Beer Compurgation

On Twitter the Beer O’Clock Show runs a weekly Hopinions poll to tie in with their weekly podcast show. The discussion this time seemed to have quite an understandable premise – “What do you consider to be the best Unsung (or under-hyped) British breweries?” The plan was to take people’s suggestions and then divide the most popular answers into four separate polls (that I assume was to accumulate in a final winner-takes-all poll.) Whilst asking for suggestions most people seemed to be happy to give opinions and go with the flow. Poll Number One emerged with the first four breweries suggested by the majority being Arbor Ales , Brew By Numbers , Buxton Brewery and Wylam Brewery . It was here where people’s opinions changed into anger and the poor podcasters were heavily criticised for the whole facade.   After some rather ridiculously nasty comments started emerging (more on that at the end) they decided to axe the entire poll; much to my disappointment as I ...

The more that we see beer enter the mainstream psyche the more that those around need to come up with new braggadocio tactics and techniques. The beer sellers need a niche and a marketing tactic. The beer drinkers need an angle to make their repetitive social media beer reviews stand out from the same photo filtered iceman beer pornography shared a thousand times. And we’ve found the answer: unfermented hop water. Somewhere we lost our way. Somewhere we pushed through the 22 mile pain barrier, made it to the finish line but forgot to stop running. We fixed the problem but went too far, like Father Ted trying to tap out a dent in a motor vehicle. Freshness became an issue. It became the talk of the town. The imported beers weren’t getting here quick enough and then were sitting on the shelf for years. We were drinking overhopped IPAs 18 months after they were bottled. We improved. We improved our import markets. We started cutting out Swedish or Dutch distributors. We had...

In what has become one of the most written about subjects amongst beer communicators for a long while I am going to follow on with my own thoughts about cask beer. Yet these ideas are formulated from potential posts I've been writing the odd paragraph about for around 18 months but never managed to construct into something relevant.  I have much to say on the subject; so much so that rather than making this into one enormous read I've split it into three sections regarding the current trends and effects on cask beer as I see it.  Today I look at what retailers can do with cask beer Part 1 can be read here Part 2 - here Away from the town centre, under the subway that tunnels beneath Huddersfield’s ring-road and opposite odd circular brick towers, lays a pub that's interior seems born from an odd Jim Henson and Terry Pratchett collaboration. The walls are aligned with witches, puppets, nudes and odd creature busts possibly slain from ...

In what has become one of the most written about subjects amongst beer communicators for a long while I am going to follow on with my own thoughts about cask beer. Yet these ideas are formulated from potential posts I've been writing the odd paragraph about for around 18 months but never managed to construct into something relevant.  I have much to say on the subject; so much so that rather than making this into one enormous read I've split it into three sections regarding the current trends and effects on cask beer as I see it.  I start with my first part focusing on the breweries following this week's much discussed announcement.    The Latest Cask Departure It's Sunday 11th December 2016 and I'm rounding off an afternoon out in Leeds with good friends in Friends of Ham, New Station Street. Despite a varying range of delightful looking styles and breweries on the bar, most of our group are focused on a 3.9% Cloudwater Pale Ale on c...