20 CRAFT BEER REAL ALES GOOD PUBS TASTING NOTES TRAVEL + other nice stuff
BELFAST
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HERITAGE BEERS
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MIKKELLER'S ART
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SAN FRANCISCO
Photo by Gareth Dobson
Issue 20 | Contents
The Mash /p04 • Memories of beer /p10 • Photo essay /p14 Belfast boozers /p19 • San Francisco /p21 • Tasting notes /p22
Cover illustration exclusively for Original Gravity by Mark Brown / markbrown.online
IN REMEMBRANCE OF beer past and future
Memory is a great trickster, on a par with Loki (that’s the character of Norse myth not Tom Hiddleston btw). The years roll by and a pub or a beer we frequented when the world was young changes, becomes warm and tender in the embrace of memory, taunts us almost with its insubstantiality — was the beer really that bad/good; did the reek of tobacco or the streak of meanness in the regular customers really matter; what was the first beer whose branding meant
something? As you might be able to guess, memory and time are the twin themes of the latest issue of Original Gravity, that wisp of smoke on the horizon, that biscuit dipped in tea that creates something greater than the act, the remembered glass with friends who are no longer friends. Boak and Bailey have seized upon the Portuguese word saudade, which describes a vague, melancholy yearning for something/
someone/somewhere that has been lost, or is slipping away, and applied it in their own distinctive way to beer. Pete Brown investigates the fifth (or missing) ingredient of beer — time — something which it is all too easy to forget about in this world of Sunny Delight-lookalike IPAs, whose brewers call for them to be drank as soon as the can is brought home. Talking of time it’s 100 years since the war to end all wars came to an end and Katrien Bruyland tells
the tale of that most enduring of Belgian beers Duvel (and also manages to uncover an intriguing connection it has with Leffe). Elsewhere San Francisco and Belfast’s pubs are celebrated with gusto, I try to understand what led me to end up writing about beer and we celebrate heritage beers and anatomise porter (that’s porter porter btw, not pastry or puff adder porter). Do take the time to enjoy! Adrian Tierney-Jones
ORIGINAL GRAVITY Describe in 15 words your first-ever beer
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: facebook.com/Lindoneast 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
Katrien Bruyland
Boak & Bailey
Dorothy Hollamby
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
Katrien Bruyland is a journalist who specialises in tasting the moment. She writes about what’s good, pure and true. /epicuralia.com
They write under the names Jessica Boak and Ray Bailey. They live in Bristol and have been running their blog about beer since 2007. / boakandbailey.com
Dorothy is a small craft hop grower in Sussex, where she is also involved with the family farm. She enjoys designing, the countryside and beer. / abushelofhops.co.uk
I found a crate of empty beer bottles and drank the dregs. I want to say that they were Double Diamond.
A glass of Kestrel lager almost 50-50 with lime cordial. Knocked it over on the Cluedo board I got for Christmas.
Age four, I reached for a chalice full of Affligem. Nearly drowned myself in it.
Jessica: A sip of Dad's bitter at the Farmer's Arms in St Davids. Ray: pint of Foster's in my early twenties.
Can’t remember my first beer! My father loved beer so we always had a small glass to taste.
Adrian Tierney Jones
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THE MASH
The ART OF BEER MIKKELLER / KEITH SHORE
Mikkeller's labels are perhaps among the most recognisable in the craft beer industry. The 'Henry & Sally' designs manage to suggest an eyecatching simplicity with some strong storytelling. US-based Keith Shore speaks to Daniel Neilson about developing his style, how he came to work with Mikkeller and how he manages to handle 200 beers a year.
editorial stuff, skateboards, clothing, book covers, packaging design…
Your designs for Mikkeller are probably the most instantly recognisable in the craft beer world. Did you have this style already or is it something that Mikkel saw and wanted for his beer? At the time I showed my work to him everything I was drawing had characters with octagon shaped heads and a little hat. The first label I worked on was a collab with BrewDog called ‘I Hardcore You’. This one definitely introduced the vibe that would later become Henry & Sally.
How did you start working together? And did you expect it to turn into what it is now? I never expected this. As a freelance illustrator, you take things one job at a time. I've been fortunate to work on some cool projects over the years, but they were typically one and then done. Even a successful collaboration doesn't guarantee you more work with that company — you might never hear from them again. The life of a freelancer is constant ups and downs. I had hit a bit of a dry spell at the time I got my first label assignment with Mikkeller. I had a blast working on it and made sure Mikkel knew I was down to work on more projects. Our relationship had everything to do with timing. Mikkeller was ready for a change, and I was loving the collaboration and was determined to have them hire me full time.
What kind of stuff were you designing before Mikkeller? I had been working as a freelance illustrator for about ten years before my first job with Mikkeller. I've worked on
How do you go about approaching each beer label? What brief are you given? I'll get the basic info about each beer: name/style/abv/ingredients. These days we work on roughly 200 labels a
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year, so we’ve streamlined the process and go about things quite loose. I'll bounce some ideas around with our designer, Ben Kopp, and we’ll make some quick pencil sketches to figure out the general concept and layout. From there, we finesse things on the computer in Illustrator and then it's off to print. I used to spend insane amounts of hours on each label. But I've been doing this for eight years now, and the company has grown a ton, and the demand for new art is intense. So I've learned to work quickly and trust my instincts — not overthink things too much. There have been times where we have turned around five labels in one day. Which other illustrators do you admire? In beer and out of the beer world? Outside of beer, I love Geoff McFetridge, Raymond Pettibon, Jockum Nordström, David Hockney, Misaki Kawai and Ed Templeton. Also Misaki Kawai and Ed Templeton. And in the beer world… Kris Herteleer and Karl Grandin. I always enjoy seeing new labels from Grimm Artisanal Ales, American Solera, Tired Hands Brewing Company, Prairie Artisan Ales and Partizan Brewing.
Away from beer, what other clients do you have - and what do you do for them? Not many these days. I work full time with Mikkeller, so my free time is very limited. I recently did some travel poster illustrations with Google. Next month I'm working on a bunch of projects with Huckberry. What new projects are you working on that you're excited about? Last year I started an art project with Mikkel called Mikkeller Editions. We release limited editions screen-prints and risograph prints. All artwork is signed and numbered. Editions is also working on a very special project with Tired Hands called ‘Henry & Dudley’. Very excited about what's to come from that collaboration. / mikkellereditions.com / mikkeller.dk / @keithashore Exclusively distributed in the UK by Euroboozer, the Mikkeller beers available include a year-round quartet plus an ever evolving selection of seasonal beers, one-off specials and low/alcohol brews. / euroboozer.co.uk
THE MASH
The 6 PACK HERITAGE BEERS
Beer meets... TIME David Bowie wrote about time in Aladdin Sane, but as far as we know after perusing the lyrics there was nothing about beer in it. Never mind. He could have written about how time has been an important element of brewing for centuries: massive vats of porter standing sentinel-still for months before being blended with others; lager’s fifth ingredient has been time. There could have been a brief verse about the 20th century’s aversion to time until the return of barrel-ageing and the celebration of lagering, all finishing off with an epic chorus about beer sleeping the sleep of the just in barrels or conditioning tanks. But he didn’t. So we have written about beer meeting time instead. ATJ
/ Lost and Grounded, Keller Pils, 4.8% You can’t hurry a great lagered beer and that is why Kellerpils is such an eloquent and elegant example of the fifth element of brewing that is time; it chimes and rhymes on the palate, braces those parts other beers don’t and finishes with a flourish of bitterness and dryness. / lostandgrounded.co.uk
You could argue that what we have decided to call Heritage Beers are simply beers with a heritage– they could have been resurrected Nosferatu-style from the grave of a discontinued brand, once made in what is now a shopping centre with a cafe called The Cooper Kettle; or they could be a beer that uses a variety of barley long consigned to the back pages of a yellowing seed catalogue but now having being carefully grown and nurtured, it is fit for purpose (hello Chevallier and Plumage Archer). Then there are the breweries who have looked back
through their old recipe books and had a bit of fun bringing a Double Burton or a Cantankerous Mild back to vibrant life.
seems to have vanished, but I often note a nostalgic vein still throbbing away at times in the forehead of beer culture.
The past has always been an important part of beer, though sometimes it’s been overdone as old family breweries, and what we used to call microbreweries, have been heavy-handed in their use of rural imagery and twee evocations of yesteryear (brewers in bowlers and aprons, steam engines and 40s pin-ups). Times have changed in the last 10 years and a lot of this retro fusty chic
On the other hand are Heritage Beers a recognition that some beers from the past and some barley strains are just too be good to be lost, and if the brewing records and yeast cultures are still extant then why not bring them back? So for our issue dedicated to time and memory we are happy to celebrate these six Heritage Beers with not a bowler hat or steam engine in sight. ATJ
/ Cheshire Brewhouse, Govinda Chevallier Edition, 6.8% Muscular English-style IPA brewed with the 19th century barley variety Chevallier (it also does a Plumage Archer one); full-bodied and fulsome with a spicy, peppery hop character and a dry grainy finish.
/ Fuller Smith & Turner 1981 ESB, 5.5% Fuller’s have logs detailing every brewing day back to the 19th century. The latest in the Past Masters series, is a recreation of an ESB brewed the day former brewmaster John Keeling began work.
/ Greene King, Heritage Vintage Fine Ale Chevallier Series, 6.5% Greene King has finally woken up to the heritage they have in their archives and produced a rich and handsome beer using Chevallier barley; now if they could only start producing bottles of the 12% 5x.
/ Lacons Brewery Audit Ale, 8% These ales were potent barley wines once brewed for Oxbridge colleges to celebrate the end of the yearly audit. Using Lacons’ original yeast, this is a cooper-coloured colossus that’ll put you on the high table.
/ Little Earth Project Stock Ale, 10.5% Historic, farmhouse and aged sour beers are the MO of Suffolk’s Little Earth and this is their recreation of a 19th-century stock ale aged in oak with mixed culture fermentation and plenty of Goldings.
/ Tetley’s No 3 Pale Ale, 4.2% Originally made during the days of Queen Vic, Tetley’s brand owners Carlsberg commissioned Leeds Brewery to play Dr Frankenstein. The result is a very drinkable beer that finishes dry and lightly bitter.
/ Goose Island, Brewery Yard Stock Pale Ale, 8.4% Looking to 19th century stock ales for inspiration, Goose Island paired up with brewing historian Ron Pattinson to create this earthy, citrusy, peppery and full-bodied beer, which spent 10 months in oak in the company of Brettanomyces. Hard to find, but make time for what could be a glorious hunt. / gooseisland.com
/ Ayinger, Altbairisch Dunkel, 5% One of the great Dunkels of Bavaria, this is all chocolate, rye and grain on the nose, whilst once you start drinking it is there is a gentle toastiness, a hint of pumpernickel bread and floral hop before its dry and crisp finish. Sensational and a great example of how time adds magic. / ayinger.de
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IRASCIBLE THE FLAMINGO BELGIAN IPA 7.0%
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THE MASH
The big PICTURE The Big Picture is a series that focuses on one single image. It is a picture that has to tell a story. There’s a saying that you’ll know you’re in a good pub if you feel as comfortable as you do in your own living room.
Beer BOOKS
Stepping through the doors into the quirky hubbub of Tapping The Admiral in North London’s Kentish Town, we two strangers were welcomed like old friends. Eight cask ales were on offer – the Jaipur was sublime – and they make a point
Drink Beer, Think Beer / John Holl Holl is a former All About Beer editor, current senior editor of Craft Beer and Brewing and great drinking companion. Here he eloquently dissects the beer scene, discusses its ingredients, zooms in on how we drink and taste beer and, crucially, on the importance of equality and diversity in beer. A passionate love letter to beer from a great. ATJ
of always having at least three available that are brewed within 30 miles. Down one end of the L-shaped bar, a lively folk band were hitting their stride, at the other end, a nonchalant cat oversaw the proceedings. Reborn in 2011 from the squatted, near-derelict and excruciatingly-
The Last Landlady / Laura Thompson Laura Thompson’s grandmother Violet was born in a pub, and became the first woman to be given a publican’s licence in her own name. This memoir, The Last Landlady, is a beautifully written ode not just to a legendary landlady, but to the British pub in general. It is published through Unbound. PB
punned Tavern Inn The Town, the Admiral has won three CAMRA awards. Chatting to the loyal regulars, it was clear that this genial sidestreet boozer has won their hearts, too. Gareth Dobson / beershots.co.uk
Where to Drink Beer / Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø At more than 470 pages, no one could accuse this of being light on information. Jeppe JarnitBjergsø of Evil Twin Brewing brings together more than 1,600 recommendations in 70 countries. It follows Phaidon's successful Where Chefs Eat format. A vast and indispensable book. DN
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THE MASH
The Q&A
Q&A Fergus Fitzgerald, Adnams' Head Brewer
My knowledge of beer was fairly limited… as far as I knew there were three types: the fizzy yellow stuff that didn’t taste of very much, the black stuff that your dad drank and Smithwick’s, that no one drank, or at least not in the pubs I knew. I was sleeping on a friend’s floor… and the night before I started at Fuller’s we went to a pub in Chiswick and I had a pint of London Pride for the first time. That’s when I think I decided I did actually want to work in a brewery and that it was something I wanted to learn about properly, which was lucky as I was going to do exactly that
at 8am the following day. The decision to be a brewer came a bit later and was really instigated by Georgina Young who encouraged me to sit the IBD exams. I like the fact that we actually make something… that when we finish the day we have something that we can point to and say we made that. I enjoy the process, the fact that at its heart brewing is still this process that’s been around for thousands of years. Working besides the sea is great, the seagulls not so much… Adnams has moved from being a Victorian brewery almost exclusively brewing cask beer in the early 2000s to now being a relentlessly modern brewery. That’s involved a lot of investment into the equipment and almost every year we’ve been doing some major expansion so it’s been too easy to forget where we are. Recently I’ve started parking on the sea front, mostly out of necessity as there is nowhere else to park, but it’s been nice to do that. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day stuff but staring out across the sea pretending to be able to see Holland is a great start to the day.
Anatomy of... PORTER This is the beer style that had become marooned in the history books by the 1970s, a castaway of a legend whose stories included massive vats of beer taking time to achieve ripeness and which often burst and drowned the unfortunate; while it was drunk by the London porters from whence came the name. Since Anchor’s version reminded drinkers of what they had
STRENGTH Between 4% and 6%, though some have been known to be even lower. Once it starts pushing into the higher altitudes of alcohol then we are in the rarefied air of the imperial.
been missing back in the 1970s (though it was more of a reinterpretation than a continuation), it’s been a staple part of many a brewery’s portfolio, a dark, smooth, chocolaty beer that some cannot resist tinkering with and adding all manner of flavourings. But here, we look at porter, pure and simple, a pint of plain, your only friend. ATJ
AKA Some argue you can call porter stout and vice versa, but stout has a more roasty character; lets leave that debate to those who resemble monks arguing over the amount of angels on a pinhead.
You could pour yourself a pint of a robust porter while sharing it with a plate of roast beer and Yorkshire, or go a bit more avant garde and pair with a dessert like cheesecake.
APPEARANCE If you’re thinking blundering around on a moonless night then forget it, modern porter is a very dark chestnut brown with ruby tints at the edge, though some do opt for the dark night.
WHERE TO DRINK Pretty much any decent pub with a good selection of beers, though if you wanted to feel all historical how about a bottle of Fuller’s London Porter at the Dove on the Thames.
Ralph Harwood leapt out of bed and recalled how his local boozer was selling a beer called three threads. Not really, ancient porter came out of a popular sweetish brown beer, modern porter is its own creature.
THREE OF THE BEST
/ Burning Sky, Porter, 4.8% You’d expect nothing but joy from this porter produced by Firle’s favourite brewery — chocolaty and rich with a bracing bitterness.
FOOD
FLAVOUR Less roasty and acrid than its close cousin stout, expect gentle toasty notes, chocolate, milky coffee, occasional hints of dark stone fruit, a moderate creamy mouth feel and a dry and soft bitter finish.
HISTORY
Photo by Anthony Cullen
I don’t recall any lightbulb moment when I decided to work in brewing… I had moved from rural Ireland to London for a temporary lab job at Fuller’s. Although I had studied biotechnology it wasn’t with a view to getting into brewing in particular, it was just because I enjoyed science. I’d applied for the job at Fuller’s as something interesting to do, a bit of an adventure really, and as it was a brewery it was something to tell my mates when I eventually settled down to work in a lab at one of the giant dairies around where I grew up
WEIRD FACT The porter vats of old London were so large that dinner parties were supposedly held within them (obviously when they were empty).
/ Elland Brewery, 1872 Porter, 6.5% Award-winning recreation of a 19thcentury beer with bitter toffee, treacle, espresso notes plus a creamy mouth feel. / The Kernel, Export India Porter, 5.6% With the Export India Stout, The Kernel has made a handsome beer with a flurry of soothing, creamy, mocha coffee notes on the palate.
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F E AT U R E
Illustrations: Adam McNaught-Davis
Duvel’s Scottish origins WHEN WORLD WAR ONE ENDED, THE MOORTGAT’S FAMILY BREWERY PRODUCED VICTORY AS A WAY OF CELEBRATION, A BEER THAT EVENTUALLY MORPHED INTO DUVEL IN THE 1960S. KATRIEN BRUYLAND TELLS THE TALE OF THIS GORGEOUS GOLDEN ALE AND REVEALS A SURPRISING CALEDONIAN CONNECTION.
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lbert Moortgat was never expected to become a brewer. That was the job of his eldest brother Joseph, but then in 1914 Joseph passed away. After this sad event, the gossip in Breendonk was that the Moortgats would cease brewing. However, with a determination condemning him to a visionary’s life in Belgian strong ale, Albert swore: ‘Like hell we will!’ ‘My grandfather was an open-minded, combative man.’ Veerle Baert-Moortgat loves to tell tales of “bompa” Albert Moortgat. A member of Duvel Moortgat Board of Directors, Veerle Baert-Moortgat keeps the fondest memories of the man who gave the beer world a strong blonde devil to dance with. ‘Until I was 16, I spent every weekend at my grandparents in Breendonk. On Sunday, we would rise early for a bike trip. After mass, the men went off to tour the village pubs. At the villa, across the road from the brewery, I waited for what
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I knew was next. Lunch waiting to be served, my aunt went outside to ring a bell. The men never responded. Every time, I had to go and fetch them. Even as a child, I knew the itinerary. If they weren’t in one pub, I continued to the next. I never failed to find them.’ Saint Arnold is the patron saint of Belgian brewers, while Gambrinus a legendary beer-loving king. In Duvel Moortgat’s 1984 comic strip story about the origins of Duvel, the heavens’ lack of tasty beer causes an angelic uproar. It follows paradise’s two biggest beer experts back to earth. Their mission? To find a beer to stop the angels’ mutiny. The official Duvel story on the company’s website doesn’t stray far from the romantic comic strip line depicting the family’s story in beer. In his quest to tailor a beer after the First World War, based on the popular ales of Belgian’s British allies, Albert is said to have embarked on an epic journey across the North Sea. In Edinburgh, Younger’s Brewery was said to having shared their yeast with the Belgian visitor, while the story claims Albert returned with the yeast in an aluminium milk jar.
At less than 30 kilometres from Breendonk, John Martin already imported British beer in 1908. Ten years before the First World War, Younger’s beer was available in Belgium. The strong ale being live beer, it makes no sense that a technically skilled, perfectionist brewer would choose a time-consuming journey to harvest yeast in Edinburgh instead of cultivating yeast from a bottle of imported ale. However, Moortgat worked with Professor P Biourge, a world-renowned yeast expert, who is said to have combined several strains from the Edinburgh yeast to be used in Victory Ale. Albert was trained by the best. A skilled perfectionist with a penchant for cleanliness, nothing escaped his scrutiny. ‘He kept the brewery impeccable’, says Veerle Baert-Moortgat. His focus on hygiene would later land him a contract to bottle Tuborg. Surfing on the popularity of Danish luxury pils, Albert’s brother Victor sent Duvel samples to each pub that ordered Tuborg. Duvel boomed. From dark and strong, Victory Ale became the pale blond and equally strong Duvel in the 1960s. The transition is mainly credited to Albert’s collaboration
with Jean De Clerck, a professor of the University of Louvain brewing school. Meanwhile, the true story of Duvel is told by its yeast. The truth is still there for everyone to smell. The key? 4VG or 4-vinylguaiacol. While considered a phenolic off-flavour in bottom fermented beer, 4VG is well-known to aficionados of top-fermented Belgian style golden ales. Duvel has a subtle 4VG character. Leffe, being the quintessential example of 4VG beers, offers strong hints of clove or ‘sausage-type meat’ aromas. Chris Bauweraerts is co-founder of Brasserie D’Achouffe, which Duvel Moortgat purchased in 2006. He suggests discerning noses will still be able to detect Belgian beer descendants of the original Younger’s yeast that, somehow, found its way from Edinburgh to Belgium. Raymond Moureau, who worked at Brasserie Grade, told Bauweraerts that Jules Grade – as Albert Moortgat years before him — went to visit William Younger’s in Edinburgh. He came back with yeast. Brasserie Grade both brewed Vieux-Temps and Leffe. Are Duvel and Leffe unsuspecting cousins? Both being of British ale blood, they most definitely are.
F E AT U R E
Taste = beer X time HOPS, BARLEY, YEAST, WATER AND TIME. THE FIVE ESSENTIALS THAT MAKE BEER. OR ARE THEY? PETE BROWN INVESTIGATES
I
was once invited to give a course on brewing beer at a famous cookery school.
‘We’d like you to show them the ingredients how to brew, and then at the end of the day they get to take home and drink the beer they’ve made!’ said the organiser. ‘That won’t work,’ I said. ‘Why not?’ I wasn’t sure if she was being serious. (This was a very famous cookery school.) ‘Well… because once you’ve done everything, the beer needs to sit and ferment for several days, and then condition afterwards. It takes time.’ ‘Well that’s not going to work,’ she said, as if it was me who was being difficult. To the best of my knowledge, the course never happened. I’m currently reading The Missing Ingredient, the new book by food writer Jenny Linford. It’s a brilliant concept for a
book about food: the missing ingredient is time, an essential aspect of any kind of food or drink preparation. She divides the book into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years, contemplating the immediacy with which we taste and the second-by-second judgement required to make perfect caramel, through to the long ageing required by balsamic vinegar and the mysteries of vintage wine. In the section dealing with weeks, alongside the
discerning drinkers, the length of storage or conditioning time is an indicator of quality. Budweiser Budvar matures its beers for up to 90 days. Some commercial brands are packaged within 72 hours. Many traditional British ales were also historically stored for long periods before being drunk. When people refer to cask ale as beer like it’s always been brewed, they’re largely incorrect. These beers were initially
Time has changed the IPA almost into the opposite of what it once was maturation of cheese and the hanging of meat, she discusses the fermentation time and cellar conditioning of real ale. Without time there’s no fermentation, and without fermentation there’s no beer. But even after primary fermentation has ended, time continues to shape and define beer. This is made clear in the very name of the beer style that accounts for over 90% of the world’s volume: ‘lager’ comes from the German word for ‘to store’, and for
known as ‘running beers’ when they appeared in the late 19th century because they could be served after just a few days of cellar conditioning, whereas the porters and India Pale Ales that were popular at the time were cellared for anything up to a year before being released. IPA is perhaps the most fascinating example of the impact of time on beer. It gained popularity on the subcontinent because as it aged on its six-month journey, it ‘ripened’.
We can only guess what this phrase covers technically, but when I took a barrel of beer to India by sea in 2007, it aged more quickly than the same beer back in London. When we opened it in India, the fresh, zingy hop character had disappeared, morphing into something deeper, more complex and subtle. Today, brewers and drinkers go to great lengths to prevent this from happening. We’re told we must keep IPAs cool to delay their ageing. New England IPAs should be drunk within weeks of being packaged, so their precious hop character remains intact. The drinkers of the Raj would likely have spat out these beers, referring to them as ‘green’ and in need of maturation. Time has changed IPA almost into the opposite of what it once was. Deliberately ageing beers is the final frontier for brewers. We know beer changes over time, but we’re only just learning how and why. Flavour compounds appear and disappear. Mapped over time, they create sine curves of ebb and flow. The oldest beer I’ve ever tasted was brewed in 1879. I’ve got another bottle of it in my cellar that I’ll open and share with friends one day — when the time is right.
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F E AT U R E
Remembrance of pints past WHEN THEY DISCOVERED THE PORTUGUESE WORD SAUDADE BOAK AND BAILEY FINALLY UNDERSTOOD THEIR YEARNING FOR WHAT YESTERYEAR’S BEERS TASTED LIKE
T
he word saudade is peculiar to the Portuguese language — it includes much — a recollection accompanied by affection, and regret, and pleasure... Mary Shelley, 1837 Writing for the New Yorker in 2017 novelist Michael Chabon described nostalgia as ‘the ache that arises from the consciousness of lost connection’. Saudade is a form of nostalgia with added emotional masochism — feeling that ache, but enjoying it, and even seeking it out. Feeling it, too, for things you’ve never known, or that might never have existed. When we first came across the word we recognised the feeling at once. Journeying deep into the history of beer while researching books and articles we found ourselves edging closer to understanding how specific beers might have tasted and mourning their loss at the same time. It felt a little like tracing a longlost relative only to find a gravestone. Reading tantalising tasting notes by dead writers on vanished beers is pleasurable/
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painful enough, but passing comments in oral histories, interviews or memoirs are even better/worse. When in his diaries General Sir James Hope describes the Burton pale ales that sustained him through the siege of Delhi in 1857 as ‘balmy nectar’ and ‘delicious elixir’, the palate tingles, and a desiring dryness rises at the back of the throat, the body unable to distinguish between a description of a delicious beer on foxed and yellowing paper and the thing itself. The ache is intensified by the knowledge that when it comes to beer, what is gone is gone. Performances can be captured on tape or film but nobody has yet worked out how to replay the way a particular batch of a specific beer tasted in one special moment. Sure, there are recipes mined from great gridded ledgers in the archives, but how close can a historic recreation ever get? A recipe is nothing without hops from the right farm, from the right year’s harvest, for example. The brewer, the brewery, the equipment, the yeast, the handling of the beer in pub cellars… There are so many variables that all we can ever experience is
a vague outline, the end point in a game of broken telephones. There has lately been a trend for posting tasting notes on antique beers — imperial stouts and souvenir barley wines retrieved from sideboards and attics, acquired at car boot sales and in online auctions — motivated by a desire to connect with the past literally, in the most intimate way imaginable, through ingestion. When we drank a Barclay’s Russian Stout that had been bottled in 1970 it felt impossible to distinguish between the flavour of the beer as beer and the experience of consuming the past. It was thrilling, of course, but painful too: we might never find another bottle even remotely like it, and with each mouthful we were reducing the stock of 1970 left in the world. Bittersweet sums it up. Pubs can have a similar power. The yearning we feel reading contemporary descriptions of postwar pubs in brewery publicity goes beyond nostalgia for the buildings themselves. After all, those clean, modern, bright and better pubs presented on paper ceased to exist minutes after the
doors opened for the first time, when the Linoleum got its first cigarette burn and beer began to soak into the carpets. No, the yearning here is for the optimism and ambition they embodied — for a whole system of living and structure of society. For the New Elizabethan age that never materialised. Saudade is heady stuff and should be taken in moderation, as part of a balanced diet. When we’ve been wallowing in old books, staring deep into black-and-white photographs, we like to go to a pub that’s thriving now, and drink something that tastes great today, and simply enjoy it. But melancholy nostalgia can intrude there, too: this beer might never taste better, and I might never be as happy again as I am right now. Every trip to the pub with an elderly relative becomes weighed down with the sense that there might not be too many more, making it somehow both more enjoyable and sadder. It’s just a beer, you say, but what if that beer is the beer you look back on as the last? Once you have the word saudade, you’ll catch yourself feeling it all the time.
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HOP HARVEST 2018 'The 2018 hop harvest from a growers' perspective can be summed up in one word: ‘disappointing’. The extreme temperatures and drought this summer did not suit hops. Like many crops we grow in the UK they prefer a temperate climate hence yields are considerably down. Generally, the cones are much smaller, although later varieties had more growing time so were able to grow a little on after the rain. Packing the hops after drying we found them very oily so hopefully brewing quality will be good. Interestingly, after the late rain, some varieties produced a second round of burr when they were in hop, this was probably the missing hops that would have made up the normal yield that we expected at harvest. Alpha acid results are still outstanding, and apparently, the stress might have helped those, we shall see. But there’s always a silver lining! We had perfect September days for the harvest, and the hops were easy to pick. I've also been making a tea-towel about British hops. The inspiration came just because I enjoy everything about growing different hop varieties. Dr Peter Darby, researcher at Wye Hops, has always been encouraging and helpful and the research work is ongoing developing new varieties for brewing flavours and global warming to consider, as this year showed. Wye Hops are looking for funding, so this seemed a perfect opportunity to combine the tea-towel I wanted to design, with a donation to this research as a thank you to Dr Peter Darby. Over the years I have heard of him helping students, small brewers and homebrew groups.' Dorothy Hollamby of A Bushel of Hops instagram.com/abushelofhops The tea-towel (below) is available from abushelofhops.co.uk
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F E AT U R E
I bet he drinks... BEER PLAYS A PART, HOWEVER MINOR, IN MOST PEOPLE'S LIVES, BUT OCCASIONALLY IT CHANGES THE PATH OF ONE
By Adrian Tierney-Jones
I
once asked my mother what my father liked when I was young. She replied, ‘TV, cigarettes and other men’s women’.
I never saw him with a beer until I had written my first book in 2002 and he suddenly expressed interest (though when he died amongst his effects was a photo of him in an army canteen with a couple of bottles of Bentley’s Mild on the table). So I bought him O’Hanlon’s Port Stout and he opened it, drank half, said it was delicious and reminiscent of what his mother used to drink. He then put the cap back on and left it in the fridge, ‘for another day’. When he did drink, Scotch was his tipple, and the odd glass of wine but not beer. My mother didn’t drink beer either. I don’t recall any beer in the house until I brought in some cans of Carling Black Label after turning 18. So why is it that beer has become an essential part of my life, so fundamental and immaculate in its conceptualism that I ended up making a career of it in the most picaresque of ways? I wasn’t brought up around beer or in a pub, and there was no town brewery and the accompanying aroma of brewing day to provoke my interest. However, if I dig deeper into my memories I find a fairly fulsome seam of beer that might have had an influence. It was my Liverpool-Irish paternal grandmother, Peggy Wright (a big
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woman that low comedians used to call ‘battle axes’ and whose father James Tierney was killed in 1918), who was into her beer. On the Sundays when my brother and I saw my father, we would go to her small two-up, two-down in a Llandudno backstreet for lunch. ‘Have a sip of Mackie,’ she would say to me every time we visited (I was 12 by then), but I was not interested. I had drunk from her glass of Mackeson once before and thought it acrid, tar-like on the tongue, burnt toast. The Guinness she often poured herself in the tiny kitchen as she prepared
bad cook of a great aunt. However, because of her lodgers he was put in a shed in the garden, but as I got to know him (I’d never met him before) I became aware that he liked beer. One day in the damp outhouse at Borthyn I found a crate of empty beer bottles. I want to say that they were Double Diamond but I don’t really remember.
looking bar called The County. The beer was Greenall Whitley, a Warrington brewery that once had many pubs in North Wales. I was not impressed. Over the next few years as I went to college, fled to Paris for a few months and settled in London, beer was here, there and everywhere but it never really made me stop and think.
Being of that age when curiosity invariably catches the cat, I upended a bottle and drank the dregs. I recall a sweetness slightly reminiscent of the malt extract we used to get as kids. I seem to recall a bitterness, or was that later on?
I drank Greene King in college, as well as Holsten. Pilsner Urquell from Oddbins, Jenlain in Paris, Becks as a production editor on a pop magazine. I even recall being excited when Budweiser became available in London pubs. Yet my interest in beer was as passionate as my interest in bacon. I liked it but I wasn’t going to become a bacon writer. It was only in my late 20s when it began to matter, though the idea of writing about it still had to wait (which is another story for another day).
I began to notice pubs and even found the aroma of spilt beer and stale smoke beguiling whenever I encountered it. lunch was even worse. I recall thinking it smelt a bit like the kitchen of my great aunt Blanche whose cooking was extraordinarily bad and steeped in the art of the Maillard reaction (god knows how her lodgers coped with pork chops that resembled the aftermath of Joan of Arc at the stake). Around about the same time I tasted another beer, which was a bit more amenable. Peg Wright’s first husband, Owen Jones, my paternal grandfather, had returned from Birmingham where he’d been living since the 1930s having abandoned his wife and young son. He’d had a stroke and come back to live with his sister, my legendarily
Yet, these two examples of early exposure to the taste of beer (whatever my reaction) must have had some effect. I began to notice pubs and even found the aroma of spilt beer and stale smoke beguiling whenever I encountered it. I was about to leave behind the wellconstructed carapace of childhood and enter the flimsy downy world of my teens and the pub was one aspect of this change that I would want to get to know. The first time I drank beer in a pub I was a few days short of my 16th birthday. It was an anonymous-
To get to this stage where beer is an axis on which a major part of my world turns, where it sustains and settles upon the framework of day-to-day life, still surprises and puzzles me. Maybe it’s just a passion that got out of hand or maybe those memories of my early encounters with beer had more of an effect that I admit. Have all of us who have a lust for the beer life got similar memories, or does my path, your path, that person over there’s path pass on a different route?
F E AT U R E
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S H O RT S
The Troubles with beer Pubs and beer had an important role to play in the Troubles, but in Belfast today, they could be part of the solution
‘You want to write about the role of pubs in healing after the conflict?’ Billy laughs and shakes his head. ‘Pubs and beer were the start of it, not the end of it.’ Billy tells us stories as he drives us around the city. It takes me a while to acclimatise to his talking
better than the loyalist ones. He still remembers the time a concrete paving slab came through the window and hit a ‘retired lady of the night’ in the back of the head. ‘She had the sense to hit the latch locking the door as she went down,’ he tells us. ‘The mob outside had to attempt to get in through the broken
outside the door so people could be checked before they were allowed into the pub. When the new owners reopened the place under a new name in 2012, they decided to keep the cage, now painted bright green, as a reminder of the past. Two blocks further up Union Street, among the
‘A publican used to be behind the bar with a gun in each pocket. That’s how you ran a pub in the ’70s,’ says Billy. about nationalists and unionists rather than catholics and protestants. In terms of affiliation, it’s pretty much the same thing (apart from the Presbyterians, who were nationalists), but in his choice of language Billy is suggesting that the Troubles were a political rather than a religious conflict. People gather together in pubs with people like them. This makes pubs easy targets for people who aren’t like them. Billy grew up in a pub down by the docks. He jokes that his name tells you which side he was brought up on, and his only regret is that he grudgingly admits the nationalist murals are
windows instead, and were finally repelled.
At the height of the Troubles, hardly anyone went out in the centre of Belfast. In the 19th century there was a pub on every corner. Now, the pub Billy grew up in, like so many others, is long gone.
graffiti, big white emulsion letters once spelled out ‘NO TOPLESS BATHING’. Underneath, in red, another hand added ‘Ulster has suffered enough’. That wall is long gone, but the words are now neatly painted on the wall next to the Sunflower’s cage. The Sunflower has a mural too — the signature of this city. But this mural is joyful, abstract and colourful, looking forward, or perhaps to one side, rather than back.
Back when the Sunflower was called still called the Tavern, it was bombed. Another time someone came in with, literally, guns blazing. In the 1980s the Tavern erected a cage
Five minutes’ walk up the hill from the Sunflower is the Carlisle Memorial Church, a stunning High Victorian Neo-Gothic building that for most of its
‘A publican used to be behind the bar with a gun in each pocket. That’s how you ran a pub in the ’70s,’ says Billy.
By Pete Brown
history was a Methodist church. It lies at the edge of North Belfast, close to the heart of where the Troubles raged fiercest. Phil McGurran, landlord of the Errigle Public House, remembers going to school just up the road. ‘We were ordered to cross the road, not go near it, not even look at it,’ he tells me as we chat in one of the Errigle’s seemingly endless array of cosy bars. Facing dwindling congregations, the church closed in 1982 and fell into complete disrepair. In the early 2000s it was close to collapse, but the first phase of regeneration was completed in 2015. The following year, it became home to the second edition of the ABV Festival, Northern Ireland’s finest celebration of craft beer. Now, in September 2018, I’m at the fourth.
Craft beer was late coming to Northern Ireland. I’m looking for interesting beers from local brewers, but here they’re delighted by some of the beers that have been brought in from the rest of Britain and Europe. The atmosphere is quite relaxed, incredibly good-natured. Looking at the audience, it’s easy to see that good beer appeals to people of all ages, genders and sexual orientations. It’s absolutely impossible to tell who is catholic or protestant, unionist or nationalist. As the festival closes to restock for the evening session, I wander into town. The streets are deserted except for cabs. But in the John Hewitt — a classic old gin palace of a pub now owned by a collective that donates all profits to the unemployed — there isn’t room to sit, or even lean.
Despite its appearance, the pub only opened in December 1999 – the same month 1998’s Good Friday Agreement came into effect. This pub in its current form never endured the violence, and exists only because that violence ended. But the memory of it infuses the building. A side room is decorated with framed theatre posters for events like ‘The history of the Troubles — according to my da’, billed as ‘a hilarious account of 36 years of conflict’. Twenty years after Good Friday, there are drinkers in here who weren’t born when it was signed. It feels like any pub in Britain on a Saturday night — any really good pub, that is. It’s hard to imagine there being any late-night fights here to rival those in a typical British town on a Saturday night, let alone anything worse.
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SAN FRANCISCO The west coast port casts a magical spell on Daniel Neilson as he anchors himself in its beer scene
What do you think of when you read the words ‘San Francisco’? Close your eyes. Which images appear? Is it the Golden Gate Bridge or Steve McQueen’s Ford Mustang bouncing down Taylor Street? Does it conjure up thoughts of the hippie resistance of Haight-Ashbury? If you’ve been there, chances are your images are more specific: clam chowder served in a hollowed-out sourdough loaf on Pier 39 or the bounce of a downtown trolley ride. San Francisco is one the world’s great cities, one that when mentioned swirls around the mind, offering up vivid images and remembrances, connective thoughts pulsing down neural pathways, whether you’ve been there or not. Only great cities do that. I visited for the second time in 25 years in April 2018. My first trip, cunningly timed on my 18th birthday so I couldn’t drink beer legally, was with a friend who was brought up on a boat in one of the city’s docks. I saw the city through his memories: where he played as a kid, where his grandparents lived. For me, now writing this, half a year after going, it’s Lewes, England that passes through my mind, Lewes and a lingering obsession with Mexican food. Anchor Steam Brewery, founded in San Francisco in 1896, is one of the United States' oldest breweries and its Steam Beer, Porter, California Lager and Liberty Ale are now available worldwide. My last Steam Beer was bought from Asda. But it was in San Francisco, that it forever became associated with Harveys in Lewes.
As I toured around the brewery, museumlike in its sense of quietness, the polished copper kettles rose from the floor and mysteriously disappeared into the ceiling. As if faced with an iceberg, I could only imagine the Dr Zeuss-like system of pipes as this fantastical machine spread out. But it was in the next room that the association with Harveys was forged among the open fermentors, crusted with krausen, which gave the beer an inexplicable extra. After the tour, I returned to the tasting room and tried all the beers on tap, from
taphouse. And it was here another memory started to be stored, one of taste. The Duboce IPA was, well, funny tasting. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Taste tugs on memory, but with this IPA I was drawing blanks. Fourpure’s almost oniony Shapeshifter flitted through my mind. I wasn’t sure what to think, but I know I liked it. The next two days were a blur of breweries and burritos. Triple Voodoo was homely with quality Belgian styles ales in particular, while the 21st Amendment
Without the rumbling of the streetcar, the fleeting coolness of the San Francisco fog, and the broad smile, it's not quite the same the new fruity San Franpsycho IPA collab, but best of all, the freshest Steam Beer. Rich and full-bodied, better than ever. Why? I tasted where it was made, and where it was made I loved. Knowing the story of the beer changes the taste of the beer. I flew into Oakland and headed straight to Hotel VIA, a new place that overlooks the AT&T baseball park and has a healthy passion for beer. I met the manager and started developing my list of breweries to visit. That evening, a couple of blocks from the hotel, I visited Local Brewing’s
restaurant and taproom was a noisy, fun place with excellent food. There’s a refreshingly relaxed attitude to this place. Hell or High Watermelon, its muchloved summer beer, comes with a slice of watermelon and a wink. The rounded Down to Earth was more to my taste, a brilliant Session IPA. The more I spoke with brewers and drinkers, the more they uttered one name: Cellarmaker. The brewery’s taproom opened at 3pm and I arrived (after a taco stop) at 2.50pm. A little door opened and I wandered in, and sat at the bar alone. By
the time my flight of beers arrived, it was standing room only. What had they come for? The California hazy, the West Coast’s take on the New England IPA. Drier, more balanced, but about as transparent as orange juice. I took a sip, and there was that flavour again, one I’d picked up in almost all the San Francisco breweries I’d visited. It was weedy, I understand how dank, dank can be. It tasted of hops, but not like chewing on a pellet. I later mentioned this to Pete and Adrian who have also recently visited the West Coast. ‘Freshness’ was what came up. Wait. Is this what hop bombs should taste like? Over two days, my neural connectors laid down a new network of flavour and aroma profiles, ones that I occasionally pick up in IPAs from UK breweries: Magic Rock, Cloudwater, Deya, Fourpure. Yet, without the rumbling of the streetcar, the fleeting coolness of the San Francisco fog, and the broad smile with which it is served, it's not quite the same. When I hear the words San Francisco now, in the most evocative of cities, I wish my memory of Anchor’s taproom was more acute, and I wish I could taste Cellarmaker’s Cloudy with a Chance of Dobis for the first time again. The journey of beer was reawakened in me during those few days. I became excited again. I can also now make a pretty good pulled pork taco. / sftravel.com / visitcalifornia.com / hotelviasf.com
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TA S T I N G N O T E S
Saltaire Brewery POLARITY [6.2%]
Fourpure Brewing Co PLANET SIMCOE [5.9%]
Mikkeller STICK A... [4.5%]
Curious Brewery CHAPTER 2 [7.3%]
A full-bodied and mildly herbal black IPA from the Yorkshire brewery
A swirl of the glass and Simcoe emerges like a wraith of hoppiness
World’s most experimental brewery experiments with making beer that’s… normal
A wine yeast-fermented beer in collaboration with Brew by Numbers
Gosh, I thought black IPA was on the index of forbidden beers, beers that by the laws of loud craft commentators are no longer allowed to be made, yet here comes Saltaire risking all manner of ridicule. Dark brown with rosy tints on the edge, with a firm head of cream-coloured foam, bonfire toffee and herbal notes vie for attention on the nose, while a chime of fruitiness and light toastiness resonates in the mouth. It’s full-bodied, chewy, quite creamy in its mouth feel and slightly reminiscent of my childhood favourite dandelion and burdock. The dry finish lasts like a long summer’s day, which we won’t be seeing again for a while. I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the juxtaposition of black and pale, that’s for others to worry about. Another glass? Yes please. ATJ
Every beer has a story. Not only the tale behind it, but also the beer itself as it is born and then dies. I tried Fourpure’s Planet Simcoe as a toddler (the beer that is, not me), out of the tank. I could smell it before it was in my hand, the powerful swirl of hops hitting me as the brewer brought it forward. Simcoe is piney, fruity, all those descriptors we say all the time, but through a Marshall stack. It’s gentle at first, with an emerging bitterness building behind it like a wave. Soon it will be a Tween and then a teenager. I've since had it in a can, the finished version, and it's a little more mature, a little more rounded, but still with that mood swinging edge. It’ll die young, grab it now. It's a story. DN
To celebrate their exclusive new deal as sole UK distributor of Mikkeller beers in the UK, Euroboozer recently sent out a four-pack of some of the beers they’ll be selling. Nestling up against such delights as a ‘passion fruit Berliner’, this one, Stick a Finger in the Soil, labelled simply as ‘pale ale’ and with a sessionable ABV, seems so normal for such a mould-breaking and adventurous brewer that it’s almost scandalous — no gimmicks, no fruit additions, and only moderate haze. But here’s the thing: all that experimentation means that when Mikkeller go back to basics, they do so with an incredible command of their craft. The blend of hops here, their body, balance, and surprising depth, the journey they take across the palate, is extraordinarily good. PB
Curious’ second small-batch collaboration (hence Chapter 2) is with Brew By Numbers, a saison with added elderflower and fermented with wine yeast. Effervescent in the glass, bruised gold in colour, it’s sprightly and bubbly, going lightly on the tongue, with petrol-like aromatics rising in the air. Petrol? Think Riesling, and a well-behaved fruitiness that is just on the edge of Bohemian. The elderflower and the influence of the wine yeast add a velvety, slightly acidic, apple-like character to the palate, an elegant and eloquent presence that easily coalesces with the dry-in-its-descent-from-the-heavens finish. This is an elaborate puzzle of a beer that eventually reveals itself as a wine-beer hybrid that you hope will demonstrate to drinkers that there is more to beer than IPA. ATJ
Yeastie Boys BREWING WITH WAYNE [4.5%] Yeastie Boys celebrate a decade by giving us this fascinating 'Lichtenhainer'
Ten years have passed since the Yeastie Boys emerged and this collaboration with Cigar City is one of the beers with which this anniversary is being celebrated. Ten years ago I am not sure I would have heard of a Lichtenhainer, which is what this beer is — a smoky and sour historical wheat beer. Nebulous and darkly orange in the glass, it sways with banana-like aromatics on the nose alongside a very light
Stone & Wood STONE BEER [7.5%]
Canopy Beer Co BROCKWELL IPA
Imagine having an excuse to drop hot rocks into beer… Ancient brewers used to add fire-heated stones to beer to get it up to the temperature needed to activate the enzymes needed to convert starches to sugars (even though they had no idea what enzymes were). Every year, Stone & Wood makes one brew where they add hot stones to the mash tun to create a special beer. The stones caramelise some of the sugars, leading to some deeper and more rounded flavours. This year’s release is a strong porter, matured in port and second-use whiskey barrels to create a beer that’s warm and soothing, smooth and yet remarkably complex, with chocolate, cocoa, vanilla and roasted caramel notes, and a splash of sophisticated booziness. PB
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smokiness, the fumes of a bonfire caught on the wind from several fields away perhaps. Tart and lightly smoky, refreshing and wheaty, there is medium bodied mouth feel and the smokiness is light on the palate as is the sourness, which is gently tart, with some puckering at the back of the mouth and a crisp yet light carbonation. The finish is a mixture of tartness and juiciness. It all adds
up to a gorgeous beer, complex and refreshing, radically different and yet familiar to what I have had before. Excellent. ATJ
Watneys SARCASM [4.5%]
An Teallach Ale Co AN TEALLACH [4.2%]
Exciting times ahead according to our highly excited correspondent
Watneys? Are you having a laugh?
A perfect reward after spending a day in the mountains
Branding matters. Personality matters. And then it’s down to the beer to give that brand longevity. Canopy Brewery, which I admit to knowing very little about before picking up a range of their beers, has brilliant, colourful and fun branding. They also have personality. Bags of it. And frankly, that worried me. I was desperate for the beer behind it to be amazing. I want to love this brewery. They use magenta everywhere for a start. First up, Brockwell IPA. Good grief, it’s good. A chewy malt profile has been considered first. Then I opened the limited edition New England IPA Snap! Blimey, it’s good, and on target... and I’ve just spent two weeks in Vermont. The Kölsch too, lor! I’m excited about Canopy Beer Co. DN
Watneys’ Red Barrel. Staple of Monty Python, and something of a rallying cry for the birth of CAMRA in the early 1970s. Never has a beer been so reviled, so much so that nearly 50 years after its demise, people still cite it as an example of all that’s wrong with big beer. The people that revived the Watneys brand last year know this, and their launch was basically around the idea that ‘it’s not as awful as it used to be’. The idea it might all be a bit of a joke is given weight by the ‘headliners range’ of canned craft beers, with names like Slapstick and Sarcasm, and labels depicting cartoon mouths grinning. But this one, brewed with orange zest, is seriously OK, the citrus notes quite rounded and perfumed, the beer a clean, slick thirst-quencher. PB
An Teallach is a great mountain in Torridon, a wild area in the North West Highlands. It’s a fantastically complex massif with two Munros, those eminently collectable Scottish mountains that poke over 3,000 feet. Poured into a jug at the Torridon Inn, the mountain’s namesake beer appears as dark and foreboding as the Torridon peaks where we’d spent the day battling the swirling October winds, torrential rain and glaring sun. Made in the Scottish 80/ tradition this was a classically rich and malty ale, with a mildly astringent edge that complemented the vinegar on our fabulous fish and chips. There were golden ales and hoppy pale ales on offer, but they were left untouched. Why would you want to drink anything else on a day like that? DN
[5.6%]
YOUR ROUND
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