Beer Tinted Spectacles

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

Branded Glasswhere

There’s a quiet revolution going on with beer glassware. I remember when I was at University down in Exeter it was a real struggle to get your pint served in the correctly branded glass. In fact, it was rare to even see a branded glass. Guinness was the exception, so much so that it was quite typical to get a pint of Director’s or Bass served in one, often leading to me asking for it in a plain glass instead (I have nothing against Guinness but somehow any old pint in a Guinness glass spoils the experience both of the beer you are drinking and your future pints of the black stuff too). Packaged beer was even worse. Frankly, if I asked for a glass with my bottle of swanky lager I was given a thoroughly gone-out look. ‘Look at that wazzock, wanting a glass with his beer instead of necking it from the bottle like the rest of us. Knob.’ Today you may get a glass designed specifically for the bottle. But back then it wasn’t a case of brand glassware but rather branded glass where?

What really brought the change home was a conversation with an ex wine marketeer, a friend of mine who has put me right on a lot of commercial issues facing the wine boys which I as a beer boy had been quite ignorant of, if not thoroughly mistaken over. One of these issues was glassware. Wouldn’t it be great to have an industry standard set of beer glasses to ensure that each type of beer was served in the right way? This would keep it easy for publicans….not swamping them under a sea of different shapes of beer glasses, or having them confronted by oafs sending their beer back if it’s served in a Guinness glass. The wine boys: they have it sorted: elegant glasses, consistent across pubs to bars to upmarket clubs. I even attended a beer dinner at The White Horse in Parson’s Green where this was raised. But funnily enough, I as with many others, was mistaken.

The first issue is how the wine makers see their challenges. One big issue for them (perhaps not for drinkers but leave that to one side for the moment) is a lack of wine brands. Coupled with over supply this is leading to many wine markets suffering extreme price deflation and discounting, and a huge differential between the pricing drinkers experience in the on trade vs supermarkets. Whereas in beer the difference is double (using the UK example but increasingly this seems the rough rule of thumb in many markets) in wine this can be anywhere up to fourfold. And wine ‘all looks the same’ to drinkers…a glass of rose may vary slightly between labels but there’s little else to distinguish them, including no branded glasses. The plan: introduce branded glasses. Ah. Which just goes to show that not only is the grass not always greener on t’other side but in fact, it could be pink with yellow spots.

The second problem has been listening too closely to the licensees. Publicans have it tough, that’s for sure, not only have they got the issues with escalating duty, supermarket cut-throat deals and changing leisure patterns impacting on their business, they also have to run a complicated little business with long hours, the vagaries of staffing and recruitment, coping with weird laws and bylaws, offering food and getting their drink range and quality right. But this doesn’t always mean they appreciate the best way to run their businesses. And beer glassware is one example. If you took operational considerations to the nth degree then you would have standard height, stackable, toughened (shatter not shard to prevent glass injuries), non branded (doesn’t wash off in the dish washer) in two sizes, pint and half, capable of being used for beer, spirit long drinks and soft drink too. Oh, hang on, this is often standard fare in pubs in the UK. So, they’ve got it right, yes?

Nope. Think of your own experiences. Here are some of mine in the last few weeks. In the Lakes, I had a pint of Black Sheep in The Bridge in Buttermere. Right glass, right setting and definitely the cause for a second. A bottle of Erdinger nearer to home, in its preposterously curvaceous tulip glass; on holiday in Lanzarote a glass of Estrella Galicia in a handled, frosted glass; numerous bottles of Nastro Azzuro and not just in Pizza Express; in Prague a fantastic cellar-aged Žatec in a simple pilsner glass. I could go on. The point is that the glass is the fireworks over the Disney castle. The theme park is good, but those extra details make it memorable, lift it, make you want to go back. So it’s a fine thing to see Fosters promoting their new glass; to see Stella Artois continuing to push for sales in its ‘chalice’, for Carlsberg introducing the wonderfully angular San Miguel glass, or abroad for brewers like Boston Beer investing research and development money in the right glass shape for Sam Adams Boston Lager. And sure. They get stolen, but if ever you wanted advertising in the home and prompt to buy the right beer for the right glass then surely this is a investment worth making (or sell them to bars for the price of a non branded glass – bars need to buy glasses anyway and this reduces the hit).

But why is this? What is behind the transformational effect that something as simple as a branded glass has in the purchase of a glass of beer? Interestingly, the psychology of buying sheds some light on this. Basically when we buy, in fact when we plan to buy, there’s an emotional upside that impacts our physical state: endorphins raising our anticipation to a peak, the apex being when you actually hand over the money and buy. Thereafter the downside kicks in, big for a TV set or clothes and so on, but for a beer is pretty small (one reason beer has traditionally been described as ‘recession proof’). And the branded glass? It simply accentuates the positive …. it’s a triple win, it shows the brewer cares, the pub cares and you can show off your distinctive choice overtly.

Now ok, clearly you can only have so many branded glasses in a bar. But here is another reason for bars to sell a smaller range, with higher throughput and therefore fewer problems with glass storage and serve (as well as all the upsides of beer quality).

Back to that beer dinner I mentioned earlier. As the debate rolled about different issues, out came pudding. And with the pudding came some Trappist and Abbey beers. Westmalle was one, served of course in its Communion style stemmed glass, deep-walled and thick painted. It’s no exaggeration to say that celestial quiet filled the room for the brief moment it took to pour. There, I thought to myself, is the last word on the subject. Whisper it quietly, but ‘Vive La Revolution’.

© David Preston, Beer Tinted Spectacles. Originally posted on Posterous, April 2012

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)

Posterous is closing

Posterous is closing as of 30th April 2013. I’m not sure what the plans are for ‘Tinted, but we will continue when a new home is found. More details to follow.