Beered in the USA

Well, the GABF has started off well for me, had a whole series of top-quality beers last night that I thought I'd share with you!

I kicked off with beers from the Blue Corn brewery (Santa Fe), served up to me by the brewmaster and original cowboy Brad Kraus, and the first beer of Atomic Blonde pils at 5% was an absolute treat! Sometimes in this job you can forget that a really good clean pilsner at the right time can be an absolute treat - and this was, clean, zesty and with a little punch of bitterness at the end.

The brewery's award-winning oatmeal stout was also an absolute cracker, an enticing chocolate and coffee nose with a balanced coffee and hop  bitterness combined with a really creamy mouthfeel makes it intensely drinkable and it's understandable that it took a gold medal in its class last year. As an aside it also helps no end that Mr Kraus is an absolute blast and has definitely gained the title of my favourite person in the world to share a Rochefort 10 with.

Then it was on to Buckbean and their 5.8% Orange Blossom Ale, Pallisade, Ahtanum and German select hops marry beautifully with orange blossom, Munich & caramel malts.

The result is not so much an orange blossom ale but a fabulously jasmine tea-like end to the beer that begs to be drunk over and over - interestingly a lot of the craft beers out here are canned, what they do is use the technology that soft drinks companies have been using for years and have a lining on the inside of the can that prevents all metallic taint.

My next great beer was the Saint Arnold Elissa IPA - rather sad that I chose it because it's so close to my name but I'm glad I was feeling childish because it was a really pleasant honey pine nose, with a rich spicy flavour with a not unpleasant prickly hop bitterness, very fresh in the finish and well-balanced.

Rogue Morimoto Soba, which I believe is only around 5%, is a truly incredible beer - a buckwheat nose leads to a similar profile in taste augmented by a light lime, then after you've swallowed you get this most amazing rush back of bready/buckwheat right at the front of the palate - totally unique in my opinion and well worth seeking out.

I also had the great pleasure and privelege of drinking Sierra Nevada's Estate beer at 6.7%, all the ingredients are grown at the brewery and it's a got a lovely clean mineral nose with a bit of peach/passion fruit and then a jammy middle throught to a balanced bitter end - fabulous.

So, that was yesterday, today my standout beers were the 21st Amendment Watermelon wheat, which I'd heard about from Richard Dinwoodie who raves about it, however I was a bit sceptical - ohhhh how foolish I was to be so pre-judgemental, it's utterly, utterly awesome! It smells like watermelon and then on the palate anyone who ever ate the watermelon Nerds as a kid will recognise that sour watermelon flavours are some of the nicest things in the world and that's what this was. Unbelievably refreshing and fabulous this also came from a can and was just a revelation.

Next standout was Bison Brewery's Honey & Basil ale Wheat, I can't tell you how nice this was and how much I wished I'd had something Italian to eat with it. A honeyed basil nose leads through to a really balanced slight sweet herbal body with a great earthy herbal bitterness you'd associate with English hops; utterly stunning and I asked the owner if I could shamelessly try to reproduce something close on one of my next brewing adventures and he was really stoked about the idea, everyone is so incredible like that out here - it's all about sharing ideas, stamping out politics and growing the category.

Deschutes Red Chair IPA was another cracker, I judge these in the World Beer Awards a lot but rarely see them and wish they'd export more to the UK, I really do, a wonderfully restrained example of an American-style IPA, it balances that usual huge grapefruit note out with some nice lime and caramel-bready body (without being too toffee) and a rich jammy bitter finish.

And finally Alaskan's beers were something special, the Smoked Porter is a living legend but I thought the White (the spiced wheat) was very elegantly done. For those of you who have tried the Coney Island Albino Python think this done much more delicately, not to say that's not a great beer, but the White has many similarities without the huge pot pourri nose.

And talking of Coney Island I'm also pleased to say that I've been introduce to the most fabulous American diner called Sam's No. 3, at which I've been eating with Glenn, and today I decided, when in Rome, to have their Coney Island hotdog, which was sublime; if you're ever in Denver then Sam's No.3 is a must-see.

Will update you on the winners etc. tomorrow, back off to the festival now and then onto dinner in the Samba Room!

Yee Haw

Judging at the GABF is hard work, no seriously! The quality of the beer is for the most pretty good, and in places stellar, with fewer brewing defects in general than most other competitions I've judged but what is really amazing is the level of technical detail that they look for.

Now that may sound super-nerdy but judging within strongly classified classes and styles actually makes the process a lot easier but the level of information and feedback they encourage you to give is very intensive.

But, all that stuff aside, I've met some truly fantastic people who I hope to stay in contact with for many years and I would be delighted to come back to Denver because, I must confess, the Falling Rock pub is simply the best place to drink I've ever been - I could kick the bucket in that place and die happy! If you want to see what I'm talking about then click here.

Sorry for the brevity of the post but festival is now open so I'm off to do the rounds, I'll be taking names and making notes so will feed back to you what I've had tomorrow but I sadly can't tell you anything about the beers that I've been judging until it's all over but there are soooo some I'll be seeking out over the next few days that's for sure!

American Adventure Has Begun

Howdy!

Right, I'm in Denver and raring to go on the judging front - however that doesn't start until tomorrow so today I'm off on a little adventure.

Had a couple of brews in the Rock Bottom Brewery (as my colleague Glenn texted me very wittily, hit Rock Bottom immediately eh?!) whilst reading Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope and thoroughly enjoyed their Golden Buffalo - which was indeed an orangey gold, with a good tight head, laced down the glass well, typical American floral/fruit on the nose, a nice orangey bite on the palate and a very, very clean aftertaste - almost like a good pilsner.

I'd love to tell you what the ABV was but all I could elicit from the waitress was 'they are mostly around five except the Falcon' - but she was very sweet and attentive otherwise and I was too tired to give a rat's patootie about the nerdy details!

And today we're off to see the JuJu Ginger Wizard, Eric at Left Hand Brewing, which I'm super-excited about.

Apparently I'm getting on a bus to do this, but fortunately Glenn is here to guide me and given that I managed to get lost finding Rock Bottom last night (walk out the door go straight, take a right after two blocks) I think that's probably a very good thing!

So, this is just the beginning and I'll let you know more when I do!

p.s. If you haven't already, place your cynicism aside and read Obama's first book -
Dreams from My Father - it's an excellent and very personal story from a man with a really fascinating background, who also happens to be President of the USA. This one's a little more heavy-going on the idealogue front but really well-written nonetheless and a good insight into the American political machine.

The Evel Has Landed

Oh dear, Eve's here and targeting me via Facebook!

I particularly love the line 'Eve is a brand new drink that’s just made for us girls.' Am I supposed to twiddle a piece of hair round my finger, twist my foot, pout and giggle after saying that?!

Money on any advertising of this product including less of a girls' night out and more of a Diet Coke 'ooh we're only here because the barman's hunky' moment?

Greed is NOT Good

Sorry for the serious note but it's come to my attention that some of my fellow beer bloggers are demanding cash for posts and then passing them off as personal opinion, comment or recommendation and I'm just not cool with that.

There's a big difference between a blog being sponsored, or carrying advertising, to authors asking for cash for coverage and then presenting it to their readers as editorial - I don't care what Michael Douglas's Gordon Gecko character said in Wall Street, I think we have seen enough woe in the economic world recently to recognise that greed is just not good.

This trend came to my attention a few weeks ago and whilst I'm not willing to out those responsible I have been having a bit of a personal dilemma about what to do with the information; but when someone called my blog's integrity into question the other day over the Zeitgeist post , which I did NOT get paid for, I felt I had to let everyone who kindly follows my work know where they stand with me.

I never have and never will take payment for comment because if you have the courtesy to read my work then I owe you the courtesy of making it honest.

However, what I am doing is going back over my posts and marking up any that I've put up for my lovebeer@borough tastings, or those that I've had a financial interest by working with the party mentioned, so that it is utterly transparent.

Thanks for your continued support.

Missing Licensee

UK pub-goers & publicans please check this story in case you can shed any light on this chap's whereabouts.

Travelling Well

Just a little update on my weird world - the Epic Armaggedon IPA that has been on the NZ Inter-Island ferry in barrels named after myself and Pete Brown have finally been tapped!

Pete & Melissa were opened to the public at Beervana, a beer fest in Wellington that was held over the weekend, and apparently we both travelled very well.

Anyway, if you'd like to see a bit more then take a look at this Youtube clip...

p.s. at least he's not assaulting me in this picture, unlike the last one!

(Pea)Nuts to the Home Office

Good grief Gordon Brown, what the hell is your Home Office playing at with all this chat about banning glasses in pubs?

Now, please don't think I'm denigrating the 5,500 people are injured by glasses or bottles a year but I tend to feel there's bigger fish to fry here - like tackling the quarter of a million burglaries in the UK every year or helping the victims of the 4,700 rapes a year in this country or, and here's a good one Home Office, actually investing in police resources and infrastructure so there's someone watching the bloody CCTV cameras you've insisted are installed EVERYWHERE!

This ridiculous waste of time will merely penalise the many due to the few pubs where, frankly, the only reason thugs are using bottles & glasses to hit each other is because the furniture is already screwed down!

In all the time I've been drinking in pubs, going clubbing and generally having a high old time, I've seen two people bottled or glassed - and both times were, to be honest, because I was in a less than salubrious establishment.

So target that sort of pub, club or bar - give the authorities the power to initiate a three-month ban following any violent incident involving glassware or bottles, but don't penalise me because I want to enjoy a bottled beer out of a stylish glass in a nice bar.

But mostly, because this is the real kicker here, don't start undoing all the good work that the trade has been doing to get people to drink quality rather than quantity.

If you look at the beer market figures, spend is up whilst volume is down on quality products, which tells you people are spending rather than guzzling and high-quality branded glassware is undoubtedly part of that equation.

And what infuriates me is that this was all part of the plan - remember all that talk of cafe culture when the Home Office (under Labour) implemented flexible licensing hours Mr Brown? Well you're beginning to get it and now you're going to bloody blow it!

I could go on and on about this but I'm just so angry, so early in the morning, that I'm not sure it's good for my health, so I'm off to have some breakfast - have a good day everyone but don't forget to wrap yourself from head-to-toe in bubble wrap before you leave the house.

Why? Well I'm reckoning you may as well get used to it now because it's only a matter of time before the nanny state implements that too!

Good grief...

A Few Beers Later...

I hope that, as I post this, the lads are still celebrating a very hard-fought, grafted-for Ashes win.

All right, it means that my personal best score today of a whopping 14 (not to mention my first ever boundary) does have a tendency to pale into insignificance but, who cares frankly!!

However, I am not going to dwell on today too much but look to the future - going forward I have three wishes for watching England play cricket in the coming years: firstly I'd like to see us retain that little urn for quite some time, secondly I'd like the quality of the Marston's to be significanly less variable at the grounds I go to and, thirdly, can there please be more than one bloody cask bar at each ground?!

As the official beer of the England & Wales cricket team I think it's ridiculous that the cask version of the beer is so horrendously difficult to get at grounds, especially when the alternative is smoothflow - shudder!

p.s. ta to Wells & Young's for taking me to the first day of this historic test at the Oval - what a good day out that was!

Would You BeliEVE it

I was wrong, Eve's not coming, it's already here. A fellow beer blogger has alerted me to the fact that it's being trialled in the north-west, thanks for letting me know Tyson - you can read his post here.

Biblically Bad Faux Beer Launch Iminent

Carlsberg looks set to unleash Eve, the female-targeted 'near-beer', on the UK market.

Now, I've already dissected MolsonCoor's recent trial of a similar product, so before I comment on this latest development here are the tasting notes on Eve from my good friend Laurent:

"3.1% ABV, very syrupy, very sweet, pinkish and bubbly, with an overpowering chemical fruit taste. The front half of one's tongue is coated with the agressive sweet fruitiness (feels like your tastebuds are dying one-by-one, blown up by the flavouring's overkill...), and the back half of the tongue does not send any signal, as if it was dead.

"Indeed, no bitterness to be expected from lychee or passion fruit flavours, but they even managed to produce a grapefruit taste completely devoid of bitterness... grapefruit being by far the less offensive of the three (yes, I've tasted actually all three, and it's not a nice recollection).

"Hops ? no perceptible hops... taste of the base beer ? No taste recognisable as such, no trace of yeast, fermentation, anything reminiscent of beer..."

Mmm, doesn't Eve sound yummy?!

I had read an article in Brewer's Guardian that mentioned this product but hadn't heard anything about it potentially hitting the UK until Laurent sent me this link to a design agency's website, where they are giving it large about the creative they've come up with for the product, so I think it's safe to say that it's just about to come to our stores.

Do you know what really cheeses me off though, is that when they launched the Jacobsen range a few years ago I had women going mad for the Bramley Wit, it was delicious! Put out of your minds the taste of Applebocq , this was a deliciously well-balanced, very slightly tart (in that really good apple sauce way), a nice coriander & orange peel aspect you'd expect and a fabulous body with lingering wheaty-apple notes - not to mention wonderful glassware and a beautiful bottle.

It was a craft-brewed product from their microbrewery in Coppenhagen and ticks all the bloody boxes about what people want more of from their beer, artisan brewed etc.

But, maybe I'm just being that little bit too radical again so thank you Carlsberg, it's just as well you're here to remind us ladeez not to get too big for our britches on the flavour front.

You've caught us just in time because us girlies were just beginning to take our tastebuds out of saccharine atrophy, so thank you for putting us right back into our sweet little fluffy, sparkly-pink boxes.

Anyway, I simply must dash now, there's ironing, cleaning and baking to do before the man of the house gets back from the football...



(image from www.StarvetheBardies.com)

Looking Glass

There's been some scepticism around the blogosphere on the issue of women, beer drinking & the role of glassware in improving this.

In general, the issue around glassware, labelling and the like is that everything else in our lives - all the other decisions we make to buy products from make-up to mobile phones - is based around the appeal of the packaging, the marketing and the functionality of said product.

And, when you're talking about products specifically marketed to women then, frankly, they all look nice!

The problem beer has is that once it's poured it's down to the glass to make it look nice and all too often the existing options for glassware fail to do that - they just aren't aesthetically pleasing.

And I don't think that's a solely girly thing, when you drink in a pub where there's the option to have a groovy Belgian fluted glass for your beer or a standard one I have never, ever heard anyone say 'oh no, I'll take the Nonic thanks' - it just doesn't happen!

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

Hmm, as if self-loathing hack Liz Jones isn't catching enough flack from her contemporaries and local Exmoor residents for her new book The Exmoor Files (brilliantly pastiched here), she's decided to have a pop at the whole of the glossy magazine industry, citing an article on beer to which I contributed in Easy Living as an example of how these publications are all going to pot!

Firstly, Easy Living, not really a glossy, and secondly does anyone think this woman could you be any more patronising?!

"I have just been reading the new issue of Easy Living and came across this article. I quote its beginning exactly: 'As an alternative to wine, I'd like to drink beer, but I haven't tried it since I was a teen! Where do I start?'.

"This in a magazine with readers who are supposedly older, professional, fairly well-heeled and, presumably, intelligent."

Yes Liz, they probably are intelligent which is why they are looking to change their drinking habits from high ABV wine to lower ABV beer, broaden their horizons and experience something new.

Honestly, it makes me want to weep sometimes that my profession gives people like this a platform - this is the same woman by the way who compared modern hairdressers to Guantanamo Bay - I'm presuming she also thinks a weekly manicure is a basic human right and that she's currently cooking up a crock on how orange jumpsuits are a crime against fashion!

I would heartily suggest that she steers away from topics on which she has no understanding in future - which, it would seem, pretty much covers anything to do with the real world for a start.

(Illustration by Neal Fox and appeared on the Guardian website )

STOP THE PRESS: WOMEN LIKE DIFFERENT BEERS STYLES!

Sorry for the sarcastic headline but what a brilliant week it was at the GBBF for debunking the myth that women only like sweet fruit beers.

There was a difference in the audience this year, they were significantly more experimental and much more confident - and long may that trend continue. I also had some fellow hacks along and whilst I don't very often publish my own press I have barely stopped laughing/blushing since I perused this from BitchBuzz.com earlier - hilarious!

Anyway, back to the point of this post, the most heartening thing about the beers that emerged as winners was that not a single one is shy with flavour - if you read below there are barley wines and whisky-aged beers in there, not exactly backwards in coming forwards on the taste front!

The stars of the show were definitely Cribyn & Ysbrid y Draig from Breconshire Brewery, Sharp's Honey Spice, Moorhouse's Blond Witch, Devon Ales Thick Black, Holden's Black Country Mild and Hog's Back A Over T.

So, yah boo & sucks to you, if you're one of these marketing bods who is trying to come up with the magic bullet for the female beer market, there isn't one.

And why? Because there are already as many diverse beers as there are palates out there, we've just got to concentrate on developing trust from the female market through sampling and improved marketing & advertising campaigns, not fluffy female-targeted, here-today-gone-tomorrow, twaddle.

p.s. must send much love to Buster, Ewan, Paul, Chris & the rest of the crew on the Scotland & Wales bar who put up with us camping at the end of their bar every night - they must have got sick of the sound of my voice - and also to the lovely Kim who put up with me every evening, Tarli who was also uber-helpful and always so cheerful, Louise for mucking in on Friday night (brave!) and Anita for being one of my biggest cheerleaders x

Here We Go!

It's the most bonkers week in the British beer calendar - it's the Great British Beer Festival - huzzah!

And we've even kicked off the week with some super-positive news, the amount of women trialling cask ale in the UK has doubled from last year! How cool is that?

What really cheers me up about this statistic is that if you put in context of other research done previously about the conversion rate of cask ale triallists it means that more and more women will actually be drinking real ale as their tipple of choice.

The research I'm talking about showed that of those in the 22-44-year-old age bracket trialled cask ale 46% of them went on to drink it regularly.

Now, obviously I'm assuming that the research was done on this age group, this could mean that 14% of the female population in the UK now regularly drink real ale - which is fantastic news.

Because of the paucity of information around beer in this country, on bottles and in pubs, it's often difficult to get women to try great artisan beer because it's outside their comfort zone - but the minute you empower them with knowledge they are off and running to the nearest handpull!

It's my main modus operandi when encouraging women to drink beer and was the tack I tried, & succeeded with, when I entertained a reporter from CityAM recently - which you can read about here.

All this week I will be doing female beer tours at the GBBF again, at 7.30pm every evening, and am hoping for similar amounts of positive feedback that I got last year.

I look forward to meeting you if you are coming on one of these tours and if you are interested in doing so then click the link above and sign up, they are nearly full so don't delay!