Mad scientists take on low-alcohol beer brewing

One of the great things about beer and brewing is that there’s always something more to learn, and rarely is that more true than of the fast-evolving non-alcoholic and low alcohol – NoLo, or sometimes LNA – segment. 

I’ve written a couple of times before about the improving quality of British low-alcohol beer and the ensuing NoLo sales growth but only touched lightly on how they’re made. How did we get from the thin and slightly soapy de-alcoholised lagers of yesteryear to a world where we have enjoyable non-alc IPAs and Porters?

And sure enough, the production of modern NoLo beers turns out to be a fascinating business, on a par almost with the companies chasing synthetic meat or dairy-free vegan cheese. On the one hand, in beer, meat and cheese, we humans have discovered things that are delicious and relatively easy to produce. 

But on the other, we’ve come to recognize they have major flaws. While nourishing and tasty, they can also contribute to poor health, and both meat and dairy production can be environmentally destructive, whether in terms of degraded grazing land or the greenhouse gases that animals emit. 

Thankfully beer does not suffer so much on the latter score. Yes, it requires lots of energy to boil and mash, but that can be renewable for instance. And breweries are much better now at reducing their water usage, although even the most efficient still consume two or three pints of clean water for every pint of beer. 

Bye-bye Saccharomyces

NoLo brewers have often been a bit cagey on their processes though, referring only to “special yeasts” and the like. So it was great to get deeper into the topics earlier this year with John, a haematology doc by day and one of the self-proclaimed ‘mad scientists’ behind new brewery Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing by night. 

“It’s hard to grow organisms that don’t eat sugar, to brew beers that don’t taste like either hopped water or wort,” he said, when we met at this year's Brew//LDN. “We’ve been isolating yeast from for example Kombucha [fermented tea] and the National Collection of Yeast Cultures. You want a yeast that doesn’t eat maltose but will eat glucose, then you adjust the wort to be drier.

“You want it to work slowly, producing esters and other flavour compounds. Fermentation is what makes beer taste like beer, but you want it to ferment with the least alcohol and the most flavour.” It certainly worked well for their zesty and light 0.5% Easy Rinder citrus hefeweizen, made with real mandarin orange rind. 

Growing interest in lower-strength 'table beers' 

John added though that’s it’s not all about 0.5%ers: “2.8% is still important – that’s the tax break*. We have three beers there.” I tried a couple of these, I wasn’t taken by the Short Stack blueberry wheat beer, but the whisky barrel-aged Black Lager was very good, starting light, with classic Schwarzbier notes of coffee and ash, then filling out as the whisky comes through. (They blend back with fresh beer, of course, to keep it at 2.8% despite the whisky.)

And he said it’s easier to make gluten-free beers if they’re non-alc, too, because the grist – the amount of malt used – is smaller. “They’re already down to 30ppm of gluten so there’s less to take out.” Like many brewers, they then use enzymes – Brewer’s Clarex – to take out as much as possible of the remainder. 

If there’s a downside, said John, it’s pricing. Sure, the alcohol duty is lower, “but the ingredients are the same whether you brew to 5% or 0.5%.”

*UK beer duty is approximately halved for low-strength brews (between 1.2% and 2.8% alcohol - under 1.2% there's no duty payable) and increased for beers over 7.5%. 

IPA-lovers subscription scheme offers limited editions and shares

Do you love IPAs? Do you love IPAs enough to subscribe to and crowdfund a new brewer who will make nothing else – and will send you half a dozen cans of a new limited-edition IPA every month?

That’s the proposal for Standard Brew Co, a new venture from Milo Oddi, the former head brewer for London’s Beer+Burger chain. So far he’s done three New England IPAs – two 6% prototypes and the first subscription beer at 4%. 

He says though that from here on each month’s subscription brew will be a different IPA type, from Session IPAs to Triple IPAs “and everything in between.” No word yet on whether that includes the likes of Sour IPA or Black IPA – I’m doubtful, but you never know!

Certainly the first of those subscription beers, cunningly named IPA #003, is a very tasty start. Tropical, juicy and hoppy-dry, it features Citra Cryo and Mosaic hops, adds wheat and oats for a soft and fluffy body, and uses the popular Verdant NEIPA yeast. It is, as they say, very crushable.  

Why six of the same brew? “It has always been about sharing,” Milo says. “Whether that be sharing the beer at garden parties, taking it to friends’ dinners or even gifting it as presents.” 

If this sounds like your bag – if you’re already buying six-packs or even 24-packs of IPAs, say – there’s an extra hook. Subscribe for 12 months at £25 a month (including shipping), and as well as six 440ml cans each month, he’ll also give you twelve shares in the company, making you a co-owner.*

You can read more, and sign up, on the Standard Brew Co website. There’s also a special code “LOVEIPA” to get your first month free. 

Now, who’s going to start something similar to brew all different kinds of Porters and Stouts?? 😁

*Of sorts - these shares are non-transferable and non-voting.

No more cask Fuller's Vintage this autumn

 If, like me, you look forward to a few glasses - or even pints - of Fuller's Vintage Ale each autumn, you're going to be sadly disappointed this year. Unless, that is, you caught it at the London Craft Beer Festival back in August.

Cask-conditioned Vintage Ale 2020

The background is that, while most of each year's Vintage Ale brew goes into bottles, Fuller's always puts some into casks. A few of these go to beer festivals local to the brewery, and most go to a small number of cask-led Fuller's pubs. A couple of the Fuller's pubs I visit normally get two or three each, which they serve from around October onwards - last years' was especially delicious. 

This year, however, there has been a problem. I heard from multiple sources that the casks had been sent out, but had then been recalled by the brewery. So I asked for more information and this is the reply I received: 

"We released a very small quantity of Vintage Ale 2021 on cask this year at London Craft Beer Festival in August and a handful of pubs during Cask Ale Week.

"Unfortunately, as time progressed, we weren’t completely happy with how some of the Vintage Ale 2021 casks were tasting when we sampled them. 

"There were a few cases of low cell counts, which left them susceptible to oxidation. While they posed no safety risk, we did recommend to the pubs that still had stock to withdraw from sale. 

"Hope that is helpful to know. We’re sorry for any disappointment caused. Our priority is always ensuring consumers enjoy our beers and experience cask at its best."  

It's hard to judge from the outside, but it looks like something went badly wrong while the beer was being prepared for cask. This involves filtering the beer and then reseeding it with the right amount of fresh yeast for that secondary conditioning in-cask. 

It all seems rather odd. Yes, it can be a ticklish process to get right, but Fuller's brewers should have plenty of experience here, and under normal circumstances you then have experienced cellar staff in the pubs who are able to make the final quality decision. 

Yet the reports I've seen from LCBF suggest the Vintage Ale was unusually sweet this year. Could someone have forgotten to reseed it with fresh yeast? Or what else might have gone wrong? Either way, it is disappointing - but still, better no beer than bad beer, I guess. 

You won't be Haacht off by these Belgian classics

Haacht is certainly a name I recognised, not just as the brewer of M&S Belgian Lager(!) but as one of the older family breweries in Belgium. So when I spotted its bar at this year’s Brew//LDN show, I was curious: with all the problems over Brexit red tape and with fewer mainland lorries coming over to the UK, why would a Belgian brewer be entering the UK market right now?

“Haacht sees the UK as the biggest European beer market, but also a complex one,” explained UK country manager Matthew Langley (left). “The UK has so many different beer categories, it’s not at all like Belgium. Setting up a subsidiary here is a real commitment to the UK market, and we have to set up now to smooth the imports – everybody is really confused about the rules.” 

The brewery has three main families of beers, plus a few individual brands and outliers, such as its Belgian Pilsner, Primus. Super 8 is the more mainstream line – Export is a pale lager, Flandrien is a strong (6.4%) blonde ale, Blanche is as you might guess a Witbier, and then there’s IPA (6%), which is more traditionally English in style than American or Belgian. For now, only the IPA and Flandrien are coming to the UK.

Then there’s the Charles Quint line of three strong beers, which aren’t coming over, and thirdly, the family that Belgian beer lovers are most likely to recognise which is the Tongerlo abbey beers. 

These remind us that, while Trappist beers can only be brewed in the abbey precincts, almost all ‘abbey beers’ are actually brewed commercially, with the brewer having licensed or bought the name. Here, there’s three regulars – Tongerlo Lux is the Blond (6%), then the Dubbel is Tongerlo Nox (6.5%), and lastly there’s the Tripel, Tongerlo Prior (9%).

So what of the beers? 

Haacht had Super 8 IPA on draught at the show – deep chestnut-brown and dry-sweet, with notes of toasty malt, biscuit and grapefruit, it’s a very nice modern take on a classic English IPA. Flandrien on the other hand is more classically Belgian in style – a little candy sugar and spicy hops, its sweetness balanced by a drying alcohol warmth. If you like Leffe, say, you’ll probably like this. 

Why two Belgian Blond ales in the mix? Well, Tongerlo Lux is noticeably different from Flandrien – sweetish, yes, but with estery notes of melon and spiced apple, and a crisp dry edge. It’s lovely, but then the other Tongerlo beers are even better. 

Nox (right) is dark and plummy-sweet, lightly roasty and ashy, with hints of wine and cocoa, and a drying hoppy bitterness. Prior Tripel is fruity and lightly floral, full-bodied and estery-smooth, with hints of Weissbier-like banana and lemon, and a boozy warmth balanced by peppery drying hops. 

All in all, it’s a pretty solid line-up. Nothing too crafty, but well-made examples of Belgian – and English – classics. Langley adds that, in Belgium at least, Haacht also has several seasonals such as a Belgian Saison and a Tongerlo Christmas beer. “They’re also going to bring out a Stout,” he added. “On one level they’re very staid, and on another they continually surprise me!”

It's Oktober, time for a Festbier

It’s Oktober, and these days, that means Oktoberfestbier*! Finding a decent Festbier used to be a bit of a trial outside Germany – and more particularly, outside Munich**. That’s changed now though, thanks to North London’s music-inspired Signature Brew, and the latest iteration of its Festbier, Luftballon.

When I tried last year’s brew of Luftballon, it seemed just a little light for the style, but this year’s release is smack on target. It’s smooth and malty-sweet, lightly bready and toasty, with drying hoppy notes and a mild bitterness, mouth-filling yet somehow also light and not cloying. Just the ticket, both for Oktoberfest and more generally for an autumn afternoon or evening...

*Or at least it does for the non-Americans out there – most American breweries that brew Oktoberfestbiers stick to a variation on the amber-brown Märzen style, whereas the Bavarians almost all switched about half a century ago from Märzens to golden Festbiers. 

To explain further, Märzen was more or less a stronger version of what we now know as Vienna lager – the amber beers that succeeded Dunkel lagers as the mainstream drinker’s choice. Meanwhile, Festbier is basically a strong version of Munich Helles, the golden beer that in turn displaced Vienna amber in the Bavarian public’s affections. 

And yes, I know that if the Munich Oktoberfest had been running this year it would be over by now...  

**The six Munich Oktoberfestbiers are all fine brews and eminently quaffable, but having a choice is nice – and there’s always something a bit uncomfortable about a cartel. (The Big Six Munich brewers are the only ones legally allowed to use the term ‘Oktoberfestbier’ and sell it at the Wiesn. In my opinion, if that isn’t a cartel then I don’t know what is!) 

Still, hopefully next year Munich will get that more choice too, as upstart Giesinger Bräu has reportedly broken through at last and got permission to become the seventh member of the Oktoberfestbier gang, alongside Paulaner & Hacker-Pschorr (both owned by Schörghuber), Spatenbräu & Löwenbräu (both now AB-Inbev) & the two independents Augustiner & Hofbräu-München.

The return of Allsopp's and the legend of IPA

If you’re at all interested in the history of beer, you will have seen the name Samuel Allsopp. the pioneering brewer and exporter of India Pale Ale. He and his sons built their Burton-on-Trent brewery into one of the largest in the world, before some unfortunate business decisions by Samuel’s grandson combined with a market slump to push it into receivership in 1911. 

But now it’s back: one of Samuel’s descendants, Jamie Allsopp (left), has re-established the name and worked with Jim Appelbee, the former head brewer at Molson Coors’ William Worthington’s brewery in Burton-upon-Trent, to turn recipes from the only surviving Allsopp’s brewing ledger into beers for more modern ingredients and tastes. They’re starting with two, a Pale Ale and of course – how could they not! – a classic British IPA. 

Jamie Allsopp has also reacquired some of the Allsopp’s trademarks, including the famous upright red hand, which had subsequently been taken over and used by first Ind Coope (which was 'Ind Coope & Allsopp' as late as 1953) and then Carlsberg. Most recently the mark had been bought by BrewDog, for a historical IPA project which as far as I can tell never bore fruit. 

The family legacy was all around when he was growing up, Jamie says. “We had mirrors, and jugs, and ashtrays – there was Allsopp’s memorabilia on every table.” He adds that while for his father it was just family history, his grandfather had remembered the brewery business. 

The old Allsopp’s brewery is long gone, of course, with a Carlsberg factory now on the site, so having located recipes he needed a brewery for them. He found one in Sheffield, some 50 miles from Burton, where Mark Simmonite had a 16-barrel plant originally built for another project. 

“The old records were specific enough that they could be interpreted,” Jamie says. “The IPA has not really changed, just a drop of ABV – it would have been more like 7% back then. Our Pale Ale is nothing like the 1700s, but it’s similar to later Pale Ales.” He notes that while the recipes have been modernised, both beers use a proportion of malted Chevallier barley, a heritage variety that dates back to the 1800s. 

The result is two classic British-style beers – the Pale Ale (4.4% bottled, 4.0% in cask) is refreshing, malty and drying, with a slight earthy note, while the IPA (5.6% in bottle, 5.0% casked) is smooth and lightly sweet under a drying hoppy-woody topnote.

So what’s next for the revived Samuel Allsopp & Sons? The new website shows a Lager Beer, although it’s not on sale yet. Its 1897 purchase of an expensive lager brewing plant was one of the ill-timed decisions that helped crash the original Allsopp’s. The market wasn’t ready for Allsopp’s Lager back then,* although the redundant plant was later moved to Alloa and used to brew the predecessors of Skol lager. 

Jamie also notes that before Napoleon closed off the European market to British brewers, and before the IPA trade opened up, the company was one of several shipping Porter to Russia. Then from the 1850s there was Allsopp’s Arctic Ale, originally 11% and brewed to accompany expeditions heading to, yes, the Arctic. Indeed, Jamie bought a bottle of a later Arctic Ale brew, the 9% 1875 version, at auction last year. Could a Porter, an Arctic Ale, or even a Russian Imperial Stout be next on the Allsopp’s menu? “Watch this space,” is all he’ll say. 

The one question that remained for me was, given that Jamie is a wealthy Old Etonian ex-financier, is this more than just a rich man’s vanity project? Being able to self-fund certainly makes something like this far easier to do, yet at the same time Jamie’s deep affection for the Allsopp’s history is almost palpable, and it's clear that he genuinely wants to revive it. 

In fact, it feels as if it’s something he has long wanted to do, but only now has the time and resources for. “I worked in finance for 20 years, but this was my lifetime ambition,” he smiles. “Selling pints – now I wake up every morning happy!”

*Curiously, there is already an Allsopps Lager in Kenya, named for where it's brewed, in the Nairobi suburb of Allsops. 

Interesting times for cask ale

There’s been quite a bit of worry recently about the future of cask ale – or real ale, as many prefer to call it. Cask’s share of the beer market has declined in recent years and then it took another big hit from the Covid-19 lockdowns. That’s because almost all cask ale is sold via pubs, and they were closed. 

Wild Card's hazy cask Pale

Cask also faces other challenges though. Many drinkers expect it to cost less than keg craft beers, for example, even though it can be just as expensive to produce and typically requires more care in the pub to get it conditioned and to serve it just right. 

Even before the pandemic, some brewers had been talking about the need to increase the price of a cask pint to restore a bit of profit margin. Others had largely or wholly moved to keg as it was the only way they saw to make a decent return – and of course the pandemic-driven move to selling bottles and cans, instead of draught beers, has accelerated that shift. 

Similarly, the uncertainty involved in the post-lockdown reopening of pubs seems to have encouraged many to reduce the number of cask pumps in use – and some to drop cask altogether. Pub visitor numbers are both down and unreliable, by all accounts, so I can see it’s a risk – after all, once you tap a cask, it needs to sell within days, whereas a keg can stay good for weeks. 

The paradox is that demand for cask doesn’t seem to have fallen as much as the more pessimistic brewers had feared or expected. Twice recently, I’ve spoken with London-area brewers who say their cask sales are up, in part because others have dropped out of the business. 

'Small pack' at Brockley

The first was on a trip with a CAMRA group to visit Wild Card which now has its own pub, The Tavern on the Hill, near the brewery in Walthamstow. As well as several of Wild Card’s keg beers, this popular local has two of its cask ales on handpump, usually the simply-named Pale and Best. In fact, these two beers were created for the pub – many of the regulars are cask drinkers, so when the brewery took the pub over, it either had to buy cask ale in from elsewhere or brew some itself! 

Wild Card co-founder William Harris said that although the majority of each 20hl cask brew is sold via The Tavern on the Hill, “people really want cask from us, partly because a lot of firms have pulled out from it. Mostly it’s cask-led pubs looking for suppliers, and it’s mainly a London issue – outside London there’s still plenty of cask around.” 

And then on a visit to Hither Green, near Lewisham, I discovered that Brockley Brewery was also nearby. In the brewery taproom I was surprised to find that as the (inevitable, these days) cans on sale, they had four cask ales on draught, all dispensed by gravity from casks in the coldstore, and to learn that Brockley's production is now around 50% cask. The story was similar – it’s picked up cask sales volume from other breweries who have dropped out of the business. 

Is all of this good news or bad? I’m not really sure, but I do find it interesting – as in the apocryphal ‘curse’, “May you live in interesting times.” 

Tasting chocolate instead of beer? It's an Olympian task!

Honey dissolved in whisky? Sure, why not!

There’s not been too many big food and drinks fairs in the last 18 months, so the trip over to London Olympia this week for the Speciality & Fine Food Fair was welcome on many levels. One of the first things that struck me was the sheer diversity of the food and drink exhibitors, and the next was how much commonality there was within that. I spotted several offering different sorts of monthly meal kits, for example, plus a number offering assorted honeys and honey derivatives. 

Plant-based products were another grouping, including vegan ice lollies, and of course lots of snack brands – crisps and the like. A drinks quarter offered any number of craft gins and rums, modern whiskys and liqueurs, hard seltzers and so on – even a mobile gin distillery, though for flavouring pre-made spirit rather than distilling it afresh. What there wasn’t much of, as far as I could see, was beer. 

Mmm, chocolate...

So I decided to become a chocolate blogger for the afternoon – there were a lot of chocolatiers out there! And it seemed like each had its gimmick: there was single-estate chocolate, volcanic island chocolate, illustrated chocolate, chocolate so fresh it has to be kept chilled, and lots more. See my Twitter for more photos and details…

At last though I found a few beers. First was Fungtn, which is pronounced Function but with a nod to ‘funghi’ because, as well as being alcohol and gluten-free, it has mushrooms in it… They’re not just any old funghi either, they’re “adaptogenic functional mushrooms” as used in traditional eastern medicine. Oh-ho. There wasn’t time on site for more than a sip to confirm that yes, they’re good lo-no brews, but fuller reviews of Chaga dark lager, Lion’s Mane IPA and Reishi Citra beer will follow.

And then just as the show was wrapping up, I discovered PR Dutch Drinks who distribute in the UK for 20-odd craft breweries from I think you can guess where. They include the likes of Uiltje, Poesiat en Kater, Kompaan, Emelisse, De Molen and Brouwerij t’ IJ (and yes, I know that not all of those are independent now). 

OK, who doesn't fancy owning a mobile still?

Of course, while chatting with the company’s Eric Bestebreur I had to ask whether his imports had been affected by the widely-reported border disruptions. “Normally our deliveries took four days from leaving the brewery, but our first shipment after Brexit took seven weeks,” he said. He added that it’s now down to three to four weeks, but that the real problem is not so much the product being delayed – although I do notice a fair few “sold out” messages on their website – it’s financial. 

This is partly the extra cost of transport and of having valuable goods in limbo for weeks on end, but it’s also payment terms: being on 30-day terms with your supplier is not much use if the goods take 30 days to arrive! “We’ve had to change the definition of delivery,” he says. 

I hope to catch up with Eric again at some point – he also runs The Bolton, a pub in nearby Earls Court with a specialist Dutch & Belgian beer bar upstairs called Proeflokaal Rembrandt. (I notice this is also where you can pick up your Dutch Drinks orders, and avoid delivery fees.) 

Just coming back to Olympia after more than a year was startling too, as almost the whole area now seems to be a building site. At the eastern end, the Grand Hall and National Hall are still there – they are Grade II listed buildings – but they’re shrouded and fenced-off, and even inside the lobby it was almost impossible to hear yourself think due to what sounded like a pneumatic drill just behind a wooden partition. 

Meanwhile at the western end of the site, pretty much everything has been demolished. It turns out that most of Olympia is being rebuilt, with lots of new office space (just in time for the work-from-home and hybrid-working revolution, hah!), two hotels, new public spaces, a 1,575-seat theatre, and an exhibition hall with a 3,500-seat live music arena on top of it. Completion is due in 2024. 

German Pale Ale: when a beer is defined not by what it is, but by what it's not

A bit of a gusher...

Just recently I’ve has a few German pale ales and amber ales, and noticed something common to them all – a yeasty roughness on the palate, and sometimes on the nose too. The malty body is still there, along with fruity modern-style hops, but overall it’s nothing like the clean brew you’d expect in the US, or in most other countries with a US-influenced ‘craft beer revolution’ underway.

It set me thinking. What are the fundamental things setting a well-made pale ale apart from a lager? There may be fruity esters from the warmer ale fermentation, say, but they can be minimised. The existence of Kölsch – which to the uninitiated might appear to be a pale hoppy lager, but some which beer geeks insist on calling a pale ale – shows how close the two can be, as do several British ‘lagers’ that are actually warm-fermented, such as Fuller’s Frontier.

In the opposite direction, so too do the snobbish descriptions I’ve read online of Eichbaum’s clean and smooth Steam Brew Session IPA as “lagery”. Then what’s going on with these rough-edged and yeasty brews?

Then it struck me: it’s most likely a legacy from the early days of German ‘craft beer’, when the most important thing seemed to be to differentiate yourself from the industrial Pils producers. So if their beer was golden, hoppy and as bright as a new pin, yours needed to be murky amber and tasting of yeast.

I had hoped it would have changed by now. After all, what inspired many new-wave brewers in Germany and around the world were the big flavours and aromas of golden-bright Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and its ilk. The opportunity is still there to create great Pale Ales, and differentiate or localise them by using all-German ingredients.

It’d be a huge shame if, instead of capitalising on the broader palette of aromas and flavours available to them, it turns out many German brewers – and drinkers – still prefer to lazily define German Pale Ale as “Hey look, it’s definitely not Pils!”

What's your experience - have you found a great German Pale Ale? Do you like the yeasty-rough edge, and am I missing something here?

What’s the best city for beer?

It’s one of those questions that's really hard to answer. I mean, first of all you have to set parameters – what terms do you judge “best” by? And what do you mean by “beer” – craft beer, or anything from industrial lager onwards? On top of that, how reliable is your data to start with?

But in the quest for a headline – and to incidentally promote its other activities – the Money.co.uk website has given it a go. Working on the three measures of price, brewery density and bar density, it lists the top three as Asheville (in North Carolina), Prague and Krakow, with major craft beer destinations such as Denver, San Francisco and yes, London, way down the list.  

Top 10 Best Cities in the World for Beer Drinkers

Rank	City	Country	Breweries per 10,000 people	Bars, pubs & clubs per 10,000 people	Average price per pint (£)	Overall score
1	Asheville	United States	2.80	7.86	£3.58	8.41
2	Prague	Czech Republic	0.76	5.86	£1.34	6.88
3	Kraków	Poland	0.39	2.46	£1.89	4.79
4	Fort Collins	United States	1.29	1.41	£2.87	4.72
5	Cincinnati	United States	1.02	2.70	£3.58	4.46
5	Buenos Aires	Argentina	0.21	0.89	£1.17	4.46
7	Austin	United States	0.53	2.69	£2.87	4.4
8	Dublin	Ireland	0.54	5.66	£4.70	4.36
9	Wrocław	Poland	0.42	0.92	£1.70	4.35
10	Grand Rapids	United States	0.85	1.59	£2.87	4.31

What they’ve done is to take brewery numbers from Ratebeer, venue counts from TripAdvisor, and the average price per pint from cost-of-living tracking site Numbeo. 

Those who know the US scene will not be surprised by presence there of Asheville, a party-town full of small breweries, nor I suspect by Fort Collins, where 20+ craft brewers, most notably New Belgium and Odell, have grown in the shadow of a massive Budweiser factory. Prague and Krakow, on the other hand, benefit more from low beer prices and thriving nightlife. 

Pricing – or rather the extortionate rate of beer tax in the UK – is a big part of what pushes London to an absurd 39th out of 40. And that’s despite London having more than twice as many breweries as any other city on the list, and being second only to Tokyo in its number of venues. Well, that and the fact that Money’s analyst has normalised by population, which drops sprawling London down below even Antwerp and Anchorage on "Breweries per 10,000 people".

Re-sorting the full list of 40 cities it’s interesting to see other effects apparently at work. For example, craft beer meccas such as Portland Oregon, San Diego and Denver report beer prices around $6 a pint, while in the likes of Kansas City and Milwaukee it’s nearer $4. 

Is that because more people in the latter two drink cheaper macro, or because they’re less fashionable and wealthy areas, so prices are lower? I don’t know – although a quick look at Numbeo suggests that its data may not be the most reliable as it merely quotes average prices for “domestic” and “imported” beers. This is a crappy old Americanism from the days when the typical menu choice was Bud/Miller/Coors for Joe Regular, and Heineken or Amstel for Joe Posh.  

It’s all a bit of fun though, and it certainly generates a few ideas for places to visit, as well as a picture of what you can expect to be charged in different countries around the world. Just don't take Money's promotion of debit cards as gospel – cash remains king in many places, including Germany where pre-pandemic habits are reasserting themselves.  

Let's rephrase it them: what’s your favourite city for beers, and why? 

A grand day out: BrewLDN 2021

After 18 months of not-a-lot, and 10 days after the absurdity of "Freedom Day", it felt weird but so good to be back at a beer festival, chatting with brewers and fellow beer fans. The oddness started of course with the trek across London to Canada Water - my first tube journey in 18 months, too, and the city still strangely quiet which somehow I'm not used to, as my local area has been pretty busy for months now. 

Then the long-ish queue to get in, still reasonably distanced while we all waited to have our Covid passes checked, and finally into the cavernous halls of The Printworks... Again, it really was not busy - partly by design, as the organisers were determined to avoid crowding and said they'd gone for just half the theoretical maximum capacity, and partly because it was so early in the first trade session that some bars hadn't quite finished setting up yet. 

Anyhow, I'm typically rubbish at taking photos, often only remembering once it's too late, so this time I decided to get it done while it was quiet. The early start gave a better view, even if it also meant a slight absence of atmosphere! Here's a few samples...

Needless to say, it got quite a bit busier as the day progressed - though never crowded or full, not even during the early stages of the evening public session - and there's quite a bit more to write about.

Turning back the years: aged Barley wines

To 2014 in this case, which is when these lovelies were first brewed. How they have managed to sit in my beer shed for so long since then, I’m not sure. I guess once they got past the first year it was a repeated case of “I wonder how they’ll be after another year…?”

The first, Windsor & Eton’s 7.2% Magna Carta, I bought in the brewery shop at one of their Knight Club events – a friend was a member and invited me along. It’s an interesting beer – a barley wine, but with the herb and spice mix known as Gruit as well as hops, and based on a recipe by a keen homebrewer local to Windsor, who then helped mash-in the commercial brew. And while it was brewed in 2014, with a few samples escaping that year, its proper release was in 2015 to mark 800 years of the eponymous Great Charter. 

I actually bought two bottles, opening the first in 2015, so this week allowed me to compare the effect of an extra six years. Not too surprisingly, time had oxidised it a little, but the herbal and liquorice notes from the Gruit of 2014 were still there, along with toffee from the caramelised sugar and black malt that also featured in the recipe. The original earthy bitterness and burnt sweetness had mostly subsided though, to be replaced by an aniseed note.  All in all, it was slightly better young, but still very drinkable. 

The second is a sad reminder of the days when, thanks to the Single Market, brewing across country boundaries wouldn’t have generated the paperwork it would today. Although badged, and I believe bottled, by Shepherd Neame, this 10% Barley Wine was actually brewed in Sweden, as a collaboration with Sigtuna Brygghus.  

Thankfully the result, even – or perhaps especially – at seven years old, is gorgeous. Almost, but not quite, lovely enough to take one’s mind off the cretinosity that is Brexit. Deep deep red and still lively, at first anyhow, with a settling foam and a woody malty nose that carries notes of liquorice and red fruit. Malty-rich and bitter-sweet, it’s herbal and syrupy, with a slight vanilla softness from its original ageing in Blanton’s bourbon casks.  

So what of my ageing experiment so far? It’s telling, perhaps, that the stronger beer survived better, although it may of course also be that Shep’s longer experience with bottling had a part to play. There's also the fact that the Sheps beer was in a presentation box, which explains why its crown cap was pristine, unlike the rusted and dusted WEBrew one. 

Anyway, I know I’ve a few even older bottles that need opening – mostly Fuller’s Vintage Ales – so I will continue to investigate!

Hail the Goat indeed!

“I can relax a bit here, because everything has Brett in it anyway,” says Holy Goat co-funder and sour beer specialist Johnny Horn, comparing life in his own small Dundee brewery to his previous role, cuckoo-brewing sours for Vault City in the much larger – and more mainstream – brewhouse at 71 Brewing across town. 

Goat Wizard

That relaxation, relative though it be, is clearly paying off, because the resulting beers are amazing. I have to declare an interest here, as Johnny’s a family friend and fellow ex-Viking, but the beers are still excellent! 

At Holy Goat he focuses on two main brews: Goat Wizard is a 6.8% ‘Golden sour ale’, while Crimson Queen is a 7.4% Flanders Red. There is a third, an 11% Russian Imperial Stout called Foehammer, but that’s contract-brewed in Edinburgh by Newbarns, no doubt to keep it safe from all those sour influences.

“It’s all mixed-fermentation here,”  Johnny explains. “The primary ferm is 100% Brett, then we use our own mixed culture to do the souring and finishing.” Brett for the initial fermentation? Yes, you read that right – Brettanomyces is more often used for finishing, to dry out a beer by eating up the complex sugars that your regular Saccharomyces yeasts can’t digest, but at Holy Goat he’s fermenting a complex wort using only a pair of Brett strains. 

The secondary mixed strain is equally interesting. It combines a Lactobacillus strain – that’s the bacteria that produces the lemony-tart notes in Berliner Weiss and assorted modern sours – with a Kveik. That’s the Norwegian farmhouse yeast that’s fascinated both of us since it was thrust out of obscurity some years ago, and which Johnny adopted with gusto – that’s him in effigy on Filungar, the collaboration Kveik IPA he brewed with Gipsy Hill, by the way.

The results are, as I said, amazing. The Vault City beers I’ve had have been very good, but most were very much fruit-forward with a layering of tart or sourness. Goat Wizard and Crimson Queen are more complex and multi-layered, and beautifully integrated with it.  

The Crimson Queen in particular is gorgeous – tart and lightly balsamic sour, yet somehow smooth with it, it’s rich and fruity-dry with its Bretty juicy berry notes intensified by refermentation on local Scottish blackberries and tayberries. 

Goat Wizard is funky and earthy, dry-sweet and sour with notes of lemon and stonefruit, yet despite its rich fruity flavours and tartness, it is both unhopped and unfruited – the flavours all come from the malts and fermentations. Having perfected the base beer though, Johnny is now experimenting with maturing it over fruit and herbs. We were able to taste from the tank a version aged over Sicilian citrus – bright, zesty and delicious, and subsequently released as Citrus Crusher. There’s also now a honey and elderflower version, called Honeybucket, which I very much look forward to trying – if there’s any left... 

The brewer and his brewery

The icing on the cake was tasting the beers at the brewery last month, while on a family holiday in Scotland. Not only was it the first time I’d been inside a brewhouse in many months, but we’d not seen Johnny in more than two years. 

The last time we met, he was still brewing with Vault City, which he also co-founded. He moved on from there last year – or perhaps it was Vault City that moved on, as they went back to Edinburgh while Johnny stayed in Dundee. 

It amused me a little that the 10hl brewkit that he and his new business partners, Scan and Graham, pulled together is – like Johnny himself – a London transplant. The brew vessels and three of the fermenters were formerly at Islington brewpub the Earl of Essex, while his other fermenters are ex-Kernel. “We have 20hl fermenters coming, we’ll double-brew into those,” he adds. 

Why so many fermenters for just two core brews? In a word, time. The beers spend a full three months maturing, so even if you only brew once a week, that’s twelve batches sitting around. 

How many 'styles' can one beer have - and what is Amber Ale anyhow?

Beer styles are a perennial topic for discussion among beer geeks - sorry, I mean 'aficionados'! I was in just such a debate last week, discussing whether a particular brew should be classed as Bitter, Pale Ale or Golden Ale. 

Over on sites such as Ratebeer and Untappd, and among the BCJP beer judges, it's even worse - does this particular Amber/Red Ale meet the specs for Irish Red or would it be better listed as American Amber? Is this Pale Ale - English, Pale Ale - American or Pale Ale - International? And how do we differentiate between Lager - Strong and Bock - Helles?

So when the news came through that Asahi has refreshed* the branding for Fuller's London Pride I was struck not so much by the new imagery - very nice though it is, with an impressively subtle combination of modernity and continuity of tradition - but by the fascinating image they published alongside the news, showing how Pride's branding has changed over time. 

The name's unchanged of course, and the griffin is always there, but just look at how the description changes!

* Distinctive Best Bitter 
* Special Pale Ale
* Outstanding Premium Ale (superlative overload...)
* Original Ale, and now...
* Outstanding Amber Ale

So one beer has at various times in its history been Best Bitter, Pale Ale, Premium Ale, whatever that is, and today it's Amber Ale. OK, so now tell me what you reckon the difference is between Bitter and Pale Ale? 🤔

It also confirms something I've been saying for a while now: Amber Ale is just another word for Bitter. (And yes, American Amber Ale is just American Bitter!)

It's the same thing that happened with Mild. Marketing types decided that Mild was no longer an attractive word to use, that it didn't describe the beer accurately (and to be fair, they're right - Mild originally meant un-aged, not Mild in flavour) and that it put consumers off. So they renamed it Dark Ale - I'm guessing the marketeers were probably lager drinkers, so weren't aware of pale Milds...

Now it's the turn of Bitter. In recent years more and more brown bitters have been renamed Amber Ale, or in some cases Ruby Ale (although we are crossing into Brown Ale territory here, as well). 

Let me say it again then: 

Amber Ale is just Bitter under a new name.

Dark Ale is just Mild under a new name. 

Oh, and historically at least, Bitter was synonymous with Pale Ale - and by the look of it, for many brewers it still is. Or am I wrong?? 

*Well, I say 'refreshed', they say 'unveiled a striking new brand identity' 😉

Drink local

One of the few compensations of lockdown is that, while I really miss the pub, it’s been a chance to connect with local breweries in new ways. In particular, with draught outlets few and far between, many breweries have not just ramped up their “small pack” production – that’s cans and bottles to you and me – but they’ve also found ways to deliver locally, often for free. 

For example, while it’s my closest brewery, the Ealing Brewing taproom in Brentford is shut for now and the only place to get their beer has been click-and-collect at the original brewpub in Northfields. Sadly, that’s not on a regular route of mine any more, so when I heard they were now doing local delivery I got an order straight in. 

I've only a few bottles left – here’s some of the empties – but they’ve all impressed thus far. A couple of Saisons, including spicy Gan Bei, a couple of very nice fruited sours – properly, but not overly, sour – two strong bitters, one of them brewed with Kveik,  a couple of IPAs and a rich and complex Imperial Brown Ale. 

Then there’s Weird Beard up in Hanwell. I’ve placed several orders with them during lockdown, it helps that their minimum order for free delivery is lower for locals – I reckon sometimes the staff deliver them on their way home! Most recently, there’s been two fine Black IPAs and their excellent black barleywine, Gaslight the Electorate. (They don’t just brew black beers, by the way, they also do great IPAs, a nice Pils, and now a great example of a Helles too – although it seems to me to be closer to a Dortmunder than the expected Münchner!)

This is my most recent order with them, it includes Orange & Black which is the beer they did for the BrewDog Collabfest a few months ago. We had this as one of our dozen festival crowlers (canned from the tap in the pub) and it was excellent, so I wanted to try the properly canned version. 

More recently, an opportunity came up to take part in a tasting session with another local brewery, Portobello – well, it’s t’other side of Acton but that’s still only five miles, and they deliver free inside the M25. So now there’s a mixed box from there and also Big Hug, a contract brewer that currently brews at Portobello. I’m looking forward to that little lot! 

So if you’ve not ordered locally yet, have a look around and see what’s available. There’s still time before your local pub's beer garden reopens – if indeed it has one.