Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Writing about beer and pubs since 2007

In 1989, Roger Protz provided The Guardian with a round-up of the best beers available from the high street for drinking at home. Across all the major supermarkets of the time (including Gateway…) he found homebrew kits, Pilsner Urquell, Budvar, Tatra Pils (Poland), Tiger lager, Old Peculier, some nasty-sounding, very weak own-brand German lagers, plastic bottles and cans. Among the oddities were Thurn and Taxis Kristall Weizen in Tesco and Biere de Garde Jenlain at Sainsbury’s. There was no American beer and not much from the UK that wasn’t bitter, mild or very weak lager. There’s a sense that he was really hunting to find anything worth writing about.

In 1991, for the same paper, he wrote (with disclaimers about American beer) of the appearance of Anchor Steam and Brooklyn Lager, along with German and Belgian wheat beers, in specialist off-licences. Most branches of Tesco, he said, now had an interesting selection of imported beers including ‘Belgian monastic ales‘.

In 1993, Stuart Walton, writing for The Observer under the headline ‘Designer Beers’, declared that ‘waves of new beers from several sources have been hitting our shores unrelentingly’, and mentioned a few new arrivals, among them Timmerman’s Framboise and Schöfferhoffer wheat beer. (He was also excited about Corona and Kirin lagers.)

By 1994, Protz was able to report that an imported beer craze was in full swing, and his round-up included news that Sainsbury’s had launched, of all things, an own-brand gueuze, joining a Trappist beer and a bottle-conditioned English ale on their shelves. Safeway, meanwhile, were selling an attractively packaged box-set of ten British ales with a substantial booklet of tasting notes by Barrie Pepper. In the next ten years, as we remember fondly, the same supermarket would introduce an own-brand Kölsch ‘Cologne-style Lager’, Vienna lager, wheat beer and raspberry wheat beer, courtesy of Greenwich’s Meantime.

In a sense, that would seem to be a high-point of enthusiasm for beer on the part of supermarkets which have since stepped back a bit from the weirdness of gueuze and own-brand beer writing. A decent selection is now standard in most supermarkets, with occasional festivals and pushes.

Its worth noting, however, that the CO-OP, which Protz declared a write-off in 1989, now generally has as wide a selection of beer as Tesco had at that time when he declared them the best on the high street.

For those who are interested, in 1989, Budvar was 75p for 330ml; Urquell £1.25 for 660ml; Tatra Pils was £2.09 for a pack of four bottles of unspecificed size; and Old Peculier was £1.79 for three bottles.

And here’s a little thing we wrote about buying beer in the supermarket prompted by the Pub Curmudgeon.

The Ups and Downs of Supermarket Beer

Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Writing about beer and pubs since 2007

By 1993, Boak & Bailey’s beer newsletter was no longer a few stapled sheets.

The December edition of that year was printed on glossy paper and contained features on the demise of Newquay Steam Beer; the meaning of the term ’boutique beer'; and a review of Barrie Pepper’s Bedside Book of Beer.

As was traditional, it also contained nominations for the Dredge & Mogg Golden Pint awards.

* * *

UK Cask Beer

There’s no doubt that it’s been the year of the summer ale, fuelled in part by the post-Beer Orders demand for guest ales. Though some traditionalists deride them as a fad, these golden beauties have certainly made a change from boring brown bitters. Whitbread Summer Ale was a pleasant surprise, but Hop Back Summer Lightning is still the one to beat.

At the far extremes of the market, however, some serious experimentation is occurring. Both West Coast Brewing of Manchester and Sean Franklin’s new brewery Rooster’s have been experimenting with strange hop varieties. You might say that there’s an element of Emperor’s new clothes about the trendsetters supposed enjoyment of aromas of cat pee, blackcurrant and tangerines, but we for one can’t get enough of these mad-cap brews.

• 1^st place: West Coast Yakima Grande Pale Ale
• 2^nd place: Rooster’s Yankee
• 3^rd place: Hop Back Summer Lightning

UK Keg Beer

For the first time in ages, we are not giving this award to the sublime Guinness. Though it sadly closed earlier this year, the Packhorse Brewery in Kent takes the prize this time with its German-style lager brewed to the Reinheitsgebot. Let’s hope we hear more from talented young brewer Alastair Hook in the future.

• 1^st place: Packhorse Golden Pilsener
• 2^nd place: Packhorse Viennese Amber
• 3^rd place: Guinness

UK Bottled or Canned Beer

The emergence of a new class of PBAs (posh bottled ales) has made this category much more fun in recent years. Where once we might have travelled half a day to get a pint of Old Speckled Hen, we can now find it in most supermarkets. Once again, though, we must betray the beer freak’s traditional bias towards beers at the extremes of strength and flavour…

• 1^st place: Young’s Old Nick barley wine
• 2^nd place: Marston’s Export India Ale (not strong and hoppy enough to be really authentic, but good)
• 3^rd place: Morland’s Old Speckled Hen

Overseas Draught Beer

We have worked our way through the six Belgian beers on offer at Belgo in North London and have fallen quite in love with…

• 1^st place: Leffe Blonde
• 2^nd place: Hoegaarden wheat beer

Overseas Bottled Beer

This has been the year of the wheat beer. Though we beer freaks have been raving about them for years, their sudden arrival in Tesco and Sainsbury’s, as well as behind the bars of pubs up and down the country, has been a revelation to many. Hazy beer that isn’t bad for you? Deliberately swirling in the yeast? Whether British drinkers will accept this in the long run remains to be seen.

• 1^st place: Thurn & Taxis Weizen (Tesco)
• 2^nd place: Franziskaner Weizen (Sainsbury’s)

Collaboration Brew

It has to be the beer Mark Dorber brewed with Bass for his India Pale Ale symposium at the White Horse. Frankly, it was undrinkably hoppy, but he is keeping some back and hopes it might have mellowed by next summer.

Branding

The name is a simple, powerful statement of intent; the graphic design makes the best of modern desktop publishing software: the winner is Baz’s Bonce Blower from the Parish Brewery.

Pub/Bar of the Year

Three establishments that could hardly be more different – the sophisticated London restaurant with Belgian beer; the brewery tap from which we emerged to find that the tyres had been stolen from our tour bus; and the West London pub where we wore wax jackets as we supped Anchor Steam Beer and perfectly kept Bass Pale Ale among the City and yachting set.

• 1^st place: Belgo, Chalk Farm, North London
• 2^nd place: The King’s Arms, Chorlton-cum-Medlock, Manchester
• 3^rd place: The White Horse, Parson’s Green, West London

Best Festival

As the only really big festival, it has to be, once again, the Great British Beer Festival at the Grand Hall, Olympia.

The Michael Jackson effect continues to be felt in the ever-more adventurous foreign beer stand — you’ll find stuff here that you won’t get anywhere else, including American beer. (Some of the US brewers who were hanging around called it ‘craft beer’ – a phrase we’ve also noticed Roger Protz use a few times. Will it catch on?)

We applauded a well-deserved Champion Beer of Britain win for Elland’s 1872 porter, which showed that the judges are far from conservative in their tastes.

And who can forget the magical performance from the Bruce Boardman Swingtet on Thursday evening?

Supermarket

With their range of Belgian speciality beers, Sainsbury’s win this hands down. Trappist dubbel in a stoneware jug? Check. Biere de Garde in a champagne style bottle? Check. Their bottle-conditioned porter – a remnant of the craze for such beers from a couple of years back – merely sweetens the deal.

Beer Book or Magazine

Apart from reprints of Michael Jackson’s New World Guide to Beer (now rather out of date) and the Durden Park Beer Circle’s Old British Beers and How to Make Them, it’s been a thin year for beer books. We have no choice, therefore, but to go for CAMRA Good Beer Guide 1994, edited very capably by Jeff Evans.

Beer Blog or Website

We don’t really understand the internet, but the discussion group alt.beer shows promise as a forum for beer enthusiasts around the world to engage in frank, friendly, open-minded discussion. (Though some recent conversations about the benefits of kegging over traditional cask-conditioning have become worryingly heated.)

* * *

Note: this is, of course, a fiction, or perhaps more accurately, a wish-fulfilment fantasy. In 1993, we were at secondary school and not yet drinking (Bailey) or necking cheap vodka in Epping Forest (Boak). We also took the liberty of using one source from 1994 so a couple of details about supermarket beer might be a bit out.

We owe a pint to Barm (@robsterowski) for the excellent period-style logo design.

Golden Pint Awards 1993

Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Writing about beer and pubs since 2007

In 1995, a handful of Brits were beginning to get excited about American beer and, at the same time, rather irritated by the Campaign for Real Ale.

The Grist began life as, to all intents and purposes, the magazine of SIBA, in 1983, under the editorship of Elisabeth Baker. In that incarnation, it focused largely on offering technical advice to small brewers, and pre-Beer Orders policy propaganda.

By 1995, however, its ties to that organisation had been all but severed, and it was being edited by Alastair Hook, now best known as the founder of Meantime, but then head brewer at Freedom in West London. Under his control, and, later, that of his friend Peter Haydon, The Grist became more concerned with personalities and the passionate advocacy of ‘great beer’.

The November/December 1995 edition (No. 67) gives us a glimpse into a time when more than one influential voice was beginning to evangelise about the quality of American beer and the benefits of ‘brewery conditioning’, while also criticising the Campaign for Real Ale’s dogmatism. From Hook’s editorial:

[Most American microbrewery] beer is brewery conditioned. It might be bottled or kegged, but always cold matured and filtered. The American micros know that without a consistent product there is no business… For hundreds of UK micros who fight to survive in a fiercely competitive market, producing beer that by its very nature is difficult to handle, the role of CAMRA is critical. It strikes me that unless CAMRA’s nonsensical opposition to the cask breather and blanket opposition to brewery-conditioned beers is reversed, the microbrewing industry will suffer chronically. The irony is that the micros are, after all, the greatest agent for the change and choice that CAMRA claim to desire.

Elsewhere in the same issue, Mark Dorber, then manager of the White Horse, also in West London, gave an account of the Great American Beer Festival XIV:

A tradition unencumbered by the ideological baggage of our ‘real ale’ movement appreciates quality in terms of flavour and absence of faults, as it should… Vibrant flavours stood out in many of the beers judged and sampled. (Alas, much of the UK brewing industry, by contrast, seems reluctant to offend any portion of the beer market with its bland {aka ‘balanced’} beers.)

A third article by Keith Laric (a pseudonym?) in the same issue lays into CAMRA’s ‘Cask Breather Hypocrisy': “Perhaps we need to be less insular, and to look at the best European and American traditions as well.”

Just to make sure the point was absolutely hammered home, Hook also gave over two-and-a-half pages to a piece on his own brewery venture, written by Peter Haydon, who said:

The American microbrewers were not able to produce cask conditioned beers when their revolution started. They produced keg beers of startling quality and sophistication that really deserve a different appellation. If a keg beer is produced by a brewer who wants to produce good, exciting beer, then there is no reason why such a beer cannot be produced… Keg beer is only bad when it is produced by accountants, or when it is masquerading as something else.

OK, we get the message!

Though the term ‘craft beer’ does not appear once in any of the articles — Hook uses the term (brace yourselves) “gourmet beer” — this particular issue of The Grist suggests that the idea of a ‘third way’ that was neither ‘industrial fizz’ nor ‘real ale’ was fully formed by the middle of the 90s.

Embracing Keg, Rejecting CAMRA, 1995

Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Writing about beer and pubs since 2007

The fundamental shift in thinking around hops which took place at some point after the 1970s was reflected in a mid-nineties UK industry competition.

First run in 1996, ‘The Beauty of Hops’ was sponsored and organised by the National Hop Association (now the British Hop Association), Horticulture Research International (HRI) and SIBA.

In its inaugural year, the event took place at the White Horse, Parson’s Green, then run by Mark Dorber, and reflects a strain of thought you might call ‘Franklinism’:

The aim behind the Awards was an attempt to stimulate thought about varietal brewing, to  steal some of the clothes of oenologists and increase understanding of the potentials of individual hops in the same way that grape varieties are assessed and understood. [The Grist, May/June 1996, ed. Alastair Hook]

It seems amazing, in an age when Marks & Spencer has a single-hop beer range, to think that this approach needed prompting as recently as 18 years ago.

Four hop varieties were used in the competition: Phoenix, Progress, Target, and the then-brand-new First Gold. The winners in each hop category were, respectively, Ballards with Nyewood Gold; Rooster’s (Sean Franklin) with Bullseye; and Hop Back with Thunderstorm. The First Gold competition was informal and no winner was announced.

The competition was repeated the following year, this time at Wolverhampton & Dudley brewery, and with a new category open to regional/family brewers: Aromatic Cask Ales.

The task brewers they were set was ‘to brew a beer with any grist of English grown hops — Max ABV 5%’. The gold medal winners were Hardy & Hanson of Nottinghamshire with Guzzling Goose, described by a correspondent for The Grist (Mar/Apr 1997, ed. Peter Haydon):

Here was a beer that was balanced, not too powerfully bitter, which demonstrated a teamwork between the hop aroma and the hop flavour, so that the former gave you a reasonable indication of what the latter was going to provide.

In second place, Wolverhampton & Dudley’s White Rabbit ‘painted a landscape of fruits and spices’.

The winners in other categories were Crouch Vale First Gold (single hop cask), Rooster’s Jerry (aromatic lager), and Freeminer Trafalgar (single hop bottle).

The most entertaining thing about The Grist article, however, is the criticism directed at brewers who didn’t rise to the challenge:

The judges of the aromatic cask ales… were a little disappointed with the standard of the ale offered up to taste. The beers fell into four categories. Oxidised (by far the largest), full of off flavours (buckets of diacetyl and acetone), good beers but either of so malty a character or so lacking in hop character that one was left wondering why they had been entered in a hop competition, or good beers that filled the remit… 

One beer was so bad it prompted Hop Back’s John Gilbert to remark, disturbingly, that it reminded him of his ‘Granny’s pants’, while another wasn’t fit to wash his dog in.

There’s a sense that the regional brewers didn’t understand how the rules of the game were changing — that ‘hoppy’ was gaining a new, alternate meaning that didn’t have much to do with bitterness or Fuggles. In the years that followed these competitions, the gap between them and the ‘micros’ would grow ever wider.

This post was, as you’ll have guessed, based only on a couple of old magazine articles. If you can point us to more detailed information on the Beauty of Hops competitions, or were involved yourself as a competitor or judge, please do comment below.

The Arrival of Aroma

For a long time, Britain had beers associated with Christmas that weren’t explicitly billed as Christmas beers.

If Frank Baillie’s 1973 Beer Drinker’s Companion is anything to go by, there were certainly winter ales released in November or December in time for Christmas, but they didn’t feature Father Christmas on the pump clips or labels; they weren’t called things like Rudolf’s Throbbing Conk; and they weren’t dosed with cinnamon and nutmeg.  As far as we can see, Shepherd Neame’s bottled Christmas Ale was the only one with Christmas is in its name at that time.*

Based on looking through old copies of the Campaign for Real Ale’s Good Beer Guide (thanks again, Ed!) it looks as if the idea of marketing ‘winter warmers’ as Christmas beers really took off in the increasingly competitive real ale scene of the 1980s. The 1987 GBG (published in 1986) lists around ten beers that we would classify as definitely Christmas seasonals, such as Mauldon Christmas Reserve, Wood’s Christmas Cracker and the Bridgewater Arms’s Old Santa.

One name stood out among this crowd of (ahem) pioneers: family brewers Greene King. Tracking back through the decade, the other Christmas ale brewers drop off one by one, until only (as far as we can see) Greene King’s Christmas Ale was left, first appearing in 1984.**

While these beers were all relatively strong and dark, none of them seem to have been dosed with spices, at least according to a set of tasting notes provided by Danny Blyth in CAMRA’s newsletter, What’s Brewing, in December 1986. The same issue does, however, include an article by Peter Pearce on mulled ale traditions involving ginger, nutmeg and cloves — perhaps that kind of talk gave people ideas?

Across the Atlantic, Anchor’s Our Special Ale, aka Anchor Christmas, was first brewed in 1975 and was certainly intended as the revival of an ancient tradition. (There’s more on this from Tom Acitelli, author of The Audacity of Hops, in an article published yesterday.) Using a different recipe each year, by the late 1980s, it routinely contained Christmassy spices. The 1988 version was available in the UK through Majestic Wine Warehouses, as reported by Ronald Atkins in the Guardian on Christmas Eve that year and, we suspect, made a splash among beer geeks.

In the 1990s, it was probably the more general clamour for guest ales and seasonal specials, and the subsequent interest in wacky ingredients (Brew Britannia, Chapter Ten), that led to beers such as Lichfield’s Mincespiced, Blackawton’s Winter Fuel (‘a dark spiced beer‘) and Swale Christmas Spice becoming more-or-less obligatory in the product ranges of British brewers.

This piece is based on a couple of hours research over breakfast this morning (we were up early because a gale was blowing a tin can round in circles in the street) and is by no means intended to be definitive. Not that we ever need to ask, but do correct us in the comments below if you know better.

UPDATES 17/12/2014

* Based on comments below, we added reference to Shepherd Neame’s bottled Christmas beer.

** We also removed a reference to King & Barnes Festive which first appeared as a draught beer in the GBG in 1981 but was not, it turns out, anything to do with Christmas.

UPDATE 20/12/2014

This December 1980 local CAMRA newsletter from South Hertfordshire says…

Christmas ale fans will have a double delight this year with the introduction of Greene King’s Christmas Ale and the appearance for the second year of Mac’s seasonal offering. The McMullen’s Christmas brew is essentially the same as last year’s, a dark 1070 beer, not quite as sweet as many of its type and, for my money, much the better for it. It doesn’t surprise me that many pubs will not serve people with too much of this stuff!

The Greene King beer, strangely enough, will only be available through Rayment’s houses. The beer is around 1060 OG and is effectively a naturally conditioned version of St Edmund Ale. Both beers are now in the pubs. I suggest you get out and try them, before it’s too late.

Where Did Christmas Ales Come From? from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007

CAMRA’s East London & City Beer Guide is a fascinating document which, across three editions from 1983 to 1991, charts changes to the drinking landscape.

We’ve had the 1986 edition for a while, and have 1983 (finally) on the way, but 1991 arrived this week, looking as if it had come fresh from the binders, the spine un-cracked. (“Printed by Calvert’s Press (TU) Worker’s Co-Operative”.)

We turned to the section that covers Walthamstow, London E17 — an area we know particularly well — which prompted a few observations.

1. It hasn’t changed that much. The Grove, the Windmill, the Plough and a few others have gone, but many others are still there — the Lord Brooke, the Lord Raglan, the Lord Palmerston, the Chequers, and so on, many in better shape now than they were when this book was written.

2. It’s always seemed odd that there’s no Wetherspoon’s in Walthamstow (the nearest is across the line into Leyton). Now we know that the College Arms on Forest Road was a JDW (Younger’s Scotch Ale at 79p a pint!) but, at some point, the firm abandoned it — something it seems it’s always been pretty ruthless about.

3. The Village, which looks like a well-worn and traditional Victorian pub, actually opened in 1989. The building is Victorian but the premises was formerly (Boak thinks, calling on childhood memories) residential. For that  matter, The College Arms was formerly two shop units and the Coppermill an off-licence, so these change-of-use conversions have occasionally gone the other way.

4. Pubs change their names a lot. The Tower Hotel became Flanagan’s Tower, which became the Tower Hotel again, which is now the Goose. The College Arms was formerly ‘Cheeks American Bar‘. What is now the Waltham Oak on Lea Bridge Road was formerly the Chestnut Tree, but began life with what might be our new favourite pub name: The Little Wonder.

The content of all three editions is available at this splendidly old-school website if you want to investigate further, but the 1991 edition is also generally available for pennies.

Pubs of London E17, 1991 from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007

In Chapter 10 of Brew Britannia we wrote about the craze in the mid-1990s for interesting one-off seasonals.

Some were single-hopped, others were spiced and/or infused with fruit beers. This beauty from Flowers (Whitbread) launched in 1995 is typical.

As luck would have it, what appears to be the original press release is lurking in the depths of the internet:

COLONEL PEPPER’S LEMON ALE — AN UNUSUALLY REFRESHING COMBINATION!

Whitbread has revived the use of one of brewing’s oldest ingredients, black pepper and added a relatively new one into British beer making, lemon, with the launch of Colonel Pepper’s Lemon Ale – the ideal thirst-quenching pint for those long, balmy summer days!

Colonel Pepper’s (5.0% ABV) is a wonderfully refreshing beer, unusually light and golden in colour for an ale, with a spicy aroma – the lemon peel and ground black pepper added into the brew give it a clean and fresh ‘tingle’ for the drinker’s palate.

While this combination is one that may seem more suited to a recipe, both ingredients actually have impeccable brewing credentials.

Pepper itself has been utilised in a wide variety of different beers since the Middle Ages — primarily to give beers body and bite, but also to give them a more interesting or challenging flavour. Its usage gradually declined as the use of hops in the flavouring of beer took over.

Regarding lemons, fruit beers are more commonly associated with Belgium, so Colonel Pepper’s is an uniquely adventurous addition to the British beer drinker’s repertoire.

Brewed at the Flowers Brewery in Cheltenham — birthplace of Whitbread’s ‘Scarlet Lady’, ‘Glorious Goldings’ & ‘Fuggles Chocolate’ ales — Colonel Pepper’s is the third limited-edition beer in the brewer’s 1995 series of single varietal cask ales.

Tracy Darwen, Whitbread’s Marketing Manager of New Product Development said: “Colonel Pepper’s is the ideal ale for summer. It’s light, refreshing and a real alternative for those drinkers more used to lagers in the summer months. As with the other limited-edition ales that we’ve gradually been introducing, it’s a beer which all drinkers — bitter, lager, cider, wine, male or female — can enjoy.”

The brew also uses Marris Otter barley and 100% Target hops, a long-established English variety. Drinkers will be able to track down their local Colonel Pepper’s stockist by phoning Whitbread’s Hot Line on 0345-585058 (calls charged at local rate) — the beer will be available in well over 2,500 pubs in England, Scotland & Wales.

More Whitbread limited-edition ales planned for the rest of the year will further demonstrate this dynamic side of British ale brewing and continue to tantalise the taste buds of drinkers!

Does anyone remember drinking it?

Artyfacts from the Nyneties #1: Lemon Ale from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007

“Welcome to the most exotic bar in the whole festival… This year’s star feature has to be the USA. Thanks to months of work by Jonathan Tuttle… Rick’s American Bar has probably the widest selection of beer and beer styles ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean from West to East.”

From Alistair Boyd’s introduction.

Belgian beers listed: Boon Kriek, Framboos; Cantillon Gueuze, Kriek; De Troch Gueuze (unfiltered); Drie Fonteinen Kriek; Girardin Gueuze; Hanssens Kriek; Van der Linden Vieux Foudre Gueuze, Vieux Foudre Faro, Duivelsbeer, Vieux Foudre Kriek, Frambozenbier; Vandervelden Oud Beersel Gueuze; Wets Kriek; Crombe Zottegemse Kriek; Liefmans Goudenband, Oud Bruin, Kriek; Rodenbach; Strubbe Ichtegems Oud Bruin; Verhaege Duchesse de Bourgogne, Vichtenaar; Orval; Chimay Red, White, Blue; Rochefort 6 & 8; Westmalle Dubbel, Tripel; Bornem Tripel; Steenbrugge Dubbel; Lefebvre Abbaye de Bonne Esperance, Moeder Overste; Maredsous; Brugs Tarwebier; Hoegaarden Wit; Dentergems; Leffe Blond (“slightly bitter with a malty nose”); Duvel; Lucifer; Brigand; Blaugies La Moneuse; Dupont Moinette, Saison Dupont; Martens Sezoens; Saison de Pipaix; Gouden Carolus; De Dolle Arabier, Bos Keun, Oerbier; Brugse Tripel; Verboden Vrucht; Huyghe La Poiluchette Blonde; Gordon Highland Scotch; Straffe Hendrick; Van Eecke Hommelbier.

“Pete Slosberg’s justifiable pride in Pete’s Wicked Ale has brought not only the beer to the festival but also the creator himself for several session to serve it. Belly up the bar and have Pete pour you a wicked pint.”

Jonathan Tuttle

American breweries represented: Mendicino, Sierra Nevada, Yakima (Bert Grant), Oldenburg, Pete’s, Catamount, Mass Bay (Harpoon), Dock Street,

This came from the pile of ephemera Steve ‘Beer Justice’ Williams sent us recently — thanks, Steve!

Artyfacts from the Nyneties #2: World Beer Menu, 1993 from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007

The advertisement above appeared in the Campaign for Real Ale’s monthly What’s Brewing in November 1994.

The year before, ‘Pete’s’ had sponsored the Bieres Sans Frontieres programme and it was on its way to becoming the best-known American brewery among British drinkers.

In the Daily Mirror on 27 January 1995, Nick Kent wrote:

THE coolest beers in America are hitting Britain – and some of them are OK when they’re warm! Microbrewery beers are fashionable in the US but may become an endangered species as hype and big business start to get a hold… Pete’s Wicked Lager is a fine example; hops predominate and it has a clean, sharp, dry taste even though it is on the strong side (4.8 per cent alcohol).

Then, on 21 July the same year, Kent announced an exciting competition:

HE’S loud, proud, thirsty-something, and he could be heading your way… American Pete Slosberg, founder of Pete’s Brewing Company, is coming to the British Beer Festival, and he wants a brace of Mirror readers to go with him… So prepare to be sloshed with Slosberg. It will be a swill party… Modest, quiet, polite, a tasteful dresser — Pete is none of these, as the two competition winners will soon discover… They will accompany Pete as he pint-ificates his way around the festival at London’s Olympia, on Thursday, August 3… Dispensing views on other people’s wares, he will be looking out for any beer daring to rival Pete’s Wicked Lager and Pete’s Wicked Ale for taste… Pete will also take his Mirror guests for a taste of the Belgian beer and food at Belgo Centraal… This top restaurant is the trendiest thing to come out of Belgium since Tintin.

By 1996, Pete’s beers were in Majestic, Waitrose, Tesco, Morrison’s and Oddbins (Independent on Sunday, 17 November).

The flagship beer was a brown ale, Pete’s Wicked Ale, which was reviewed by ‘Sparks’ for the Oxford Bottled Beer Database in around 1998:

This is one of the easier American breweries to get hold of in the UK… The beer is ruby-coloured with a thick, reasonably tenacious head. The nose is quite light, but with noticeable sugary malt notes and a little background hoppiness (aroma hops only). On the tongue, it is quite fizzy and fairly malty, but not as sweet as you might expect from the aroma – in fact it is much drier than many brown ales. There is burnt caramel in the back of the throat, becoming more pronounced towards the finish. The aftertaste is more hoppy, but also with bitter, burnt sugar flavours. This is a pleasant example of a brown ale, with a pleasing dryness not often encountered in the genre.

It doesn’t sound terribly exciting — as Jeff Alworth put it in 2011, ‘In the 1990s, lots and lots of people drank and enjoyed brown ales… I mean really, brown ales. What the … ?’ — but it had a whiff of the exotic about it, and was cleverly marketed with a big personality front-and-centre, e.g.

In the UK, it seems to have occupied a similar space to Newquay Steam Beer, come to think of it — a bit outside the narrative of the ‘craft beer revolution’ (unless we’re mistaken, the last 20 years hasn’t seen a ton of Pete’s Wicked clones among UK brewers, unlike, say, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale) and different without being too different.

Artyfacts from the Nyneties #4: Meet Pete from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007

Did you drink, eat, work at or run a gastropub between 1990-1998? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

We’re especially interested in diary entries, letters, articles, emails or other records you might have made at the time — nothing is too scrappy or too minor.

But memories are helpful too.

We’ve got lots of facts, dates and figures: what we want to know is, how did these places feel?

Like journalist Kathryn Flett, a great champion of gastropubs in the 1990s, did you appreciate their un-blokey atmosphere and rustic chic? Did you welcome the opportunity to enjoy good food without having to dress, mind your table manners and take out a small bank loan?

Or perhaps you’re with Patrick Harveson who, in 1995, wrote an article in the Times calling for The Campaign for Real Pubs. Did your local became somewhere you no longer felt you could pop in for a pint? Maybe you saw the very idea of the gastropub as dangerous — a threat to the very idea of what pubs are meant to be.

The Eagle in Clerkenwell, London, generally given credit as the original gastropub after its 1991 reinvention, is one we’re particularly focusing on but we’d be happy to hear about any others you think are notable or interesting.

You can comment below but it’d be much more useful if you could email us via contact@boakandbailey.com.

Thanks!

Main image adapted from ‘Eagle, Clerkenwell, EC1’ by Ewan Munro (Pubology.co.uk) via Flickr under Creative Commons.

HELP US: Gastropubs in the 1990s originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

This is very specific: we want to talk to anyone who recalls attending the opening of The Moon Under Water on Deansgate, Manchester, on 15 August 1995.

We’ve heard from people who went not long after — memories of mannequins in the former cinema stalls, and awe at the sheer size of the place — but no-one seems to remember day one.

There must have been a ribbon-cutting ceremony — Eddie Gershon, who does PR for Wetherspoon’s, reckons it was covered in the Manchester Evening News though he doesn’t have any clippings or photos.

If you were there, get in touch. If you have a vague memory of your mate having gone along, or your cousin working behind the bar, give ’em a nudge. We’re contact@boakandbailey.com and any memory, however small or apparently insignificant, might be just what we need.

Also feel free to share on Facebook or wherever else you fancy.

HELP: Wetherspoon’s, Manchester, August 1995 originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

In a Tweet Meantime Brewing stated their claim to be (paraphrasing): ‘The only craft brewer in the UK when it was founded in 1999.’

It’s paraphrased because, after prodding from disgruntled beer geeks, the Tweet was removed. The thing is, we don’t think that’s an outrageous claim, even if it is a bit bigheaded, and requires a lot of disclaimers.

But first, the case against: how do you define ‘craft’ in a British context? (Groan.) If it means using aromatic American hops and brewing pale ales and IPAs then Brendan Dobbin (West Coast/Dobbin’s) and Sean Franklin (Franklin’s, Rooster’s) got there first, and that was fairly widespread by the late 1990s.

If it’s about fancy, expensive bottled beer with sexy packaging then look at Newquay Steam. (Thanks for the reminder, Jackie.)

If it means eschewing real ale and real ale culture then Meantime’s Alastair Hook was beaten to that by, er, Alastair Hook, at his own earlier brewing ventures Packhorse (1990), Freedom (1995) and Mash & Air (1997). He was raging against CAMRA and the strictures of cask ale culture, as he saw them, from around the same time.

If craft in your mind is synonymous with microbrewing then you can look back to the boom of the 1980s, or 1974, or 1972, or 1965.

If it means not being a national or multi-national giant, brewing interesting beer, employing traditional methods, and so on, then take your pick — Young’s, Adnams, almost anyone.

So, yes, we get all that, but it’s a bit like the debate around who invented the hot air balloon, or the radio. Guglielmo Marconi is generally credited with the invention of radio as we know it today but there is a long line of inventors and innovators, all with their champions, who either contributed to the technology or somehow nearly got there much earlier. In fact, Marconi was just the bloke who pulled it all together, perfected the technology and, crucially, managed to make a commercial success of it.

When it comes to craft beer in the UK, then, as per our definition 2 — cultural as much as anything, dismissive of CAMRA, bitter and mild, and looking overseas for inspiration — Alastair Hook is Marconi. He’s the man who made it work.

Meantime was gaining headlines by falling out with CAMRA about access to beer festivals when James Watt of BrewDog was still at school. The range of beers Hook brewed at Meantime at the beginning featured multiple types of lager and wheat beer but not one British-style pale ale or bitter (as far as we’re aware), and it was all brewery-conditioned, served either from bottles or kegs.

And Meantime was a commercial success in a way that Franklin’s, Dobbin’s and Mash & Air weren’t. Where others, however innovative or interesting, remained the preserve of geeks, Meantime went mainstream. It was the brewery that, when we first started paying attention to beer, had its bottles in stylish bars and restaurants, showing that beer could dress up and cut it with the cool kids. Meantime also worked out a way to get people to pay something like £4 a pint when most people were still boggling at half that price.

You might find all of that repellent but, for better or worse, that’s what craft beer means in the UK now, and Hook pulled it all together half a decade before anyone else.

Of course we’re playing devil’s advocate a bit here and, to be honest, we think Thornbridge and BrewDog both have claims that are about as strong. But we really don’t think it’s ridiculous of Meantime’s PR people to make that statement. It is, however, daft of them to think they could get away with it without being challenged.

Needless to say if you want more detail on any of this there are lots of bits and pieces here on the blog and we tried to pull it all together in Brew Britannia, the central argument of which is something like (a) alternative beer culture didn’t begin in 2005 but (b) real ale, world beer and craft beer are distinct waves of the same overarching 50 year event.

Was Meantime the First UK Craft Brewery? originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

In response to an article listing ‘The 25 Most Important American Craft Beers’ Michael Lally at Bush Craft Beer has challenged his readers to think about what might be on a Brit-centric version of that list:

I think we can define ‘craft’ relatively loosely and ‘important’ in a similar way to our US colleagues: It’s one that either changed consumer tastes or how breweries approach making beer. There are a few obvious ones: Punk IPA by Brewdog, Jaipur by Thornbridge, ESB by Fullers.

There’s a survey you can respond to including space to make your own suggestions but here’s some food for thought from us.

1. Traquair House Ale (1965)

Arguably the very first ‘microbrewery’ was Traquair House which commenced production in 1965. It demonstrated that it was possible for small breweries to be opened despite prevailing industry trends, and also that small independent breweries could often do more interesting things than their bitter- and lager-focused Big Six peers — this beer was (and is) at a hefty ABV and very rich.

2. Litchborough Bitter (1974)

Another brewery with a strong claim to being the first microbrewery was Bill Urquhart’s Litchborough based in the village of that name near Northampton. The beer itself doesn’t seem to have been especially exciting but the business model, and Mr Urquhart’s mentoring/consultancy, directly inspired the microbrewery boom that followed.

3. Penrhos Porter (1978)

Porter went extinct; Michael Jackson talked it up in his 1977 World Guide to Beer; Penrhos brought it back. Porter is now one of the quintessential ‘craft’ styles — what you brew if you want to send a signal about history and heritage, and that you’re more less mainstream than Guinness.

4. Firkin Dogbolter (1979)

This is the iconic house brew of David Bruce’s Firkin chain — a strong ale that gave the chain its cult reputation and which was the antidote to the earnest reverence of the real ale movement. Today Gadd’s makes a beer of this name based on a later recipe and West Berkshire Brewery, with which David Bruce is involved, brews a tribute called Firkin Ale. (DISCLOSURE: Mr Bruce insisted on sending us a case even though we don’t take samples these days; it’s extremely good, in a fruit-cakey way.)

5. Franklin’s Bitter (c.1980)

As far as we can tell this was the first UK beer to feature — that is, to make a virtue of — the distinctive aroma and flavour of American Cascade hops. There’s more on Sean Franklin below.

6. Hop Back Summer Lightning (1987)

This beer, originally conceived as a lager, kicked off a craze for golden ale and inspired the creation of ‘pale and hoppy’. It is still available.

7. West Coast Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (1989)

Northern Irish brewing genius Brendan Dobbin shamelessly cloned Sierra Nevada Pale Ale until SN asked him to change the name when it became Yakima Grande Pale Ale. A huge influence on a generation of hophead brewers and drinkers. (Conwy Brewery currently produce a version of this beer with Dobbin’s involvement.)

8. Rooster’s Yankee (c.1992)

Sean Franklin left brewing for a bit and then came back with a bang, inspired by Summer Lightning to produce a very pale, super-hoppy, American-accented ale that knocked enthusiasts for six. Mr Franklin handed over the reins of the brewery to Tom and Ol Fozard a few years ago but they still produce Yankee today.

9. Freedom Lager (1995)

Working with a wealthy investor Alastair Hook brewed what would become the first really successful home-grown designer lager, begetting his own Meantime brewery (1999-2000) as well as much later (but quite directly) Camden Hells. A version is available today but it’s brewed in a different city, to a different recipe, by different people.

10. Thornbridge Jaipur (2005)

Though not the first UK-brewed American-style IPA Jaipur was, by our reckoning, the first such beer to be made its brewery’s flagship product. Co-creator Martin Dickie would go on to co-found BrewDog whose Punk IPA was initially a very similar beer. Jaipur is very much still available.

11. Dark Star Saison (c.2009)

Was this the first UK-brewed saison? Please tell us below if you know otherwise. Honestly, we can’t say for sure how influential it was — most UK breweries making saison went to the source (Dupont) or were inspired by US breweries. It appears to be out of production right now.

12. Moor Unfined Revival (2011)

A bit tentative, this one — it’s hard to name a specific beer and pin down the date — but we reckon this is the first unfined pale beer to end up in mainstream pubs, thus kicking off the furious bickering over beer clarity still underway today. It is still available today.

13. Beavertown Gamma Ray (2012)

We’re a bit unsure about including this one, too, but we think it gets the credit/blame for the now ubiquitous rough-hazy-oniony pale ales that so many pointedly hip breweries produce.

14. Wild Beer Co Ninkasi (2013)

Their beers can be variable and (ahem) challenging but this one always impresses us and is the earliest example we’re aware of a British beer that isn’t quite a beer, being a cider-wine-saison hybrid. We think we see its influence in various such Big Bottle brews with odd fruit additives and expect to see more in years to come.

15. Buxton/Rooie Dop Ring Your Mother (2015)

One that we suspect others might overlook: with a historic recipe and modern sensibility this beer kicked off a small resurgence in the brewing of mild. Kind of. It seems to be re-brewed only occasionally.

* * *

We could probably keep going — this isn’t a comprehensive list of every influential beer ever, and it’s certainly not every interesting beer — but fifteen will do for now.

Don’t forget to complete Michael’s survey!

The Most Important British Craft Beers? originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

For this edition of the international beer blogging jamboree Josh Weikert at Beer Simple asks us to consider whether the internet is hurting or helping craft beer.

Beer geeks got online early in the life of the internet: nerds gonna nerd.

We’ve sometimes joked that if you produced a Venn diagram of (a) beer geeks, (b) jazz fans, (c) lower division sports obsessives, (d) Whovians, (e) IT professionals, it would be more or less just a single big circle.

Researching Brew Britannia some of our best sources were early online chat rooms archived comprehensively, if clunkily, by Google. The big one, alt.beer, was founded (as far as we can tell) in July of 1991, long before Amazon, or Google itself, or any of our other sinister tech overlords. In fact, before the first website had ever been created — alt.beer existed as threads of text. Here’s the charter posted around the time of its establishment by one Dan Brown:

Alt.beer was created for the purpose of discussing the various aspects of
that fine malted beverage generally referred to as beer. Welcome here are
discussions of rare and interesting beers, reviews of brewpubs and
breweries, suggestions about where to shop for beer, and tips for making
your own….

Not welcome are the plethora of tales of drunken stupidity that usually
go something like, ‘I guzzeled 5 cases of X beer, drunkenly made a fool
of myself in front of a large number of people, of whom I was desparately
trying to impress a certain one, and then spent the rest of the night
alternately driving a porceline bus, and looking like road kill on the
bathroom floor.’ Almost everyone has heard or experienced this, or
something similar, at one time or another.

(Does anyone know Mr Brown? It would be interesting to, ahem, chat to him.)

The question we’ve got is, how did appreciating beer ever work without the internet? To some extent enjoying beer in the 21st Century is a job of recording, cataloguing and sharing information, and the internet is better at that than floppy discs in the post, or letters, or CB radio.

We’re not quite digital natives — we remember the internet arriving and struggling to work out what to do with it once we’d looked at the handful of websites that existed in the mid-1990s — but by the time we got into beer we were fully immersed in online culture and looked there for advice and guidance. We’ve written before about some early sources of beer information that no longer exist, notably the Oxford Bottled Beer Database (1996-c.2010). These websites — all text, frames, striped backgrounds and under construction GIFs — told us which pubs to visit in strange towns, which beers to buy from the bewildering selection at Utobeer, and (not always accurately) explained why certain beers tasted the way they did.

The fact is, in 2017, online and offline aren’t distinct spaces — the former is integrated into everyday life. When we go to the pub and see a strange beer on offer, we look it up on our smartphones. We might take a picture and share it on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram (hint hint) or write it up here. Sometimes, we choose a pub based purely on intel we’ve picked up on the internet — or, rather, that we’ve subconsciously absorbed from the ambient blur of shared information that acts as background noise in our lives. And often, online relationships translate into pints shared in person with people we might otherwise never have known existed.

And, for all the problems with online information — FAKE NEWS! — it’s much harder to be a beer bullshitter now than 40 years ago because if you make a ludicrous claim someone can just look it up.

Has anything been lost? Perhaps insofar as the internet enabled the Global Republic of Craftonia at the expense of the concept of the Local Scene. Martyn Cornell has written about a time in the 1970s when, having tried something like 14 different beers from not only Hertfordshire but also several other counties, he considered himself quite adventurous. Back then, the infrastructure of beer appreciation manifested itself in local festivals, local newsletters, and tips shared in the pub.

But this isn’t just a challenge for the beer world — working out a way to reap the benefits of global connections without the loss of regional cultures is a much bigger human issue.

Session #123: The Cyber Is Huge originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

In the summer of 1991 The Times’s food critic, Jonathan Meades, took a break from visiting upmarket restaurants to investigate a new eatery that was generating a strange amount of buzz.

He found it ‘chaotic-looking and very noisy’ and was lukewarm about the informal set-up: no bookings, order at the bar, lunge for any available seat before anyone else took it. The customers around him were young, though, and seemed to like this kind of thing. The food wasn’t refined but it was good value, generously portioned, very much in line with the ‘rustic’ style then in fashion. He duly filed a review of the Eagle in Farringdon Road, North London, which was not far from glowing. [1] Something interesting was afoot but, for the moment, the language lacked a word to describe this collision of gastronomy and the public house.

* * *

The above is a condensed version of the opening to the chapter on gastropubs from our book 20th Century Pub which came out last autumn. We’re sharing it, along with the extract below, because it was announced today that we’ve made the shortlist for best drinks book at the 2018 Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards. The results are announced on 10 May which means we get a month to bask in the glory whether we win or not. The book is available in all the usual places at a recommended retail price of £16.99 and is on a 31-strong streak of 5-star reviews at Amazon, so please do buy a copy if you haven’t already.

The founders of what is generally recognised as the first gastropub were Michael Belben and David Eyre. They had worked together at several restaurants, mostly recently Mélange in Covent Garden, Eyre as a cook, Belben in management. In a portrait photo taken in 1990 they look like members of a synth pop group – slim, moody, Belben in a dark suit, Eyre in cotton shirtsleeves. [2] Belben is older, born in 1952, while Eyre, born in 1961, grew up largely in Mozambique and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), moving to Britain to attend university. [3]

They were both keen to start out on their own but, in the meantime, absorbed culinary influences, struggling to reconcile their taste in fine food with their limited funds. Eyre got married in 1989, but came out of that short-lived relationship after 20 months with very little except an idea, given to him by his ex-wife’s aunt: with a recession imminent, opening a restaurant would be foolish, she argued, so why not run a pub? She hadn’t meant a pub with food, but it was the spark Eyre and Belben needed. Why not open a pub with decent food, catering to people like them who longed, but couldn’t afford, to eat at places like the then super-hip River Café?

Fortunately for them, a catastrophic change to the British pub ownership model was underway. In 1989 the UK government passed a bill which meant that breweries owning more than 2,000 pubs would be required to dispose of half of the excess. This act, known informally as the Beer Orders, meant in the first instance that the largest brewers had no choice but to dump a large number of their worst-performing pubs on to the open market, or sell them en bloc to other firms. In this respect, as food critic Jay Rayner has said, ‘the gastro pub movement is a pure product of Thatcherism’.

The Eagle was an unremarkable Victorian corner pub in Farringdon, then a rather unfashionable part of London, and was owned by the astonishingly unfashionable brewery Watney’s. For a brief time in the 1980s it was a freakish hangover from the theme pub era – a ‘fun pub’ decorated with metal furniture, exposed pipes and bare breeze-blocking so as to resemble a nuclear bunker. [4] (Fun indeed.) When it was unloaded by the brewery in response to the Beer Orders, Belben and Eyre took it on, describing it as ‘the first and cheapest dead pub we found… But beneath the sad grime we could see an attractive, if small, room with huge windows and maple floor’. [5]

They paid for it with a combination of bank loans and money borrowed from family, got the keys on 18 December 1990, and undertook renovation work themselves, scrubbing it back to an almost bare minimalism and letting the light flood in. Michael Belben fitted it out with, as food writer Diana Henry recalled in 2003, ‘mismatched china, battered furniture, sagging sofas and a few lamps with wobbly shades’. [6] They operated at first, from 16 January 1991, with an 8 by 5 foot kitchen containing a microwave, fridge, grill, two burners and a sink, none of professional standard. In the flat above the pub, where Eyre also lived, they used an oven to prepare one or two shareable dishes in pots, such as casseroles. Twenty years on, Eyre recalled their working relationship:

Mad Mike. Mike was prone to be a bit crazed at any time. But you see, he did get it and he was very good at… [pause] I got all the glory, but he was very good at trudging down to the bank and getting the float and spending hours and hours in the office… Not the best people person sometimes. Infuriating sometimes. I mean, we did have some blinding arguments… But we were good. It was that kind of opposites thing.

Belben and Eyre have always emphasised their democratic intentions, underlining what to them were key signs that the Eagle was still a pub:

It was important that a table could be used by people in muddy boots drinking lager as much as by people who’d come to the best place to eat ribollita. It was very egalitarian – a great leveller. You’d have the editor of the Guardian next to a builder, next to a fresh-out-of-school graphic designer. [7]

There were no reservations for tables, no dress code and, they insisted when challenged, customers could just turn up for a drink – dining was not compulsory. ‘It was the Anti-Restaurant Thing that we sort of embraced wholeheartedly,’ Eyre would recall in a series of recordings made in 2011 by Niamh Dillon for an oral history project:

No uniforms, chefs wore fisherman’s smocks… Mismatched plates, the no starters, the no desserts, the one-course eating, the old fashioned portions of the food, the fact that there was no service – if you wanted to tip a member of staff you bought them a drink. [8]

The comedian and broadcaster Graham Norton worked with Eyre and Belben at Mélange and considered Belben ‘one of the most heterosexual men I had ever come across’ but ‘impossible to work for’,⁴¹¹ a friend and a mentor. He joined the waiting staff at the Eagle where, freed from the obligation to kiss-up to earn tips, he enjoyed being rude to customers:

‘A smile costs nothing,’ a customer who’d been ordering in dribs and drabs and therefore irritating me would say.

‘And intelligence can’t be bought,’ I’d retort. Why nobody rabbit-punched me I don’t know. [9]

From the customers’ perspective this kind of thing meant that the Eagle could sometimes be faintly intimidating, despite its founders’ avowed desire to create warmth and conviviality.

In the same 2011 recording Eyre explained that the Eagle was able to operate with a lower mark-up on food than restaurants proper – 60 per cent gross profit rather than 70 or 75 – because there was no air-conditioning, no linen, and the kitchen staff, having less formal training, would work for less. Until 1997 even the most expensive items on the menu cost no more than £10 (about £20 in today’s money) and, Eyre said, students or younger office workers could go to the Eagle and have something substantial and well-made for only ‘twice the price of a sandwich in a sandwich shop’.

At its best, the atmosphere was lively and, at its worst, when hype brought crowds of would-be diners into a venue with no table bookings, it could be loud and chaotic. The background music was directed by Eyre’s older brother Robert, who worked there for a time and had a large, quirky record collection: ‘I really do believe my brother was the first person to buy Buena Vista Social Club.’ There was world music, jazz, blues, but definitely, pointedly, no guitar-heavy classic rock.

There was a problem with all this. In a January 2016 interview with Susie Mesure marking the 25th anniversary of the Eagle’s opening Eyre said: ‘We weren’t really pub-going people, because pubs didn’t seem to answer our needs’. [10] And therein perhaps lies the source of much of the irritation that gastropubs would go on to generate in the decade that followed among those who were dedicated ‘pub-going people’: they were seen by many as middle- class colonisers taking over pubs and, in the process, denuding them of their essential ‘pubness’. In practice, to drinkers, the Eagle looked like an informal restaurant rather than a pub with food and, even if it was theoretically possible to turn up and just have a drink, the pub soon became so hip it was impossible to get in the door anyway.

Jay Rayner, reflecting on gastropubs in 2001, said, ‘It is hard to overstate the importance of The Eagle… When it launched in the early 90s, the idea was extraordinary, if not bizarre.’ He also pointed out that, though much of what the Eagle did had by then become to seem clichéd, in 1991 it seemed ‘nigh on revolutionary’, inspiring many imitators, often founded by people who had themselves worked at the Eagle. [11]

Sources

[1] ‘Popped in, pigged out’, The Times, 3 August 1991, Saturday Review supplement, p.27.
[2] Reproduced in the Independent, 9 January 2016, pp.20-21.
[3] Biographical details for Mike Belben from Debrett’s, retrieved 26 May 2016; and for David Eyre from 2011 oral history recordings, ‘Eyre, David (1 of 10)’, Niamh Dillon, Food: From Source to Salespoint, British Library.
[4] Correspondence with veteran pub-goer Ian Worden, 14 June 2016.
[5] Big Flavours, Rough Edges, David Eyre, 2001, p.8.
[6] The Gastro Pub Cookbook, p.6.
[7] ‘20 Years of the Eagle Interview’, Liz Edwards, Clerkenwell Post, 2011.
[8] ‘Eyre, David (6 of 10)’, Food: From Source to Salespoint, British Library.
[9] So Me, 2004, pp.74-75.
[10] ‘The Eagle: Britain’s first gastropub celebrates its 25th birthday’, Susie Mesure, Independent, 9 January 2016, retrieved 17 March 2016.
[11] ‘Fox Hunting’, Observer Magazine, 22 July 2001, p.49.

BOOK EXTRACT: The Birth of the Gastropub, 1990 originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

Yesterday we stumbled upon a 2006 ‘top ten bottled British ales’ listicle by Pete Brown which we shared on Twitter, and which reminded us of something we found during research on Brew Britannia: a list of 101 bottled reviewed by Michael ‘The Beer Hunter’ Jackson’s for an article in British tabloid the People in 1994.

It appeared in the Sunday edition for 21 August that year and offers an excellent snapshot of what was then readily available in British shops.

It’s from just the moment when Premium Bottled Ales were coming into existence in their almost-a-pint bottles and at around pub strength, shoving aside traditional half-pint brown and light ales.

There are some surprises but, generally, we think, it brings home how far things have come.

Jackson subscribed to the view that it was a waste of time to write bad reviews when you could focus on things you’d enjoyed but in this exercise was essentially forced to give a short note for each beer, some of which were uncharacteristically stinging.  Carlsberg Special Brew, for example, he found “sweet and yucky” and Scorpion Dry prompted him to ask: “Where’s the sting? More like cabbage water.”

On the whole, though, he remained quite gentle, even finding diplomatic words to say about some fairly bland lagers such as Rolling Rock with its touch of “new-mown hay”.

The asterisked beers are those he particularly recommended — quite a high bar, evidently.

Artyfacts from the Nyneties #6: Beers of ’94 originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

Rather than relying on interpretations of tasting notes and faulty memories, wouldn’t it be good to know for sure if and how British beer has changed in the past 20 years? Well, there is a way.

In the November/December issue of UK brewing industry magazine The Grist Keith Thomas provided a technical breakdown of the typical strength, colour and bitterness of British beer styles. It is full of fascinating jewels of information but the most interesting parts are this graph…

… and this table which shows the measured colour (EBC) and bitterness (EBU) of a hundred beers with the numbers prescribed by CAMRA’s style guidelines beneath in brackets:

These offer a fairly precise snapshot of the reality of the situation in 1995-96 and that is somewhat interesting in its own right, but it becomes a lot more so when you discover that Dr Thomas and his colleagues at BrewLab in Sunderland have been checking in on these stats ever since.

They published a detailed report in 2006, sadly locked away behind paywalls (British Food Journal, Vol. 108, in case anyone has access) and have an update in the works. In the meantime, though, they have released a sort of trailer in the form of a press release, which states (our emphasis)…

[The] features of many styles remained similar to the parameters summarized in 2006.  However, when considered overall some differences are evident.  Average alcohol levels are down by 3% on average.  This did vary by style and was mainly due to old ales being weaker.  More extensive differences are evident in beer colour and bitterness.  While bitterness overall has increased by 5% colour has decreased by 18%.  This is particularly evident in the darker beers – milds, porters and stouts.  In general, it appears that beers are becoming lighter but more bitter…. It was particularly interesting to see that standard beers are retaining their character but also that darker beers appear to be evolving.  The introduction of blond and golden beers has had an impact on the market and possibly influenced changes in other styles.

It also comes with a useful infographic (believe it or not such things do exist) from which we’ve snipped these details:

There’s lots of interesting stuff to chew on there:

• What’s the difference between porter and stout? Nothing, says history. About 15 points in colour and 7 points of bitterness, say these real world observations.
• Dark mild has got more bitter since 1995-96… or is it just that the more bitter, characterful examples have proven resilient during the ongoing extinction event?
• What’s the difference between old ale and barley wine? Not much, says history. About 65 points in colour and six or seven points of bitterness, sez this.

Crunching the Numbers on British Beer Styles originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

This piece first appeared online at the now defunct All About Beer in 2015. It’s collected in our book Balmy Nectar but, as there’s been some chat lately about when and how the UK got the taste for the perfume and flavour of US hops, we wanted to share it here, too.

Some of the best beers being made in Britain today belong to a style that has no name. They are the colour of pilsner, usually made with only pale malt, but they are not mere ‘golden ales’ – because ‘golden’ is not, after all, a flavour.

They have extravagant, upfront New World hopping suggesting tropical fruits and aromatic flowers but they are not US-style India Pale Ales because their alcoholic strength is likely to be somewhere between 3-5% ABV.

Though this might sound like a description of US session IPA, beers of this type have been around in the UK for more than 20 years. If they are given a name at all, as in Mark Dredge’s 2013 book Craft Beer World, it is usually a variation on the simply descriptive ‘pale’n’hoppy’.

In the mid-20^th century there were several British beers noted for their pale colour, Boddington’s Bitter from Manchester being the most notable. That particular beer was also intensely hopped although the hops were English and were used to generate a bitterness that ‘clawed at the back of your throat’ rather than a delicate aroma.

As the 1970s and 80s wore on, strong dark beers such as Theakstons’s Old Peculier and Fuller’s ESB became cult favourites among beer geeks, while pale yellow lagers became fashionable with mainstream drinkers. Boddington’s Bitter darkened in colour and gradually lost its bitter edge.

As a result, when, in the late 1980s, the first golden ales emerged, they seemed positively and refreshingly innovative. Exmoor Gold from the Somerset-Devon border can claim to be the first of this new breed but it was really Hop Back Summer Lightning, first brewed in 1989, that triggered a trend.

Conceived by former big-brewery man John Gilbert as a cask-conditioned lager, it instead became an ale that merely looked like lager, which he hoped would lure drinkers back from then highly fashionable brands such as Stella Artois. It won a string of awards and, before long, any brewery hoping to appeal to connoisseurs had to have a golden ale in its range.

That cosmetic trend coincided with another new development: the arrival in Britain of American and New Zealand hop varieties, along with US beers such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Anchor Liberty, which showed those hops off at their best.

Sean Franklin first experimented with American Cascade hops as far back as the early 1980s. Having worked and been trained in the wine industry he was an expert in the characteristics of different grape varieties and believed similar subtlety could also be drawn out of hops. His first brewery didn’t work out, however, and he ended up driving a taxi for five years. When he returned to brewing in 1993, he had, in effect, conceived a new type of beer, as he explained in an interview we conducted in 2013:

I’d had Summer Lightning and that was a great inspiration, a lovely beer. Flavour is about competition, the different components coming up against each other. So, when you use crystal malt and Cascade, you get orange and toffee. When you use Cascade with just pale malt, you don’t get orange – just that floral, citrusy character. The plainer the background, the better. It allows the essential character of the hops to show much more clearly.

The flagship beer of his new brewery, Rooster’s, was Yankee – straw-coloured, hopped with then-obscure Cascade and, though still essentially a golden ale, a touch more aromatic than most UK drinkers were used to at the time.

At a mere 4.3%, however, it also fit comfortably into British pub and beer festival culture, which then, even more so than now, required beers to be drinkable by the pint and, ideally, in multiple pints over the course of several hours. Along with a range of stronger beers brewed by Brendan Dobbin in Manchester at around the same time, it turned many British real ale drinkers into confirmed hop fanatics.

A contemporary product developed quite independently was Oakham’s Jeffrey Hudson Bitter, or JHB, also first brewed in 1993.

Despite its name, which suggests something old-fashioned and varnish-brown, it too was inspired by Summer Lightning and has always been golden with extravagantly fruity late-hopping (a combination of Challenger and Mount Hood) suggestive of elderflower and lemon peel.

Hopping levels have been constantly nudged upwards over the last 20 years to accommodate the palates of drinkers spoiled by double IPAs – head brewer John Bryan estimates that there are about two-and-a-half times as many hops now as in 1993 – but it still seems relatively restrained compared to some newer iterations of the style.

Oakham’s own Citra, for example, was the first UK beer to use that hop variety, in 2010, and is even more flamboyantly pungent than its older sibling.

Nigel Wattam, Oakham’s marketing man, says that the majority of Oakham’s range is ‘very light, or really dark, with not much in-between’. On the appeal of ‘pale’n’hoppy’ beers more generally he says, “I think we’ve converted a lot of lager drinkers because it’s the same colour, but it has more flavour.”

There is a similar logic behind Kelham Island’s Pale Rider, which was first brewed in 1993 in Sheffield, the northern industrial city made famous by the film The Full Monty. The brewery was founded by the late Dave Wickett, an influential figure on the British beer scene with a hand in several other breweries, and whose former employees and associates include many of the current generation of UK craft brewers.

Writer Melissa Cole credits Pale Rider with arousing her interest in beer and in her book, Let Me Tell You About Beer, records that it was initially conceived to appeal to female drinkers, with restrained bitterness and ramped-up aroma.

Popular among northern real ale drinkers for a decade, it became nationally famous in 2004 when it was declared Champion Beer of Britain by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). It is best enjoyed in Sheffield at the brewery tap, the Fat Cat, where its feather-light body and punchy, peachy perfume makes it easy drinking despite its 5.2% ABV. Nonetheless, the brewery has also produced Easy Rider, a similar beer at 4.3%.

Another cult favourite is Hophead from Dark Star, a brewery in Brighton, a fashionable coastal resort an hour’s train ride south of London. Mark Tranter, recently voted the best brewer in the UK by the British Guild of Beer Writers for his work at his own brewery, Burning Sky, worked at Dark Star from the 1990s until 2013.

He recalls that, at some time after 1996, one of the owners of the Evening Star pub where the brewery was then based went to California and came back with Cascade hop pellets.

These, along with other US hops available in small quantities via hop merchants Charles Faram, formed the basis of ‘The Hophead Club’, conceived by Dark Star founder Rob Jones. At each meeting of the club members would taste a different single-hopped beer.

“Cascade was the customers’ and brewers’ favourite, so it was not long until that became the staple,” recalls Tranter.

When he took on more responsibility in the brewery, Tranter tweaked the recipe, reducing its bitterness, and, in 2001, dropping its strength from 4% ABV to 3.8%. 

Today, with the brewery under new ownership and with a different team in the brew-house, the beer remains single-minded and popular, giving absolute priority to bright aromas of grapefruit and elderflower.

If the style isn’t officially recognised, how can you spot a pale’n’hoppy on the bar when out drinking in the UK? First, turn to smaller microbreweries.

The larger, older family breweries have not been hugely successful in this territory, perhaps being too conservative to embrace the fundamental lack of balance that  characterises the style. (There are exceptions: Adnams Ghost Ship, for example, has been a notable success both among beer geeks and less studious drinkers.) 

Secondly, look for a conspicuous mention of a specific hop variety on the hand-pump badge, along with names that include ‘Hop’, ‘Gold’ and sometimes (but less often) ‘Blonde’.

Pointed mentions of citrus are another giveaway.

Finally, a very broad generalisation: breweries in the north are particularly adept — we once heard the style jokingly referred to as ‘Pennine Champagne’ after the range of hills and mountains that runs from Derbyshire to the Scottish border.

Salopian Oracle (Shropshire, 4%), Burning Sky Plateau (Sussex, 3.5%), Marble Pint (Manchester, 3.9%) and Redemption Trinity (London, 3%) are among the best examples.

Rooster’s Yankee, Kelham Island Pale Rider, Oakham JHB and Dark Star Hophead are all available in cans or bottles, though they are best tasted fresh and close to source.

From US brewers, the nearest equivalents are among the new breed of session IPAs and pale ales, such as Firestone Walker Easy Jack.

These two distinct traditions – UK pale’n’hoppy is traditional session bitter with a glamorous makeover, whereas American brews are big beers reined in – have ended up in a remarkably similar place.

For all of those who like to wallow in hops over the course of hours, both are good news.

The evolution of ‘pale’n’hoppy’ ale in the UK originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog