 12pm - 10pm, at THE WILD BEER CO Lower Westcombe Farm Evercreech, Somerset, BA4 6E

Tickets £20 from: tikk.co.uk/wild-beer

S H O RT S

The shock of the old Pete Brown asks if the world of beer in danger of being marooned on novelty island

A friend of mine used to work across a whole raft of music magazines, as both writer and editor.

The first time we met, I was somewhat taken aback by the fact that he thought my job was more interesting than his.

I’d always wanted to be a music writer and was curious as to why he now thought beer was so much more exciting?

‘Beer today is like 1978 for music!’ he said. ‘The rulebook’s been ripped up.

Anything can happen.’

of the friends I made at university was a huge Beatles fan. I genuinely felt sorry for him.

But then I’d start reading interviews with my idols, and they’d go on about records from the 1960s and 1970s that had inspired them. There were no downloads back then, so it was expensive and difficult to find anything that wasn’t a regular on pick of the pops-style radio shows. In the early 1990s, all the old stuff was re-released on CD,

theft that linked up into an alternative history of the world. A few of my favourite bands had surpassed their influences.

But I realised many more were simply bad karaoke versions of those who did it first. Here, in bargain bins, sporting dreadful sideburns and flares, were the true innovators.

I must confess to being in a different demographic now it’s beer’s turn. I’m one of the crusty old guys who remembers the originals and always has to

Beer, like most good things in life, gets fuller, richer and more interesting when there’s more diversity. And the main place to find that diversity is in the past When he said, ‘anything’, I doubt the concept of glitter beer ever crossed his mind. But glitter beer is now a thing, which shows how right he was.

For a music fan growing up in the 1980s, Year Zero was very important to me. Anything that came before it didn’t count.

It was prehistory. The shock of the new was all that mattered. One

and you could get three albums for twenty quid from Virgin or HMV. I bought the Velvet Underground and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Kraftwerk and Can, old 1960s psychedelia and 1970s ambient. The people on sleeves looked desperately old-fashioned and uncool. But listening to the music was like being able to see through time, a web of influence, experimentation and

take care not to slip into things-were-better-in-myday mode of grumbling.

For the record, I don’t think things were better in my day. Interesting, flavourful beer was thin on the ground, and you were thought of as some kind of eccentric if you went looking for it. And anyway, I like to think that today is still my day, too. I’m constantly trying new beers, still discovering beers that inspire me and

By Pete Brown

make me excited about the sheer creative possibilities and simple delight beer can bring.

It’s just… I do sometimes worry that the headlong charge for the new is in danger of making beer a duller, rather than a more exciting, place. Last week I was in a craft beer bar where, among 20 taps, seven were IPAs. I asked which ones were West Coast-style, with some bitterness as well as hop aroma, and was told none of them were: every single one was a New Englandstyle IPA. At this point, fans of NEIPA will be reaching for the pic of Grandpa Simpson under the cartoon newspaper headline, ‘Old Man Shouts at Cloud’, which may even have the word ‘water’ stuck on at the end. Feelings run high on both sides of the debate around the most popular craft beer style of the moment. But the beer world is in an odd situation in 2018 when you’re considered old and boring for suggesting that having more than one beer style might be fun. Look hard enough and you can still find pubs that have eight or nine different mainstream lagers on, all

tasting the same. I thought that’s what we were all trying to move away from.

Beer, like most good things in life, gets fuller, richer and more interesting when there’s more diversity. And the main place to find that diversity is in the past.

The American craft beer revolution was inspired by the age-old brewing traditions of Belgium, Germany, and in particular, the real ales of Britain. Countless modern breweries over the last ten years have been inspired by BrewDog — now considered distinctly old hat by many craft beer fans. BrewDog were in turn inspired by beer writer Michael Jackson — who would be 78 now if he was still alive — who also lit the fire under the US craft brewing movement that provided the template for BrewDog to follow.

Now all these influences have got us here, have they served their purpose? Do brewers and beer styles always have to have a sellby date on them?

tickers on sites such as RateBeer. Now it doesn’t make the top 20. What changed? Not Westvleteren. And for some, that’s its problem.

But I reckon that Westie and the other Trappists, along with dark, nutty best bitters, wheat beers and, yes, crisp, bitter ‘old school’ IPAs, will bide their time, waiting for novelty hunters to tire and come back home, or even simply change direction and go retro.

A couple of years ago my wife’s young goddaughter burst into our house and said, ’Omigod you guys, I’ve found this amazing band, you’re going to love them? They’re called The Clash?’

We’ve both been listening to The Clash for over 30 years. But until Katie found them on some playlist, that was irrelevant. Each generation needs to make its own discovery, each learning on their own terms that there was life before Year Zero.

A few years ago, Trappist ale Westvleteren was considered the undisputed best beer in the world by a generation of online

P19

WHITE RIOT WHITE PALE ALE

Not a pale ale.

Not a wheat beer.

A riot of beer styles in one.

Maximum refreshment.

SEIZE THE CROWN

uprisingbrewery.co.uk

BOOK YOUR £25 SIX EDITIONS*

BIT.LY/sub6OG

*Delivered

STACK NOW

BEER

T R AV E L L E R

SACRAMENTO Daniel Neilson travels to the 'City of Saloons', a place where music, politics and history collide over beer

Chuck Suckit kicked the contraption that sat on an old tin box. As far as I could tell, it was a Hellmann’s mayonnaise bottle filled with dry black-eyed beans, taped to a cheese grater that he poked his toe through.

It made a good racket. He plucked the strings of his homemade, box-shaped, fourstring guitar, like he was plucking a chicken.

‘I’IIII chuck it,’ he drawled. “Yoou suck it.’

The crowd responded enthusiastically. The dimly lit Torch Club had been a Sacramento hang out since 1934, the year prohibition ended. The current incumbent Marina Texeira told me a bit about it over Chuck Suckit’s raw blues: ‘My grandaddy took it over. He was a boxing promoter and racecourse owner.’ She pointed to the wall dedicated to pugilism. One case to the right of the stage was filled with Vietnam War memorabilia, and to the right prints of Vietnam-era choppers have been signed by veteran groups and dedicated to Ron. I asked about it. ‘My daddy called this place “The Bunker” and always welcomed vets at a time when they were having a hard time.’

After Chuck Suckit packed up his homemade instruments in a wooden ammo box, Jon Enery stepped onto the stage with a band. Raucous country music, telling tales of women, whisky and a life on the road, filled the dimly lit bar. The audience, equal parts baseball caps and cowboy hats, equal parts Budweiser and IPA from the Revision Brewing Company, started to dance. It was going to be a long night at The Torch Club.

It was only 5pm after all.

Mark Twain described Sacramento as a City of Saloons: ‘You can shut your eyes

and march into the first door you come to and call for a drink, and the chances are that you will get it.’ When he visited in 1866, Sacramento was the most important city in California, having being incorporated in the state two years after gold was discovered in 1848, and state capital since 1854.

I stepped out into the sun, past the taco wagon that was just opening outside, and jumped in a cab. My destination was the other side of town. On this early Saturday evening, families were walking the quiet tree-lined streets and the number of wedding parties waiting for photos

was sitting at the counter in Pangaea Bier Cafe, one of the town’s first beer bars that opened in 2008, slack-jawed as I heard what people were buying. It was a world away from tech-employed hipsters buying up the latest ‘California Haze’ or mixed ferm sour; instead it was families with buggies, kids who need ID’ing, college students, and mom and pop who had popped down because they’d heard the latest Sante Adairius was on tap.

I’d met the owner Rob Archie, earlier in the day at a new venture, Urban Roots Brewing — this was a large brewery with an enticing barrel room, bar, patio and smokehouse. It had 24 taps, many brewed by his business

At Pangaea, I ordered Stank Pocket Brut IPA from Berryessa. This was the California beer scene in a glass. in the famous rose garden had grown since my earlier wanderings. ‘Early town planners had the foresight to plant trees everywhere,’ my guide Nick Leonti had explained. They had to as ‘hot’ was the most common response I heard from people in San Francisco when I told them where I was going. ‘For beer?’ was the next quizzical question. Despite being the state capital, Sacramento often gets overlooked for, well, pretty much everything. And I began to think that’s just how the Sacramento population likes it.

Two saisons, and a peach sour please… A Hazy Bones and a 10oz St Bernardus 12…

A Hammerland DIPA and nitro stout… I

partner Peter Hoey. A Sacramento native, he discovered European beer while playing basketball in Italy, but it was his trips to Belgium that sparked his passion for beer.

‘This city is an unpainted canvas for beer and it’s our responsibility to bring some dope shit,’ he smiled.

At Pangaea, I ordered another Stank Pocket Brut IPA from Berryessa. This was the California beer scene in a glass. The brut IPA was thought to be developed by Social Brewing’s Kim Sturdavant by adding amylase enzyme, sometimes used to lighten the body of dark beers. It was a distinct move from the ‘California haze’ IPA, the West Coast’s take on the Vermont IPA. It was dry,

tempered in hoppiness, and the two barely touched the sides. It was also brewed for 4.20 — a day that celebrates the legalisation of marijuana. It had cannabis turpenes added, the aroma elements from marijuana.

Dank was the word.

The next day I visited Bike Dog’s new tap.

It looked more like an ice cream parlour along with the kind of clientele you’d expect at such a place. Kids coloured at tables and there was even a baptism party. On a hot lunchtime, there are few places I’d rather have a beer. The Mosaic was as gold as the metal this city was founded on; it was crystal clear and managed to have the hop character I’d come to recognise in California as ‘incredibly fresh’, but with a mature balance I’d rarely experienced before. There was more to come. At Field Works later in the day, among the haze bombs, I’d enjoyed a Vienna lager and over a few days I was also richly impressed with Track 7 and New Helvetia Brewing Company among the 50 or so breweries in the area.

I thought back to the Bike Dog Mosaic again and I firmly believe that is in Sacramento where I try the beers that are probably the future of beer in California: those with balance, poise and maturity. DN For more information: / visitsacramento.com / visitcalifornia.co.uk / doubletree3.hilton.com / torchclub.net / bikedogbrewing.com / pangaeabiercafe.com

P21

TA S T I N G N O T E S

Adnams Sierra Nevada NEW ENGLAND IPA[6%] SIDECAR [5.3%]

Burnt Mill Brewery PINTLE [4.3%]

Magic Rock FANTASMA [6.5%]

Need a NEIPA, but wary of yeast bite? How about this sunny delight from Southwold?

Are they taking the pith?

An impressively mature beer from a young brewery

A gluten-free beer you don’t have to be gluten-free to like

Given the Victorian origins of Adnams, some might say that the NEIPA shark has been well and truly jumped; others could suggest a celebration. Having had too many NEIPAs with an aspirin-like yeast bite, I am in the latter camp. Even though it looks like Sunny Delight it’s a beer to reactivate your faith in, well, beer.

There’s mango juice and crushed papaya on the nose, adult fruit juice to break the night’s fast; there is plenty of juiciness on the palate, but also a just about discernible dryness; there’s a full bodied mouth feel, some pepperiness and the suggestion of the petrol note you would get on a Riesling, and, hooray, no yeast bite in the finish. One of the easier drinking versions of a style that is subcutaneous in its appeal.

ATJ / adnams.co.uk

A classic Sidecar is a sour cocktail featuring cognac, orange liqueur and lemon juice. It’s not everyone’s tipple, but these days it looks like great inspiration for a beer recipe. Sierra Nevada pioneered the modern, hop-forward pale ale back in 1979. Sidecar is brewed with orange peel, and the nose gives you hints of grown-up burnt orange and zest rather than a big wave of juice. This leads to a great double hit: there’s a orangey character to complement the big hop aromas, but there’s also a zesty bitterness that plays wonderfully with the bittering hops, not increasing the the bitterness, but fleshing it out and making it more interesting. Like all the best cocktails, it’s fruity in a multi-dimensional way, and you feel clever and sophisticated when you drink it. PB / sierranevada.com

There are some breweries that rise, almost imperceptibly, into fleeting conversations, comments on social media and, eventually, into fridges. Burnt Mill Brewery in Suffolk, under head brewer Sophie de Ronde, is one such brewery that has been quietly bubbling away, before recently winning RateBeer’s best new brewery in the UK. Why? These are beers that have a richness and a spiralling whirl of flavour that continues to tease and please. Pintle is as dry as sandstone with a depth of flavour that is mildly astonishing at every sip. The hops spike through the wheaty malt bill holding aloft lemon sherbert and tart white grapefruit. It’s impossible not to be endeared to a brewery that clearly puts so much care into its beer.

DN / burntmillbrewery.com

Like low/no alcohol beers, it feels as though, after several false starts, gluten-free beers might finally be staking a claim to be taken seriously.

The combination of new technologies and brewers who are uncompromising about flavour is getting results. The only reason I have to buy a gluten-free beer is if it tastes good, so I’m delighted to inform coeliac readers that Magic Rock have pulled it off. Apart from the labelling on the can, the only clue is a slightly odd, somewhat musty aroma. Get past that, and it’s a teasing delight of skunky, resiny hops, a little thin in the body, but that works perfectly well for the style. It’s crisp and clean, and then the hops draw you back for more, and it goes down so easy, and, damn, I didn’t spot it was 6.5% until it was too late. PB / magicrockbrewing.com

So there I was at the Exeter Food Festival and someone said I should go over to the Stannary stand and have a chat with a couple of guys whose brewery is based in Tavistock, on Dartmoor. I had a glass of the Repeat Offender DIPA, lush and ludicrous as its flavours threw cartwheels on my tongue. And then I bought a bottle of this, which I was told had plenty of Mandarina Bavaria hops as well as a being

fermented with a classic saison yeast. A few nights later, I opened it and was engulfed with a nostalgia for my trip to saison country a few years back.

Dartmoor field during a drought.

I loved it, you should too.

There was a rigour to the beer, a flintiness and a full-bodied character, while the Mandarina Bavaria sent a light citrusy swipe across the palate, before a finish as dry as a

ATJ / stannarybrewing.co.uk

Stannary Brewing Co SAISON DU SOLEIL [5.2%]

A saison from Dartmoor sensually seasoned with Mandarina Bavaria, whatever next?

Russian River BLIND PIG [6.25%]

Siren Craft Brew WHITE TIPS [4.5%]

Beavertown x BRATTISH [6%]

Fyne Ales EXPEDITION [5.6%]

A West Coast classic that grows up

IPA-style hopping gets wise with a witbier and the result is an appealing, elegant pleasing beer

This ‘drinkable friendship bracelet’ hints at a winning brewmance with De La Senne

The complexity of a barrel-aged IPA beautifully realised

So I got to the stage in California when I wasn’t really sure what I was tasting. Something in the beer tasted weird. All of them. Then it occurred to me, is this what fresh hops taste like? I drive two hours to Russian River to get a bottle of Pliny the Elder and come away with one Ron Mexico and Blind Pig (‘a staff favourite’ said the server). Back in the UK I open it. Bouncing out of the bottle is that aroma, a dank, woody smell again, laid bare in smell-o-vision. But Blind Pig is not the hop explosion I expected, instead it is masterfully balanced like a tight-rope walker over Yosemite’s peaks, seemingly ready to tip at any point, but it never does. Nursed back to the UK, and gone in 12 minutes. Beer gets you sometimes. DN / russianriverbrewing.com

Translucent in its golden sheen, and brimming with that jazzy, angular character you’d expect from Belgian yeast this is Siren’s invitation to IPA and witbier to get to know each other a bit better (hence IPA-style hopping, Belgian yeast and citrus peel). The result is a sharp and refreshing, slightly tart, spicy, hoppy and herbal beer, whose bone-dry finish lingers like a police informer in a dubious cafe in postwar Vienna. This is a beer that both chimes in the glass and sends out rays of sunshine but also seduces with its musky hop aroma in tangent with a ripe conceit of orange frothiness. White IPAs don’t always call to me, they sometimes seem like a forced style, but White Tips crooks its finger and draws the drinker in. ATJ / sirencraftbrew.com

This particular Beavertown and Belgian brewers De La Senne collaboration has the same frisson as if your favourite DC characters turned up in the next Avengers film. De La Senne is rightly feted as one of the best breweries in Belgium today, and the main reason for that is the relationship between brewer Yvan de Baets and his yeast, which he describes as ‘the greatest gift I’ve ever been given’. Here, the flavour qualities of that yeast blend beautifully with a smorgasbord of hops to create a summery, fruity, yet delicate and refined beer that teases the palate with hints of banana and lemon, a perfect blend of British and Belgian.

PB / beavertownbrewery.com

I’m going to sound a little gushing now, but is there almost nothing that Fyne Ales make that makes me go 'meh'. Jarl, for example, is in my (admittedly ever-changing) top beers list. I’ll readily try anything they put in front of me.

And now we’re seeing an experimental side to the brewing mostly through the Origins series.

Expedition is an appealing prospect: a lively IPA matured in American oak barrels for 12 months and then blended with a sour wheat beer. The resulting beer begins with a surprising sharpness. Once it has your attention, it just keeps digging depths. The oak, the fruit of the hops, the deeply savoury and just about as drinkable as your favourite West Coast IPA. I like Fyne Ales, did I say? DN / fyneales.com

P22

YOUR ROUND

Twitter and Instagram shared pictures around the theme 'travel' @OGBeerMag / #OGYourRound

@Pieandpint

@beerjustice @GammonBaron

@Greave17

@daisy_turnell

I n d e p e n d e n t & U n f I lt e r e d

fivepointsbrewing.co.uk

@fivepointsBrew

P23