Observations – Page 8 – Beer Tinted Spectacles

Three styles good?

At the end of last year the blog hoster, Posterous, was consumed by Twitter and users of the service, myself included, needed to make other plans. Much pain & grinding of teeth was involved and just last week normality felt like it was being restored when I reconnected with one of my original ‘Follows’ in the beer blogosphere, Malt Jerry. He’d posted a piece on Fuller’s ‘Frontier Craft Lager’. Jerry writes thoughtful pieces with interesting angles on topics. In this case the bait that hooked the fish was the wriggling worm of a web forum where the question was asked if Fuller’s should brew lager. Responses included, “Why in the world … would they choose to brew an inferior type of beer?” and, “No. Leave the chemical beers to chemical brewers.”

Elsewhere, there will be voices that are pro lager. What the comments underlined was how, once perceptions are built, they are difficult to shake. To summarise a whole category with a headline like ‘lager = chemicals’ is patently wrong, but it only takes one turd in the swimming pool to stop you swimming, as an old boss of mine liked to say. And we seem to be in a critical period now when ale is both rebuilding its reputation but also becoming anchored to associations that may in time, prove to make its growth more difficult.

Which is where we find ourselves today, a category classified broadly threefold: a ‘everyday’ (bitter? Pale Ale?), an ‘IPA’ and a ‘golden’ – and brewers following the money. I find myself pondering whether a category defined by these three styles – at a drinker level not a beer connoisseur level – is an advantage or a disadvantage. Commercially, it’s a good thing. Too often, small brewers fragment their range to such a level that they end up with un-commercial brew lengths and stock issues, write-offs and a declining spiral around beer quality. Reputationally, it’s a worry. If ale is to continue to grow – both in scale and in renown, then it needs to be a broad, encompassing school – catering to those who ‘know what they like’ and happy to drink in depth across those styles, and those who continue to experiment and discover, who we must ensure are not put off by the conventions being established today. ‘Black IPA’ is a case in point: the for : against debate centreing on the apparent contradiction of whether a ‘pale’ beer can be ‘black’. Rather, the debate should be on how we can establish this new exciting beer style into the lexicon of ale and help it be part of its continued growth – and more to the point, protects its reputation from future assessments similar to ‘chemical beer’.

©Beer Tinted Spectacles, 2013

Mad (wo)Men

Women and beer: always something that’s topical nowadays – and rightly so when only 15% of the majority of our population drink beer. In the craft scene there’s a wealth of activities, great female beer bloggers, celebrity female chefs endorsing beer, brewsters and brewster collaborations and a broad mindedness from all, open to the possibilities and welcoming to the idea of women leading the beer agenda. This effort is worthwhile: if you have read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, ‘The Tipping Point’ you’ll know how a confluence of interest, memes, epidemics and mavens can drive a point of inflection*, a strap on turbo booster to the awareness or usage of your product or service. This craft beer originated push is critical – it’s the sign of a healthy category – and will make a difference in the long term to the acceptance and engagement in beer amongst women.

Of course, it can be accelerated, and the biggest potential accelerator is if those with the real marketing muscle right now – of brand, of distribution, of financial clout – put their shoulder in to push too. Which may be an odd thing to say – surely the craft brewers are largely pressuring against the big boys? Well, yes and no. There are just some elephant-sized tasks that need to be supported by all – and engaging women with beer is a stand out topic. Commerically, it’s not the most important – getting young adult men to enter or stay in the sector when they reach legal drinking age is a huge prize as they are likely to consume beer as their main alcoholic beverage throughout their adult life. But perceptually, getting women to …well, at least be interested in beer and occasionally consume it, is Job One.

The history of beer across most mature beer markets in the last 30 years is littered with mistakes in this area. Cack-handed attempts to actively target women – brands such as ‘Brunette’, ‘Eve’ (was this beer?) and more recently ‘Animée’ now make up beer’s back catalogue. But lessons are being learned – a case in point is Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s new advert – take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-IwbtrQ6eI

Nastro screen shot — Peroni: Una Storia Di Isparazione

Of course, judging advertising is as subjective as judging a beer, but in this instance a small straw poll backs up my hypothesis. Here’s why it works:

Respect. The interactions between the characters display warmth, respect, flirtatiousness and a little longing. Yes, there’s the rather outdated male boss / female typing pool dynamic – but the idea here is the growing up; the liberation & empowerment of women throughout the course of the advert.
Believable. In ‘Let There Be Beer’ there is a bespectacled female office worker knocking back a pint of frothy brown stuff in a bar, almost necking it, engaged in the banter and probably pinching blokes’ bottoms. Here, the social setting is urbane, is cool and is real – not typical, but believable and attainable.
It’s an advert. It’s an advert for a beer, one that exists already. Not a beer for women. And that’s the critical point.
Men. Men find it appealing too. Men appreciate the men in the advert. Men appreciate (and OK, ogle at) the women in the advert. Men appreciate the beer in the advert. Job done – and women recognise that men appreciate these things this too.
Beauty. Whoever made the advert had a big budget and knew how to use it. It’s a consistent theme in alcohol advertising – particularly in spirits and brands such as Guinness and Stella Artois – the communication is part of the visceral feel of the brand. If it looks and feels sophisticated, high quality and beautiful, then those same values become reflected on your brand without the need to say it. And the fact that it feels like a scene from Mad Men can’t fail to help, even if it is slightly ironic.

Turns out, it’s not that hard. I wonder who else will copy?

* Malcolm Gladwell, ‘The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference‘, Abacus, 2000

©Beer Tinted Spectacles, 2013

Tip Top Tap

If asked, I know I get defensive about it. I shouldn’t – I should have the strength of mind to ignore the stereotyped sniping that can arise. I should stand proud, chest thrust out. But no. The truth is that when I tell people that I’m interested in railways the nerd on my shoulder kicks in. “They’ll think you’re a trainspotter” “First real ale, now trains. You’ll be growing a beard and wearing sandals next” “Standing at the end of a platform. Better than gold, surely?”

And the real truth (not sounding defensive) is that I’m not a trainspotter. There is no child-inspired interest in jotting down engine numbers. I’m really not interested in the carriage configurations of Virgin Pendolinos*. But I am enthralled by the confidence, the grandeur, the sheer scale at which the Victorians thought. I am impressed when the aforementioned Virgin train goes barreling past at 125 mph, tilting wildly. But most of all, it’s the stations and their concourses. Whenever I travel through one of major cities I can’t help but look up in awe at the majesty of the engineering – both in the vision and the delivery. The soaring & swooping Cathedral-like roof of Paddington Station; the civil engineering marvel of Edinburgh Waverley; the majestic curve at York. And of course, pretty much anything to do with St Pancras, always sharpened by the fact that where I occasionally go for a coffee is located in the beer store built by my old company almost 200 years before.

And then there’s Euston. One of the UK’s busiest stations. The London terminus of my daily commute, a designated critical European transport corridor and the most important route for freight on the whole British rail network. It should be like New York’s Grand Central, Chicago’s Grand Union or Gare du Nord in Paris. Alas, while once it was, today it’s a Le Corbusian temple to concrete, blockiness and functionality. The real travesty being what stood there before – the Doric arch entrance being unceremoniously broken up and dumped.

Imagine arriving here on the 7.46am from Tring.

Yet, where the entrance once stood are two gatehouses. I have been skirting by them for about two years when an ex colleague suggested we meet for a beer before heading home – the venue: The Euston Tap. I almost blew my lid when I found out what I have been missing. Despite its heady architectural pedigree, the Tap isn’t much to look at. Just off the Euston Road, it’s so prominent it’s hidden to the eye, as most users of the ‘new’ station enter at either end, rather than through the middle where the old station entrance once was. In design, it’s Classical, but in classical terms it’s dumpy and lumpy, so the architecture doesn’t really rock you back on your heels. But the bar does. I didn’t count them, but there must have been a dozen draught beers, served through taps in the wall – a set up I have only seen once before, in San Francisco, but I’ll admit to living a sheltered life. Mostly, internal alarm bells ring when I see so many draught brands on sale, but here it was clear that they have the drinkers to justify it. Frustratingly in fact, both of my first two choices had run dry on the back of recommendations from the barstaff and the general volume of supping that had already commenced on an early Friday evening. Fortunately, the bottled selection was jaw dropping and gave me the opportunity to start a walk through The Kernel’s range of single hop IPAs, a voyage which once begun must be concluded. As for The Tap, that too is a voyage started. I will return and suggest you do too.

The Euston Tap, pub design courtesy of Inigo Jones.

* I only know there are such things after I eavesdropped on a conversation between some real train spotters whilst delayed at Rugby Station

©Beer Tinted Spectacles, 2013

Double Helix

Few topics are as divisive amongst brewers as that of balance – something I find quite ironic. Oddly, balance is something conceptually simple – I mean, if I said to you, “tell me what balance is” you’d probably look at me gone out – yet is in reality the opposite – hellishly complex.

Balance implies a pivot point… something on one side countering something on the other to create a sense of equalising forces. But in my experience in foods and drinks it’s more like neutrality – too often, in the pursuit of balance, something is lost not gained. Perhaps neutered is better than neutralised.

And it’s worse in beer. Worse because balance is one of the subjects brewers of mass beer can use to level at craft beer. A drinkable, everyday pale beer vs a deeply bitter IPA , loaded to the gunwales with whole cone C Hops. No contest on then as, sure, it may have ‘character’ but it isn’t balanced, it’s not moreish. Well, whichever way you see the world it’s all erroneous. Balance just isn’t a two dimensional creature. And there are more than two variables at play, which doesn’t help understanding nor appreciation of beer.

The bitterness scale of International Bitterness Units (IBUs) is the normal ‘measure of beer’. It’s become a limiting shorthand, aided and abetted by the Nuclear Hop Race and IBU proliferation. Brewers across many continents pushing the boundaries – introducing multiple stages of hopping in the boil, as well, of course as post-fermentation hopping, chiefly through dry hops. More prosaically, on my days running Grolsch, those who didn’t agree with the strategy would throw in the cheap shot of bitterness: Grolsch is just too distinctive, too bitter to be an ‘everyday brand’. But no one mentioned the residual sweetness in the beer that in fact meant it was both a characterful and well balanced lager. In fact, I hadn’t realised until recently that there is a measure of this particular balance – BU:GU or bitterness units to gravity units; nor had I realised the relatively common old British practise of measuring ‘Pounds of hops per quarter malt’. A contender for a better shorthand descriptor than just IBUs? Maybe.

Were the world so simple. Bitterness and sweetness are not the only facets that make up beer. There is saltiness and sourness of course. If you think beer cannot be salty then try and get hold of some Burtonised brewing liquor and taste that – positively coats the mouth it does. And next time you have a pint of Pedigree just see if you can’t detect it, especially now it’s been pointed out. Sourness is huge in food at the moment – particularly confectionery, where brands like Haribo Tangfastics, Wham Sourz and the most worryingly pleasingly named, Toxic Waste, represent the growth categories in the UK market. And in beers it’s not just lambics that offer sourness, some of the new wave brewers are aging on wood and in some case even exposing the beer to controlled oxidisation to give these tastes. So why not a sour: sweet axis for beer?

Then there’s umami – the mystical 5^th taste which is behind many of the most astonishing beer and food pairings, like cheese, oysters, meat pies and the Pint’s Best Friend, scratchings. Yep, even umami is present in beer – chiefly as a result of the fermentation process.

So if balance is not two dimensional, it’s three, right? Well, not even that, because then there’s the alchemical effect of visual appearance and cognitive perception. Visually: the head, the colour, the condensation, the presentation; cognitively – the reputation, the word of mouth. How many unarguably average beers have a reputation way beyond the sum of their parts due to these?

No, the conclusion I draw is that balance is a red herring. You may want a balanced beer on occasion; heaven knows a pint of Landlord scores bullseye for me on this measure, yet more often I don’t. As I write this I am positively craving a hoppy IPA. I don’t want balance, I want a full on, in-your-face malty, floral extravaganza. In the Summer, around the barbecue, I can predict that I’ll be drinking something so cold it will numb the taste buds. No, balance is like the mystical double helix of DNA. I get it in principle but I’ll be damned if I can make head nor tail of it in everyday life. Balance is a cul-de-sac I won’t be walking down.

The rollercoaster

My first memory is very clear. I was on holiday in south Devon, Kingsbridge in fact, where there used to be a miniature railway on the quay. It was a Heath-Robinson affair, probably 8” gauge, with track laid by enthusiastic amateurs so had that pleasing rocking and yawing sensation as you rode on it. The owner built it all himself and for a period was so successful that he had two trains running. One, the workhorse, he called ‘Heidi’ but there was no alpine, goat-milk drinking charm about her, just a serious, functional, work-all-day temperament. The other was a Gordon the Big Engine affair, 8 wheels, a turbo-Electric in GWR glossy green where driver and passengers could sit atop, and built more for inter-city work (to scale obviously. I mean, Derby to Nottingham would be like the Trans-Siberian here). Like Gordon, if he could talk, if he could express his emotion (and unlike Heidi, this was definitely a ‘he’) he would be haughty, arrogant, aloof, superior. He would sniff at his lot and look with disdain on the rails he was forced to run upon. As it turned out, he was crap at his job. The tight turn as the railway swung around the top of the quay to avoid the landing stage, was for him too tight and the bogies would constantly derail. Out of this trauma was born my first memory. Holding my Dad’s hand as I was forced to clamber off the train and watch as the driver and some passengers strained to lever the engine back on to the rails. Tears featured and a career at Network Fail stymied forever.

But the memory lives deep. If Kingsbridge is mentioned, the memory comes back, and with it a slew of associations – colours, feelings, temperatures, a clear image of the scene and others that followed. It’s a neural pathway that is deep set, powerful and emotive. Yet, it’s not just our first memories that are powerful, in fact, our first experiences of everything that is new, surprising, challenging, frightening, pleasurable leaves us with a network of anchors that are the reference points for the rest of our days. My first car: a red polo (dodgy driver side windscreen wiper, gearbox like stirring stew, exhaust that broke on the top of Exmoor (best Spitfire I ever flew after that); my first meal I cooked myself: chile con carne (hold the kidneys a touch next time); my first kiss…. you get the drift.

And the first beer I drank the first time I went to the US was Sam Adams Boston Lager.

Sam Adams. Even drinking it as a Brit felt a little treacherous. At the time, mid 1990s, US beer was still reviled; those who drank it generally bought into the attendant brand values rather than the beer (and pre frogs, and ‘Wassssup?’ Bud had some great, iconic ‘Genuine Article’ advertising). For the few however, word was out. Something was going on Stateside, on the West Coast in San Francisco, in the East Coast from Boston to Delaware. In this case, I drank my beer in Quincy Market, like Covent Garden and Canary Wharf placed adjacently, with a hellishly tasty sub, and where I was asked for proof of age for the first time in my life. And the beer was great. Not just good, but really great. One of those occasions where you have to stop yourself, put the glass down and look at it, head slightly askance to make sure you’re not dreaming. Beautifully structured maltiness, a slight tobacco-stained white head colour and a floral yet spicy hoppiness both in aroma and taste. Today perhaps, not great shakes, but back then, and particularly given that this was an American lager, it was two hoofing great milkshakes, potentially verging on a Knickerbocker Glory. So there it was: my future wife, a terrific only-in-America sub, a beer to die for in an entrancing setting. Quite literally, the stuff memories are made of.

So what do you do then when memories are shattered? How do you reconcile yourself to the rollercoaster of emotions, the feeling that you have been living a lie, tricked, kidded on? To this day, in my other passion, cycling, I have to face this with disturbing regularity. One by one, your heroes are dethroned – Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton… it’s painful and needs a period of adjustment. And this is where I am today as I write, over such a silly little thing really. But Sam Adams Boston Lager in the UK is now brewed under license by Shepard Neame. Previously they were the agents, importing and distributing it. Now the line has been crossed – the line of irrationality. Because everyone knows, when they stop and think about it, that shipping large quantities of liquid around the globe makes neither economic nor environmental sense. Rational minded individuals know that brewers today are so skilled, that within the bounds of what humans can detect, it is possible to ‘match’ beers. And whether we deny it or not, we accept that it goes on. If you have ever drunk a pint of say what? 7 or 8 pints out of 10 in the UK, then you know that this practise goes on. And high gravity brewing; and adjuncts, and tricks with bottle size.

But it’s OK. The rules are in place. The context is transparent – the big brewers make war on their own terms, and make decisions to keep them competitive and alive. It’s mass-manufacture behaviour. I understand it commercially and choose to accept it because I can vote with my wallet and drink elsewhere if I have a problem. But somehow Sam Adams (Boston Beer Co) have crossed that line now. Somehow their principles as a craft brewer have been shown to be suspect and they need to ‘fess up and play by the new rules. For me, and I suspect for many though, it’s too late – my memory has been sullied and the damage done.

Faversham Lager, brewed near the original site of the Faversham Tea Party. (The new logo shape is the giveaway)