January 2018 – Beer Tinted Spectacles

Pouring it down the sink

I can think of only a few times when I’ve poured beer down the drain – and there’s been no common denominator. I mean, I don’t buy beer ever with the intent of disposing of it anywhere other than down my throat. And sure, it would be easy to chortle and say that’s what Bud Light’s for, but they brew that lack of flavour with real care and attention to detail. And the beechwood chips really do exist. I’ve disposed of beer in punctured cans or when it’s been heinously out of date – not a regular occurrence in truth.

But a sink evacuation is what I was faced with. An experiment that went wrong.

I’d saved two bottles of Worthington’s White Shield. It’s not like the White Shield from the ’90s – the first I remember drinking, which had a good finger-thickness of yeast gloopily sticking to the bottom. The late 2005 vintage I’d kept (guessing from the best before at least) had a tickle of yeast below a deep, almost mahogany brown liquid. I had deliberately saved it – in fact, I have two cases of 2010 vintage tucked away elsewhere. These three had been lounging in an old Grolsch case (more commonly used by painters and decorators these days). Stored in my cellar (don’t read into this visions of Downton Abbey, we got the servants’ quarters) it had been well looked after. Crowns checked regularly. Any signs of dampness scrupulously sought – but nothing. Our cellar may be small. It may be full of old crates of kids toys, books and our stash of loo rolls, but it’s also the perfect home for good wine and good beer. Cool, consistent, dry.

Whiteshield

So there was a no reason to have anything other than high hopes. I prized off the cap of the first and poured – as steadily as I could to ensure the yeast stayed at the bottom – but even after that first slight crimp in the cap, even with the first whispy release of gas (very little it must be said, this is naturally carbonated but old beer) – even then, I knew.

Just the faintest whiff. Just the touch of acid glancing across my nostrils. Just the organoleptic receptors hitting the nuclear alert button. Spoilage; bacteria; vinegar.

I poured it out all the same. Poured and held my nose. And gazed. Gazed longingly at the colour; deep and rich, dark conker brown; imbued with just a faint red after-light where the meniscus clawed up the glass rim.

And yet, dispassionately, poured it away. Swirled out the bottle and poured that away. This is experimenting with ageing beer. The 2005 is gone. Long live the 2010! It will wait no more.

New look, new Tinted

Today sees a new look and feel for Beer Tinted Spectacles.

Last year, I found my passion for writing about beer waning – something I couldn’t easily explain or reconcile. One factor was time; my own business is almost five years old and growing, placing an inevitable constraint on other things. But it was more than that. For some reason, I was finding the world of beer and the narrative around it frustrating and… boring.

That’s a difficult thing to admit, and on the surface utterly counter-intuitive. The world of beer is as healthy as it’s been – arguably for 50 years. The number of new breweries; the plethora of choice; old styles being rediscovered, re-worked or bastardised. Who cares in the pursuit of great taste?

Yet, one debate – that of New England IPAs got my goat. Tit-for-tat arguments about whether such yeasty, sediment-rich, cloudy, turbid brews are genuine brewer-led innovation or the products of today’s ‘Instagram culture’. At the time from what I could see, the debate was getting personal and pretty nasty. And this is amongst so-called beer lovers.

Beer lovers who are losing the plot.

Let’s go back just 30 years. U.S. beer was dominated by one brewer, who focused on two brands: Bud and Bud Light. Everyone else was a runner-up. Marketing spend was aggressive and enormous. U.K. beer was dominated by half a dozen vertically integrated leisure conglomerates, who owned the ‘route to market’ pretty much from the point that the newly harvested barley crossed the gates in the Maltings to the point where the liquid touched the drinkers’ lips. Depending where you lived, this meant a limited range from pub to pub. Innovation was quashed, possibly inadvertently, but quashed all the same. Regional brewers struggled to co-exist. Micros weren’t even a fertilised egg. Love or loathe CAMRA, they were genuinely fighting big, hairy corporate beasts who wilfully or not, were shaping consumers’ tastes and controlling the market.

To bicker about whether a cloudy IPA is good or not is missing the point. The threat of drink consolidation is looming again. In the short term, changes will seem imperceptible. New owners will commit to keeping the breweries (or cider presses) of the acquired companies open; their brands will be lauded; their people extolled. But soon, all too soon, small changes will occur. Recipes will subtly change. Efficiencies will be found. Economies of scale will be sought. The heady drug of profit and the churn of staff will see promises reneged and old favourties become milking machines for bottom line growth.

So, Beer Tinted is back. Stripped back, simplified, more picture-led, its core purpose nonetheless remains. To tell beer stories that celebrate great beers. To champion the people who have had the courage to risk everything in pursuit of a dream or a passion. To narrate a perspective on issues of the day from the point of view of someone who was once on the other side – the consolidator, the acquirer, the ‘big beer’ executive. To remind anyone who passes through these pages what we have, what we should cherish and what we will need to fight for.

Thanks for reading.

Beer and friends

2017 was a year of the rise of fermentations; it’s been a ‘food trend’ for a while now, in products such as kombucha tea or kimchi pickle, or just the general renaissance in pickles and chutneys (presumably because those with a passion can become artisan producers relatively easily) or the growth in cuisines such as Japanese, Malay or Vietnamese. Whatever, there is an alchemical magic to these microscopic transformations: with yeast, with bacteria, with oxygen – and time, always time.

Vinegar is the golden thread for me: the sweet but sharp tang of apple cider vinegar; the bold, cleansing aromatic hit of a good malt vinegar; the sharp astringency of distilled vinegar, or the rounded crispness of a vinegar from wine. And I am drawn to any product with vinegar at its heart: a relish; pickled veg, a spice-infused chutney, dark, sweet, pungent – and in particular mustard.

Yesterday, the news came out that Colman’s, the famous British mustard brand, is leaving its long time home, Norwich, where it’s been made for over 170 years. Behind the move of course, is money and whilst new jobs in new locations are touted and some preserved in the city, more will be lost. One of those beneficiaries will be Burton-upon-Trent where the Marmite production line will have to budge up to make space for Colman’s production. Burton’s local MP is already trumpeting his catalysing powers: he’s as “keen as mustard to meet with Unilever” (Colman’s owner) and presumably even keener to make it look like he was behind the move all along (and claim the credit for the jobs created). Politicians are as Politicians do I suppose – what’s interesting though is how in a small way, Colman’s coming to Burton is more of a return. Time was when the holy trinity of fermentation: beer, vinegar, mustard, would be located on the same road. And Sarsons still today the processes are clearly related – look at Sarson’s latest press advertising for instance. Substitute ‘Sarson’s’ for ‘Marston’s’ and the ad would still make sense – you could even try a nip of Pedigree on your chips if you’re game (Sarson’s described themselves as ‘Vinegar Brewers’ for many years).

It was equally common across Europe – a few years ago I visited the small but vibrant Gulpener brewery in the Limburg region of The Netherlands. The brewery, set in cottage-like buildings either side of the main east-west road connecting Germany to Belgium, today houses just a brewery. But previously that brewery had been on one side, a vinegar maker on the other (the width of the road perhaps just enough to guard against the souring acetobacter invading the beer brewhouse) and a hop skip and jump down the road was the mustard production. Chatting to the then gulpener_12448_limburgse Managing Director, Paul Rutten, he was interested in starting collaborating on mustards again, whilst round the corner, in a local bar, the brewery had installed a wild fermentation brew kit to renew brewing a lost beer style local to that area ‘Mestreechs aajt’ – closely related to the wild, sour beers of Belgium today – and if you’re not too careful – to vinegar too.

(I found this image on t’internet. Maybe Paul managed it)