Named after a local primary school the SW London brewery, which only accepts investment from those with kids at the school, says it has just £1,000 in the bank and is considering not even fighting the case.

In an article that appeared on the Daily Mail website (I’m sorry but I won’t link to them until they remove that sidebar of shame), an excerpt from a legal letter was published, saying: ‘Visually and aurally, Belle-Vue and Belleville share the first six letters in common and end with the same letter “e”.

‘Conceptually, both Belle-Vue and Belleville would be understood by the English-speaking consumer as signifying something beautiful.

‘As a result of this considerable degree of similarity .  .  . your use [of the name] is bound to lead to deception and confusion among the public and our clients’ consumers and potential customers. 

‘Such use also enables you to take unfair advantage of, or free ride on, our clients’ reputation in the EU.’

And then demands the total eradication of the brand from the web, PoS, labelling etc.

So, I guess there’s just one question – any lawyer out there want to take on this total tossery on a no win no fee basis? It’s bloody appalling.

I am very sorry I have neglected to post anything recently BUT in my defence I have been rushing all over the country and world, so I do have write-ups on Montreal’s beer scene and various other things in the wings for you (just not right now!).

This post is to just quickly draw your attention to a few things, if you don’t mind taking the time?

Firstly, my massive collaboration brew with Fuller’s is in the tank! It’s an ‘around 11%’ imperial stout that has British bittering hops and then a LOT of Centennial for dry hopping and will also be dry ‘budded’ with roses. (When you read ‘budded’, how many of you thought, for a split second, Jesus she’s gone properly nuts and snuck some gange in the brew this time! There are limits you know.)

I am hoping it will basically come out like a very subtle grown-up version of Fry’s Turkish Delight (which I hated when I was a kid but so very much wanted to like, hence my alcoholic efforts now!).

We will be launching it at the GBBF and will be the one of only two times, to my knowledge, you will see any on cask – so get there early!

Moving on to other stuff, as some of you may know I work a bit with Barbecoa and yesterday saw the launch of the refreshed beer list, which now features Freedom lager & dark on draught, Brooklyn lager, Goose Island 312, Ilkley Mary Jane, Redchurch Hackney Gold, Ilkley Siberia, Redchurch Bethnal Pale Ale, Cornish Orchard Heritage Cider and Harviestoun Ola Dubh 12. Not too shabby huh?

And whilst I know it’s all about the street food right now, I am personally a bit more traditional and prefer to chow down at a table but Barbecoa ticks all the boxes and has some of the finest pulled pork in town (not a euphemism) and you HAVE to try the olives, they are AWESOME.

As well as doing the Clapham Common Foodies Festival this weekend – giving beer masterclasses at 14.30 Friday and then 12.30 Saturday and Sunday AND working with Young’s pubs to do beer & food matching events (timings TBC, I’ll post them later today) I’m also doing some beer and food events with Craft Beer Rising in Wholefoods High Street Kensington window (that won’t be weird!) next Monday and Wednesday with Harbour and Otley respectively.

And, finally, watch this space for a super-mega-brilliant announcement – I AM VERY EXCITED!

I have no idea about what has been going on, other than what what I have been told personally and via social media.

Personally, I’m very sad to see an event designed with the best of intentions to showcase the amazing beers of my beautiful city go badly.

BUT, I’m a firm believer in not everything is perfect first time and it’s how you deal with failure that defines your successes and I look forward to this event bouncing back slicker, better and bigger than ever next year.

Hope to see you another time for a glass or six of fine London beer. x

I’ll probably get into trouble for this but hey ho!

I got shouted at by a friend the other day that I’m becoming too negative all the time and that I should know better.

I’m not sure about the latter but they are probably right about the former and it’s a good thing sometimes to stop and check yourself for such problems (and for others of course, but that’s for other websites and the medical profession to deal with!).

Anyway before I meandered off-course, as usual, sometimes it’s a hazard of my job where I’m being analytical all the time about beer that I sometimes forget to stop and smell the hops.

So, in an effort to counteract this malaise, here’s a quick list of things I’ve really liked recently:

Arbor Ales Brown Beer Dammit – probably the pint I’ve been most surprised and impressed with this year, big nettley, grassy, sandalwood flavours with the drinkability of a British bitter.

Green’s Gluten Free Beers – nearly the whole range impressed me, for whatever reason it by-passed me that they had a totally different range from when they launched with what I thought were quite awful beers to be honest and said so, the owner called me on it and sent me the whole range and he was right, I was wrong, the new ones are a whole different kettle of fish and worth every penny. The dry-hopped lager in particular was delicious I thought.

Bridestone’s American Pale Ale – this is one for those who like all the flavours of American hops but still want some of the caramel notes of British beers, Sweetish, floral and quite moorish, it’s a perfect spring drink (come on Spring, you can do it, you’re nearly there!).

Elland Brewery’s Amnesia, 5.8% – almost certain to fall foul of the Portman Group at some point but it’s a seriously nice beer; it’s like someone’s packaged up all the aromas of spring and popped them in a bottle – fresh cut grass, daffodils and cherry blossom are all there. Glorious.

The new-look Clockhouse in Peckham Rye/East Dulwich from Young’s where you can see every penny of the seven figures invested in this place, it’s really very pretty, they are expanding their beer range outside of just W&Y brands and the food from the young chef is very good now and can only get better. In the interests of full disclosure, I did a beer & food event there on Saturday with Yelp London, which was really good fun, no one went hungry or thirsty!

Finally, as the sun is coming out and we all tend to go a bit mad on the sherbet, try sticking to one of these amazing low-ABV beers; The Kernel Brewery Table Beer, somewhere between 2.8-3.2% as is usual for Evin’s inimitable style of brewing. Super-refreshing, full of pretty lemon posset and lime blossom aromas and flavours and so full of body you can’t believe it’s not boozy!

Tap East Tonic Ale – it may be mind games but the tonne of Citra hops that brewer Jim Wilson uses seems to create all those refreshing and bracingly bitter components of a great gin and tonic, using true tonic water but at just 3%, it’s a joy to drink.

Magic Rock Simpleton – another 3% lovely, that’s eminently drinkable with lots of big grapefruity bite and tremendously moorish!

So, what’s been going on in your world lovely people? It’s been pretty darn productive in mine I’ll tells ya!

I have had some tremendously fun and exciting meetings about beer & food with some tip-top chefs, got lots of food & beer festival appearances sorted (keep an eye on the calendar page, I’ll be updating it soon) and have brewed another collaboration beer with Jim Wilson @tapeast – a blood orange pale ale called Elysian Peels – which is launching tomorrow evening from 5.30pm, hope to see you there!

I also have some other good news, a couple of weeks ago I won Imbibe magazine’s Educator of the Year award! Whoop!

I believe I’m the first beery person to win an Imbibe award in its three years of being around and I honestly think it reflects the fact that the higher-end of the on-trade is getting more serious about beer.

I also feel it is less about me than it is about the truly astonishing diversity of brilliant beers that are being produced around the UK and, indeed, across the globe. And congrats as well to all the other winners, you can find a full list here.

And speaking of magazines there is a bloody marvellous new one called Buze, which I’m writing for, there’s an app for it to and you can take a peek at it before you buy if you wish but, come on people – IT’S GOT DAN ACKROYD ON THE COVER HOLDING A CRYSTAL SKULL, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!

In other cheery news, there are more collabs to come. I have plans with Beavertown and Otley in the near future and am in conversation with Red Willow & Harviestoun and various others to get some fun stuff off the ground.

Plus, I have also gained a masochistic taste for doing more beer dinners (about which there may be some exciting news soon) after my début cooking and pairing experience in the tender care of Ryan Perratt (@ryzojizo) and the rest of the lovely crew at the National Gallery Café (run by @peytonandbyrne), where I did one of the Friday Night Socials.

Ridiculously good value for money, it was a mere £28.50 for two canapé starters, a fish course, a meat course, a dessert course and a cheese course – with the beers thrown in for the price!

Which couldn’t have been done without the truly amazing support of Fuller’s, Harviestoun, St Austell, Ilkley and Sharp’s – thank you so much to all of you and I hope you approve of the below menu.

Sorry for the lack of pics but it’s darker than Satan’s armpit in the Café and I was VERY busy in the kitchen! I will however be posting some of the recipes soon, especially the Belgian-style fish & chips, because that was ACES!.

Pork Quavers with British Bacon Dust & Black Pudding Won Tons
paired w/Harviestoun Schiehallion in Champagne Flutes

Mini Cone of Belgian-Style Fish & Chips
paired w/Ilkley Brewery Green Goddess 

Pulled Pork Sausage Roll w/Winter Root Veg Coleslaw
w/St Austell Proper Job

Doughnuts with Fuller’s Black Cab Hot Chocolate for Dunkin’
w/Fuller’s Black Cab Stout

British Cheese Board
w/Sharp’s Quadrupel 

*If you have no idea what the hell the headline refers to, you’re either a) disgustingly young b) not from the UK or c) very old! I say this because it’s a play on the theme tune of one of my childhood programmes called Record Breakers, here’s the theme tune.

Sorry for the slightly rubbish photo, I was concentrating on my suet pudding that’ll be posted soon

Citra Mango Sorbet
Makes 1.5 litres of mango sorbet

Two large, very ripe mangoes, skinned and de-stoned (see here for the best way to prepare a mango)
Juice of 1 lime
160ml water
160g fructose (or 190g unrefined caster sugar)
80ml single-hop Citra beer

Quick beer note:
I used the gloriously divine latest @Sharpsbrewery Single Brew Reserve that uses Citra (which I’d describe being like as a subtly powerful hug from a tropical fruit-scented Honey Monster) but @oakhamales Citra should also work.

Warning however, it will come through more strongly and with slightly more bitter results, you might want to the test mix for its bitter/sweet balance before putting in ice cream machine or finishing by hand (remembering you’ll pick up bitterness more strongly when the rest of the flavours are surpressed by the cold temperatures).

1. Pop all the ingredients into a blender and blitz
2. If you want super-smooth results, pass through a fine sieve into an ice cream machine or just dump it in!
3. Set machine going, stop when you have sorbet!

Non-machine method, check out the lovely @felicitycloake method at the bottom of this lemon sorbet recipe which I’m going to try soon using something like Hopback Taiphoon or maybe my Asian-inspired @otleybrewingco collab Thaibo when it’s re-brewed later in the year!

Wings worth getting in a flap about (sorry, so sorry!)

But I’m sure wasn’t alone there was I universe?

Was I?

Hello?

Well, that’s the last time I use this blog as a form of therapy!

Anyway, putting my past issues of being a slightly too literal child aside, you might be wondering why I embarked on the slight faff of making wings in my own home when I could have headed out for some at one of the many new American-style joints that have sprung up around my fair city of London.

Well, there could be myriad reasons for this; perhaps it’s that I don’t want to try four or five potentially disappointing joints before alighting on the perfect wings, or that I have recurring paranoia of being seen with a Joker smile of hot sauce in public, or it could be that I’m scared I’ll revert to childhood and ask them where a buffalo’s wings are…

But, in all honesty, it solely revolves around the no-booking policy of most of these places, which means queuing… and I hate queuing.

There, I’ve said it; and I’m sure this has caused my extremely minuscule quotient of cool to completely and irrevocably tank but there we are.

Plus, the best wings I’ve had in London are at The Bull in Highgate, but it’s bloody miles away from where I live sadly. Not to mention that the owner, Dan Fox, has what I consider to be a very unreasonable stance combined with a certain lack of can-do attitude.

Why do I say this? Well it’s because he has repeatedly said he can’t just ‘pick up a brewpub and transport it from Highgate to south-west London’…

See what I mean, the man is wholly unreasonable! (Oh, I’m going to pay for that!!)

But, as usual, I digress, back to the recipe. I’d just like to make one point: whilst I adore heat in my food, if you want to smother these in face-numbingly hot sauce, save yourself the hassle & don’t bother with any other stage than just chucking the wings in a fryer, you won’t taste anything else anyway and you’ll waste a lot of time for negligible results.

Other than that, please alter as you wish but I think they’re pretty finger-lickin’, face-smothering, greedy-licious good as they are!

Beer & Buttermilk Buffalo Wings – serves 4
Just a quick note, most buttermilk I come across comes in 284ml pots and whilst the marinade calls for 250ml, you might be tempted to think ‘sod it’ and chuck it all in but you need 30ml for the blue cheese sauce so don’t get totally over-excited!

Marinade

20 large free-range chicken wings, jointed in half for ease of eating
250ml buttermilk
330ml Sharp’s Chalky’s Bite (or anything herbal and that’s low in bitterness, like Brasserie Pietra Colomba)
4tbsps Cajun seasoning
1tbsp garlic salt
3 bay leaves
1tbsp cumin seeds
1tbsp fennel seeds
1tbsp coriander seeds
Green tops from bunch of spring onions
Big handful of lemon (or normal) thyme
1tsp hot chilli flakes
1tbsp salt

Spiced Flour Mix
200g plain flour
50g cornflour
8tbsp Cajun seasoning
3tbsp garlic salt

Buffalo Sauce
175ml Linghams Chilli Sauce (I wanted a fairly subtle hot sauce, no point in putting all that work into the wings if you can’t taste the damn things!)
30g butter

Blue Cheese Sauce
30ml buttermilk
150g Gorgonzola picante – frozen (yes, seriously!)
1tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp pomegranate molasses
1/2 tsp white wine cider
1/2 tsp elderflower or cider vinegar
Little bit of cold water – you may not need it but keep it on the side

Other Stuff
About 2l groundnut oil to deep fry

To Serve
Four large carrots, chopped into chunky sticks
Four large sticks of celery, chopped into chunky sticks
Lots and lots of paper napkins or be a peasant like me and grab a roll of kitchen towel!

Marinade & First Cooking Step

1. Heat a large frying pan or wok gently on a low heat
2. Dry fry all seeds for 30 seconds, then chuck in rest of ingredients for another 30 secs
3. Remove from heat and pour in a little water to cool and deglaze pan, pop in a large non-metallic bowl and allow to cool
4. Once it’s cooled, add your beer & buttermilk & whisk thoroughly, it will smell a little funny, don’t worry it’s fine, add your chicken wings (top up with water to cover wings if necessary) and pop in the fridge for at least three hours, overnight maximum
5. When you’ve done with marinading, pour the lot into a large pot and warm until bubbles just start to break the surface, allow to cook like this for about 15-20 minutes; if you have a meat thermometer then the recommended internal temperature for chicken 73C or when juices run clear
6. Put on a cooling tray over a baking tray and pop in the fridge for the skins to dry until you’re ready to fry these little suckers! You can do up until this step the day before

Blue Cheese Sauce

1. Mix together all the liquid ingredients, except the water, you may not need it
2. Get your cheese out of the freezer at the last minute before you’re going to serve and, using the coarse setting on a grater, grate it into the wet mix and stir in every so often (why do this? because I think this is the best cheese for the dip but it’s a bugger to cut into a small enough chunks to get an even distribution through the sauce and it tends to just sink to bottom, this solves that problem)
3. Let down with a little water if you require a looser consistency, pop in fridge until needed

Cooking & Serving

1. Prep your carrots and celery, pop in a bowl of water and put in fridge, it’s essential they are cold and crisp
2. Warm large plates and prepare small individual bowls for blue cheese sauce for each person
3. When you’re ready, get plenty of groundnut oil heated up to 220C (I needed two litres) in a deep pot or fryer (caution, my wings spat oil like hell, deep pot and fry guard if you have one)
4. Whilst that’s heating, melt the butter for your buffalo sauce in a small frying pan and, once it’s melted, pour in your chilli sauce and whisk together, put pan on very low heat
5. Mix together the flour, Cajun and garlic salt in a large bowl, toss your wings in the seasoned flour, shake off excess and fry in batches of three or four wings, pop on cooling tray over a baking tray and pop in oven to keep warm, repeat until finished (watch oil temp doesn’t drop too low, wait in between fries a bit if you need to)
6. Once all wings are cooked, plate everything but your wings up i.e. carrot, celery & blue cheese sauce
7. Then take a large bowl and throw in your hot sauce, chuck in your wings, toss them very quickly and vigorously and pop them on plate and rush them to the table and enjoy getting sticky fingers!

Drink With:
To my mind this calls for a big pale ale made with Nelson Sauvin hops. So, Thornbridge Kipling, Kernel NS Pale Ale or even something like the Mikkeller Single Hop NS if you can still get it (not sure TBH). Alternatively, anything big and tropical will do nicely, perhaps an Oakham Green Devil.

You know you want to!

Just wanted to alert you to the fact that I’m going to be doing a week of beer and food matched dinners at various Young’s pubs around the capital – and as an added bit of blackmail, it’s my birthday week, so please give me the present of your company!

A list is below and you can find more information under the Beer Events Calendar section but it’s a series of events I’m really looking forward to, I’d love to see as many of you there as possible.

You’ll get a goody bag at the end of each event with a unique beery recipe card of my co-creation with each pub, as well as some other fab surprises, so don’t miss out! Each event starts at 7pm.

Duke’s Head, Putney 23rd October

******Waterside, Battersea 25th October (feel free to raise a glass to my actual birthday at this one!) Sorry this is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances but stay tuned for the reschedule, we’re switching up the format to something super-fun! *****

Dial Arch, Woolwich 26th October

Leather Bottle, Earlsfield 28th October

Plough, Clapham 29th October

The Grange, Ealing 30th

Well, what a week that was. GABF is over and done with for another year and I’m already pining for the next one.

Not very far from the madding crowd!

I was going to write a long post about the GBBF vs GABF but the lovely Mark Dredge (@pencilandspoon) has already done most of the leg work for me, so I can mainly concentrate on a couple of my GABF highlights instead!

But before I do, I wanted to just make a quick point about the further differences I see in the US vs the UK.

First and foremost, this is not to denigrate the huge efforts CAMRA makes to get beers into the GBBF and to make the whole hoopla happen, it’s a massive undertaking, done mostly by volunteers – that’s immense – I am actually airing these suggestions in the hope that CAMRA members might take them forward to help stop at least a few of the brickbats that are aimed at them being lobbed in the first place!

I know I am very much NOT alone in having a problem with the lack of transparency around how GBBF beers are selected and/or entered for judging; to me it’s still a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a conspiracy.

And, having been sent the actual guidelines for how beers get to GBBF, I’m not sure I’m any the wiser on how it actually happens, I’ve posted them at the end if you’re interested!

Although I appreciate I am not a CAMRA member, for journalistic ethics reasons, which means I have little right to a say… but I would like to put my penn’th worth in about it because I feel it’s a very confused system for consumers and brewers and needs more transparency.

We all have leanings towards things, it’s natural, we are only human but the ales that are entered into GBBF are too shrouded in mystery and I think it gives the CAMRA nay sayers more even more ammunition than they already fire.

I’m not saying that paid-for entries like at GABF is the panacea, I think I’m just one of many that would like to see more clarity in the practices around the GBBF entries and, again, it would put a lot of the ‘chosen by CAMRA’s inner cabal’ accusations to bed too

I would also echo Mark’s comments on the complete lack of reason in the layout of GBBF; this year’s event left me baffled, bemused and extremely frustrated, the bar names were worse than useless and even though I have perfect eyesight, getting close enough to figure out which beers were on which bar was a struggle I gave up early on.

This was doubly frustrating because I studiously avoided Bieres sans Frontiere this year in an effort to support and sample more British beers – that’s not a criticism of anyone who did visit it, your festival, your choice – it was a self-imposed directive and one which I now regret.

It was also only the fact that I was looking for my Ilkley collab, Siberia, that led me to the fact that there was an upstairs at the event! There were signposts to the moon (seriously!) but not to the upstairs bars, that’s just madness people!

The other point Mark made about allowing brewers to serve their beer is extremely valid, and again this is not to bash the incredible volunteers who give up their week to work GBBF, but there’s a better level of professional expertise needed as cask is a much more contrary beast than keg.

Just as a couple of examples, I was served a beer that was extremely acetic and shouldn’t have been, when I raised it with the volunteer serving and suggested it was taken off I got the response ‘no one else has complained’ before they huffily emptied my glass and, without asking, or even rinsing, refilled it from another tap with a beer I didn’t want – not great.

Not to mention I was beyond stunned to hear from several sources that the last barrel of Siberia wasn’t put on because of ‘concerns about fruit flies in the heat’ – thoroughly disproving the phrase ignorance is bliss.

All of that said, I still embrace and adore GBBF and hope I always will, but I know it is beginning to pall for others (see http://www.beersweden.se/archives/10788 for just one example).

However! I’m not getting into the debate here in relation to GBBF and keg.

Why?

Because, quite simply, until CAMRA is mandated by its members to serve ‘craft keg’ (or however you wish to define it) at its beer festivals there is nothing the people at CAMRA head office or the organisers of the GBBF can do about it.

If you want keg there that badly, join CAMRA and effect change from within OR if you’re a CAMRA member, stop sitting on your bum in a Wetherspoon’s spending your vouchers and get to some branch meetings – help stamp out practices like fellow members emailing great breweries who sell both keg and cask telling them to ‘drown in their own keg swill’.

Aaaaaaanyway, before I bring a massive shower of proverbial down on my head – and after writing more than I meant to – here are just some of my highlights of GABF 2012:

The Beers – in no particular order:

1. Lost Abbey Track #7 (@lostabbey)
   This was a beer take on Sangria and hit the mark better than any wine-based
   

   Tomme Arthur with what can only be described as a Kenneth Williams-esque expression!

   version I’ve ever tried, had all the big fruit and red wine flavours but a smoother acidity and less agressive nose, well done guys

2. Destihl St Dekkera (@Destihl)
   These guys were my find of the World Beer Cup two years ago and they still don’t disappoint! Balanced sour flavours with just a hint of the barrel ageing, scrumptious! (Although looking on the website I hope they get rid of some of the slightly questionable pump clips, it’s a much classier operation than that IMHO).
3. Bull & Bush GPA grapefruit pale ale – from cask! (@BandBManBeer)
   

   Erik & a very tired and make up-free Melissa in Falling Rock on Sunday

   I have not only fallen ever so slightly in love with Erik Peterson, who is simply lovely and delivers awesome cuddles, but the GPA is nectar from the gods for a session beer-loving Brit in the US. Despite not liking grapefruit much in its raw form, this pithy, perfectly pitched and balanced citrus supping beer is like someone took Hophead and put it through a Randall with grapefruit peel in it – simply divine!

4. Dogfish Head Positive Contact (@dogfishbeer)
   This is a beer and cider hybrid and it totally rocks. An ale brewed with Fuji cider, slow-roasted farro, a bit of cayenne and fresh cilantro – TERRIFYINGLY drinkable for 9% and is juicy, rounded and with just enough chilli warmth that you know it’s there but it doesn’t burn your taste buds off.
5. Elysian Brewing Maelstrom Blood Orange (@elysianbrewing)
   There’s a bit of a theme developing here isn’t there! However, unlike grapefruit, I love blood orange and I nearly wept with joy when I tried this beer! It’s almost smoothie-like in its consistency, without being in any way too heavy or cloying. It reeks (in a good way) of that distinctive blood orange aroma and tastes of it too, with a little earthy hop undertone that just sends you to heaven.
6. Odell Meddler (@OdellBrewing)
   Once again the gorgeous Doug Odell comes up trumps! Meddler is his take on an
   

   Doug Odell is one of nicest men in industry, I swear that’s why his beers are so good

   Oud Bruin and, dare I say it, may have actually out-Belgianed the Belgians with this one. Cleaner than the average Belgian bruin, but not losing that slight funk that makes them such fun on the tongue, it really is one to seek out.

7. Ska Autumn Mole Stout (@skabrewing)
   The boys at Ska are hilarious, mad as biscuits, and this beer reflects that – but in a good way. Normally a bit wary of chilli in beer, especially when made by fairly extreme beer brewers, I was pleasantly surprised at the very savoury and quite balanced nature of this ale. You can taste all the ingredients: cocoa nibs, spices; Mulato, Ancho and Hatch green chiles – and there’s also a slightly bacony edge to it all too. Definitely one to try, although I’d probably not have any more than half of one with someone else, I really liked it.
8. Avery Uncle Jacob’s Stout (@AveryBrewingCo)
   Well, this nearly did for me at the rare beer tasting I went to. On the upside I had a nice chat with Adam Avery before I drank it (and went for food and a little lie down!). Sinfully dark, epically decadent and very, very boozy – in a good way – this is one hell of a barrel-aged stout. Tobacco, espresso, chocolate, oak, bourbon, vanilla, resin, rose – I could go on but my brain shut down at that point and said: ‘just shut up and enjoy’. So I did.
9. 3Floyds Baller Stout (@3floyds)
   I love this beer, every time I try it, it just gets better and better and better! Stupidly rich, it smells like someone made a Malteser of the most expensive malt powder ever seen with the finest dark chocolate known to man and then floated it on god’s own espresso.
10. Crooked Stave Persica (@crookedstave)
    As refined as a pinky elevated from the finest bone china teacup, Persica is a beer
    

    Keep an eye on www.crookedstave.com – you WILL hear more about these guys

    I could drink all day long. If you imagine a grown-up Pecheresse, one that’s stopped being so cutesy and developed more of an edge and you’ll be there. Stunning, simply stunning.

The Judging
Once again bravo to the staff of the Brewer’s Association (Chris Swersey & Nancy Johnson in particular) and the magnificent brigade of volunteers who make it all happen. This year they were all mourning the loss of Danny Williams, who was the powerhouse behind the organisation of the beers at judging for countless years and a genuine sweetheart, but I’d like to think he was sitting on his beer cloud looking down and being intensely proud of the fact that this year’s event ran smoother than a baby’s bottom! In my experience anyway, hope everyone else had as good a time.

And, of course, the quality of the beers was extremely good. I got some new categories to me to judge this year, as well as some familiar ones, and the standard even in the first rounds was, on the whole, very good.

The Company
There was a much larger contingent of Brits this year, which was lovely, but I also got to judge with some truly fantastic people, many of whom I subsequently met for beers around the place. Every year I visit I make new friends whom I hope to socialise with for life, the atmosphere is so epically collegiate I consistently feel humbled.

I also have to say sorry to Geoff Larson of Alaskan and Todd Ashman of FiftyFifty for being the meanest judge captain ever, you took my British humour with the pinch of salt it was meant and we got the job done very well I think – thank you the rest of the table and everyone I was lucky enough to judge with over the three days too, you were all fantastic professionals!

A massive special thanks to the wonderful, fabulous and utterly inimitable Cheryl & Chris Black, as well as Beth and all others at Falling Rock Taphouse for my book signing – thank you so much for squeezing me into what I know is a mental schedule that week.

Big love also goes to Fuller’s for providing the beers (and to Brains for trying to so valiantly, I hope Denver is enjoying them anyway now!) and, of course, to the gorgeous Jonathan for helping me serve them.

And of course all the drinking crew – Brad, Glenn, Andreas, Will, Steve, Nick, Dorber, Bill,

Very, very naughty boys!

Derek, Megan, Jeff and anyone else I’ve forgotten to name right now, you know who you are, love you all!

So, that’s it for now, unless you need some ‘light bedtime reading’ in which case the CAMRA CBOB explanation is below – if you get it, please explain it in words of one syllable to me!

A spokesperson said: ”We have conducted a full review of the performance of Animée Beer and have taken the decision to exit this brand from the market in line with key customer range reviews.

“Molson Coors remains committed to continuing to innovate as one way we’ll add value to our customers’ business and build the beer category.

“However, not all brands are successful in market and it’s important we invest in growing brands where there is a great proposition that works well for our customers and our consumers.”

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that there’s been a simply enormous amount of celebrating going on at Cole Towers upon hearing this news, along with plenty of laughing and a rather unedifying amount of schadenfreude too.

But, despite the fact that I’d happily dig a big hole to bury any remaining stock with my own two hands, there’s also a serious side to this, and it’s that I hope Molson Coors and other big brewers, like Carlsberg which launched the equally doomed Eve, have learnt their lesson.

But I won’t hold my breath.

You see the mind-set of the big brewer is that there HAS to be a way to create a brand that acts like a silver bullet to fix all that they’ve broken over the last 40 years.

But instead of utilising brands with heritage and provenance, like Worthington White Shield or even Boddingtons or Bass which is where the market has been heading for last 10 years or so, there’s this frantic desire to ‘innovate’.

Which I find an immensely baffling point of view, and one that leads me to wonder at times how some of these people run a bath, let alone a business.

The numbers are very clear that craft beer is where the category is making its biggest gains, not just in attracting women but also a much younger demographic.

Personally, I strongly believe it’s because, as a community and an industry, artisan beer engages with its consumers on a very personal basis.

I understand that it’s easier for them to do that, but I also think that a lot of the success of the craft sector is that most of the brewers don’t tell people they should be enjoying their products, they just encourage them to do so – come one, come all, if you like tasty stuff!

It’s very much the approach of: “We’ve got all these flavours to play with, you might like some but, hey, if you don’t, just hang out, it’s cool…”

Rather than advertising campaigns that make it clear that if you aren’t ‘in the gang’ then you’re simply not cool and you never, ever hear about the key flavour characteristics, unless it’s something like ‘crisp’ or ‘refreshing’.

Although, in fairness that’s because when you talk about something like Corona you’re probably not going to tell the truth and say: “It’s like a bouncy castle farted in your bottle” or possibly just “Clear glass, because the beer simply isn’t worth it”.

And of course there’s Carling Zest… and they aren’t alone, San Miguel has bought out Fresca, which is basically the same thing…

Which also brings me to the second part of the statement and where my general suspicion that there is more patronising clap trap on the horizon comes from:

“Animée was only one part of our plan to attract more female drinkers to beer, and attracting female drinkers remains a priority to get the category back into growth. We’ve found that some of our brands, such as Coors Light, Corona and Carling Zest, already attract a higher proportion of female drinkers.”

Argh! Look, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, light and, having tried both the Carling Zest and the Fresca I can confidently say, nastily flavoured beers are not the way forward!

Firstly, how can any of these big international companies, not see that they are permanently painting themselves into the same corner, again and again?

This type of beer does not engender brand loyalty – by its very bland and inoffensive nature people will flit from brand-to-brand dependent on price promotion and availability in-store or in-fridge.

And nor does it have any depth of complexity or interest, that makes it into a stepping stone into the wider world of beer, where intensity of flavour, artisan values and a geniune engagement with the consumer like they are intelligent happens (Psst, I mean like Sharp’s, that you paid £20m for… just in case you’ve forgotten about them down there!).

Which leads me onto my second point, Corona and Carling are also not the types of beers that are going to encourage many of the 28.3 million people who regularly drink wine in the UK to swap their grapes for some grain.

Put simply why would these consumers, who are drinking high-alcohol, complex products with bagfuls of aroma and flavour, want to dumb down to brands that are either thin, watery, inappropriately packaged in clear glass or ‘with a hint of natural zest’ – or all of the above?

Have you looked at the wine market by any chance? It took me five minutes on the phone to the very pleasant and helpful Natasha at Wine Intelligence  to discover that of the 28.3million people who regularly drink wine, which is 58% of the population it’s 49% male vs 51% female, which is also a direct reflection of the population’s make up.

I would hazard, on the opposite side of the coin from taste and flavour, that this has more than a little to do with the fact that apparently it’s extremely rare that wine brands will do gender-specific marketing and that it has learnt that it rarely works when it’s been tried on an overt scale.

So, are we going to see more ‘female beer’ nonsense in the future? I think the answer is sadly yes.

But maybe it at least won’t be the second largest beer producer in the country, which I hope has sat down and had a stern talk with itself about the meaning of irony after the marketing director said of the launch of Animee “it’s important when launching a female beer not to be too patronising”.

No one likes to be pigeon-holed… it’s not a gender specific thing, it’s just self-respect.