issue 17
GOOD NEWS FOR PEOPLE WHO LOVE GOOD BEER
THE MAGIC OF BEER
F R EE
CRAFT BEER REAL ALES GOOD PUBS TASTING NOTES TRAVEL + other nice stuff
fro s e abl f ng i h c wit e B
m
the
r bee
y
d un
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rl wo
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ART OF BEER / CATALONIA / BELGIAN MYSTIC BREWS
WILD BEER
GIPSY HILL
ONE MIILE END
FIRST CHOP
FOUR PURE WILD WEATHER NORTH BREWING TWO TRIBES WYLAM BREWERY
EAST LONDON
YEASTIE BOYS
SUSSEX BREWERS
LOST & FOUND LAINE BREW CO
Photo: Jane McDevitt and Peter Byrne
Issue 17 | Contents
Cover photograph exclusively for Original Gravity by Rob Vanderplank. Retouching by Dan Harker. / robvanderplank.com
The Mash /p04 • Magic of beer /p10 • Photo essay /p14 • Belgian myths/p15 Essay /p19 • Catalonia /p21 • Tasting notes /p22
MAGIC/REALISM ...where beer meets the netherworld
Tommy Cooper did magic, though like many a duff brewery’s beers his tricks usually went wrong; David Copperfield also dabbles in magic, glitzed up and given the gift of the gab — if he was a brewery, he’d have tripped over himself in the rush to get to the door when Mr AnheuserBusch knocked. Then there is Merlin, who probably never existed but some (probably monastic) scribe, in the wake of the Romans leaving, managed to weave a magic spell that has lasted down
the centuries (a bit like one of the small group of family breweries still surviving). As you might have guessed from this preamble, this is our magic issue, though we’re aiming more towards Gabriel García Marquéz than Paul Daniels. When we talk about magic in brewing and beer, it often comes down to the process of fermentation, when yeast in the prePasteur time, as Pete Brown recollects (not from personal memory), was known as
'godisgoode’, because nobody had a clue about where that foam on top of the fermenting beer came from — and given the grip of religion in this period there was only — thing that could explain it. Then there is the magic and fantasy that threads its way through Belgian beer like a vein of gold in a mine overseen by the Nibelung. Our very own master of magical writing, Joe Stange, is just the person to investigate this sense of the fantastic.
We also look at ritual in beer and the myths that hold sway, while elsewhere Emma Inch has written a fantastic essay on how some pubs can be safe havens and others not. There’s also our usual round of reviews, a bit of a q&a with masterful Czech brewer Adam Matuška, barrel-aged beer and Pilsner going under the microscope and a general sense of magical realism. Do enjoy (in the company of a magical beer, naturally). Adrian Tierney-Jones, Editor
ORIGINAL GRAVITY What’s the most transformative beer that you’ve had?
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: Adam McNaught-Davis 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
Emma Inch
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
A freelance beer writer, judge. She produces and presents Fermentation Beer & Brewing Show. / fermentation online.com
Joe Stange, a freelance journalist based in Berlin, is the coauthor of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide Belgium. Follow him on Twitter at @Thirsty_Pilgrim.
Jessica Mason is the Founder & Editor of Drinks Maven. She is an entrepreneur with a healthy interest in what we imbibe. / drinksmaven.com
Beers from Ipswich Ale Brewery in Massachusetts in 1996, ‘hey, this American beer is really good!’
It was a Bridgeport IPA in 2004, first taste of American hops. From black and white to colour.
It has to be Kernel Export Stout — humble perfection from a brewer who changed just about everything.
Boulevard Tenpenny, a Bible Belt take on ordinary bitter, 3.2%. I didn't know beer could taste like that.
A bottle of Oude Kriek Vieille that worked like a defibrillator on my tastebuds.
Adrian Tierney-Jones
Joe Stange
Jessica Mason
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THE MASH
The ART OF BEER THE CREATIVE CRATE
For all of our 17 issues, we've used this position to highlight the best of art, design and illustration that is related to beer. The two are inextricably linked. The design is used to sell, of course, but also to send a message, to describe the contents, to solidify the brand. Our favourites are those that use the space on a bottle or can as a canvas for art, as a way to get a piece of art in your hands. Much like the cover of Original Gravity, we enjoy shining the light on great new artists as well as the brewers behind what's inside the can. That's why we're partnering on a new brewing and design project called The Creative Crate. The Creative Crate is a unique collaboration between London advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, international Design and Art Direction network D&AD, and open brewery UBREW. It brings together emerging designers, illustrators and brewers to make the world’s most creative six pack of beer. In doing so it will provide a platform for new brewing and design talent to get a leg up in their industry. The project will be run as two concurrent competitions – a brewing competition taking place at UBREW HQ in London – writer and Original Gravity's Editor-at-Large Pete Brown will be a judge at the competition. In each field the aim is to represent the agency’s six creative principles: Curiosity, Simplicity, Authenticity, Audacity, Tenacity and Responsibility. The aim is to see what these six principles look like and what they taste like. The result will be a case of six, brand new, creatively themed brews that will be crafted from scratch with labels designed by emerging designers and illustrators. The Creative Crate is about identifying new brewing talent and giving emerging designers and illustrators the opportunities they deserve in the creative community – something that we back wholeheartedly. Matt Denham, founder, UBREW said, 'We want to celebrate creativity in all its forms, creating six new beers and new designs is a great way to do that. We can’t wait to see the exciting beers and designs that the participants come up with.’
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Brewers can win a free membership at UBREW, a chance to play on the professional scale brewing equipment, and possibly even to see their beer go into production. For the designers and illustrators, industry placements and workshops are up for grabs with some of the country’s leading design and illustration agencies.
Jamie Thompson, Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, said: ‘We believe that there are six principles to great creativity. And we wanted to bring these to life in the world’s most creative six pack of beer. Our Creative Crate will give emerging design and illustration talent the opportunity to craft a career in the industry.'
The competitions will be judged by industry experts in both fields and the winners will be announced on the 11th July at the opening of the prestigious D&AD New Blood festival at The Old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch. For more details and to enter, visit: thecreativecrate.co.uk
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The 6 PACK BARREL-AGED BEERS
Beer meets... THE DEVIL The Devil has the best tunes, but does he also have the best beers? With Duvel (devil in Flemish), he certainly has one of the most exceptional Belgium beers to keep him company as he puts another hapless soul in the toaster. On the other hand you could argue that he is promiscuous in his drinking habits: if you go to Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig, you’ll see a dummy Dr Faustus sitting on a massive wine barrel. Whatever the truth, here are three beers with a sympathetic shine for the Devil (we’re only joking, he said, as he spotted a cloven hoof beneath the pub table). ATJ
/ Duvel Barrel-aged 2017 (Bourbon), 11.5% As Joe Stange writes elsewhere in the issue, legends attach themselves to Belgian beer like barnacles to a sea-battered galleon and Duvel is no exception, apparently getting its name when a brewer exclaimed that it was the beer of the Devil on first tasting it. With this barrel-aged expression, firm and eloquent, the gates of Hell are well and truly opened (in the nicest possible way).
This is how we should think of barrelageing: the long sleep; a beer brewed and then enclosed within a wooden tomb on a par with a Pharaoh whose retinue is certain he will resurrect and rule once again; time floating by, like lilies on a stream, with only the imagined scurries and scratchings of creatures we call lactobacillus, pediococcus and brettanomyces disturbing what seems an eternal sleep. Then there is a rude awakening, a tap against the wood, almost like a cry for help, the emergence into sunlight. The beer is filled with a new sense of vigour, ready to start off on its own journey or happy to merge with
another beer or be taken to another barrel whose wood is a different story.
grow old and elegant, ready to be embraced by a younger generation of beer.
During the great porter days of the 18th and 19th century beer was routinely aged in barrels, sometimes for up to a year or more. It ripened and was renewed by its time in barrels the size of modest hotels in modest seaside towns. Then as the brand new century dawned and world wars churned their weary way, brewers forgot what they used to do, they lost the art of ageing beer, they dismissed from their minds, memories of how they used to blend old and new, how they let the right microbes in, kept the wrong ones out; they forgot that beers could
Time passes and retinues of practice return. Many breweries now have their own barrel farm, an odd phrases that’s crossed from the Atlantic and sounds more Big Mac than Old MacDonald had a farm. I was recently in BrewDog’s new sour beer facility, Overworks, where racks of barrels stood silently ready to do the brewer’s bidding. And if that wasn’t enough, there was an amphora, a direct descendant of those vessels that the Romans used to fill with wine (or even fish sauce). For beer, sleep it seems can take many forms.. ATJ
/ Founders Brewing Co Backwoods Bastard, 11.1% Trust the US masters of the barrelaging process to make one of the most complex beers here. Dark fruits shine through smacking Scotch. Masterfully balanced and effortlessly drinkable.
/ Duchesse de Bourgogne, Verhae Vichte, 6.2% In Flanders, wood aging has endured for several beer styles, including the vinous red ales. The brews are tart and dry and full of fruity notes.
/ Wild Beer Co, Beyond Modus IV, 8% This is perhaps the best expression of Wild Beer Co’s passion for wood. It’s a blend of the flagship wood-aged beer Modus Operandi, and aged again. Expect sour cherries and balsamic.
/ Burning Sky, Monolith Vintage, 8% In rural East Sussex is a brewery full of wood. Monolith, a dark, almost stout beer, has vatted on oak for two years, bringing an astonishing complexity.
/ Buxton Brewery, Highlander, 10.5% Perhaps some of the £8.49 went on the gorgeous label, but most (it's not cheap aging beer) it's time spent swilling around Scotch whisky barrels. But wow, this is as complex as a single malt.
/ Siren Craft Brew, Barrel Aged Shattered Dream, 9.1% Broken Dream is Siren's highlyrated breakfast stout. This version has lingered in the copious amounts of barrels at the brewery. An expressive bourbon is tempered with a savoury woodiness.
/ Unibroue Maudite, 8% This potent Abbey-style beer with its panoply of spices, alcohol warmth and bittersweetness on both nose and palate is named after a Quebecois legend in which a bunch of lumberjacks, in their eagerness to get home in time for Christmas, made a deal with Lucifer, who then arranged for them to fly home in their canoes. Wonder what happened after Christmas?
/ Thornbridge Lukas, 4.2% Lukas sounds like the sort of spooky name given to a small boy who is really the Devil in disguise, isn’t it? No? Ok, how about a gulp of this finely made Helles from Derbyshire instead — it’s as blonde as a sunlit smile, light and sparkling on the palate and an elegant and uplifting contrast to all this talk about supping with the Devil.
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THE MASH
The big PICTURE The Big Picture is a series that focuses on one single image. It doesn't have to be beautifully shot, but it tells a story. Life imitating art? How about art imitating death? These wooden models, seen in a souvenir shop at the Artists
NE WS
Alliance Gallery in Accra, Ghana, are bottle-sized models of a remarkable Ghanaian phenomenon: the fantasy coffin. Ghana’s fantasy coffins are now famous worldwide as artworks, with pieces in
Last September, Original Gravity watched as Camden Town were named Beer and Cider Marketer of the Year. Our very own Pete Brown, Chair of the judging panel, said, ‘Camden Town is still a relatively young brewer, but across its marketing there’s the solidity, consistency and rigour you’d expect from a global brand, with the freshness and creativity that characterises the craft beer scene still very much intact. It’s a potent
galleries and museums, including the British Museum, but they are still widely used as coffins. The coffin itself reflects your job or passions when alive. In this coastal city, it's no surprise that the fish is the most common, but we have also seen carpentry planes, taxis, cattle, shoes
combination’. That’s all very well, but doesn’t it sound a bit po-faced and corporate for the supposedly edgy, creative world of craft beer? Well, if you’re going to do marketing, there’s no point doing it unless it’s good. If you’re going to brew the best beer you possibly can, why would you package it in a bottle with a crappy label and launch it at a badly organised event?But does a brewer need to do marketing at all? Figures would suggest
and palm oil plants. It was the beer that caught our attention, of course. These are made for brewers or simply those who love beer. Mine would be a Club. / @danieljneilson
so. There are now over 2000 breweries in the UK, with two or three new ones launching every week into a beer market that’s flat or declining, even while craft is increasing its slice of the total cake. If you know a brewer or cider maker who deserves to be recognised for what’s outside the glass, bottle or can as well as what’s in it, send them to www.bestofbeerandcider.com.
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The Q&A
Adam Matuška, head brewer, Pivovar Matuška
I was a very bad student in elementary school… …in everything, then when I was thinking about going to high school, my father, who has been a brewer all his life, said maybe you can try this chemistry degree as you learn a bit about brewing. I told him that I was bad at chemistry, but he taught me enough so that I was prepared for the exams. The course was four years, and the first two years it wasn’t about brewing, just chemistry and physics and bullshit and I played baseball. Then I met Jamie Hawksworth… …(founder of Pivovar pub company), who was visiting my father with the intention of learning how to brew Czech beer. The three of us went to a beer competition in České Budějovice and Jamie was a judge there. I was 16 I think and on the way back I told Jamie that I wanted to go to the UK and learn about brewing. He said that he had a small pub Pivni in York and I could come and work there.
I had no English and I had to learn it… …but in this bar there were 20 beers on tap and hundreds in bottle. At that time in the Czech Republic there wasn’t anything like this, and it changed my thinking. Before that I had just thought about brewing beer, but now I wanted to brew an IPA and other styles. I was shown a new world of beer. I have a motto in brewing… …every beer that I brew you have to drink 1/2 litre of it, and then you have to be thirsty for another 1/2 litre, even if it is 9%, you don’t have to drink it but you would like to. This is my credo. The first time I said to my father I will try brewing an IPA beer he replied you have to sell it, he said that people need to drink it. I learnt everything from my father. California is not a pale ale style… …it is a highly drinkable beer style. I didn’t want to have it as a sipper, I wanted to
develop an ale like Pilsner Urquell, with high drinkability. The thinking behind California was that we wanted to brew the beer like a typical Czech lager, very balanced. When I brew a new beer… …I always try and pair with food at one of my favourite restaurants Krystal (krystalbistro.cz), which also sells four of my beers. The chef has the same thinking as me, new things within tradition. For instance, a Czech style goulash which is different. What I don’t want to do is mystify people, so with the beer Ella, which is a lager with the Australian hop Ella, I mix three things I love, my daughter Ella, the decoction style and the hop. ATJ / pivovarmatuska.cz
Anatomy of... PILSNER Be careful what you say around a Pilsner brewer. A couple of pints in, I once asked my host, a Czech master brewer, what else he had. ‘Why, what’s wrong with this?’ he replied. Nothing was wrong. I was just curious to try different things. ‘Then I have failed,’ he said. Pilsner is a style that is micro-engineered in every respect to create
STRENGTH Typically around 5%, a true Pilsner can go down to around 4% if it has to. Inevitably, craft brewers have given us ‘imperial Pilsners’ of up to 9%.
FLAVOUR Lemony, grassy, herby notes, with a light, crisp bitterness. German ‘Pils’ tends to be lighter and crisper than earthier, fuller Czech Pilsner.
APPEARANCE Crystal clear, golden and bright like the summer sun, Pilsner should be served with a thick, creamy, white head of foam.
HISTORY Created in the Czech town of Pilsen in 1842 via a marriage of English pale malt, German lagering expertise and Czech ingredients, it was immediately copied around the world.
maximum drinkability. That doesn’t mean it’s bland, like so many industrial versions that use words like ‘goes down easy’ as synonyms for tastelessness — a true Pilsner has a character that teases your taste buds and rouses your palate. Why else would the average Czech drink more beer than anyone else on the planet? PB
AKA Brewers in some parts of the Czech Republic don’t want Pilsen to take all the credit. In Prague, ask for a světlý ležák — literally, ‘pale lager’.
THREE OF THE BEST
/ Pilsner Urquell, 4.4% Literally the ‘original Pilsner’, every golden lager in the world is a photocopy of a photocopy of this 1842 classic, still brewed in Pilsen.
FOOD Infamous as a foil for spicy curries, it’s also a superb complement to lighter dishes. A goat’s cheese salad with a citrusy dressing is a heavenly match. WHERE TO DRINK There’s no better place than Prague, but uniquely among beer styles, some of the very best examples are widely available across the UK. WEIRD FACT The term ‘Pilsner’ was never trademarked, and has been appropriated by lager brewers across the planet whose brews bear little resemblance to the original.
/ Budweiser Budvar, 5% Not to be confused with the US brew that stole the name and the style from the Bohemian town of Budweis, or České Budějovice. Try to track down the ‘tank’ version. / Five Points Pils, 4.8% Some UK brewers are now specifically making great Pilsners rather than just generic lagers. Tasted blind, this one fools the palate into thinking its Czech.
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F E AT U R E
Magic & loss IF YOU GO BACK FAR ENOUGH, MAGIC, SUPERSTITION, RELIGION AND SCIENCE ARE ALL ESSENTIALLY THE SAME: OBSERVING PHENOMENA IN THE WORLD AND FORMING THE BEST THEORY YOU CAN ABOUT WHY THEY HAPPEN.
By Pete Brown
I
know someone who once wore a pair of gloves to a football game and his team won, so he now wears the gloves to every game, even in summer. Even though his team often loses, he still believes the gloves play a part in their victories.
If you know nothing about the rotation of planets, or much else outside your local valley, and you sacrifice a goat in midDecember, it makes some kind of sense
being a gift from the gods, or a function of magic. Go back to the first appearances of the magical stave in myth and legend — the forerunners of Harry Potter’s wand or Gandalf ’s staff — and it always appears as an instrument specifically of transformation. In ancient brewing cultures from Norway to Africa, a stick or staff was stirred through the wort to start brewing. In traditional South African villages, prayers are still said to the ancestors as the wand stirs. We now know that yeast cultures that have lain
For thousands of years, we’ve observed fermentation happening and exercised some degree of apparent control over it. But we’ve known the truth of how it actually happens for less than 150 years. that you’d sacrifice a goat every December, and when the days start getting longer each time you do, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that your poor departed goat had something to do with it.
Illustrations by Sam Marsh @sam_marsh_illustration
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For thousands of years, we’ve observed fermentation happening and exercised some degree of apparent control over it. But we’ve known the truth of how it actually happens for less than 150 years. And let’s be honest: from a standing start, the notion that alcohol is created by invisible fungi eating sugar, pissing booze and farting CO2 sounds, if anything, less plausible than alcohol
dormant in the wood since the last brew are introduced to the fresh wort by this practice and start the fermentation once again. Without microbiology, repeated practice and observation make it seems obvious that the waving of the magic wand is transforming grain and water into alcoholic beer. In the middle ages beer was mostly brewed by women, known as brewsters, ale-wives or — sometimes — ale-witches. In surviving engravings, these ale-witches are pictured in tall, conical hats. When a brew was ready they would sometimes mount long poles or even broomsticks
F E AT U R E
outside their doors to show that the beer was ready. Wise women, accumulating the knowledge of the poisonous, healing and transformative powers of various plants and passing it on through generations, had knowledge that sat outside the patriarchal pyramid of the church. Monasteries gradually took control of brewing away from ale-witches who were eventually, inevitably, persecuted as evil. Science was born as the conjoined twin of alchemy, with both conducting experiments to discover how the world worked, and magic — such as the transformation of lead into gold — not yet discounted. The foamy cap atop a fermentation vessel was known as ‘godisgoode’, a substance that seemingly appeared from nowhere to create beer. But gradually science progressed, with chemistry disproving the spontaneous creation of matter in the 18th century, and biochemistry proving that microorganisms were responsible for both fermentation and beer spoilage in the late 19th. Finally, we understood the fundamentals of brewing. But as in many aspects of life, detailed, rational knowledge killed some of the magic around us.
Ritual
By Adrian Tierney-Jones
‘It is like saying grace. In the wine cellars of Baron Bachofen von Echt, under his schloss at Nussdorf, on the edge of the Vienna Woods, I have raised a glass of “Sir Henry’s” dry stout, brewed on the premises, and said a silent prayer of thanks to the Campaign for Real Ale.’ Called to the Bar — an account of the first 21 years of CAMRA, published 1992
I
f we define ritual as an act that is always repeated, as an act of devotion, sometimes as an act of exaggeration, often as a sense of belonging and being in the vanguard of something with its own quirks and language and a heightened sense of its own reality, then brewing and beer is as ritualistic as say the Tridentine Mass or the fulsome applause whenever Kim Jong-un utters some proclamation. Think smells and bells, chants, Gregorian or otherwise, gestures or fingers crossed in the air, prayer and meditation,
the unknown and, when it comes to working with mixed fermentation and barrels of various denominations, an act of blind faith. Like many a writer and brewer, I have heard the tale of a head brewer at Guinness’ former Park Royal plant in west London, who at the start of the brewing day would sit on a chair (or a throne even) overlooking the brewing kit, and, at the appropriate time, fob-watch in hand, boom out ‘let the mash begin’. Whether true or not, the very existence of the story (or myth, another important part of ritual) seems to suggest that ritualistic practices have their place in the world of beer. On a personal
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Continued level, I’m reminded of my experience at St Austell about 10 years ago during the first brew of the day — it was customary to taste the runnings of the wort from the first mash. It was horribly sweet, but at least it didn’t have a raw egg in it, an experience Roger Protz wrote about in The Ale Trail. So how is brewing ritualistic? The same procedures are adhered to for each brew of a certain beer (unless of course you have split away, hammered your theses on the door and work with the uncertainties of wild yeast); the correct amount of salts are added to the liquor; the same temperatures for the mash and the boil; the same time given to the length of the brew. Meanwhile, hop varieties — Citra, Cascade, Centennial and Eukanot, perhaps — are intoned with the dedication of a prayer, an evocation that these hops will make the beer that beguiles drinkers, batch after batch after batch. And finally, the quiet slumber of fermentation and conditioning, head bowed, thought cowed, the mediation on the ritual taken. There is also ritualistic behaviour in the pub. We buy rounds for each other, we say, ‘cheers’, ‘good health’ or (in my case) ‘long legs to the squadron leader’s baby’. A multitude of Maß brimming with gold-flecked Oktoberfest beer is clinked with gusto at Munich in the autumn. Smartphones are tapped and glasses snapped with metronomic passion and Instagrammable aptness at beer bars up and down the country, companions to those for whom beer festival programmes and spiral bound notebooks are chapbooks for the faith when face to face with new ales. With all this in mind, it makes me think: are the rituals that run rife through beer and brewing a case of making the ordinary extraordinary? For after all, it does seem that the fermented juice of the barley has had the power to cast a spell on men and women ever since the first brewer stood up and said (for all I know) ‘what has happened here is magic’? Or are they, as could be ascribed to any ritual, a nervous tic of behaviour, an itch that needs to be scratched, a way of celebration that leads to ecstasy? Is this the real magic of beer: the unknowable?
Brand, myth & magic Daniel Neilson plots barstool stories from the very first trademark to the new age of label legends
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abels sell beer; we know that. On New Year’s Day 1876, under registration code UK00000000001, a red triangle, known in the file as the Bass Triangle, became the first registered trademark in the Intellectual Property Office. Under the List of Goods, it reads Pale Ale. It was first used in an advert in the same year. It worked. The logo appears in a Manet painting, and more than 40 Picasso drawings. James Joyce wrote about it in Ulysses. It distinguished Bass from other beers ‘many years before 1855’. The Guinness Harp, based on Ireland’s oldest surviving harp dating back to the 14th century, was registered not long after the Bass Triangle. It's a better logo. Why? There’s an emotional connection: it was designed to appeal to a renewed interest in Gaelic art and music, but also to appeal to homesick Irish workers in London. The harp is a symbol of their homeland. It tugged heartstrings as well as thirst. Other early labels are a nod to the city or country: Amstel’s lions are from Amsterdam’s crest, and Beck’s key is on Bremen’s coat of arms. Others are symbolic: the chimerical creature of the kirin, appearing on Kirin Beer, is a harbinger of good luck. Some are even politely mocking: the goat on bottles of German bock comes from the accent of Bavarians, who apparently when asking for Einbeck, sounded like ‘ein Bock’ or ‘a Billy
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Goat’. Labels sell. But so does myth; everyone likes a good story. No matter how authentic the origins, however, having a good story is also Marketing 101. Take another classic logo: the red star of Heineken. Even the brewery’s own historians haven’t unearthed a definitive answer, but a favourite is that it was a symbol of European brewers in the Middle Ages, ‘who believed it to have mystical powers to protect their brew’. Cool. More modern breweries also look at myth and legend for inspiration. Beavertown’s cans tell a story of something, though I’m not entirely sure of what: Star Wars viewed through the prism of Futurama perhaps? Take a browse of Magic Rock cans. There’s a story there, an intrigue that allows you to draw your conclusions. Designs on Burning Sky and Cloudwater all invoke something other than mere brand recognition. Sierra Nevada has an imperial stout called Bigfoot while Great Divide’s is called Yeti. By latching on to existing myths, a brewery can set out a stall of enticing curios of which the beer inside is just one of them. Allegory and myth have carried the human story since man first traced a handprint on a cave wall in somewhere like France and said here I am. The fear in stories where Prometheus ends up chained to a rock or Oedipus descends to the underworld warns us mere humans, against moral failure or mortal danger. Except, that is, in beer. In beer it means one thing: drink me, I’m interesting. You hope.
1000 AMAZING BEERS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
www.beerhawk.co.uk
P H O T O E S S AY
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P H O T O E S S AY
BEER MUSEUM Driving though France we spotted the sign for Musée Européen de la Bière or The European Beer Museum. Who could resist? The museum is in the small village of Stenay. The building once a citadel, then malting house, was converted into a museum by a group of beer enthusiasts in 1986. The museum guides you though the process and history of beer making and the last room of ephemera, advertising and signage is an explosion of colour, design and typography. The museum also has a bar – enough said. Photos by Peter Byrne & Jane McDevitt
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Of Belgian beer and mystique ARDENT BELGO-PHILE JOE STANGE MUSES ON THE MAGIC AND FANTASY THAT RUNS THROUGH BELGIAN BEER
By Joe Stange
A
s a longtime atheist — sceptic, realist, whatever you prefer — the only ‘magic’ I know lies in those parts of the mind we have yet to understand. These can be uncomfortable areas to explore. They occasionally manifest in the real world, often through the creations of the right-brained or the intoxicated — or, in the case of the Belgians, both.
a bit of space cleared for a few people to sit. It’s a work of art, in its way, a mishmash of cobwebbed antique bicycles, candelabras and Jesus busts in party hats. Authorities have closed it four times for sanitary reasons, though it serves no food whatsoever. The owner Lieven De Vos keeps several different beers in his fridge, but the only brand you get is whatever he chooses to serve you. The whole experience is as unsettling as it is entertaining. To say I recommend it would be an exaggeration. It’s not for everyone. Another of these obsessions, less well known, is the Bezemsteeltje in Antwerp.
to the café. Thus fantasy finds its way into all sorts of beers and associated marketing. There are witches and elves and trolls and things all over the artwork — the labels, the breweriana, and in the brand names. Many of these legends spring from local folklore, like the witches of Ellezelles, in the hill country of north Hainaut. The Quintine brewery there has long embraced the witch theme (I once visited to find an ad out front for a used broom — ‘only 600 flight hours’). The Quintine ales got their name from a 17th-century woman burnt at the stake for ‘witchcraft’ along with four other women;
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience
I’ve walked into hundreds of different Belgian cafés. They lean more eccentric than most pubs, to put it lightly, so we could fairly describe many as odd but charming. Beyond those, things can get really weird. A select few are more like sweaty obsessions than cafés. Upon entering you get a palpable sense that you’ve walked into a dark corner of someone else’s brain; you obviously don’t belong there and must immediately choose whether to turn around and walk out before committing to the experience any further. The Velootje in Ghent is one of those, a thick, dusty hoard of junk and memories, with just
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This is on the Varkensmarkt, about 10 minutes walk northwest of the Cathedral. The café’s whole interior is layered in witches — mannequins, toys, masks, statuettes. They gaze into crystal balls and seem to cackle from the rafters. It is not a destination beer bar, though they tend to stock a few witch-themed ales. It’s worth the detour if you collect that sort of experience. Belgium excels at fantasy. They know better than us that life is too short for the mundane, just as it’s too short for boring glassware, dull-looking beer, or a Sunday without a visit
the real evil, of course, was superstition and those who used it to manipulate fools. Inevitably there is a medieval, horrorthemed knees-up every year in Ellezelles to commemorate this grisly event. Meanwhile the town’s answer to Brussels’ Manneken Pis is a charming fountain named Eul Pichoûre. She is a squatting witch who relieves herself at a shocking velocity. Mind you, Ellezelles is the same town (pop. 5,000) that decided — entirely on its own, since Agatha Christie never specified — that it was the birthplace of Hercule Poirot. To state the obvious, we are referring to a
F E AT U R E
fictional character. Yet the local authorities can produce a birth certificate. It says he was born on April 1. That’s the sort of nonsense that keeps me toiling happily in the mines here, in the decidedly un-lucrative field of Belgophilia — part drunkard, part foreign ethnographer and cultural appropriator. I share this self-awareness to prepare you for what comes next: some dubious notions about Belgian art. My impression is that the Belgians would be more into magical realism, but it’s just too realistic for them. Fantasy is their thing, and by fantasy I don’t mean wizards and dragons (although they like that stuff too). I mean they are into the fantastic — anything goes, as long as it’s out there and detaches from the mundane. In Brussels there is even a Museum of Fantastic Art — full of weird and surreal objects — right next to the Horta Museum, a temple of Art Nouveau. Speaking of which, the very best of Art Nouveau architecture — born in Brussels, mind you — tends to look rather elvish. One of the best places to admire the style is the swooping interior of the brasserie Porteuse d’Eau (perhaps with a bottle of Lindemans Oude Gueuze, its own label drawn in Art Nouveau style). The fact that the place is an imitation only reinforces the theme. It doesn’t have to be real; it’s better if it isn’t. Why be real, after all, when you can be surreal? Many of the surrealists, incidentally, subscribed to a method called automatism. The idea is to lose conscious control of what you are creating, and submit to the creations of your subconscious mind. Altered states of consciousness fascinated them. How often, do you reckon, were they sober?
The Belgian painter René Magritte didn’t embrace that method. His deliberate creations were more like visual poems, meant to create mystery. He said he did not intend them to ‘mean’ anything; they were supposed to be unknowable. In Brussels, Magritte drank sometimes with other surrealists in the Fleur en Papier Doré, perhaps 10 minutes’ walk from the art museum that now bears his name. You can enjoy a tumbler of draught Oud Beersel lambic there and admire all sorts of odd things on the walls. My favourite is this scrawled bit of wisdom: Nul ne m’est étranger comme moi-même. No one is as foreign to me as I am to myself. • Along with Tim Webb, Joe is the co-author of the latest (and 8th) edition of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide Belgium which is now available, £14.99. We think it’s rather essential if you’re catching the Eurostar to Midi.
Clockwise from the top: a constellation of clutter at Fleur en Papier Doré; witch craft at Bezemsteeltje; wise words at Fleur en Papier Doré.
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S H O RT S
SAFE We love the comfort and care that a pub provides, but not all of them are equal in the welcome they provide
I’ve pushed open a lot of pub doors. The flush of warm air, the growing babble of chatter, and the scent of beer-tainted wood have rushed towards me many thousands of times. But, as I stand on the threshold of an unfamiliar venue, even before my eyes adjust to the yellowed light, even before I lift my palm away from the door handle, the feeling that most engulfs me is often not one of comfort, but one of ‘will I be safe here?’ Some people achieve immediate contentment,
is a luxury not always afforded to everyone. Throughout my drinking life I’ve been asked to leave a pub on the grounds that it’s a ‘family friendly venue’; I’ve witnessed a friend being ejected for giving his male partner a dry peck on the cheek; I’ve had a fellow customer shout homophobic abuse in my ear whilst the bartender calmly continued to ask me to pay for my pint. Once, I had to shield my face from flying glass
threatening precursor to abuse should any query be left unanswered. Pubs have not always been safe spaces for me, and many — including, I’m saddened to say, a few of the pubs closest to my own home — remain places that I am simply too afraid to enter. But, that’s not to say that all pubs are sites of fear for me. At times, the pub has also been a source of enormous strength. When I first came out as lesbian in the early 1990s,
By Emma Inch
learned the importance of those spaces for bringing people together, offering validation, and creating resistance. For a while, I only drank in gay venues, always seeking them out if I went somewhere new. I could plot my way across the country, from city to city, via my mental map of the best gay pubs. Even in other countries, some in which homosexuality was barely legal, I sought out subterranean gay bars, sometimes ringing the
these years later, as I enter gay venues, that feeling of strength is still there. As the beer pours into my glass, I feel the good humour, and, just sometimes, the anger that has protected me from the hostility of the world, and I understand that it’s not by chance that Stonewall — perhaps the best-known symbol of resistance to prejudice and hatred — is a New York bar.
I anticipate the shared glances between other drinkers, the trivial hesitation of the bartender’s hand, the almost imperceptible smirk, and the just-tooslow welcome. I jump at the soft shove as someone passes by me on their way to the bathroom, and at the visceral roar that goes up each time a goal is scored or a glass is smashed.
Of course, I no longer drink exclusively in gay venues. Many have disappeared, victims
But, somehow, the worst of it is that even though in the vast majority of
I anticipate the shared glances between other drinkers, the trivial hesitation of the bartender’s hand, the almost imperceptible smirk, and the just-too-slow welcome. even in a pub they’ve never previously entered. They find relief in an anonymous corner where they can muse over a solo pint, or they boldly claim space in which to celebrate successes with friends, or share quiet intimacies with lovers. But the privilege of never having to wonder whether what makes you different will also make you the target of abuse, harassment or violence
as the pub windows were kicked in by bigots outside, and I still remember the sharp, breathless fear in the days following the Admiral Duncan pub bombing, not knowing if it was all over, or who and where would be targeted next. I’ve encountered whispered disapproval, open mockery and the saliva-spraying, salacious questioning that forms the
gay venues were places of great wonder to me. When I entered them, I found people who looked just like me — and people who looked like no one I’d ever seen in my life — and the pub became a location in which anything might happen: a meeting of minds, a brushing of arms and the promise of a beer-drenched kiss. I met many of my best friends and most of my partners in pubs, and I
bells on unmarked doors in order to be snapped into dark alcoves where my authenticity was appraised before I was allowed passage into the pleasures below. In much the same way that we drew on music to comfort, unite and coalesce, those of us who were excluded also used those hot, dark, beer-sweaty spaces to gain some sort of affirmation. And, all
in part perhaps of our new ways of interacting with the world. And, in common with many other beer lovers, I am forever chasing that feted brewery, the brand new beer, the brew that will make my taste buds dance outside my mouth. And, as I re-draw my mental map of the country, I’m back to pausing at the door, considering my safety.
pubs I am not abused, and no one ignores, insults or ridicules me, as I leave I still sometimes feel like I’ve narrowly escaped something, as if just this once, I was permitted to experience that unequivocally benign harbour that draws other people in and holds them safe. And I feel gratitude. And I wish that I didn’t.
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Prague images: Prague City Tourism (prague.eu)
BEER
T R AV E L L E R
Catalonia Celebrating and salivating over Catalonia’s evolving beer transformation
By Pete Brown It doesn’t work on everyone, but beer has the power to perform a kind of transformative magic. One minute you have an average interest in the impact of flavour on your palate, enjoying the odd glass of wine or pint of lager. The next, you’re on your way to jacking in your job to make, sell or communicate about beer and converting the cupboard under the stairs into a cellar space. It happened to me in 2004 in Portland, Oregon, and I’ve seen it happen to a great many people since. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to witness the actual moment: a handful of times, I’ve been the perpetrator of it. I’ve seen it happen to men and women, close friends and strangers. And now, I think I’ve just seen it happen to an entire region. Barcelona has always been one of my favourite cities to get drunk in. For a long time, the only beer available was Estrella, but that wasn’t the point: it was the manner of its drinking that was so appealing. In the Boqueria — the best food market in the world — Estrella was served ice-cold from the bar of a little kiosk where fresh langoustines wriggled on a hot plate a few feet away. In side-street bodegas, Estrella was served in tiny glasses — or cañas — to accompany plates of padron peppers, octopus or heroic portions of patatas bravas. And in the twisting warren of the old Bario Gótico quarter, Estrella was drunk in pints in a selection of randomly themed bars. Four years ago, I was back in Barcelona
and looked again for these bars. They’d all gone, replaced by generic craft beer bars from central casting. All sold beers from Meantime, Brooklyn and BrewDog, and all had stripped wooden floors, bare brick and a smattering of heavy metal sights and sounds. I could have been in London, Manchester, or Nottingham. Sitting on a bar stool sipping a pint of Punk IPA, the ghost of the Starsky & Hutch theme bar that had once stood here whispered in my ear, ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it? I distinctly remember you complaining that it was just Estrella last time you were here’. If this was victory, it felt hollow. In March 2018, I’m back for the seventh annual Barcelona Beer Festival, in a vast convention centre reminiscent of the Great American and Great British Beer Festivals. There are brewers and drinkers here from both those countries. I suspect they’ve not come all this way to try beers from Brooklyn and BrewDog.
Agullons. They quit the city for an almost ruined former winery around the turn of the millennium. In a cool stone room that smells of cats and has a bar that looks like it was stolen from a Devon country pub, Carlos serves us some of the best traditional British cask pale ale I’ve tasted in many months. In the cellars next door, this self-taught brewer is re-fermenting his beers in local red wine barrels with a wild Brettanomyces yeast he isolated and cultivated from the air around us. Catalonia has lots of wine barrels. That’s why at least a third of the breweries here have a barrel-ageing programme. But it doesn’t have much in the way of hops and barley.
‘There are now 100 craft breweries in Catalonia,’ says festival organiser Mikel Rius. ‘This is not about a movement from the city. It’s all around the rural area of Catalonia.’
That’s why Oscar Mogilnicki Tomas and Quiònia Pujol Sabaté have put together the ‘Full Circle Project’, with the aim of growing everything they need to produce a beer not just in, but entirely of the region. He’s an engineer, she’s a biologist, and together they’ve built the Lo Vilot brewery by hand. The number of different skills they possess between them defies comprehension, as does the consistency of their range of beers including sour fruit beers, IPAs, Pilsner, wheat and Belgian-style ales.
The day after the festival, we’re driving up into the hills through stunted, winterpruned vines. At one chilly peak in the centre of a region most famous for Cava, Tempranillo and Grenache, we meet Carlos and Montse Rodriguez — at Ales
Back down in Barcelona, over a bourbon barrel-aged Belgian-style dubbel, someone asks the American-born head brewer of Edge Brewing what attracted him to the idea of working in the one of the world’s most beautiful cities.
‘You’re from a scene from the US — which had lost its beer culture — brewing in a country that never had a beer culture to start with. So, you’re doubly removed in terms of creative freedom,’ he replied. Days later, after gorging ourselves on homemade salami, barbecued spring onions dipped in romesco sauce and the simple brilliance of rustic bread rubbed with garlic and ripe, fresh tomatoes before being drizzled with olive oil and salt, all offered at every one of the dozen or so breweries we visit, I decide this creative freedom is one half of an explosive combination. Catalonia may have never had a beer culture, but it’s always possessed a proud sense of gastronomic independence, a genuine love of food that is as amazing as it is simple and democratic. Craft beer was a perfect foil, a natural fit. After that initial wide-eyed genuflection to the global titans of craft, the Catalonians simply got on with the job of making beer their own. They’ve only just started, and already they don’t seem to be able to brew a bad or mediocre beer. On my next visit, I suspect it may be my turn to have my original beer epiphany all over again. This article was written after a trip organised and paid for by the Catalan Tourist Board. You can find out more about Catalonia’s gastronomic heritage at www.catalunya.com
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TA S T I N G N O T E S
Rooster’s Brewing HOWL [8.5%]
Forest Road Brewery POSH [4.1%]
Lervig ACID CRUSH [6%]
Pig & Porter HONEY HILL WIT [5%]
An imperial stout that has spent time hobnobbing in a barrel with cherries and cacao
As a new London brewery gets close, a supremely balanced lager gets exciting again
What do you do when the bleeding edge goes mainstream? Remix it, of course
Lost afternoons and whiling away the time come easy when this wit speaks its mind
Back in the 1950s, Howl was a frenetic beat poem by Allen Ginsberg who wrote about how he had seen the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, and then he added in the fashion of Father Ted, ‘starving hysterical naked’. I doubt if this luscious imperial stout infused with cacao nibs and cherries and then conditioned in a rum barrel has anything to do with Ginsberg’s literary outing, but I thought I’d just mention it. The beer is as dark as the bottom of the Marianas Trench and topped a crema-coloured head. There’s bitter chocolate, cherry sweetness, rum smoothness, and a bittersweetness that makes you want to collapse into your favourite armchair and pretend you’re a great novelist (or even poet). ATJ / roosters.co.uk
We’ve always kept a close eye on Forest Road Brewery run by Pete Brown (yes, the American one). We first met him making a pilsner at Camden Town Brewery and he has since moved on to start this brewery. The first beer, Work, was a storming IPA, big on flavour yet with an impeccable balance. As I write, there’s talk of a brewery on British soil (pretty central London actually – Pete can't keep a secret), but for now the beer is made in Belgium. So what of Posh. Well, I’ve not been so excited about a lager since, well, I first got drunk. This has a deeply honeyed nose, but the character is sandstone dry. It is deep, complex, handsome, and damn tasty. Pete, be my friend. DN / forestroad.co.uk
IPA is dead: long live IPA. Whether or not you’re a fan of juicy, hazy ‘New England IPAs’, we’ve quickly reached a point at the leading edge of beer culture where they are now simply labelled ‘IPA’. But still, the search for novelty moves on. And so, perhaps inevitably, we get the juicy, hazy/sour crossover. Acid Crush is aged in Lambic barrels from a venerable Belgian brewer. It looks like lemon juice, and smells like a harvest festival in a very old church. A meeting of old and new beer worlds, it’s less a harmonious blend than a polite shaking of hands, an entente cordial, if you will. I doubt this is the birth of a new genre, but it’s arresting and intriguing, and you’ll be glad you at least gave it a try. PB / lervig.no
Just when you think witbier style beers are the kind you only want when you’re in the mood for one, this little charmer comes along and changes your opinion. How? By being incredibly sessionable and by not showing off and just nailing it. Golden, bright and aching to be consumed, it surprises and pleases in equal measure. Refreshing, but with a rounded body and impeccably well-balanced, it also has a finish that doesn’t disappear straight away like so many of its style. Instead it lingers, just to remind you that while you were kicking through stones in the dust, you found a diamond. You can easily drink two of these one after the other and while the time away on a lost afternoon. And that is what I suggest you do. JM / pigandporter.co.uk
Wild Beer Co DR TODD [9%] First it was a hot toddy, then a cocktail, and now a rewarding beer from the barons of barrel-ageing
Maybe this is what you call a meta beer. It’s based on a cocktail of honey, Scotch, ginger and lemon, itself based on the hot toddy. Wild’s co-founder Andrew Cooper had the cocktail in New York several years back and liked it so much that he wanted to recreate it in beer form. Following several attempts, it’s arrived in the world, after time spent in Islay whisky barrels, and I rather like it, even though my
Pöhjala ÖÖ [10.5%]
Fyne Ales THE MYSTIC
Uurgh. A Baltic porter.
The kind of barley wine that turns every sip into an occasion and a moment to remember
Tallinn is not everyone’s first choice as a beer destination, but when bar and bottle shop brand Mother Kelly’s visited the Tallinn Beer Festival, they discovered Pöhjala (pronounced puh-ee-allah) and began importing their beers. Öö (pronounced uurgh, and meaning night) was the first beer Pöhjala brewed in 2012. ‘Night defines who you are at certain times in Estonia,’ the brewer told me at a recent London tasting. There are raisins and chocolate on the nose, and deep layers of red fruit, coffee and tobacco on the palate. A combination of the moon-glow on the dark label, the blurb about being ‘as dark as the Estonian nights’ and the rich, wraparound flavours make this beer a comforting experience. PB / pohjalabeer.com
This is a lightly smoked barley wine, potent and muscular, complex and quite content to be sipped as the sun goes down. A winter beer yes but also ideal for drinking in the spring to remind yourself that winter has thankfully just passed. Light amber in colour, pulsating with a Bakewell tart aroma and a secondary note of Isley-like iodine smokiness, the carbonation is gentle, the mouth creamy, with a variety of toffees, chocolates, fudge and dark candied fruit being handed around by a much loved great aunt. There’s a power and intensity about the beer, a heft and a weight, yet it’s easy going in the way it delivers. A masterpiece of a beer and definitely one to age to see how the mystery of beer changes through time. ATJ / fyneales.com
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[9.7%]
first reaction was to flinch at the iodine, peaty austereness on the nose. However, just like what seems to be a difficult novel at first (The Magic Mountain, Life a User's Manual) but then starts to reveal a wonderful world of imagination and language, so it is with this beer whose ginger-like sweetness, citrusy juiciness, peaty wildness, herbal
spiciness, lemony tartness fall on the bibulous senses like a wolf on the fold. ATJ / wildbeerco.com
Deya SUNGLASSES INDOORS [6%]
Siren Craft Brew CEREALIST MANIFESTO [9%]
Here is another hazy, juicy IPA. Typically for the style, it has the visual appeal of cold tea with a raw egg beaten through it. And then, resigned to yet another one-dimensional fruit bomb, I raise it to my nose and get a wonderful surprise. As well as classic passionfruit from Galaxy hops, there’s also a ton of grapefruit and guava here — so far, so 2018-predictable. But: there’s also a delicious piney, resiny character on the nose, which on the palate turns into a crisp dryness that’s never quite assertively bitter, but still provides a foil for the fruit, complementing and enhancing its juicy character rather than diminishing it. Balance, eh? Who knew. PB / deyabrewing.com
A beer that has had Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal from Florida added to the brew sounds like a gimmick that shouldn’t work. Only it does. Dark brown in the glass with a light tan head, on first sip there is cinnamon sweetness and a dappling of vanilla from a crème caramel. It blends nostalgic scents of bread pudding made at your grandmother’s house with the kiddie glee of draining sweetened chocolate milk from a cereal bowl. Suddenly, you’re four again. Only an adult four-year-old who likes 9% beers that are soft and gentle. This is a beer that takes you by the hand and leads your senses through breakfast-munching cartoon-watching beanbag-slouching kidulthood. A triumph. JM / sirencraftbrew.com
When you think things can’t get any grapefruitier
A milk chocolate cinnamon imperial stout
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