I remember my first trip to the US. In 2002 I headed for San Francisco, with plans to see Las Vegas, San Diego and Los Angeles. I had no idea what kind of beer I might find, but I knew there was a scene brewing there.
I did my travelling, visiting several brewpubs in a few cities, and for the first time, drank beers that were mental with hops. Hops that British brewers didn't seem to use. Cascade, Amarillo, Centennial... Brewpubs in Vegas casinos, restaurants in San Francisco, bars in San Diego. Walk around a bit, be a tourist and these places eventually revealed themselves to me. No interwebs, no insider info.
And when I got home, I can remember waking up in the middle of the night, having DREAMED those big West Coast IPAs. The hops haunted me, gave me some kind of synaesthetic wake-up call that stayed with me and stays with me now.
There was a year or two when it all got unimportant. Then I drank Great Divide Titan at The Rake, and I fell in love with those big IPAs all over again. Moving a few years on, the British beer scene has watched and adapted, and now in London, I can drink Brodies or Kernel, their interpretations of those superbly hoppy IPAs impress and delight me. Hops prevail and our own brewers have caught the wave.
#IPAday is a superb way to catch the wave around the world. One day to capture a global experience spanning years and continents. Why not. I've been drinking variations on the theme all day, and I'm going to pop a Kernal Citra IPA open once this is posted. Job done. For today. I won't be reporting on my IPA drinking tomorrow but it'll be there next week, next month and next year.
Showing posts with label kernel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kernel. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Monday, 1 August 2011
One Summer Morning In Bermondsey...
To the Kernel to rack off my 50th birthday beer, where I find the arch interior undergoing some minor demolition and Dominic Driscoll from Thornbridge watching wort recycle. These two events are unrelated.
worty saison; Dom watches a sci-fi nightmare come true
Dom is down for GBBF, but takes the opportunity to pop in with some saison yeast for Evin, so a new beer codenamed 'Saison De Dom' is about to be run off into the copper. I am there to help out with the bottling of the beer Evin has been putting together for me. It's a raspberry porter using some of his superb Export India Porter as the base beer. The beer has been sitting on a bed of lightly mashed working-class raspberries for a month.
I chat with Dom, asking if he misses the hands-on small-scale experience now he's playing with a 30-bbl computer-controlled plant. He says not, though as he doesn't have a hop monkey to sort out the additions while he sits on the bridge and pushes buttons, he still gets up close and personal with his ingredients.
As my beer is brought out and made ready for bottling, Charles Faram and one of his team arrive. They're also down for GBBF, and are popping into a couple of South London customers to talk hops and other things. Evin produces some of his latest Citra-hopped IPA. I've been drinking this, and reckon it's the best Citra he's done so far. Just the beer for a warm morning.
boggle's birthday beer - soon, my pet, soon...
A sample of my beer is drawn and measured with a hygrometer. It's tart. Very tart. I'd wondered if the residual yeast in Evin's porter would be able to cope with the fermentables in the raspberries, and it turns out there's probably still quite a bit to attenuate out. We agree that a few bottles with different levels of priming and reseeding should be incubated to ensure either the beer doesn't remain flat (it's a bit listless right now), or become 'bottle bombs'. Hopefully we'll know by the end of the week, so I should have the bottles in good time for the Big Day.
How do you get a bottle? Rather than receive birthday presents, I'm aiming to give them away. If I see you and know you, you'll get one (while stocks last, though I don't think I know that many people...) But, here's a chance to WIN WIN WIN! Study the first picture above and tell me who you think that is with their backside hanging out of the Kernel's copper. First correct answer will get a bottle.
worty saison; Dom watches a sci-fi nightmare come true Dom is down for GBBF, but takes the opportunity to pop in with some saison yeast for Evin, so a new beer codenamed 'Saison De Dom' is about to be run off into the copper. I am there to help out with the bottling of the beer Evin has been putting together for me. It's a raspberry porter using some of his superb Export India Porter as the base beer. The beer has been sitting on a bed of lightly mashed working-class raspberries for a month.
I chat with Dom, asking if he misses the hands-on small-scale experience now he's playing with a 30-bbl computer-controlled plant. He says not, though as he doesn't have a hop monkey to sort out the additions while he sits on the bridge and pushes buttons, he still gets up close and personal with his ingredients.
As my beer is brought out and made ready for bottling, Charles Faram and one of his team arrive. They're also down for GBBF, and are popping into a couple of South London customers to talk hops and other things. Evin produces some of his latest Citra-hopped IPA. I've been drinking this, and reckon it's the best Citra he's done so far. Just the beer for a warm morning.
boggle's birthday beer - soon, my pet, soon...A sample of my beer is drawn and measured with a hygrometer. It's tart. Very tart. I'd wondered if the residual yeast in Evin's porter would be able to cope with the fermentables in the raspberries, and it turns out there's probably still quite a bit to attenuate out. We agree that a few bottles with different levels of priming and reseeding should be incubated to ensure either the beer doesn't remain flat (it's a bit listless right now), or become 'bottle bombs'. Hopefully we'll know by the end of the week, so I should have the bottles in good time for the Big Day.
How do you get a bottle? Rather than receive birthday presents, I'm aiming to give them away. If I see you and know you, you'll get one (while stocks last, though I don't think I know that many people...) But, here's a chance to WIN WIN WIN! Study the first picture above and tell me who you think that is with their backside hanging out of the Kernel's copper. First correct answer will get a bottle.
Monday, 20 September 2010
London Brewers Strut Their Stuff
I'd previously referred to the nascent London Brewers Alliance. Being based in London, with a finger on the pulse of the beer scene, the good blogger has been tracking the development of this initiative, and indeed it has been subject to a good deal of interest in the trade. I, on the other hand, found out about it when I tried to send prime mover Phil Lowry a birthday greeting via Facebook.
Phil is a Renaissance Man of Beer. His day job, Beermerchants.com has been busy encouraging the UK spoogebeerian to empty their piggybanks with his enticing range of quality craft beers from around the world. He has also 'til recently been found making productive use of the brewery plant at Brew Wharf, drawing plaudits for his (and his associates') interpretations of the New Craft Beer, turning that venue from a restaurant that sold overpriced bottled beer, to a destination bar for interesting and drinkable cask beer.
He's opened himself to beer movements elsewhere, principally the craft brewing guilds located in some of the US beer hotspots, and he decided that London needed something similar to nurture the resurgent London brewing scene. He got a bunch of brewers around a table, got himself a nifty logo (left), and lo, The London Brewers Alliance was born.
Like London itself, the Alliance is a diverse and cosmopolitan group. Members include Fuller's, who brewed almost a quarter of a million barrels in the last year; Meantime, Sambrooks and Twickenham; brewpubs such as The Florence, Brodie's and the long-established Zero Degrees in Blackheath; and recent start-ups like Kernel Brewing in Bermondsey, Camden Town Brewery, and there's a seat for the craft brewers of tomorrow who currently express themselves as the London Amateur Brewers. There are brewers from London, Austria, New Zealand and elsewhere.
From top left: meta Phil Lowry; London Amateur Brewers; Lizzie & Jackie Brodie; meta Camden Town Brewery; Simon Siemsgluess (Zero Degrees) & Evin O'Rioirdain (Kernel); John Keeling getting down; Rabid Bat Fly (geddit?); I'm not stalking Mark Dredge - honest; two responsible licensees
The Alliance hopes to see an inaugural London Beer Week in Spring 2011 (New York's is next week, San Francisco has one in March), but in the meantime, they met their public on Friday 17 September at the London Brewers' Showcase, hosted by Brew Wharf in their impressive Upper Hall. A special collaborative Alliance London Porter was brewed at The Redemption Brewery in Tottenham, and 35 firkins will be available to the on-trade. Fullers have five, and are deciding which of their pubs will have it, says Head Man John Keeling.
I'm not going to bang on about the event itself at any great length. The general point is that there is now a body that isn't representing special interests or protecting a type of dispense. It's a body that will allow the new and young brewers to network with the established producers, and vice-versa, to hopefully find new markets for their products and reinvent a brewing tradition that might have stagnated, the way London has always reinvented itself, by attracting talent, ideas and energy from elsewhere. British brewing, London brewing, is patted benignly on the head by some of our overseas friends. Garrett Oliver is the most recent commentator to declare himself "disappointed". But we are opening up to new ideas, and when they eventually express themselves more widely, it'll be as a fusion of their ideas and our tradition, and London will be at the front!
Phil is a Renaissance Man of Beer. His day job, Beermerchants.com has been busy encouraging the UK spoogebeerian to empty their piggybanks with his enticing range of quality craft beers from around the world. He has also 'til recently been found making productive use of the brewery plant at Brew Wharf, drawing plaudits for his (and his associates') interpretations of the New Craft Beer, turning that venue from a restaurant that sold overpriced bottled beer, to a destination bar for interesting and drinkable cask beer.
He's opened himself to beer movements elsewhere, principally the craft brewing guilds located in some of the US beer hotspots, and he decided that London needed something similar to nurture the resurgent London brewing scene. He got a bunch of brewers around a table, got himself a nifty logo (left), and lo, The London Brewers Alliance was born.Like London itself, the Alliance is a diverse and cosmopolitan group. Members include Fuller's, who brewed almost a quarter of a million barrels in the last year; Meantime, Sambrooks and Twickenham; brewpubs such as The Florence, Brodie's and the long-established Zero Degrees in Blackheath; and recent start-ups like Kernel Brewing in Bermondsey, Camden Town Brewery, and there's a seat for the craft brewers of tomorrow who currently express themselves as the London Amateur Brewers. There are brewers from London, Austria, New Zealand and elsewhere.
From top left: meta Phil Lowry; London Amateur Brewers; Lizzie & Jackie Brodie; meta Camden Town Brewery; Simon Siemsgluess (Zero Degrees) & Evin O'Rioirdain (Kernel); John Keeling getting down; Rabid Bat Fly (geddit?); I'm not stalking Mark Dredge - honest; two responsible licenseesThe Alliance hopes to see an inaugural London Beer Week in Spring 2011 (New York's is next week, San Francisco has one in March), but in the meantime, they met their public on Friday 17 September at the London Brewers' Showcase, hosted by Brew Wharf in their impressive Upper Hall. A special collaborative Alliance London Porter was brewed at The Redemption Brewery in Tottenham, and 35 firkins will be available to the on-trade. Fullers have five, and are deciding which of their pubs will have it, says Head Man John Keeling.
I'm not going to bang on about the event itself at any great length. The general point is that there is now a body that isn't representing special interests or protecting a type of dispense. It's a body that will allow the new and young brewers to network with the established producers, and vice-versa, to hopefully find new markets for their products and reinvent a brewing tradition that might have stagnated, the way London has always reinvented itself, by attracting talent, ideas and energy from elsewhere. British brewing, London brewing, is patted benignly on the head by some of our overseas friends. Garrett Oliver is the most recent commentator to declare himself "disappointed". But we are opening up to new ideas, and when they eventually express themselves more widely, it'll be as a fusion of their ideas and our tradition, and London will be at the front!
Thursday, 5 August 2010
GBBF: The Evolutionary Spirit*
*With apologies to legendary scouse combo, The Wild Swans
My one day out to GBBF 2010 was the Trade Day. It's changed a lot since I first went in 2000. Then, you had a lot more trade attendees - crisp and snack sellers, hospitality trade businesses - who would check in for the Tuesday afternoon to schmooze with decision-makers then disappear like Wills o'the Wisp before Joe Cask turned up. Brewers and brewery bigwigs showed their faces, bought one another a beer, maybe collected a gong off Roger Protz, and were gone.
A few years back, Trade Day changed. I think it changed as Bieres Sans Frontieres, the GBBF foreign beer bar, changed. The word was out about US craft beer, and canny drinkers and their sutlers, the RB and BA types, knew they could find beer that wasn't coming to Britain outside of the fest. Scandinavia and Japan, The Netherlands, all got in on the act, making BSF the most interesting place to drink. The upshot was that, from opening time on Day One, there were punters in.
These days, you don't see any hospitality tradespeople, and the brewers are the faces of their breweries to increasing numbers of regular drinkers. I think that's a good thing, generally. Shepherd Neame have evolved their space into a brewery 'experience' with brewers on hand to chat about using new hops. There were also plenty of London-area Sheps managers in attendance. Wells & Youngs shared the Boggle 'best tee shirt' prize for their Eagle IPA shirt, along with the striking Moor Brewing shirts. Skinners sent the Falmouth Marine Band to accompany their singers, and the irrepressible John Keeling was generous with his time and the Fullers expense account. He also launched Brewers' Reserve No. 2 and all proceeds from this week's cask sales will go to charity.
Zak Avery and Glyn Roberts have offered their own views. Glyn's is telling, to me. He notes the number of events timed to coincide with GBBF. I've commented before about the effectiveness of Cask Week, which doesn't have a focal point. I suppose if you could take GBBF on the road and give other UK cities the chance to make a week-long festival of it, then we'd be on to something.
CAMRA's GBBF organising team have tinkered with the layout of the bars, but Earls Court is a very defined and constraining space which hampers any significant layout changes. I personally found the new 'alphabetized by region' bars confusing, though I do like the theming. The big change is that BSF now has a whole bar 'island' more or less to itself (it's sharing with glasses this year). The US/RoW bar appears to be the single longest bar in the place, and this year they have 80 casks of beer and fridges full of bottles, some of which are recent arrivals to our shores.
This growth is supported by the US Brewers' Association Export Development Program under the stewardship of Bob Pease. Remarkably, the UK is currently their second biggest market after Sweden, but they are seeing room for big growth, and they are able to smooth the path for subscribing members who want to export, to take advantage of US government and logistical help. Bob says that plenty of brewers are interested, and that he is taking back requests to US brewers like Russian River. When I see what an umbrella body like the BA can deliver for their members, it does prompt a rueful smile. Interests in UK brewing are so splintered and sometimes opposed, that developing something like this seems a long way off. Having said that, a representative from UK Trade & Investment was there. Hopefully he can push at some open doors...
From Left: Doug Odell & Steve Holt; Bob Pease & Martin Hayes from Cask; Don Burgess;
Matthew Waldron, UK Trade & Investment
The CBoB announcement was a bit of an anti-climax, but there was a first gold medal for Thornbridge Jaipur in the Strong Ale category. Once again, no love for Dark Star Hophead, which has never even medalled here. I can't believe there are three better Golden Ales on the day, but it happens most years. What do I know? Castle Rock's delicious (but not as delicious as Hophead) Harvest Pale won CBoB for the second time.
I leave you with this. A snap of the coming wave in British brewing. In shot you have two CBoB gold-medal winning brewers in Mark Tranter from Dark Star and Kelly Ryan of Thornbridge, while standing to my right was Evin O'Riordain of SIBA-winning Kernel Brewing in London. Justin Hawke of Moor Brewing won silver in the Bitter category for Revival, David Bailey of Hardknott (site under construction) and Dominic Driscoll from Marble Brewing are brewing interesting and desirable beers while Phil Lowry attracted my attention here with his efforts at Brew Wharf. These brewers are seeing increased demand, two of them have seen their breweries triple in size, and they are innovating and doing all the things that UK brewers aren't supposed to be capable of. Seek out their beers!
David Bailey (Hardknott), Dominic Driscoll (Marble), Mark Tranter (Dark Star), Kelly Ryan (Thornbridge), Phil Lowry (brewing at Brew Wharf), Justin Hawke (Moor Brewing)
Edit: Thanks to Kelly Ryan for putting names to faces!
My one day out to GBBF 2010 was the Trade Day. It's changed a lot since I first went in 2000. Then, you had a lot more trade attendees - crisp and snack sellers, hospitality trade businesses - who would check in for the Tuesday afternoon to schmooze with decision-makers then disappear like Wills o'the Wisp before Joe Cask turned up. Brewers and brewery bigwigs showed their faces, bought one another a beer, maybe collected a gong off Roger Protz, and were gone.
A few years back, Trade Day changed. I think it changed as Bieres Sans Frontieres, the GBBF foreign beer bar, changed. The word was out about US craft beer, and canny drinkers and their sutlers, the RB and BA types, knew they could find beer that wasn't coming to Britain outside of the fest. Scandinavia and Japan, The Netherlands, all got in on the act, making BSF the most interesting place to drink. The upshot was that, from opening time on Day One, there were punters in.
These days, you don't see any hospitality tradespeople, and the brewers are the faces of their breweries to increasing numbers of regular drinkers. I think that's a good thing, generally. Shepherd Neame have evolved their space into a brewery 'experience' with brewers on hand to chat about using new hops. There were also plenty of London-area Sheps managers in attendance. Wells & Youngs shared the Boggle 'best tee shirt' prize for their Eagle IPA shirt, along with the striking Moor Brewing shirts. Skinners sent the Falmouth Marine Band to accompany their singers, and the irrepressible John Keeling was generous with his time and the Fullers expense account. He also launched Brewers' Reserve No. 2 and all proceeds from this week's cask sales will go to charity.
Zak Avery and Glyn Roberts have offered their own views. Glyn's is telling, to me. He notes the number of events timed to coincide with GBBF. I've commented before about the effectiveness of Cask Week, which doesn't have a focal point. I suppose if you could take GBBF on the road and give other UK cities the chance to make a week-long festival of it, then we'd be on to something.
CAMRA's GBBF organising team have tinkered with the layout of the bars, but Earls Court is a very defined and constraining space which hampers any significant layout changes. I personally found the new 'alphabetized by region' bars confusing, though I do like the theming. The big change is that BSF now has a whole bar 'island' more or less to itself (it's sharing with glasses this year). The US/RoW bar appears to be the single longest bar in the place, and this year they have 80 casks of beer and fridges full of bottles, some of which are recent arrivals to our shores.
This growth is supported by the US Brewers' Association Export Development Program under the stewardship of Bob Pease. Remarkably, the UK is currently their second biggest market after Sweden, but they are seeing room for big growth, and they are able to smooth the path for subscribing members who want to export, to take advantage of US government and logistical help. Bob says that plenty of brewers are interested, and that he is taking back requests to US brewers like Russian River. When I see what an umbrella body like the BA can deliver for their members, it does prompt a rueful smile. Interests in UK brewing are so splintered and sometimes opposed, that developing something like this seems a long way off. Having said that, a representative from UK Trade & Investment was there. Hopefully he can push at some open doors...
From Left: Doug Odell & Steve Holt; Bob Pease & Martin Hayes from Cask; Don Burgess;Matthew Waldron, UK Trade & Investment
The CBoB announcement was a bit of an anti-climax, but there was a first gold medal for Thornbridge Jaipur in the Strong Ale category. Once again, no love for Dark Star Hophead, which has never even medalled here. I can't believe there are three better Golden Ales on the day, but it happens most years. What do I know? Castle Rock's delicious (but not as delicious as Hophead) Harvest Pale won CBoB for the second time.
I leave you with this. A snap of the coming wave in British brewing. In shot you have two CBoB gold-medal winning brewers in Mark Tranter from Dark Star and Kelly Ryan of Thornbridge, while standing to my right was Evin O'Riordain of SIBA-winning Kernel Brewing in London. Justin Hawke of Moor Brewing won silver in the Bitter category for Revival, David Bailey of Hardknott (site under construction) and Dominic Driscoll from Marble Brewing are brewing interesting and desirable beers while Phil Lowry attracted my attention here with his efforts at Brew Wharf. These brewers are seeing increased demand, two of them have seen their breweries triple in size, and they are innovating and doing all the things that UK brewers aren't supposed to be capable of. Seek out their beers!
David Bailey (Hardknott), Dominic Driscoll (Marble), Mark Tranter (Dark Star), Kelly Ryan (Thornbridge), Phil Lowry (brewing at Brew Wharf), Justin Hawke (Moor Brewing)Edit: Thanks to Kelly Ryan for putting names to faces!
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