BEER AND PRESENT DANGER

[beerandpresentdanger]

Something in the Water

These fragments are all culled from a larger piece of work about beer, family, place and memory that is still fermenting somewhere in my head. I was inspired to finally put out a flight of snippets in response to Boak & Bailey’s #BeeryLongReads2020 challenge

* * *

Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God’s ways to man.

A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

* * *

The first sip of a pint of ale made in Burton upon Trent can be off-putting to a newcomer. There’s something intangibly difficult about it, a shrugging note of unpleasantness that many find unsettling - a mineral toned, brackish kind of scent, that most immediately brings to mind sulphur; that distinct, diffuse, almost rotten egg character that you find in the water of towns that marketed themselves as spas, and once sold their healing properties to gullible Victorians with chronic nerve conditions.

Connoisseurs have a name for it, likening it to the fleeting sensory overload of an old-fashioned match being struck in a dark, draughty room. 

They call it “The Burton Snatch”.

* * *

My father’s family have always lived in Burton and its surrounding villages, nestled among the hills and valleys between Staffordshire and Derbyshire. My great-grandfather was a farmer and a money-lender, who kept a cast iron safe in the living room with a lace doily and a bowl of fruit on top. He would open it up on Sunday evenings to take stock, counting out the large paper notes on his scrubbed wooden table while the rest of the family looked on.

My grandfather, Jimmy, was a promising football player who did a stint with Burton Albion, before going into business in the town, setting up Farrington’s Furnishers in two large units on the Horninglow Road. It was the kind of traditional, rambling shop that doesn’t exist much anymore - a haphazardly laid-out assembly of sofas, beds, dressers and wardrobes, tables, chairs, footstools and chests of drawers. At the back, there was a room full of rolls of carpet, piled high to the ceiling. My father and his brothers were playing there when the news came over the radio that JFK had been shot.

* * *

Brewing has happened in Burton for centuries, but the process really began millennia ago, when the substrata of the Trent valley settled with deep deposits of sand and gravel, a unique and serendipitous combination of minerals that built the foundations for everything that was to follow. An unusually high concentration of sulphates from the gypsum, coupled with healthy reserves of calcium and magnesium and low levels of sodium and bicarbonates, meant that when springs eventually burbled forth from the land around the river, the water had its own particular and unique character, a distinct presentation that the French might call “terroir”.

Beer-making started in earnest when an abbey named Byrtune was raised on the banks of the Trent, and the brothers did as all good monastic orders did, growing their own crops, raising their own livestock, and brewing their own beer. Over the centuries, the reputation for the region’s fine ale grew and spread, until the secret could no longer be kept.

When the canals came to Burton they made it into a city of industry and empire. Tentacle-like, capitalism stretched and unfurled its penetrating waterways across, through and over Albion’s gentle hills, bypassing the wild weirs of the Trent’s natural descent, domesticating the landscape and bringing uniformity, neatness, and standardisation to what was a tangle of disparate places and processes. By the middle of the 18th century, the Trent Navigation had been connected to the Humber, to the mighty Mersey, and down through Birmingham to the Grand Union, and suddenly, Burton was now a central hub functioning as part of a single network that ran throughout the country and onward, through its bustling ports, to Europe, Russia, and all points beyond. 

* * *

Once their children grew up, my grandparents also left for the continent. Nearly every summer holiday of my childhood was spent visiting them in Portugal. Their home, known only as “The Villa”, was an idyllic place, where my brothers and I learnt to swim, where the smell of barbecue smoke lingered over every evening, where the coarse Mediterranean grass hurt our feet when we tried to play football on it. When I was young, I only really knew my grandparents in this sunlit, bright blue light - tanned, shortsleeved, wearing hats. Their accents may have been rounded and roughened in the heart of England, but their very essence to me was more exotic, more glamorous, more European.

Some of my first memories of drinking come from those summer holidays. Sips of pungent sea-dark wine, acidic and overwhelming; a sample of gin and tonic, bitter and medicinal with a gasping clarity; and of course, beer - not ale, nothing my grandfather would touch - but lager, cold and crisp and gassy, a fleeting glimpse of adulthood.

* * *

Beer, like everything else in a free market of money and ideas, has been subject to fashion and changing tastes, and it was a fashion for pale ales that truly put Burton on the map. With the proliferation of the waterways, hops from Kent and barley from East Anglia could make their way to Burton where, combined with the local water, they were turned into a revelatory, and wildly popular beverage.

Breweries proliferated throughout the town. At its peak, more than 30 rival businesses competed for space, ingredients, and workers to keep the kettles boiling and grain mashing. Burton became the brewing capital of the world, home to emblematic firms like Bass, which by 1877 was the world’s largest brewery. Its famed pale ale was so acclaimed and copied that the distinctive red triangle that adorned its labels became the UK’s first registered trademark, a mark of its singular quality.

* * *

Even when my grandparents lived abroad, Burton still pulled my family to it. Christmas called us back year after year, or Boxing Day at least, catching up with uncles and aunts and first and second cousins, some removed, to sit in sitting rooms in front of three-bar fires, eating ham cobs, drinking flat Schweppes lemonade, watching World’s Strongest Man on the television. The arresting vision of a large man pulling a tractor down a runway or throwing a washing machine over a wall would be accompanied by the sound of adult chatter, long-delayed catch-ups on weddings, births, and especially deaths - distant relatives and long-lost school mates, old girlfriends with cancer scares, run-ins with the police.

One uncle, who worked in a brewery like a true Burtonian, kept terrapins. I would gingerly feed them sunflower seeds, holding my hand above the dark waterline of the cramped tank, waiting for the vicious snap to emerge from the depths. “Pedigree doesn’t travel well,” he once told me, referring to a renowned local bitter. Some things cannot leave Burton behind.

* * *

Burton’s skyline doesn’t have church towers, it has fermentation vessels. Over the decades, as companies have merged, collapsed, consolidated or been taken over with some hostility, the name on the side of the largest set has changed, so that what drivers on the bypass see reflects whatever corporate overlord assumes feudal control in that particular age.

In the middle years of the twentieth century, brewing, like many industries, saw the white hot intensity of competition eliminate all but the largest of breweries. Experts will tell you that the beer suffered along with it, accompanied by punitive taxation from the government and a nannying attitude to pubs and drinking, the hangover of Victorian prudishness being enacted by the grandchildren of those who first envisaged it. Tastes changed under the weight of global pressures, and ultimately, Burton lurched along with them, becoming, through a complex web of corporate exchanges, the brewing site of Canadian brand Carling Black Label. 

In the ensuing decades, Carling would become the UK’s best-selling beer, a “domestic” rival to the traditional European lager brands that dominated in Germany, France and Denmark. The attritional battles left their marks on Burton though, as closures and collisions shuttered various facilities and churned through generations of workers, leaving tracts of vacant space even in the centre of town. Coming off the train now, you overlook the whole of Burton, and get the sensation of standing in the middle of a vast and scattered industrial facility, where smokestacks and grain towers overpeer gritted-teeth terraced houses, pockmarked shopping streets and vacant lots.

The make-up of the town shifted too. In the middle of the Midlands (Burton is linguistically and administratively part of the East Midlands, but geographically in the West Midlands) the town received its fair share of immigration. A town my grandparents knew as almost entirely white and Christian is now almost 10% Pakistani Muslim - a thriving community of teetotallers, in a town famous for its beer.

* * *

My grandparents celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary in 2014, flying back from Portugal to hold a party at the National Brewery Centre in the middle of Burton. It was a lovely evening, with a large cake and lots of happy stories, relatives and friends I’d never seen before and would never see again. After an early finish, my cousins and I went to a pub, drinking pints of milk-smooth ale, before ending up in a small, loud, nightclub playing cheesy pop hits. The next morning, hungover, I walked with my parents to Stapenhill Cemetery to stare at the headstones of ancestors I had never met.

* * *

There is a popular documentary series on the BBC which sees celebrity costermonger Gregg Wallace visit various sterile facilities around the UK to witness firsthand how automation and mechanisation has changed food production. Each episode has him walking through eerily empty factories, vast and cavernous spaces where robotic production lines operate 24 hours a day, speaking to the remaining human operators who exist now as mere caretakers, there to tend and nurse the machines like temple virgins, dressed in hairnets instead of togas. It is an uncanny sight. Every installment inevitably begins with drone shots, hovering silently above the landscape, showing the immense scale of these conurbations, raised in places where land is invariably cheap and generations of people have been bred into cycles of tireless shift work. But the workers are not needed any more. Efficiency has eradicated the need for fleshy points of failure.

Now, Gregg can skip through the barren hallways, silent save for the harmonic hum of perpetual machinery, flashing his blinding white overalls and quoting mind-boggling statistics about the weight of crisps the average British child eats in a year. Various natural products are ushered in off the backs of lorries and railway carriages, fed along whirring conveyor belts and pumped through pneumatic tubes, before being baked, frozen, cut, dried, soaked, dessicated, rehydrated and reformulated into whatever bland final product can now be ejected out into the world, via shipping containers and along motorways, all to sit on a supermarket shelf before making an appearance in your cupboard, a moment on your table, and a lifetime rotting away in some far-off landfill.

It was inevitable that Burton’s MolsonCoors brewery, the home of Carling, would get its chance in the spotlight. The programme highlighted the noble history of brewing, from its pre-modern farmhouse days, when fermentation was practically a shamanic ritual, to its domestication and commodification, where each step in the process was refined and perfected, to where we are now, when every aspect has been exactingly costed and painstakingly budgeted to ensure maximum productivity, and maximum profit, with minimal ingredients, energy, or intervention. There has been a backlash to this macro-attitude, of course - “craft beer”, an ill-defined, equally co-optable movement that alludes to provenance, quality, care, and a confused sense of heritage, has become a big business in its own right, backed by venture capital and crowdfunding campaigns - but industrial brewing is still the fixture in the firmament, the thing that keeps the lights on.

When one of the few remaining humans showed Gregg the tiny, almost homeopathic quantity of hops that would add a semblance of bitterness and aromatic flavour to a lake-sized vat of Carling, it felt almost like a knowing wink - look at what we can get away with - one made safe in the knowledge that their beer will still pour in nearly every pub and take up the most shelf space in corner shops and petrol stations across the country. Of course they’ll get away with it. They’ve always got away with it. They will sell us beer with barely a sense memory of taste in it, and we will literally lap it up.

* * *

My grandfather died in hospital, in Portugal, after an indeterminate period of undramatic but gradually worsening health. His four children took turns flying out to spend time with him and their mother in the hospital, sitting by his bed, holding his hand, finishing the crosswords he was no longer able to complete.

He was cremated there, but a memorial service to remember his life was held in Burton on a crisp, February day a few weeks later. Alighting at the railway station, I watched steam from the breweries crowd the startlingly cold air, while waiting for my parents to arrive and drive us the ten minutes to Rolleston Cricket Club where the small gathering would take place. On the way, we drove up Horninglow Road, past what was once Farrington’s Furnishers, now Zielona Żabkal, a Polish supermarket. We got there early and spent some time setting up, arranging the folding tables and stackable chairs, hanging up photos, and laying out some mementos of my grandfather’s happy life - a table tennis bat, some puzzle books, a golf club, his familiar white hat.

I was tasked with approving the beer for the day. There were two casks of Bass on the bar - one which had been there a few days, the other tapped that morning. “I’m a lager man,” the bartender told me, so I tried both to see which was in form. The first had the faintest tang of vinegar that suggested oxidation, a beer that was at the end of its life, drowning in the air around it. The second was lively, enthusiastic, a little overly keen and overripe, but would settle down through the afternoon as the long goose-necked pump poured pint after pint for the guests who shuffled in, in suits and raincoats, shiny shoes and walking sticks, to pay their respects. Everyone told stories. I read a letter on behalf of my cousin, working on the other side of the world. We drank many, many pints of Bass in good nick, then when we were finished, we went to a pub, and drank many more.

When I had to catch my train back to London, I staggered back through the freezing night, to find that the town was mashing in - somewhere in the vast floodlit breweries, a switch had been thrown and malted barley was being soaked in that famous hot water, and the streets were being filled with the scent of porridge and healthy, earthy grains; a warming, nostalgic tide that overflowed down the road and spilled through the centuries; riding, falling, on the biting cold air.

[beerandpresentdanger]

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Almost Certainly Do Again

A lot of people die on cruise ships.

Some - a worryingly large number in fact - fall overboard, though this is a relatively rare occurrence in the grand scheme of things. A few will suffer freak accidents. Then there are those that just disappear, into the gap left by millions of square miles of desolate ocean and the vagaries of international maritime law.

But most just die of natural causes. A lot of people who go on cruises are old, and many aren’t in particularly good health. Give them an extended period of overindulgence and a melting-pot of germs, and it’s only natural that some will go out in style. Every cruise ship has a morgue tucked away on the lower decks, somewhere between the laundry rooms and the mighty engines.

A lot of it will be down to booze. People really go for it on cruises. Most operators offer all-inclusive drinks deals, which, given the price tag, only encourage you to push the envelope (given the price, you generally have to drink at least eight to 10 drinks a day to make it value for money, if not more). Nearly every cruise ship has a plethora of drinking establishments - pool bars, piano bars, ersatz pubs, cocktails joints, people who come around to your lounger and offer you drinks, 24-hour room service. There are plenty of passengers who step off dry land and don’t get dry again until they leave. And why would you? You’re on holiday. Treat yourself.

So how does that square with Disney and their family friendly, squeaky-clean public image? You never see Mickey looking half-cut. In fact, Disney doesn’t even offer drinks packages on its cruise ships. But I didn’t let that stop me.

In fact, almost as soon as I boarded the Disney Magic on sun-blasted Miami morning in December, I was thinking about beer. My wife had joined a Facebook drink dedicated to our sailing, and found an old hand who organised a beer swap event for every voyage he was on (this was his tenth, as it turned out. Disney fans are nothing if not loyal). Disney’s policy lets you bring six beers on board for personal consumption, but the swap event encouraged you to share your haul on a table in the night club, then take it in turns to draft a new six-pack from the combined spoils. With most people bringing stuff that was local to them, it actually turned out to be a great way to sample new things - I took a bunch of Due South Caramel Cream Ale (a Florida brewery’s eyebrow-raising flagship) and came back with cans from Modern Times, New Belgium, Odell and Avery - a haul I couldn’t help but be impressed by.

In fact, despite the abstemious impression the House of Mouse gives off, there was better beer on the boat that initially met the eye. While the main bars offered beers for every taste - Bud Lite OR Miller Lite - the “Irish” pub, O’Gills, where I hung out to watch a disappointing NFL game, actually had an impressive list for a venue floating somewhere south of Cuba- Orval, Ayinger Celebrator and Saison Dupont to name a few.

I also had my reserve stash - ie, the six-pack my wife was allowed to bring on board, but had kindly gifted to me. The issue was when and how to drink it. Feeling self-conscious - and somewhat gauche - about glugging from a bottle of Dogfish Head BA Worldwide Stout, I found that the ideal solution was to decant it (let it breathe, if you will), into a styrofoam coffee cup, lid optional, or else the plastic cup that my daughter’s apple juice was served in at dinner. In that way, I was happy to pass the time on deck, lounging by the pool and watching whichever Disney classic they played on the big screen (a grim reminder of how many shipwrecks there are in Disney films), or indeed, in the cruise ship’s own cinema, enjoying a New Holland Dragon’s Milk while rolling my eyes at the Rise of Skywalker.

On shore, the options were a bit less intriguing. Apparently there is a “craft” brewery on Grand Cayman, but the only beer I ended up with on the island was Caybrew, the local lager, a musty, sweaty, earthy beer notable for its distinct lack of refreshment on a sweltering Caribbean day. On Castaway Cay - Disney’s private island, a former drug baron’s hideout that has been sanitised and dynamited by the corporation into a tranquil, tropical resort, the only options are macro lagers and gaudy cocktails with fruit and parasols and terrible pun names. If you want to drink good beer, you have to provide it yourself, but at least they let you.

David Foster Wallace famously decided that cruise life probably wasn’t for him, but he never had imperial stouts. He also didn’t have Goofy doing laps of the promenade deck in jogging gear, or a party night themed around pirates (which seemed in very bad taste - pirates are the natural enemies of sailors. It’s like mice having a cat party). Perhaps he would have thought differently if Rapunzel had serenaded him during dinner.

As for me, I’m already planning out my six pack for the next cruise. Some heavy stouts, some supercharged IPAs. Lots of flavour, lots of booze, but nothing too outrageous. I want them to be strong, but I don’t want to go overboard.  

[beerandpresentdanger]

Well-known Pleasures

I used to drink a lot of Boddingtons at university, and I have no idea why.

I drank a lot at university generally. It was where I went to my first ale festival and fell in love with beer, but it went beyond that. I drank a lot of red wine at the formal dinners that made up a regular part of Cambridge social life (typically everyone would have got through a bottle each by the time starters were finished, thanks to the stupid habit of throwing pennies in each other’s glasses - a challenge to down it that couldn’t be refused - forcing a run to the bar as soon as dessert was done). I drank a lot of white wine at smart events like poetry readings and debate nights (societies were only allowed to supply white - red posed too much of a risk to carpets). I drank port for the first time, an acquaintance I was happy to make and have remained familiar with. I drank a curious concoction called Trinity Blue at all the terrible termly “bops” - vodka, Archers, blue curacao and lemonade is my dim memory of the ingredients, though you would typically remember very little the morning after. In short, I drank everything that came my way, and for reasons unknown, that included Boddingtons.

It may have been that it was on sale in college. As well as the bar, there was the buttery, a kind of booze-led tuck shop that mainly supplied reasonably priced wine for formals (it is said Trinity has some of the finest wine cellars in the country, though I’ve since seen most of the selections in Waitrose), but also did beer - Budvar, for sure, and Boddingtons, possibly. The main appeal of this was that you could charge it to your college card and deal with the actual bill at the end of term, which of course meant I used it most days. Free beer! Who could resist?

It’s not even like Boddingtons was a popular beer back then. It was many years removed from the popular Melanie Sykes adverts that branded it the “cream of Manchester”, and some time after the famous adverts featuring the cartoon cow - a male cow, somehow - udders swinging free, hanging out in nightclubs and supping pints. It was even years after it was namechecked, bizarrely, in an episode of Friends, as a highlight of Joey and Chandler’s trip to the UK. Boddingtons is even less popular now - no cows, no Mancunian models, no national ad campaign at all, and on sale in my local Co-op for £3 for a four-pack. So I had to revisit it.

I wondered once why the UK didn’t seem to have an equivalent of National Bohemian, or Narragansett, or Genesee, or Hamm’s - regional lager brands that are local, cheap, and deeply held in people’s affections. Britain has never been a lager nation in the same way, so if we did have our own version, it would have to be an ale, and I wonder if something like Boddingtons might come closest. It’s demonstrably cheap, has a deep sense of place, and the kind of memorable, if vintage branding that gives drinkers a nostalgic fondness for it.

The other thing those American beers have in common is their flavour, or lack of it - they’re straightforward, crisp, satisfying lagers - unchallenging, indistinct, but enough. Boddingtons is different though. I always used to think there was a slight honey sweetness to it, though now I wonder if that was just a weird sense association thanks to the bees on the can. Now I find more of an earthy dryness that I would associate with a Manchester bitter, but also flavours that seem out of place if not flat out wrong - a tinge of banana, a metallic edge - signs of a product that seems somewhat tired and unloved. The whole thing is served with that mini miracle of modern engineering, a widget, flooding the beer with nitrogen and giving it the milky softness that earned it the cream of Manchester tag in the first place, and giving it that tight cuff of off-white head that is undeniably inviting. It’s old school. It’s unfashionable. It’s not great. But it’s also somehow slightly comforting and not entirely unpleasant. The four cans are a fine nostalgia trip, and all for cheaper than most bus tickets.

I learned a lot at university - literary theory, reams of Shakespeare, basic Italian - all things I’ve mostly forgotten. But when facts go, tastes remain. And nostalgia is the sweetest of flavour of all.  

[beerandpresentdanger]

Arm in Arm

In Cardiff, on Westgate Street, there are two pubs that are, given good technique and a fair wind, literally spitting distance from each other. And yet, despite their physical proximity, it sometimes feels like they couldn’t be further apart.

One pub, Tiny Rebel Cardiff, is the expansive taproom of the popular Welsh brewery. Built in the modern craft beer vernacular - exposed brickwork, band posters, giant TV screens with up-to-the-minute taplists - there’s an accompanying food menu which is a teenager’s fever dream of American diner classics (the pork belly burger was incredible), while it also plays host to gigs and comedy sets as well as slinging pastry stouts and hazy IPAs.

Over the road is the City Arms. A de facto tap for the venerable Brains brewery, it’s a wood-panelled, sticky-tabelled kind of joint, with pump clips above the picture rail and a mix of old black and white photos and cartoons of dubious political correctness on the walls. The beer list here is almost as comprehensive as its neighbour, but with a focus on cask, particularly Brains classics like SA and Revered James.

I stopped into both last Sunday, a strange morning to be in Wales, where the Rugby World Cup loss had left a mild pall in the mid-morning air, offset only by the startlingly sun-filled October sky. In the City Arms, I ordered a pint of SA, a perfect Malted Milk biscuit of a pint, served via a sparkler - proof, if it were ever needed, that Wales is spiritually Northern (I will die on the hill that the dividing line runs from the Severn Estuary to the Wash). With bright blue light steaming in the condensation-fogged windows, and men in red shirts already struggling to keep balance alongside the well-scrubbed bar, it was a moment of such striking clarity, such simple pleasure, that I wondered why I ever bothered drinking anywhere else. Yes, there’s the small matter of living 200 miles away, but a good pint of bitter - one that makes you instinctively go “Ooh, that’s good” after the first swallow - is a remarkably persuasive thing.

Over in Tiny Rebel, I wanted to try as much as possible, and I did - a passable lager with a disconcerting peanut note, an opaque pale ale with an acerbic citrus edge, a synthetically sweet imperial stout. There was nothing necessarily wrong with these beers - and they were obviously popular with the crowded lunchtime tables - but each one left me thinking about the bitter over the road, the trad ale I’d drunk so thoughtlessly as a teenager and neglected for so long.

Am I getting old? Am I just being contrary, or needlessly nostalgic? Was I just seduced by a shaft of sunlight and a familiar flavour? Is it just because the City Arms is name-checked by my favourite band?* I think it’s all of these things. The shock of the new is beginning to wear thin - now I’m digging deep in the back of the cupboard for thick, cable-knit sweaters, the kind that can keep you warm in any weather and last a lifetime along the way.

And yet, I’m glad that these two places can co-exist, offering different things to different people, but both showing the range and the moods of beer today. They’re not necessarily opposites, they complement as much as contrast.

They take turns living in the other’s shadow, depending on the time of day.

*Baby I Got the Death Rattle by Los Campesinos!

[beerandpresentdanger]

A Swift Half

“I never stopped loving you” reads Tracey Emin’s semi-legible, always familiar neon scrawl across the face of Margate’s tourist office. But someone did. You only have to walk down the half-shuttered high street, or stroll along the seafront past the tattered arcades, to feel like the place has been generally neglected, dejected, overlooked. Even on a sunny day, there’s something melancholy in the salt air, and it doesn’t feel like there are many sunny days in Margate anymore. The story of the British seaside is a story of decline, and it’s a story that is etched in the sands and worn into the seawalls here; but Emin isn’t the only one that’s been trying to overwrite it.

There’s the Turner Contemporary, a small but perfectly formed art gallery hunched overlooking the grey steel Channel. Then there are the very good coffee shops and yoga studios, restaurants and galleries that have sprung up in the Old Town, like the Turner put down roots which began to sprout and flower throughout the neighbouring streets. There are shops that sell nothing except succulents and expensive notebooks and replica Eames loungers. There’s a shell grotto, a hard-to-explain curio that might be an ancient pagan temple or a bored Victorian’s idea of a joke. There are lots and lots of pubs. Maybe it’s just because Brighton got too expensive, but things are happening in Margate. They don’t call it Shoreditch-on-Sea for nothing.

Of course, I’m attuned to enjoy this kind of thing. I’m DFL - Down From London, on the fast train from St Pancras - and it’s hard to escape the feeling that all these things have been designed for passing trade like me and not for those who have been settled on the Isle of Thanet for generations. But the seaside is a transient place that changes with the tides, and if once they came for windbreaks and sticks of rock, now they can come for abstract expressionism and single origin Ethiopian roasts.

One thing that locals and interlopers alike can agree on is the value of a good pint. This is Kent of course, a homeland for hops, and even if the bines and oasthouses don’t extend out into marshy hinterland here, their spirit does. Margate has become a hotbed of micropubs, those mono-roomed dens of real ale and real chat, and all the ones I passed were crammed to the rafters with a wide range of people quaffing away.

I’d hoped to sample a few micropubs, but a combination of two factors - bad weather, and a day-long trip to A&E after our jaunt to Dreamland funfair turned into a nightmare when my daughter slipped and cut her head (no lasting damage, thankfully) - meant we only really had time to drink in one place. 

Night Swift used to the Margate outpost of The Bottle Shop, the bar, off licence and beer distributor which collapsed in March. I’d been a regular at the Bermondsey branch, which is apparently on its way to becoming a new Beer Hawk (ABI) venue, but in Margate, a team of former staff have taken it over and kept the same premises, same atmosphere, and most importantly, the same love of great beer, and turned it into a new independent venue. 

It was perfect. Whether hiding from a gale howling off the sea, or tending to a bandaged and sorry-for-herself toddler, Night Swift was the perfect place to sit and sip. Hazy ales from Pressure Drop, saisons from Burnt Mill, and 10 Apple Stout, a 12% imperial stout aged in calvados barrels from Pohjala and To Ol - it was a haven, a paradise, the bar at the end of the world.

So take the train, venture down the estuary and see the true eastern edges of this country, this isle at the fringe of our island. There are arcades and art galleries, bingo halls and boutiques, postcards and pubs. One pub in particular.

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside.  

[beerandpresentdanger]

The It Crowd

“I used to be with it,” Abe Simpson once pronounced, “but then they changed what it was. Now, what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me. And it will happen to you, too.”

I’ve been thinking about “it” a lot recently. It’s only natural that The Simpsons, the foundational text of my youth, would possess somewhere within its multitudes this perfect expression of losing “it”. The older I get, the less with it I increasingly become, and the more questions I begin to ask of it. “Is this it?” The Strokes once asked through the filtered ennui of their debut album. Is this it, I now ask myself. Is this it? Is this?

One group of people who know what it is are the swollen and sunburnt residents of ITV2’s Love Island. Like most of the rest of the nation, I’ve become addicted to their escapades - Curtis’ drama school theatrics and creepy youth pastor energy, Tommy Fury’s leonine proclamations, Lucie’s desperate attempts to make the expression “bev” catch on. It is central to these people. It has literally become their catchphrase this season: “It is what it is”. It Is What It Is has become everything to them, from a heartfelt bleat of resignation to a triumphant declaration of objective truth. It is simple to the point of banality yet it would take a philosopher volumes to unpack - the all-conquering expression. It Is What It Is.

On one level, of course it is what it is. It could hardly be anything other. X is what x is, y is what y is. What’s done is done, what will be will be, what it is, it is. For good or for ill, the thing is always itself. Best to just accept it. Missed the bus? It is what it is. Missed a penalty? It is what it is.

But there’s also something affirmative and positive about it. When other things have misled or deceived, when something has turned out not to be what you thought, don’t despair - it is what it is. It has permanence. It has consistency. It will never let you down.

And then we come back to Abe and his sage old words. “Then they changed what it was”.

What Carlsberg was, was a known quantity. It was reliably one of the cheapest lagers available. It was domestic strength but with continental branding. It was nice green cans and snappy slogans you could quote in conversations. It was rarely anyone’s first choice. It did the job.

But they changed what it was, from “head to hop”. They admitted, shock horror, it probably wasn’t the best beer in the world. They committed to changing its recipe, rebranding it as a “Danish Pilsner”, focusing on quality and not just price. It it what it is. But apparently it is not what it was.

Trying to describe the flavour of new Carlsberg feels a bit like trying to interpret the phrase “it is what it is” - a circular exercise, infinitely self-referential, with no beginning and no end. Have you had a mass-produced lager before? It tastes like that. It’s inoffensive, broadly subtle, not sweet enough to count as cereal or biscuit, not bitter enough to bring to mind herbs or astringent grassiness. It doesn’t contain fruit or funk. It’s just dry enough to encourage the next gulp. It is pleasant enough in an absent-minded way, without pushing me to say it’s good, exactly. Is it better than it was?

As noted philosopher Thomas Furious would say, with a shrug and a smile: it is what it is.

[beerandpresentdanger]

Spain Relief

One of my favourite pastimes - and I’m aware this might sound strange - is walking around foreign supermarkets. If pushed between visiting a local attraction - a castle, say, or a particularly well preserved Franciscan priory - and a large branch of Carrefour or Pingo Doce, then I’ll choose the second option every time. There’s something fascinating in the uncanny differences between supermarkets abroad and supermarkets at home. Walkers becomes Lays. Dairy Milk becomes Milka. Everything seems broadly familiar and yet profoundly different at the same time, a small vision into the life you would have lead if you’d only been born in Toledo or Nantes instead of Hull or Cirencester.

Nowhere are these differences more profound than in the beer aisle. Take Spain, for example, where I’ve just been. Instead of a the UK’s stacks of crates all trying to offer the lure of foreign exoticism - Belgian, Danish, French, Italian, Australian and all the rest, even if they all come from the same high-volume plants in the East Midlands - nearly everything in the Spanish supermarket traded on locality. Cruzcampo, Alhambra, Aurum - all of the big brands were from relatively close by. Add in the fact that you’re welcome to break up multipacks to buy as many as you like, and that they’re all diddy 330ml cans - well, it’s all too much to resist. So I brought them all.

I was thinking that I could provide accurate tasting notes of all them, but to be honest, there really wasn’t much to tell them apart. They were easy-drinking, low flavour, thirst-quenching adjunct lagers. At a push I maybe preferred Cruzcampo, but that might just be the Falstaffian figure on the can endearing me to it. But it doesn’t matter. At the low low rate of 22c a can (in the case of the charmingly retro Cordon Gard) it’s very hard to go wrong.

That’s not to say there isn’t excellent beer in Malaga. Like many cities, it’s got its share of “craft” offerings as well. We were in the area for a wedding, but spent two child-free nights in the city itself, taking in the tapas and some of the non-supermarket sights. It’s a lovely place. We strolled the Alcazaba, the palatial fortress dating from the era of Islamic rule in the city, where you sit by the tinkling fountains and overlook the harbour and the Mediterranean, almost imagining you can see Africa. We toured the Cathedral, a multifaceted jewel of the Spanish renaissance, where gargoyles shaped like cannon take aim at monstrous baroque altarpieces. We walked around the Bishop’s Palace, the only souls there aside from a team of bored security staff, admiring the painted wooden sculptures, a disconcerting bridge between classical marbles and Warhammer figurines. The city is small and mainly beautiful. Your shoes squeak on the shiny, polished stones.

There are a couple of well-thought of beer bars. Ceverceria Arte & Sana was the first we tried, which had a list featuring a couple of Spanish beers alongside Lervig, Pilsner Urquell and others. It was quiet in the early evening - the Spanish really do prefer to go out late - but I had a hazy, lactose-dosed NEIPA from Spanish brewery MALANDAR, and while it was a bit overly cloying, it made a nice change from endless lagers. Around the corner is Central Beers, a more open space with timber accents than brings to mind Barcelona’s legendary BierCaB, though the list doesn’t quite live up to it. It’s nothing to sniff at though, and I enjoyed a Basqueland Brewing What the F*** is DDH?, juicy and well balanced beer that went down well in the warm evening heat.

We also stopped in quickly at La Fabrica, a brewpub set up as the experimental arm of the aforementioned Cruzcampo (which is owned, ultimately, by Heineken). It’s an impressive space - almost eerily reminiscent of BrewDog’s enormous Tower Hill outpost, right down to the bleacher-style seating in one corner. Sadly the beer wasn’t worth sticking around for. I tried the inhouse pale ale, and, blindfolded, would’ve guessed it was Schweppes lemonade.

The single best beer I had was in El Pimpi, a Malaga institution, a rambling multi-roomed bodega full of nooks and crannies and an embarrassment of pictures of minor Spanish celebrities signing barrels (plus local hero Antonio Banderas). There, sat at one of the many bars, beneath a taxidermied bull’s head and an enormous painting of a rained-out corrida, I had a caña (and I am a complete convert to caña drinking - no more of this pint nonsense, give me either fleeting glasses of icy beer that disappear with a breath, or else a Maß I can get lost in) of Victoria Malaga, and it was just perfect - a slight malt sweetness, and a herbal hop finish, that combined with the setting and seating, I was ready to up sticks and settle down in the Costa del Sol forever.

All I need is a bar like that, and a really good supermarket.

[beerandpresentdanger]

Great Scots

Everyone in Edinburgh looks like a solicitor.

Something about the serious grey-black stone of the buildings, the weight of the masonry or the angle of the streets -  whatever it is, it seems to cast everyone in a suit and tie, smart glasses, a briefcase stuffed with case files and legal briefs.

It can’t be true, of course. Edinburgh is a bustling city, full of bus drivers, footballers, street sweepers and accountants - some solicitors, sure, but not nothing but solicitors. The solicitor thing is a mirage, a sense impression, a residual feeling that arises from the seriousness of the city - a city of statues and statutes, museums and monuments, colleges and kirkyards. There’s an elegance to Edinburgh, a certain refinement. Maybe that’s only shown off to tourists like me - Trainspotting would suggest that it’s not all Georgian architecture and Harry Potter tours - but there seems to a be a dignified streak that runs through the capital, as wide as the Royal Mile.

The Stockbridge Tavern

There are still pubs though. Some might have distilled the elegance of the city they inhabit, but lots are just pubs, a place beyond elegance, where what matters is proper patter - and beer of course. I had a couple of days in the city to try and explore some of city’s beer. For most of it I was accompanied by an energetic toddler, which did prove to be something of a spoiler. The first few places I tried to visit - on a sunspolied, taps aff Friday afternoon - didn’t allow children (I’m not writing this to complain - I understand why pubs may want to be child-free) so I had to skip a few spots through my compiled list of best places to drink in town. Thankfully, a place at the top of many lists - The Hanging Bat - was happy to let me stow a pushchair in the corner, and I was glad they did. A few choice lines of local cask ales and a DEYA tap takeover of the keg lines meant this was a fine place to spend some time. It’s cosier than your average modern beer bar, with deep red sofas and lots of wood - a nod to the city’s elegance, but filled with edgier delights.

Trekking back to the hotel, arcing around the city’s central cliffside, thrusting its castle aloft like Simba atop Pride Rock, I impulsively stopped at the Innis & Gunn taproom I passed. It’s been years since I drank their “barrel-aged” ale, though there was a time, pre-craft revolution, when I loved it. At the bar, I got drawn in by the tank-fresh lager, but I should have gone old school - the lager was bland, fizzy, freezing cold. I saw four-packs alongside Tennent’s in every supermarket, and I’d choose the Tennent’s every time (and indeed, I did). Still, they had high chairs, which I appreciated.

Fierce Beer Bar

A bit later, I was able to sample some places sans toddler, which gave me a slightly deeper appreciation for Edinburgh’s pubs. I got the range too, starting in the Stockbridge Tavern, a sunlit corner pub filled with a Friday night post-work crowd, a real mix of ages and genders and beverages crowded around well scrubbed tables and a bustling bar. I’d planned to drink local, but when I saw North’s Transmission on cask, a 6.9% west coast IPA, I couldn’t resist, and I didn’t regret my lack of impulse control. It was a proper “wow” pint, with huge citrus rolled around a subtle cask haze. I almost had a second, when I spotted a Cross Borders Heavy on keg, and knew I had to oblige - it was everything I expect a heavy to be, bristling with toffee apple brittleness.

I finished the evening with a quick visit to the newly opened Fierce Beer Bar in the New Town. A third of Barrel Aged Very Big Moose - 12.5% and wearing it well - was a lovely way to round out an evening, still warm and light enough to sit out past 9pm.

And so to Glasgow. It wasn’t until the train slunk through the city’s grey and rainy edgelands and the carriages began to fill up with men in green and white shirts that I realised it was a match day (Celtic and Hearts - plus a rugby game to boot), but luckily I hadn’t been planning to hit the pubs - or sit atop a traffic light getting cans lowered down to me. As it turned out, we couldn’t have gone out if we wanted - when we tried to walk into Shilling Brewing Co, we were met with another “no kids allowed” (as an aside - is Scotland particularly adverse to letting kids in drinking establishments, or is London the outlier in letting them in?)

The Wellpark Brewery from the Necropolis

For the first evening I sampled some supermarket staples instead, with a couple of Williams Bros beers. Joker, their IPA, was bland and unfocused - perhaps it had lost a little something on a warm shelf, perhaps it never had it. Caesar Augustus, their IPL, was a more intriguing affair, with a brash, grassy nose, and a pleasing floral flavour.

The next day, after wandering the coal-smoke scented galleries of the Kelvingrove museum, I popped into Grunting Growler (again, no kids allowed, except to watch me choose something from the fridge - Tempest Mexicake, a vat of red chilli flakes, powdery chocolate and moist sponge - to take away). In the end, it was BrewDog which was happy to host the whole family, and a pint of Zombie Cake, with it’s neat nutty nose, was a nice way to break the duck.

Scotland’s favourite beer

On the last day, we walked out to St Mungo’s Cathedral and the Necropolis, that glowering townscape of tombs that overpeers the beloved Wellpark Brewery, the source of every golden drop of Tennent’s. It was hard to imagine, on a rainswept day, watching the facility contribute its own clouds to the crowded sky, that the Necropolis didn’t have some strange relationship with the brewery; that the rain water didn’t flow down through the burial mounds and terraces, through the dark, stony earth, and into the deep, unseen spring that gave Wellpark its name, and impart something particular into the water - not just the minerals and nutrients and pH level, but a distinct spirit and character - the very atoms of William Motherwell and Archibald Douglas Monteath, Walter Macfarlane and Andrew McCall, all the authors and lawyers and engineers and explorers that made Glasgow and Scotland the engine of an Empire. They don’t put this stuff on the Tennent’s marketing copy, but maybe they should.

Nightmare of Cake

Escaping down the hill we took shelter in the Drygate Brewery, an offspring of Tennent’s and Williams Bros, focussed on modern beers alongside a good menu and comfortable taproom slash restaurant. It was an impressive set-up, and the beers stood up well for the most part. Crossing the Rubicon, an IPA, was an overly sweet candied mess, but the Seven Peaks session IPA was much better, dry, and with a peach-driven Mosaic character. But the real standout was my third “cake” beer of the weekend, Nightmare of Cake, a gloopy, unctuous mess of a beer, overstuffed with marshmallow and raspberry and milk chocolate and all things nice - “Made from chemicals by sick bastards” as the menu had it, and every ridiculous element from each corner of the periodic table only made it better.

Perhaps it had some dead Scottish solicitors in it too. The quest for pastry stout novelty continues.

[beerandpresentdanger]

What Fresh Hell

This is a tale of two beers. One American, one British; one bottled, one canned; one passable, one fantastic; most importantly perhaps, one old, one new.

At heart though, there is more that unites these beers than divides them. Both are hop-forward IPAs, and  both have built a reputation as modern classics. They’re both beers I’d be happy to choose when faced with an overwhelming taplist, or a crowded supermarket shelf. One is Bell’s Two Hearted Ale, and the other is Thornbridge’s Jaipur.

It was in January when I had my run-in with Two Hearted. It wasn’t my first - in fact, if pushed, Two Hearted would be one of my desert island beers. All Centennial, all action, it can be a sublime beer, a thunderous march of grapefruit and pine that blows away the cobwebs and clears the sinuses. That’s why, when I saw it on the shelf of a South Florida Target, I jumped at the chance to pick up a six pack of my old favourite. I did a cursory check of the date - barely a week old! - threw it in the trolley alongside a case of High Life and looked forward to the next few evenings.

But when I got it home and slumped down in front a hockey game, the familiar roaring notes of acidic citrus seemed dull and muted, like trying to listen to a pop song with your hands over your ears. It wasn’t bad, exactly, there was a syrupy sweet note followed by a rustic, earthy bitterness, but the edges were soft and rounded, its corners padded with woolen blankets and bubble-wrap.

I looked at the label again, and suddenly it made sense. It had been bottled in January, but the problem was, it was the previous January. What I thought was a week old, was a year and week old - I’d been caught out in the same way I used to write the wrong date on all my school work after the sprawl of Christmas. No wonder the beer was all wrong, I thought. No wonder it just seemed off.

Flash forward to this weekend. The Eurovision Song Contest. One of my favourite nights of the year, when I meet up with a bunch of old friends and settle in for a night of drinking and key changes and bondage gear (the Icelandic entry, not me and my friends). I grabbed some beers from the Tesco at the bottom of my friend’s block of flats to take up, and picked up two four-packs of Jaipur in that kind of “well I can’t take a case of Fosters, but I also don’t want to drop £50 in a bottle shop” kind of way that seems to crop up increasingly often.

Cracking it open ready to enjoy a simple glugging beer, I was stopped in my tracks, even before I took a swig - the aroma leapt out of the tin, a tuft of fruit salad chewiness, and the taste was perfect, part Nordic Fir and part marmalade shred, decidedly bitter but without being harsh or drying. It was sublime, a platonically good beer, and a perfect revelation when I’d expected merely fine. I checked the can - and discovered it was three days old.

I’ve never been a freshness truther before, in the same way I’ve generally been agnostic about cold chains and indifferent to food pairings. I’ve got no problem with other people being excited about it or preaching the good news, but if you hand me a pamphlet on it, it’s probably going to find its way into the bin before long. It’s not like I didn’t believe that fresh beer - especially hoppy, fresh beer - was better, it’s just that I’d never really had it so starkly demonstrated before. It was like a veil had been lifted. Suddenly, I was a true believer.

I don’t know if Tesco’s stocking process will mean beer this fresh is a regular on shop shelves, or whether this was one lucky find amid a sea of “shelf turds”. But it won’t hurt me to keep checking. When there are two beers on offer, I know for sure which one I want.

[beerandpresentdanger]

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Note to readers: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is presented as the memoir-cum-confessions of a maniac hiding behind the ominous pseudonym of Humbert Humbert. The other players and settings in the story have, we are told in a foreword by the briskly useful John Jay Jr, been masked with false names and re-ordered places, to protect those innocent parties “that taste would conceal and compassion spare”. The only true name in the book is its titular figure, Dolores, Dolly, Lo, Lolita; “her first name is too closely interwound with the inmost fibre of the book to allow one to alter it”.

As it is with poor unfortunate Dolores Haze, so it is with the pub that forms the topic of this piece. While I too would like to protect those who need it, the name of the pub is too central to what it is to keep it out, and in any case, as William Burroughs put it - perhaps there are no innocent bystanders. What I do need to say, though, is that this all happened more than a decade ago, in a small town far away, and if anything was ever less than legal, it was my fault and mine alone, and no single venue, landlord, management company or anyone else should be held responsible. What’s more, I’m sure that nowadays, this pub is an upstanding institution of great moral character, that has long ago shed any of the seedy connotations it carried back in the heady days of the post-Millennium. I wouldn’t know. I’m not going back.

***

Because I was a particularly nerdy 16-year-old, I asked my father’s permission to go out drinking for the first time. And, because I was a particularly nerdy 16-year-old, and there was in his view very little trouble that I could wind up getting into, he said yes. So, one Friday night, dressed in my finest shirt and shiniest shoes, we headed down town to a pub where my mate Will guaranteed we could get served.

We couldn’t. As it turned out, they’d been raided the week before by the police, who’d checked the IDs of all the furtive drinkers huddled in the back room, and given the owners a very stern talking to. As soon as we’d opened the door, a very large man with a very bald head asked to see our papers, and even though we insisted that we were just there to meet a friend, who was already sat inside, conspicuously avoiding our nods and waves, the door was closed to us, the merry lights glowing behind the bullseye panes of glass like the light Gatsby yearns for at the end of Daisy’s dock. It was slightly humiliating, but also, in some ways, a relief - what exactly were we going to do once we got inside? What were we meant to order? A whole pint of it? But something about the experience was scarring enough that we never tried to go back there again. I don’t even remember the pub’s name now, but it wasn’t long until it turned into restaurant serving British classics. It has mediocre reviews.

After this early setback, our drinking plans were scaled down. We knew we could have pints of gassy Cobra in the local balti house, but after one awkward evening where it was made clear we had to order main courses, not just keema naans, before we could have the beer, it was an expensive proposition for a boy on a dishwasher’s salary. If we wanted to drink in a pub, there was only one other option - the Doom.

The Horse & Groom, known locally as the Doom & Gloom, or just the Doom for those in the know, was that pub - the one in town with a reputation for serving any school kids who had the foresight to take off their tie and blazer. It should have been our first port of call, but something about its reputation - a slight edge, an air of danger - meant we wanted to build up some experience in advance of wading in.

After nearly bankrupting ourselves on lamb saags, a decision was made: we would invest in fake IDs, purchased from a website of questionable repute, and present ourselves down at the Doom in the time-honoured fashion - sneaking into the “beer garden” (a concrete yard with two picnic tables overlooking the bus station), making our way into the pool room, then finally, nervously, desperately, heading up to the bar.

The plan had teething problems. In the first instance, my fake ID arrived with the wrong date on it - it actually made me seem younger than I actually was, which was very much against the point. Surprisingly for a website which peddled questionably legal products, the customer service was outstanding, and a couple of emails later saw a replacement winging its way to me in no time at all. I remember it was pink, vaguely like a driving license, but with some dodgy holograms that said something like “European Identity”, which didn’t quite have the racist connotations it does now. No bouncer with more than a primary-level education would have been fooled by it for a second, but it was the thought that counted - if only we looked like we were meant to be there, we thought, we’d be accepted.

And so, one fateful night, we headed down town again. We might have bought chips first, or maybe hit up the Chinese (noodles were a whole meal in themselves - far more reasonable that the balti house). But at some point, under cover of darkness, with the smell of cigarette smoke wafting across the car park, we approached the Doom.

Furtively, we opened the gate and slipped into the yard. A crowd of students from the year above - some of whom may have even been of legal drinking age - were knocking back pints and smoking with a vigour only teenagers possess. They didn’t seem to notice us. We had passed the first test.

Next, into the pool room. We opened the door and stepped into the pub’s back room, where a dented and defeated pool table, slightly too large for the space that held it, was the focal point for another group of people familiar from school. We made out like we belonged. Lots of nods. Lots of “alright?”s. Chuckling nervously as we ducked under pool cues as they banged off the wall as every shot was lined up. Into the corridor between the pool room and the bar. A tactical decision - into the gents.

“How are they doing?” Shit. I hadn’t expected an interrogation at this early stage. In fact, I didn’t even know what I was being interrogated about. “Huh?” I said, uselessly. The man at the stainless steel trough nodded at my shirt. “Liverpool? How they doing?”

I wasn’t wearing a Liverpool shirt. Was this a test? What the fuck was he talking about? I tried to recover. He seemed slightly drunk, but not paralytic, friendly rather than aggressive. My top was a plain, red polo shirt, nothing to do with Liverpool, but I guess it was an easy mistake to make, if you ignored the fact lots of teams plays in red, we were nowhere near Liverpool, and I obviously wasn’t wearing a football shirt. “Not bad!” I said, despite not knowing a single thing about the recent performance of Liverpool FC. He nodded, seemingly satisfied, and refocussed on his urinating. I tried to do the same, which wasn’t easy, as I braced for further football chat. Thankfully, the man finished and shambled out. The next trial was over.

But the biggest challenge was still to come. The dreaded bar. The front room was a large space, with two raised areas either side of the front door, which made the bar seem sunken and low in comparison, a kind of illuminated trench, mobbed with people. It ran across a whole wall, with repetitive fonts offering the same few beers in the same pattern, and a similarly small selection of spirits on the wall behind. A concerningly large amount of real estate had been given over to some sort of Jagermeister machine, which I never saw in operation. For all I know it had never been used at all, perhaps had never been purchased with the intention of use - it had merely manifested itself one Friday evening, a malignant entity that grew out of a collection of congealed shot glasses and was now too cumbersome to remove.

I made my way up, fake ID clutched nervously in my sweaty palm. The crowd in front of me seemed to part in a way which would have been miraculous nowadays, but then felt like a kind of omen - all of a sudden, I was face on with a barman, not much older than I was, who was staring me down with a practiced eye that practically screamed “Nope” at me. I approached the bar. Nodded. He nodded back.

“Can I ge-”

“ID, please.”

Shit. That wasn’t good. Hadn’t even let me order my Fosters (it was that, I think, Guinness, or Worthington Creamflow - not an inspiring selection, but more than enough for me, even if I’m still not entirely sure what Creamflow is).

I handed it over, still clammy from my paw. He raised it to the light, turned it over, turned it back again. His lips moved slightly, as if he was sounding something out to himself. After a moment, he laid it on the sticky bar.

“That’s fake.” The words hung there for a second. The pub was loud, but in that moment, all I could feel was the deafening silence as I fell into the hollow of a skipped heart beat. He said something else, something I couldn’t hear over the deafening void.

“What did you want?”

“Fosters, please,” I croaked, and he began pouring. Shit. I’d done it. I’d been found out, and he didn’t even care. I had conquered the Doom, and I’d only had to shred my nerves and embarrass myself to do it. I had made it. I had achieved the sweetest victory of all. I was drinking underage.

That night was my initiation. I was part of the Doom now, and the Doom, for all its faults, was part of me. I learned to play pool on its table, where every shot had to be taken at an odd angle so you didn’t hit the wall. I developed a lifelong fondness for bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale, once I realised every tap in there poured something that tasted either like vinegar or batteries. I saw my first stripper, entertaining the world’s saddest stag party, who did something unmentionable with a bottle of Budweiser and made me very upset for some time to come. I watched my friend get in a fight with a man with a neck tattoo over a question of darts etiquette, that didn’t involve any thrown punches, but did feature lots of aggressive chest barging, like two novelty wind-up toys lined up against each other. I sat in there all day on my friend Rob’s birthday, while he drank endless pints of Guinness, and we couldn’t believe how much he was putting away, until he stood up to go to the loo, fell over, and didn’t get up again until the next morning. Then there was Nick’s birthday, where we all chipped in for a dirty pint, and the barman returned a glass of brown evil, that put Nick on the floor like a sack of wet cement. I worked my way through all of the bar’s dubious shots, with names like Slippery Nipple and Flatliner, which featured a layer of Tabasco between two things even worse. I was there on A-level results night, when Jonesy stood on a table and hit his head on the TV bracket above, knocking it clean off the wall, and it wasn’t clear how someone hadn’t been killed by the massive appliance collapsing on top of them. I was there through it all, good times and bad.

I don’t think I ever went back once I turned 18. When I was free to go to any pub, the one pub that had welcomed me before seemed less enticing, less sexy, less cool. Maybe also because it was a really shit pub. But for a time, it was my pub.

My refuge.

My Doom.

[beerandpresentdanger]

Unidentified Foreign Objects

When was the last time you took a leap of faith on a beer?

I mean a real jump. You didn’t know who brewed it. You hadn’t seen any social media hype. You hadn’t even done a cheeky trip round the Untappd-RateBeer-Beer Advocate triumvirate to see what its average score was. All you had to go on was an attractive label and a single recommendation.

Until I got this can of Foreign Objects’ Chaos Therapy IPA, I couldn’t have answered this question. I don’t remember when I last took a risk on something unfamiliar. My growing love of and interest in beer across the past few years have all been about eliminating doubt and removing the unknown. I’ve tried to understand everything, quantify each and every component. I can recite ABVs and hop profiles the way I used to be able to reel off Pokemon evolutions, amassing the kind of trivia that will never come in useful, but will sit in my head for years to come, until the next passion project comes along. I’ve been an guilty of chasing whalez as anyone, hunting down big names with bigger reputations, and never pausing to check out the minnows along the way. What if it’s not that good? What a waste of beer drinking time that would be. Why take the risk, when there is all this acclaimed beer out there?

But then this beer came into my life. It happened courtesy of my wife, who’d went back to her hometown of Rochester, NY, for her sister’s bridal shower. For once, I hadn’t given any specific instructions about beer to mule back - I hadn’t expected her to bring anything home. But luckily for me, she stopped into a store known locally as the Basin Hess, a gas station in a small village on the banks of the Erie Canal, which does double duty as one of the state’s best-kept beer secrets. Inside, past the jugs of coffee and racks of magazines, is an Aladdin's cave of beer, with hundreds of breweries represented across every conceivable style. When she asked the manager if there was anything in particular they recommended for a beer nerd across the ocean, they went behind the counter, and pulled out a four-pack of tall boys, resplendent in a peacock’s tail of mabled greens, purples and yellows.

I received them with some trepidation. Of course, I tried to style it out, because I’m awful. “Oh yeah, Foreign Objects, that rings a bell. I think they’re pretty new, but they got a good writeup in a blind tasting on Vinepair.” But I couldn’t bluff for long. I knew nothing about them.

The website didn’t help. Instead of the usual pictures of gleaming FVs and smiling buddies, clinking glasses in front of a roller blind, there’s more of a manifesto: “We exist in a universe of boundless capacity,” it said,  “yet we are bound to this brutish plane of existence; our struggle is to create and experience some modest degree of pleasure amongst our eternal suffering.”

“Ales made with hops”, it concluded, as simple yet enigmatic a tagline as a brewery could have.  More googling uncovered flashes of speculation - perhaps a Seattle origin, definite contract brewing - but little hard evidence. All I had to go on was the cans in my hands. And so I drank.

Popping the ring pull spritzes a blast of pineapple and underripe mango into the room, a smell so dense it almost takes on a plasticky edge. Poured into a glass, it anything but thick, but it’s hazy, limpid, the colour of iridescent crystalised honey, topped with a neat white head that dissipates within a few breaths.

The taste is taut - light fruit juice presses up front, laced with veils of tropicality, followed by rival idea, a layer that’s grassy, weedy, almost oily. There’s a real tick of bitterness in the end as well, a little green acid burn that hasn’t fallen off or rounded out despite a couple of weeks in the fridge. It suggests more booze than the actual 5% it is.

It’s a good beer, and one that makes me keen to see what else they offer - but even if I was in New York, tracking it down seems like it would be a difficult prospect, based more on luck than knowledge. I’m not the only person who’s been left wanting to know more - in the time it’s taken to get hold of, drink, and write this piece, Food & Wine have tracked them down and written a profile that clears up any mystery. I’m glad that I know. But maybe I didn’t need to. The beer speaks for itself.

It says: “Jump”.

[beerandpresentdanger]

Light at the End of the Tunnel

2018 is going to be the Year of Lager. Yes, I know, New England IPAs are still dominating the headlines and the timelines, but pause to take the temperature of the beer intelligensia, and it’s the cool, low climate of slowly bottom fermenting beers that you can feel. From crisp, floral pilsners to rich, biscuity helles, we’re all going to be drinking lagers this summer, so put away your tulips and reach for your Maß.

To guide us through these exciting times, and to provide an antidote to the reliably insular chunterings of the Campaign for Real Ale, we now have the Campaign for Excellent Lager, or CAMEL to its friends. And to help CAMEL get over the initial hump of setting out in the beer world, I sent in a quick essay on why you’ll regularly find one of the most disparaged of all lagers, Bud Light, in my fridge. Check it out, and I’ll see you in the biergarten. 

https://wearecamel.wordpress.com/2018/05/10/josh-farrington-my-love-for-bud-light/

[beerandpresentdanger]

Golden Pints 2017

The Associated Press recently caused a minor uproar by declaring that, henceforth, the august organisation would now refer to the Super Bowl by the year in which it is played. This may not sound controversial - if the Super Bowl takes place in 2018, surely it makes sense that it’s the 2018 Super Bowl - but given that the entirety of the NFL season takes place in the autumn and winter of the preceding year, with the Super Bowl in February as its culmination, the change in convention came as quite the shock. The ‘85 Bears, those Monsters of the Midway, may have won Super Bowl XX in January 1986, but they ain’t the ‘86 Bears. All of which is to say, these Golden Pints may be coming out slightly later than they should, but they refer to the what happened in the twelve troublesome months of 2017, whatever the AP may say.

It’s fair to say that 2017 may have been the best year for beer in the UK in recent memory, in terms of the number of breweries turning out great new brews, the wave of international brewers sending their wares to these shores, and the explosion of great venues, both bars and shops, catering to the new demand for delicious drinks. All of which was somewhat lost on me, after becoming a dad in January. I didn’t stop drinking beers, but as it turns out, looking after a child and working a fulltime job takes up a fair amount of time and energy, and my furious devotion to pubs was the thing that took the hit. Going to launch nights, tap takeovers, meet the brewers and other events was a near-impossibility, and even Sunday afternoons in the local were reduced to single drinks, quickly snatched between naps and nappies and all the other delights of dad life.

Swapping bottles of porter for bottles of formula meant enjoying the latest hyped beer became a more solitary, more contemplative affair, and writing down my thoughts afterwards became more of an afterthought than ever before. Now that my daughter is a toddler, stumbling around clinging onto the furniture in a way that eerily resembles my student days, I’m not sure if I’ll have much more time to devote to drinking, but I’m resolved to do what I can - starting with these obligatory Golden Pints.

Best UK Brewery - Verdant

Honourable Mentions - Cloudwater, Magic Rock, Beavertown

I’m sure Verdant must make some disappointing beers - the law of averages dictates - but if they have, I’m lucky enough not to have drunk it yet. From luminous, almost incandescent pale ales, to velveted, unctuous DIPAs, Verdant’s canon may have fixed on similar targets, but each shot was a bullseye. In a year where many smaller breweries were sending out a veritable Russian roulette of flawed cans, Verdant could be relied upon to come up with lupulin-laced goods.

Best International Brewery - Tree House

Honourable Mentions - Dugges, Garage, Trillium

There are, perhaps, some parallels between my UK choice and my rest-of-world selection - hop-focussed brewers, honing their recipes in rural repose, each struggling to keep up with devoted demand. But Tree House are a leap ahead in the evolutionary scale, putting out beers that are simply the pinnacle of their chosen styles. No one has out juice-bombed Julius. Doppelganger remains undefeated. If you don’t have a brother-in-law who can hook you up, consider getting remarried.

Best Event - Beavertown Extravaganza

This had to win for me almost by default, if only for the fact that it was the one day of the year I made a concerted effort to devote myself to beer and beer alone. But I have the sneaking suspicion that even if it hadn’t been, and I’d dragged myself to feasts and fiestas all over the country, BeaverEx would still have romped home in first place. The list of exhibitors was extraordinary, the organisation was exemplary, the setting was exhilarating - and while there may have been the expected teething problems, they were mere nibbles along the way. The follow-up is already marked on my made-up calendar.

Best Beer Holiday - Barcelona

Honourable Mentions - Boston, South Florida, Cardiff

Babies don’t necessarily make good traveling companions, but at the very least they are portable. So, we made the most of her compact size and got in some trips while we could, including two transatlantic jaunts, a couple of European escapades, and various UK adventures. While it’s hard to see past Boston in terms of the volume and quality of the beer available, I’m choosing Barcelona as my top beer destination, simply because of how vibrant it is. Anchored around BierCaB - surely one of the greatest, if not the best beer bar in the world - there is a glut of amazing places to drink, propped up by some fantastic emerging breweries.

Best Beer Communicator - Emma Inch

Honourable Mentions - Bryan D Roth, Boak & Bailey

When I couldn’t write myself in the past year, I read instead, and I’m grateful for all the talented and tireless people that are out there rhapsodising about beer. Boak & Bailey’s work ethic is something to behold, and even their shortest posts are thought-provoking. Bryan D Roth’s ability to parse a spreadsheet gives an angle on the beer business that I always want to see more of. But the writer that got me the most excited in recent months is Emma Inch - her lyrical ode to Harvey’s Best in Original Gravity magazine left me thrilled and thirsty in equal measure.

Best Bar - Tiny Rebel Cardiff

Honourable Mentions - The Chandos Brockley, Bottle Shop SE1, The Beer Shop Nunhead

I didn’t get out all that much last year - did I mention that? - so when I did find a few minutes to enjoy a quiet drink somewhere, I always appreciated it. Tiny Rebel Cardiff combines a pitch-perfect curation of guest beers, a resplendent display of house brews, and an old-school atmosphere that encourages chatting at the bar - all of which just makes me furious that it didn’t exist when I lived in South Wales.

Beer Beer - Various

I tried to come up with a smart, savvy list divided between cask, keg and small pack, but even with Untappd trying to parse the data feels like too much of a headache. Then you find yourself wondering whether you should only include new beers, or beers that are new to me, ad it’s all too much. So here are simply some beers that stood out over the past year, new or not: Marble Pint, a revelation on cask that’s almost as good in a can (whatever size it is) - Cloudwater / The Veil Chubbles, a claggy stew of an IPA that was dense with flavour - Brew York Tonkoko, a sweet and playful delight - Trillium Fort Point, the pale ale all others must judge themselves against - Buxton / Omnipollo Yellow Belly Sundae, a syrupy stout that stood out among a day of supreme stouts at BeaverEx - Brockley Brewery Spring Ale, a moreish, malty sup that dredged up ancestral memories of flawless Bass - Prairie / Evil Twin BA Bible Belt, maybe the best beer I’ve ever tasted to date.

Thoughts for 2018

I think we’ll see more spontaneous fermentation and wild ales, as Duration and Little Earth Project and Mills grow their already burgeoning reputations. I think we’ll see some smaller brewers go back to bottling after realising mobile canning can be more hassle than it’s worth. I think we’ll see fewer pastry stouts and more barleywines. I think we’ll see more great breweries emerge from rural areas and smaller towns. I hope we’ll see more conversations about representation and diversity in beer. And, just for a wild card that I’ll proudly point to if it comes off and will ignore if it doesn’t - I think we’ll see at least one merger between two craft breweries who realise that pooling their resources may be the best way forward. I’ll see you back here at some point in mid-2019 to review.

[beerandpresentdanger]

A Night on the ‘Town

I can still pinpoint the exact moment I really got into beer. It was 2005, winter, and I was looking for something to do with a group of friends, when we wandered into a seasonal beer festival organised by CAMRA and Cambridge RAG. I still remember every sound and image from that evening - the fug of steam after walking in from the cold drizzle, the hiss of waxed jackets from the heaving crowd, and the vermilion slop of chilli being ladled onto baked potatoes the size of my fist. Then there were the beers. Row upon row of metal casks, arranged around the hall, with strange, evocative names taped to the front in clear plastic wallets. I was so stunned, I even called my dad to tell him where him was, as if still seeking approval or praise. Then I proceeded to order halves of every strong stout they had and got crushingly, irredeemably drunk.

Things haven’t changed that much, if the Beavertown Extravaganza is anything to go by. At least, they haven’t changed for me - 12 years, several jobs, one wife and child later, and I’m still over-ordering strong stouts and ruining the next morning. In every other sense, things have changed massively, and the Extravaganza - #BeaverEx17 as the hashtag had it - is the perfect way to record and chart just how far things have come for beer in the UK.

I missed the Friday session and resigned myself to watching on Twitter, never a fun way to experience any major event, whether a football game or a terrorist atrocity. I watched complaints crop up - running out of beer, excessive lines - and resigned myself to spending a Saturday being mildly disappointed. But I still got there 30 minutes before it even opened, because I wanted to believe.

I was right to. After we got in to the Printworks, a huge industrial space a few hops on the Overground from Beer and Present Danger HQ, we were ushered into a cavernous holding space where we picked up an adorably lilliputian glass, and were faced with two choices - go left, and enjoy one of the many food trucks, or go right, and get in line for two hours before being let in to the bars.

We chose the queue. We were right at the front, while the crowd swelled and jostled behind us, with lines of sight and time to formulate a plan of attack. Dart left to line up up at Other Half for quick hit of juicy Double Citra Daydream, then swerve across the hall to Omnipollo for a pour of the viscous, almost unbearably sweet Yellow Belly Sundae. Then a quick scurry to the second room to grab anything Three Floyds were serving, before Trillium, before Cigar City, before, before, before, before… We felt the hordes mass behind us. The security staff warned us to walk, not run, to our chosen stands. The clock ticked closer to 1pm. The atmosphere was electric, There was movement from the guards and suddenly we were loosed - straight into another queue.

Yeah, so it turned out that they’d second guessed our super keen rampage, and we’d have to wait another 15 minutes while the crowds filed in and queues built at all the stands. There would be no optimised Supermarket Sweep style speed dash for us. But as it turned out, that didn’t particularly matter.

Throughout the day, we queued for several of the most sought-after breweries, and even if they seemed daunting, the queues never seemed to last for longer than 15 minutes at a time. And frankly, that was time well spent, because I needed some buffer between the incredible brews that were on offer, especially given my preferences (I mentioned the strong stout thing, right?) I got my Yellow Belly Sundae, as rich and unctuous as a peanut butter caramel brownie. I got my Cigar City Hunahpu’s, the rare imperial stout out of Tampa that was a deep and raisin-wrinkled treat. I got Three Floyds Dark Lord de Muerte, one of the rarest beers in the world, that smelt of Marmite and tasted of just about everything. Oh, and Trillium Affogato (pure espresso), Firestone Walker Parabajava (sherry and fruitcake), Dugges Speyside Cacao (the name says it all), Alesong Bailey’s Joy (the name doesn’t begin to cover it), and many, many more. 100ml pours were more than enough. When you’re using DIPAs to cleanse your palate, you know something is either going really right, or really wrong.

The whole day was a wonderful, slightly hallucinatory affair - after we’d done a lap or two, the scale of it unfolded and we realised this was as close to being trapped in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory as we were ever likely to get. It was beer Comic Con, minus people cosplaying as Saint Gambrinus or Tim Martin. It was beer Glastonbury, without the mud. Even the toilets were nice - no signs of amateur brewers hanging out in the cubicles doing lines of purest lupulin powder off the top of the cistern.

It wasn’t perfect of course - given the ambition and the fact it was the inaugural event, there were bound to be teething issues, though these seemed to be as a result of the punters as much as the organisers. There was a lot of “Oh hey, how’s it going!” queue jumping when a particularly good keg came on, and it seemed that more than a few people had helped themselves to more than one glass at the beginning in order to double up their intake. And by the end of the day, quite a few gentlemen (and it was always the gentlemen) could be seen looking slightly tired and emotional, head lolling over a bench. I couldn’t find any bottled water and had to keep heading outside to get sips from the enormous tanks, and, the biggest issue, which I’m sure will upset many people, was that the beer really did mostly run out almost an hour before it finished, with bars switching to Gamma Ray and Neck Oil if they offered anything at all. But by that time, it was hard to bring yourself to care - if you hadn’t had enough, you hadn’t tried hard enough.

Oh, and there was no wine for the wives. But that’s another issue.

On the whole, the day felt like a huge success, and given what I’d pay for even a sniff of each of the individual beers I had, the ticket price was incredible value. It also felt like a real special moment, an accumulation of people and moods that shone with positivity and possibility. Here we were in south London, next door to a Decathlon, with some of the best beers in the world, and people like Sierra Nevada’s Steve Grossman pouring them himself. In a few weeks, I’m sure half the breweries there will reveal the collaborations that were dreamt up when all these people got together to make beautiful, boozy babies.

I didn’t even have time to see more than 10 minutes of impressive-sounding seminars, or pay more than a passing visit to the gallery of label art. I did get to sit on the bus, however. That was good.

12 years since my first beer festival, and they still leave me reeling. Maybe I should stick to the session ales next time.

[beerandpresentdanger]

Food for Thought

I like MasterChef. I used to like it in the olden days, when it was Loyd Grossman cogitating and digesting, and I like it now, when it’s a shrieking costermonger and an Australian Droopy Dog lookalike pulling faces at each other. I still don’t know why Gregg Wallace is there, but I appreciate the fact that he is.

It’s not the parade of own-brand celebrities I really like, or the ominous voiceovers, or the weird use of indie music at moments of high drama - for me, the best bits are when the hapless contestants are sent off to professional kitchens to see how the culinary world really works. It reminds of my own time working in a kitchen, washing dishes, scrubbing pans, burning endless cardboard boxes in the yard out back, and generally trying to survive the endless shifts without suffering too many cuts and burns. The chefs, powered by misanthropy, cigarettes, and other combustibles, weren’t artistic geniuses so much as school dropouts with anti-social hours and a lack of vitamin D, but I liked the camaraderie and the dirty jokes, and the MasterChef segments give me brief, slightly harrowing flashbacks.

One of the most memorable visits was when they were packed off to Noma, the Danish restaurant masterminded by culinary whizzkid René Redzepi, which focuses on reinventing and reinvigorating Nordic cooking, and has won every accolade going in the pursuit. I remember watching it as the chefs finessed fronds of foraged herbs into artful arrangements on the hand-glazed earthenware plates, using ingredients poached that day from the harbour-side, or brought in fresh from local fields and woodlands. It was all about creating an intimate sense of place, a unique and one-off creation that could only exist at that time and place, a joyful hymn to setting and season.

So why, I wondered, did they accompany this offering with fermented grape juice from hundreds, if not thousands of miles away?

I like to think of myself as a drinks critic, and yet, I confess, I’ve never really understood why wine, or any drink, is paired with food. I understand the principles, how the two can complement each other, add light and shade to their counterpart, highlight parallels or draw out differences, but it’s just not something I really “get”. Especially when your cooking is so rooted in a particular place - by what logic is it that a wine, of all things, will be the appropriate partner? Why not Sprite? Why not chocolate milk? It feels more like tradition than actual taste, a convention we can’t quite shake off. The fact that restaurants make most of their meagre profits from the mark up on booze can only be part of the equation.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a packet of salty, fatty, ever-so-slightly hairy pork scratchings alongside a cool pint of Burton pale ale as much as anyone, but I’m just not sure food and drink pairings are really for me.

When Brooklyn Brewery sent me a bottle of their new beer, Cloaking Device, in the post, alongside some meats, cheeses, and half a loaf of crusty sourdough bread, I was delighted, but I wasn’t sure I would necessarily appreciate them together, despite their claim it would make a versatile partner for various foodie treats.

I needn’t have worried. The snacks were delicious, but the beer was plenty fascinating on it’s own, with or without other flavours to counterbalance it, even if they extend to, in the brewery’s own words,”Barbecue, venison, dry-aged steaks, science fiction, hearty cheeses, pubs with old wood paneling, dark chocolate, fine tobacco, fireplaces, and elegance.”

Cloaking Device is a 10.5% porter fermented with Brett and aged for nine months in French oak red wine barrels. It pours an inky black with a sense memory of something chestnut brown, with a light tan head that dissipates quitely into the room. From that promising start, the nose is actually fairly unappealing, a patina of farmyard with a substrata, somewhere, of Burgundian shit (a sommelier once told me, in proud tones, that good Burgundy should smell of shit), though the Diva, my drinking companion, sensed plastic, the kind of fume that comes off our baby’s toys when we first open the packet.

But this isn’t a beer that reveals itself all on first impressions. The first sip is such a confusion that it’s hard to make anything out at all, but slowly, over the length of a glass, and the bottle, it begins to organise itself into some kind of sense. There’s that unmistakable Brett character, all lithe and perfumed with violets and old medicine cabinets in mildewed bathrooms, combined with a square of chocolate so dark it’s never quite known what sweetness is. There’s some peppercorn, slightly drying tannins, a hint of blackcurrant, and the feeling of hard, bullying London water. There’s a roast note that broadens as it warms, becoming richer, thicker, more sure of itself. The whole thing is smooth, decidedly unfizzy despite a refermentation in the bottle with Champagne yeast, and there’s nary a whiff of booze despite the double digit ABV. It’s intriguing and complex in the best possible ways, and yet strangely indistinct despite all of that. I’m confused and seduced by it, I want to know more while it’s already winning me over. You could drink bottle after bottle without scratching the surface, pair it with every cuisine under the sun and find new facets, without ever really understanding what it is. I think I like it.

I dread to think what Gregg Wallace would make of it.

[beerandpresentdanger]

Quality Street

You don’t hear the word “quality” used as an expression of approval that much any more. It wasn’t that long ago that everything was dubbed quality - that goal last night, that cheesy action film, that actually terrible Oasis album. For a while, quality was favoured over awesome, terrific, excellent, brilliant, fantastic, wonderful, great, wicked, mint, cracking, ace, ceramic, Mexico, and any other term you could think to use. Now, it seems to be past its sell by date - unless you’re someone like, I don’t know, the president of the USA.

Quality has a different usage as well, of course. When not being an outdated adjective, it’s a very pertinent noun - the standard of something as measured against its peers; a degree of excellence. Quality seems like a singular concept, an intangible yet identifiable thing, a pure and immutable beacon pitched against the forces of failure and mediocrity. 

That’s why quality control is such an important idea - especially when it comes to beer. With so many breweries now competing for taplines, shelf space and drinkers’ tastebuds, holding high standards when it comes to quality is - or should be - the only way to compete. To sell yourself short, to release a substandard product, is - or should be - a death knell for a company. If you don’t care about quality, why should anyone care about you? We demand the best, not the merely good enough.

It’s an issue that has come to prominence recently. Sometimes, quality isn’t just a matter of taste, it’s a matter of safety. Cloudwater, fifth best brewery in the world according to RateBeer, made its considerable reputation on a constantly changing, seasonal line-up, defined only by experimentation and excellence. Sometimes, in pushing those boundaries, mistakes get made, as with their Make Apple Pie Great Again ale, a delicious beer that really did taste of apple pie - all pulpy Granny Smiths and cinnamon - but came with the unfortunate side effect of cans exploding from time to time. A swift and serious recall showed they weren’t messing around when it came to quality control.

Then again, sometimes it really just a matter of taste. Today, Cloudwater announced they were dumping a fermenter full of lager thanks to the presence of too much acetaldehyde (ironically, the compound responsible for a green apple flavour), saying it wouldn’t do their customers justice. Goose Island found themselves in a similar boat when it turned out swathes of its world beating Bourbon County stout was infected and offered refunds. It’s this kind of commitment to quality that builds a reputation for a brewery.

That’s why it’s so frustrating to still find breweries pushing out stuff they must know is deeply flawed. Even in the past weekend, I had two canned beers from a pair of small breweries, only to find one was a scorched earth of smoky phenols crammed into a supposed Bavarian helles, while the other was a classic English IPA that had become a metallic soup, like slurping on a slurry of batteries. I can accept that mistakes happen after the beer is packaged - that everything was given the okay in the first instance, that the first swig tasted swell - but there’s no excuse for not making regular checks, or taking samples from across the range, to ensure that what you’re sending out to market is as good as you think it is.

Maybe they just don’t realise. There’s plenty of education still to be done with consumers about off flavours - how to identify the difference between a beer that you’re just not a fan off and one that is seriously defective - but maybe there are brewers out there who need a similar lesson. It’s hard to believe, considering how every homebrewer I’ve met has been all too aware of every one of their beer’s failings, but perhaps the glamour of a canning line and seeing your efforts out in the world is enough to mask the actual rancid taste, to convince you that you must be doing something right.

How do you even address this though? I’m sure people reading this will be wondering which beers I’m talking about and wanting me to name names - but does public shaming really work? I’ve seen enough tweetstorms and Facebook threads derailed by criticisms, warranted or not, to know that these things rarely go well. An email to the brewer? A quiet boycott? It’s a minefield.

That’s why I’m always cheered to see a brewery owning up to problems and taking responsibility for issues, whatever they may be. Welsh standouts Tiny Rebel had to deal with their own hiccup this week, when they found an issue with dissolved oxygen in some of their batches of cans. They issued a recall, ceased sales, and pledged to improve their laboratory processes and assessment practices. It’s exactly what you want to see a brewery doing, and exactly why the Newport mainstays have become a regional powerhouse, with beers like Cwtch, Hadouken, and the wonderfully spot-on Stay Puft Marshmallow Porter winning such acclaim.

Their current feelgood hit of the summer - and one of the unfortunately impacted beers - is Clwb Tropicana, a fruited IPA (as is the fashion these days) that’s packed with American hops, and topped off with peach, passion fruit, pineapple and mango - basically, boozy Lilt.

Thankfully, checking the gyle number means this can is good to go. It pours a luminescent gold, neither murky nor clear, with a creamy white head sitting proudly atop. The aroma is childhood sweets and adulthood cocktails, a perfume of synthetic pineapple and underripe mango, both a pack of Fruit Salads and a jug of fluorescent alcopops masquerading as a mixed drink in a chain pub. Thankfully the taste isn’t quite as cloying as you’d first suspect - the fruit is there, but there’s the sharp acidity of pineapple to go along with the tinned sweetness, saddled up with a rolling woody bitterness that helps ground the IPA in the realm of actual beer. There’s a slightly different fruit expression happening with every sip - a dab of the peach here, a burst of the passion fruit there - but it melds together into a juicy blinder, a playground tipple that trips along nicely. It’s a lovely thing, perhaps a touch too sweet for a long session, but perfect for a swift one on a hot day.

It’s terrific. It’s cracking. It’s quality.

Disclosure: Though I’ve bought Tiny Rebel beers on many occasions, this particular can was a free sample provided by distributor Matthew Clark

[beerandpresentdanger]

Més Que Un Pub

FC Barcelona is the lifeblood of the Catalan capital, a living, breathing, 22-legged avatar of local pride and prowess. You can’t walk a couple of tree-lined blocks in the city without seeing images of Messi, Neymar and Suárez, or seeing the familiar red and blue stripes on shop windows, bar fridges, car license plates, or hanging from a hundred stylish balconies. It’s not just a football team. As they put it themselves, it is més que un club - More than a club.

I got a hint of this as El Clásico raged one Sunday evening, and I sat in our AirBnB apartment in the shadow of Sagrada Família, trying to follow along without the help of satellite TV. It wasn’t easy - the half-hearted streams my phone managed to pick up were sighing and stuttering, especially at the moments of high drama - but thanks to the echoes of cheers from every neighbour in the block, I was able to tell when Barça finally defeated their hated Madrileño rivals.

Of course, I wasn’t in town for the football. I was there on my first holiday as a dad, with a baby in tow, taking her on her first flight as a test run for a transatlantic trip to come. We were there to take things easy - stroll the streets, graze on tapas, soak up the blistered brilliance of Gaudí’s architecture. And drink the beer. That goes without saying.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Barcelona’s beer. Driving in to the centre from the airport you pass the steely bulk of the Damm brewery, home of Estrella, while the other big name in the city is Moritz, the only beer in the word to label its bottles entirely in Catalan. Both of their flagship beers, which are available in bars across the city, are good, refreshing Iberian lagers, with the edge going to Estrella based on its adult strength. Mahou, one of Spain’s oldest brands, also got a look-in, and while it wasn’t great, the fact it’s available in a cup with a straw from McDonald’s definitely saves it.

But beyond the macro-lagers, I wasn’t sure what else to expect, until we stumbled into the neighbourhood around the university known as Eixample - or Bierxample, as it’s rapidly becoming. Within staggering distance of each other is a stunning range of bars and breweries, including outposts of the BrewDog empire, and more excitingly, Mikkeller. We dove in, and weren’t disappointed.

Mikkeller was a Scandinavian scene dropped into the late spring heat of a Barcelona afternoon, all clean tiles and pastel paints, with a beer range to match. There were a range of Mikkeller classics alongside a range of international hits, including Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout, which was hard to turn down.

Another interloper, but a slightly more local one, was Naparbier, a craft brewery originally founded in Pamplona, but which now has a stylish brewpub in Barcelona. The decor - all black and white floor tiling, dark wooden cabinets and gleaming steel tanks - gave off the impression of an outsized lavatory in a steampunk mansion, but the beer was good and strong, with even a New England-style IPA updating things considerably.

More local, and more traditional - at least as traditional as craft breweries get - was Garage Beer Co, a local brewery with slightly dingy vibes, all mismatched chairs, ripped sofas, low tables and dim lighting, but a vibrant range of house beers that showed how mature the scene here is. I tried the Garage IPA to see what was what, and was pleased to find a smartly-constructed beer with a US West Coast edge, and a lasting piney bitterness. It’s not easy to get up from the low chairs, but you won’t want to leave quickly.

Unless, that is, you have an appointment round the corner at BierCaB. I haven’t been to every bar in Barcelona, or in Europe, or the world, but I’m confident in saying that BierCaB might be among the very best of them. It’s not the interior design that pulls you in - I have no idea what the bonfire explosion of sticks on the ceiling is all about - but the beer list will suck you into its orbit like a black hole, and it won’t let go. You don’t even have to go beyond the dozens of taps to be impressed, but give the bottle list a try and you’ll find a place that treats different vintages of Westvleteren XII like most bars treat different flavours of Rekorderlig - not to mention several different versions of Three Floyd’s Dark Lord, a beer so rare that it’s only sold in one place, on one day a year, to people who’ve paid small fortunes to attend a festival in its honour. When a door to a back room swung ajar at one point, it revealed a mountain of Cantillon cases piled as high as me. In short, this place is insane.

Manuel, the owner, doesn’t speak brilliant English - though it’s a damn sight better than my Catalan - but with the help of a waitress, and lots of gesticulation (mainly wiping my brow, bulging my eyes, and shaking my head), I was able to get across how impressed I was. I was rewarded with an invite to him opening a new arrival, a bottle of Solo Protagonist, a 15% imperial stout, one of only 6,000 bottles, crafted in Crete by the founder of legendary Norwegian brewery Nogne, and meant to mimic sweet, Greek coffee. It matches it blow for blow and more. It was one of the more special moments of my beer life, and there was no language needed to show how appreciative I was - we just nodded, and smiled, and went “Mmm”.

This is a special bar, one full of delight and design, built to be special and living up to it. It’s not just a place to go drinking. It’s més que un pub.