Fuller's Unfiltered bid for craft keg

When I first heard about the launch of London Pride Unfiltered at Craft Beer Rising earlier this year, my first thought was, oh-ho, a hazy rebranding for the craft generation. But could Fuller’s make the idea work, or would it be like an embarrassing parent trying to be hip? And was it just a rebrand, or a genuinely new beer?

I had all those questions in mind when I got the chance for a brief chat with Fuller’s head brewer Georgina Young – over a couple of glasses of Pride Unfiltered, naturally!

First, a bit of background – I’ve seen this sort of relaunch several times before, especially in Germany, where the marketeers have done a great job persuading the average Josef that all beer is yellow, fizzy and clear as a bell. The industrial Pils that you see advertised everywhere, in other words.

But for the Craft Bier pioneers a few years ago, this heavily-marketed industrial Pils was the enemy, and the easiest way to state your non-industrial credentials was to make cloudy beer instead. Cue lots of murky unfiltered Pale Ales, IPAs and others.

The German industrial brewers seem to have caught up much faster than the UK ones, with Naturtrüb (unfiltered and cloudy) Kellerbiers and others widely available there for a couple of years now. (Amusingly, many of the German craft brewers have now swung the other way, producing clear as a bell dry-hopped Pilsners and the like.)

The first thing George pointed out was that Pride Unfiltered is hazy, not murky or cloudy. More significantly perhaps, it needs to be reliably hazy – consistency is absolutely essential for a brewer such as Fuller’s.

“It’s really hard to get this level of haze just right,” she said, adding that “The haze is not yeast, it’s protein – quite fine.” She also stressed that while the basic recipe “is pretty much the same” as regular Pride, including Northdown and Challenger aroma hops, there are changes. Most notably that Unfiltered is also dry-hopped with Target.

Not too surprisingly, Unfiltered is very like regular Pride, but is drier and less malty-fruity, although that will in part be due to the lower serving temperature. There’s earthy and spicy hops on the nose, then it’s lightly fruity and dry.

And it seems to be doing well – on a recent visit to a Fuller’s pub which had Pride Unfiltered on tap alongside a couple of guest keg pale ales, the barmaid said it was pretty popular. The notable thing is it’s definitely not aimed at the keg Pride drinker, and indeed the Fuller’s folk say there’s no plans to replace keg with Unfiltered.

George also had some news about the Fuller’s beer range continuing to expand. “We’ll do eight new beers this year, four of them cask, plus Unfiltered of course,” she said. “We also have seasonal cask and keg beers and then monthly specials.”

They’re also increasing the range they distribute from other breweries, with Sierra Nevada the most prominent example. One of Fuller’s sales team noted that “We brought over 14 Sierra Nevada seasonals last year, this year there’s six definites plus maybe two or three more. This year’s list include Otra Vez, Sidecar and Tropical Torpedo.” Yet more reasons to visit the bigger Fuller’s pubs – although I don’t expect to see these in my local.

Family fun at Fuller's

Photo: Fuller's

We've been to the annual Open Day at Fuller's a few times now, and they've all been good fun. "Dray" rides - actually a passenger cart, but drawn by real, huge, dray horses - and craft activities in the Hock Cellar for the kids, plus brewery tours and beer for the grown-ups, and live music and a BBQ for everyone. What's not to like?!

One year they even had a fire engine in attendance, for the kids to sit in and try on helmets, etc - at least until it and the crew got called away... This year there's also a 10k Fun Run that same morning.

Anyway, it's on Saturday 3rd September from 11am to 4pm. I hope I don't need to explain where! But if I do, check out the Open Day website linked above. :)

Murky beer at Fuller's - and it's deliberate

Last week I accidentally found myself at the launch of a new beer. There I was at the Fuller’s brewery for a very interesting seminar on re-creating historic beers (of which, more later), when a brand new beer was announced – and it wasn’t a Fuller’s brew, either!

John & Justin

Brought up from Bristol specially by Moor Beer Co’s head brewer Justin Hawke, Relentless Optimism was immensely fashionably – and very appropriately, given our location in a real ale heartland – available to taste in cask-conditioned, keg-conditioned and can-conditioned form. Once CAMRA’s technical group catches up (and they’ve already validated keg-conditioning), all three formats will be acknowledged as real ale.

It’s a three-way collaboration between Justin, his guest Fernando Campoy of Spain’s Cerveza Domus, and Fuller’s John Keeling. It seems Justin and Fernando decided to brew a "non-traditional" interpretation of ESB, and thought who better to ask for advice than the man whose ESB is that rare thing – a brew that founded an entire new style of beer.

“They contacted me because they wanted to make an ESB, and they thought I might know something about it,” John joked. “So one Saturday I got the train down to Bristol and helped them brew one.”

“We wanted a modern twist on ESB,” Justin added. “It’s unfined because that leaves more flavour in the beer, and we worked with some modern British hop varieties – Admiral, Minstrel, Keyworth and UK-grown Chinook. We used a traditional ale yeast too.”

So what’s the beer like? For a start it was cloudy in all three formats – not quite Bristol Murky, but close! It looks and tastes quite different from Fuller’s ESB, yet you can see similarities in how the toffeeish malt balances the herbal and resinous bitterness.

It was also very interesting to see how each serving format emphasised different aspects of the beer – as John said, the cask version had a bigger mouthfeel, while keg dispense emphasised the hops a little more. Some people preferred the can-conditioned version though, perhaps because it came somewhere in the middle – a nice bright hoppiness, but still with that caramelly body and a decent alcohol warmth.

John said Fuller’s will buy some casks of Relentless Optimism and release them to some of its pubs, though he added that “It will be a step forward for some of them, because they won’t be used to hazy beer. We generally prefer finings because our customers expect it.”

Cloudy beer in a Fuller’s pub, yet nothing’s wrong – who’d have thought it? :)

More stuff to read....

A few interesting reads from around the web. The first's an article from Craft Beer & Brewing, a US site that's mainly aimed at homebrewers. Many of its articles are too US-centric for my taste, but it does also carry some thought-provoking pieces, including this one, Do IBUs matter? Some drinkers – notably hopheads – are obsessed with IBUs, apparently believing the higher a beer's IBU rating, the better it is. This article explains why IBUs tell you something about a beer, but not everything, not by a long chalk!

Like CAMRA's technical committee, which has finally acknowledged that you can have keg-conditioned real ale, I've had more than a few of those cask vs keg discussions where you try to point out that today's kegs are a world apart from the Red Barrels of the 1970s, then someone says “Well, what about the xyz-keg?” and you have to admit that, actually you don't know that one. So it was great to read this long piece on the Ale is Good blog which is basically explaining from a distributor or server's point of view what all the different kegs are. He doesn't really cover the real ale aspects, but hey, there be dragons...

Original 1930s conetop beer cans

And then earlier today, I picked up an item on Jeff Bell's blog where he quotes a tweet from Fuller's John Keeling, expressing the latter's doubts over micro-canning – doubts which Jeff shares. It reminded me that I never really flagged up my own article on the subject of micro-canning, which was published earlier this year in Engineering & Technology, the magazine of the Institution of Engineering & Technology. I was very pleased with the way it came out in print, and the online version's pretty nice too.

This last one was sent in to me, it's an incomer's view of The Best Bars in Neukölln – a hip district of Berlin that is now gentrifying, after decades as a big Turkish & Lebanese area. I mention the article partly because it reminds me how different people have quite different motives for loving bars and pubs. Berlin is home to a bunch of great breweries, several of them in Neukölln including Berliner Berg which is one of the newest, and Privatbrauerei am Rollberg which is inside the old Berliner Kindl brewery building (and which seems to have overcome my initial misgivings to become very well liked). Yet in all his discussion of bars the only beer he mentions is Neumarkter Lammsbräu which is from Oberpfalz in Bavaria!

The Bishop and Doctor Brown

I picked up an interesting bit of information today about the Fuller's London Brewers Alliance programme. This is a great tie-up which sees Fuller's pubs showcase beers from other London Brewers Alliance members, and all kudos to Fuller's for running it.

What I hadn't really realised until I was chatting with one of the staff in the Mad Bishop & Bear at Paddington station today was just what a challenge this is for some LBA members. The programme only runs in 15 Fuller's pubs, but even so it requires the brewer to commit to supply 70 firkins of the chosen beer. This is to allow the pubs to order multiple casks – the bigger ones might take eight, for example.

That's a lot for a small brewery – the typical 10-barrel brewkit produces 40 firkins at a time, while for smaller breweries such as A Head in a Hat's five-barrel plant at the Florence in south London, it means brewing the same beer four times. This makes it quite impracticable for some, if they don't have the spare capacity.

I mention A Head in a Hat because that's who is supplying the March LBA beer, and the Mad Bishop has it on sale already. It's Dapper Ales' Doctor Brown, a recreation of a 1928 double brown ale brewed in London by Barclay Perkins, and named after Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was a great friend and benefactor of the Thrale family who founded the brewery that became Barclay Perkins.

Dapper Ales is a new series of beers, produced in collaboration between two beer historians, A Head in a Hat's Peter Haydon, and Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer author and fellow blogger Ron Pattinson. Peter has attempted to recreate the beer as faithfully as possible, going back to original boil times, and parti-gyling the wort streams. The original hops used were Pacifics, Bramling, Fuggles and Golding, and care has been taken to get as close as possible to this original bill. American Cluster are what would have been meant by Pacifics, and while Bramling is no longer grown due to its disease susceptibility, its daughter Early Gold is, so that has been used instead.

The result is a rich and toasty ale, deep red-brown with touches of smoke and tart red fruit, and a burnt-bitter caramel edge. An excellent example of an English brown ale, I suspect, and well worth seeking out.

Addendum: And as Ed quite rightly points out in the comment below, one opportunity to seek it out is when Peter and Ron get together on Saturday 28th March from 3pm to formally launch the Dapper Ales project. I would very much like ot be there, but sadly I'll be out of town.

Fuller's to close the Harp - but only for 10 days

Last night I paid a visit to the Admiralty, Fuller's new flagship pub (ho-ho) on Trafalgar Square, just around the corner from Admiralty Arch, and what nice job they've done with it. Although how do they get permission to have white ensigns hanging up inside - I thought they were only for HM's ships and shore stations?

While I was there, I bumped into a party from West London CAMRA who were on a pub crawl, with their next destination being the Harp in Covent Garden - CAMRA's former national pub-of-the-year (that's a link to the pub's old website), which Fuller's bought last year. Also there to meet the CAMRA party was a small team from Fuller's, including Harp manager Sara Bird and the MD of Fuller's Inns Jonathon Swaine.

Jonathon and Sara were present because of the FUD following that Fuller's takeover. At the time, Fuller's said the Harp would continue to operate as a free house, though with the addition of London Pride as a regular on the bar. Not everyone believes that though, not least because similar things were said in 2005 (ale buffs have long memories!) about the acquisition of the Head of Steam free house by Euston station - that's now a Fuller's pub called the Doric Arch.

So with the Harp due to close for 10 days from February 16th, they wanted to allay fears of major change. The story is that it's just a repainting and some updates to the loos, with no more changes to the beer range planned. One of the Fuller's team told me that they have even arranged contingency measures for those drinkers who rely on the Harp for their fix of Dark Star - it's a regular outlet for the Sussex brewery - during the closure, it will be on at the nearby Lamb & Flag instead.

Talking of which, I was impressed by the range and quality at the Lamb on my last visit there - I think it was four cask guests alongside four Fuller's ales. The ale quality at the Admiralty was also excellent, with pretty much the entire current Fuller's cask range on handpump, including Bengal Lancer and Jack Frost; no guest ales that I could see though.

I also discovered that the branded glass for ESB is no longer the heavy stemmed goblet - now it's a trendily-retro straight mug. Doesn't it look gorgeous?!

Fuller's open day

Hooves bigger than my head!

Many thanks to the Fuller's team and all their friends and helpers for an excellent open day at the Griffin Brewery today. The small Vikings enjoyed their horse-drawn dray (well, wagon) ride, plus the barbeque, the cake stall, the face-painting and the tombola. Oh ,and the fire engine!

As I had to drive them there, I partook only gently of the outdoor bar, which offered keg Frontier, Cornish cider and cask Pride for the equivalent of £1 a pint*, but there was a fuller (ho ho) range on in the Hock Cellar, including Fuller's Summer Ale and Gale's Beachcomber next to each other on the bar.

Also in the cellar was an opportunity to taste some of the bottled beers, a tombola, and a "decorate your own mini-cask with stickers" corner for the kids. Sadly, the mini-cask the boy decorated and brought home was empty...


*I say "the equivalent" as the currency for most of this was bottletops. You could buy a bag of 10 for a fiver (they're new and unused ones so don't go rooting round to see if you have any used ones in the bin!) then 'spend' them on the bars and stalls.

If I understood rightly, all the income from selling them goes to one of three local charities, depending on the type of tops you chose to buy, with the goods actually being donated. A nice touch, and a lot better than simply giving things away.

In brewing, 13 is lucky for some

Sara, Derek and Jane

“I've only retired from Fuller's, I haven't retired from brewing!” splutters former Fuller's (and Young's) brewing manager Derek Prentice, when I ask how retirement is suiting him. That's just as well, because we're talking over a couple of pints of Brewer's Dozen, the 5.5% Special Bitter that he has just co-brewed with Sara Barton at her Brewsters Brewery in Grantham.

It's a luscious and hoppy strong beer – dry-sweet, yet full flavoured with touches of blackcurrant, honey and orange, plus earthy and spicy hints, and it's entirely made with English ingredients. Indeed, it is a showcase for what's possible with English hops now – First Gold, Fuggles and Admiral in the brew and then dry-hopped with Target and Admiral. That's in addition to East Anglian barley malt, caramalt and crystal malt, and Sara's brewing yeast.

The two brewers were brought together by beer sommelier Jane Peyton – Derek was named British Brewer of the Year 2013-14 by the British Guild of Beer Writers, while Sara held the same title in 2012-13. Jane suggested that they brew a beer commemorating the year when they both held the title, and given that beer is sometimes referred to as liquid bread, they decided that a baker's dozen could also work for brewers!

The first question was how to work the number 13 into the recipe. “We could have gone for an Original Gravity (OG) of 13˚ Plato, that's about 1052 OG, or for 13 brewer's pounds, which would have given about 1030 OG,” Derek explained. “So that meant either an Ordinary Bitter or a Special.”

They chose the Plato route, aiming for an English Special Bitter – although the result could easily be mistaken for an English IPA (not surprisingly, given that the two were historically very close or perhaps even the same).

“The one unknown for me was Sara's yeast – it turned out to be very clean, with a bit of fruit,” Derek added. “I was expecting 5.2% but it's turned out at 5.5% - the yeast worked a bit deeper than I expected.”

So what's next for him – does he have his own brewery yet? No, not yet, he says, with the 'yet' getting just a bit of a stress, “although I may have a small share in one.” In the meantime, grab a Brewer's Dozen if you can find it – there's only one brew of it, but it should be around in Brewsters outlets, plus there might still be some (but only a little!) left at the Mad Bishop and Bear where we talked and drank.

Disclaimer: Derek and Sara bought me beer....

Fuller's Frontier keg lager

Fuller's is dipping its toes back into the lager pond, with the launch of a new keg beer called Frontier. Described by head brewer John Keeling on Twitter as "a new wave lager", Frontier is already available in the Mawsons Arms next to the brewery in Chiswick. It is going into 50 pubs to test consumer reaction, he added.

The Frontier launch is being supported by London-based marketing specialist Boutique Beer Brands which also represent the likes of Timmermanns and Blanche de Namur, presumably to help Fuller's reach out to a new market segment.

It's not the first time Fuller's has brewed a lager of course – in the early 1980s it produced one called K2. This didn't last all that long but you can still see K2 Lager memorabilia in the Hock Cellar at the brewery (left).

And more recently some of its ales have been actively targeted at lager drinkers, most notably Discovery and Honey Dew – Discovery was subsequently switched from a normal cellar temperature ale to being served only chilled, at 8-10C.

When the Fuller's Fine Ale club asked members last year whether the brewery should produce a lager, the responses were divided. Some said it would be an unnecessary distraction, others pointed out that British breweries – most notably Harviestoun, with Schiehallion – already made good cask or craft lagers, so why not?

And of course since then we've been the continued rise of craft beer, including some very fine London lagers from the likes of Camden Town Brewery and Meantime, so it is not too surprising that Fuller's might decide to join in.

Indeed, given its interest in historical beers for its Past Masters range and the fact that lagers have been brewed in London for well over a century (and elsewhere in Britain for even longer), perhaps a Past Masters-style dark Munich lager is in order.

Being out of the country for a while longer, I won't be able to taste Frontier any time soon, but if you get the chance, please do let me know what you think!

1. Hannoversches Bier Fest

Today (Friday) was the opening day – or late afternoon at least, as it didn't start until 4pm – of the first Hannover Bier Fest. We were promised an international line-up, which is still something of a novelty in a country where many people believe foreign beer isn't worth drinking, served from stalls in the old market square – as with their beer gardens, Germans love doing stuff al fresco.

In hindsight, deciding to drive down on Friday afternoon might have been a mistake, given that it's a holiday weekend here and half the bloody country seemed to be on the road. We hoped to be in the city well before 3 but didn't actually arrive until 4, so missed the official opening, if indeed there was one.

So things were well under way, with many of the tables filling up, by the time I took a tour around to see what was on offer. The answer was, as I had suspected, many of the "usual suspects" – plenty of nationally-distributed German brands, such as Lausitzer Porter, König Ludwig, Erdinger and Krombacher, plus the local Hannover breweries and the big AB-InBev names, including Franziskaner, Löwenbräu, Spaten and of course Becks. Many of these were on what was claimed as the longest bar in Northern Germany, with 40 taps in 30 metres (above). Prices varied from €2.50 to €4 for a 25cl measure - not cheap.

Zischke Dunkel

Where it started to get interesting was rarer names such as Zischke and Allerheim, plus some of the new wave of internationally-inspired young brewers, notably Propeller and FritzAle.

The foreign country with the widest range was Belgium. However, as well as Kwak, Delerium Tremens, Grimbergen and Tongerlo on tap, this also included AB-InBev pap such as Stella and the yucky (well, the boy liked it, but he's 2 and also likes chocolate milk) Hoegaarden Rosé.

Actually, looking at it again there were probably as many British beers present as Belgian, but the organisers broke those up into England, which was mostly Fullers (though Boddies and Newky Brown were also listed) and Scotland, represented by a certain bunch of canines... Actually, given enough time I would have visited the latter tent, badged as Brewdog & Friends, as it was also supposedly serving Harviestoun Ola Dubh, Boruvka Cerna Hora from Czechia, and Sierra Nevada. The latter's Pale Ale is remarkably popular here, by the way: I guess it is a perfect stepping stone for a Pilsner drinker who wants to expand their flavour horizons.

Sadly I didn't have time to check out the African tent properly either, to see if the South African, Tanzanian, Kenyan, Namibian and Ghanaian beers listed in the programme were anything more than generic international lagers. (I did spot a couple of groups necking Castle from the bottle, and that's pretty generic in my book.)

Where we sat was opposite the Chilean bar, though – and just up from the cheese stall, which had an excellent range of potent delicacies. All around were young Germans, again necking from the bottle, but this time it was varied non-lager from a microbrewery in Chile – and yes it was the real thing, not a licensed copy made in Europe like some of the 'African' beer.

The only one dancing!

There was also good live music, with more promised, plus of course a choice of eats, including sausages, grill-kebabs and filled crêpes. It would have been nice to stay longer, but we were already a bit frazzled from the drive down and my designated driver was not looking forward to a repeat experience on the way back. Plus the Chileans were happy to sell me a couple of takeaways for later...

I'm going to try scanning the programme and dropping it in below for anyone who's thinking of going along – the festival is open from noon on Saturday and from 11 on Sunday. The programme includes a reasonably accurate beer list, which the festival website does not.

Golden Pints 2012

With 2012 in the Common Era almost over, I'm finally having a stab at the Golden Pints. This is a set of beery awards instituted by writers Andy Mogg and Mark Dredge; the idea is that anyone who wants to do so can offer their list, Mark then compiles a “best of” listing on his blog – I hope there will be an update to his initial posting here from 10th December!

The list starts with several standard categories, then we're free to add categories of our own as we wish – non-UK writers are invited to substitute their own location for “UK”; as I'm both, I'll add categories for Germany.

Best UK Draught Beer

1. Windsor & Eton Conqueror 1075 – all the Conqueror variants are superb, but I was lucky enough to catch the full-strength one on cask when it's normally only available in bottles. In bottle it's great, in cask and well-kept, it's stunning.

2. Thornbridge Bracia (Pedro Ximénez Aged) – I'm going to be strict here and only vote for beers I drank during 2012. This eliminates some of my favourites as they're seasonal and I wasn't in the country at the right time. This was one where I was in the right place and time – and fortunately had enough cash on me, as it was £12 a pint!

3. Twickenham Entire Butt – I got to try this at the brewery, it's an experiment by brewer Tom Madeiros to try producing an old-style porter by blending aged strong ale with fresh bitter and for me it worked brilliantly. I wasn't sure if I should include it here as it was a one-off, but apparently it has had a limited commercial release so here it is...

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer

1. The Kernel Export Stout London 1890 – Evin's historical beers are just so complex and wonderful, especially the Stouts.

2. Fullers Vintage Ale 1999 – all the Vintage Ales are great, and usually more so with a few years on them, it so happens that this 13 year-old was the one I enjoyed this year.

I'm tempted to put the Twickenham Entire Butt in here too, as I was gifted a litre in a bottle to take home to Mrs BeerViking, but it's not regularly bottled, so...

3. The Kernel Imperial Brown Stout London 1856.

Best German Draught Beer

This is a tough one, because finding anything other than (boring) Pils or Weizen on draught is tough, except in places with local specialities such as Rauchbier and Braunbier in Bamberg, maybe Märzen in Munich, or Kölsch in Cologne.

1. Klindworths Sauensieker Pale Ale – where most German brewpubs' output is pretty staid, these guys like to have fun. Their take on an English Pale Ale is a bit of a hop-bomb, yet malty and well balanced.

2. Paffgen Kölsch – on tap at the tap. Fresh beer is not always best, but this was one time when it was – well, as fresh as lagered beer can be.

3. Maisels Dampfbier – one of the few darker beers I can get regularly on draught, this Steambeer is a lovely example of a Franconian amber ale.

Best German Bottled or Canned Beer

If I wasn't pulling them out separately, I'd quite possibly not have any German bottled beer in here at all. There's a lot of good German beer and some very good German beer, but I've not found a lot of really really good German beer yet. Some brewers are starting to experiment with different flavours and so on, but quite cautiously so far.

1. Kyritzer Mord und Totschlag – from a North German abbey brewery that's done a number of recreations of medieval dark beers, this one's a smoked black-beer from the 1700s.

2. Weltenburger Kloster Asam Bock – one of the classic Doppelbocks, rich and sweet, yet roasty and burnt.

3. Propeller Nachtflug - that rare beast, a German Imperial Stout, it's rich, dry, roasty and slightly salty (and no, it doesn't have double-headed eagles on the label!).

Andechser and Einbecker would both be in here as absolute classics, along with Störtebeker Stark-Bier, except I'm being even more strict in this section, and listing only beers that were new to me this year.

Best (non German or UK) Draught Beer

1. Emelisse Imperial Russian Stout – as black as sin, and almost as tasty.

2. Southern Tier Choklat – a superb Stout made with cocoa.

3. Evil Twin Yin – UK or not? I'll say not as it's a Danish brew, even though the brewing apparently took place at Brewdog. It's black and thick as liquorice, and as tasty as the best bits of coffee, port, liquorice and treacle toffee, all rolled together.

Best (non German or UK) Bottled or Canned Beer

1. Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout

2. Thisted Limfjords Double Brown Stout

3. Long Trail Brewmaster Series Imperial Porter

I have a sneaking suspicion that my drinking preferences might be showing by now....

Best Overall Beer

W&E Conqueror 1075 – I've been doing some thinking and reading around Black IPA, as well as discussing it with beer historians, and I've come to suspect that it is a genuine historical style, but with the wrong name. Everyone knows the story of IPA, that it was shipped to India for the troops – well, no it wasn't. IPA was shipped to India for the officers and gentry – the troops got Porter. Indeed, Ron Pattinson's research suggests Porter shipments to India were more than double those of IPA – and that Export India Porter was a hopped-up 1800s Porter at around 7-8%. Not far off a Double Black IPA, eh? 

Best UK Brewery

Magic Rock – for consistency, variety and fun. OK, so none of their beers made it into my top three individually, but Magic Rock's average is significantly above almost any other UK brewery working today.

Best German Brewery

Klindworths, I must go and visit them soon!

Best (non German or UK) Brewery

Alvinne, for great beer and also for the Alvinne Craft Beer Festival.

Pub/Bar of the Year

It's a bit of a zoo, but as a bar and for craft keg I still like the Euston Tap. For cask ale and a proper pub experience, it's my London local, the Magpie & Crown in Brentford.

Beer Festival of the Year

Another tough one. It was great to have GBBF back at Olympia this year, and I enjoyed working at the Twickenham beer festival too, but for the variety of both people and beer I think it has to be the Alvinne Craft Beer Festival.

Supermarket of the Year

OK, this is a beer supermarket, but all the branches of Hol'Ab I've used have impressed me. Like most German drinks shops there's crates and crates of boring Pils, but there's usually a whole wall lined with unusual stuff as well, a lot from Franconia and Bavaria-proper but also some others too. Don't expect to find much foreign beer though, unless you're desperate for Guinness or Heineken, or are a gastarbeiter needing Tyskie or Lech for a taste of home.

Independent Retailer of the Year

Bierland in Hamburg, for a great selection of hard-to-find German beers, plus a sprinkling of decent foreign stuff.

Best Beer Blog or Website

1. Shut Up About Barclay Perkins – more beer history than you can shake a stick at, the dry numbers amply counterbalanced by Ron Pattinson's erudition and dry wit.

2. Pete Brown's BeerBlog – great writing.

3. Boak and Bailey – almost always thought-provoking.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year

The London City of Beer launch at the Red Herring, in particular Fuller's Bengal Lancer with a variety of cheeses. I should try more IPA/cheese pairings.

In 2013 I’d most like to...

Get more beer writing gigs, lead more guided tastings, get to the European Beer Bloggers Conference again, and generally get to more beer events.

Dear gods, I'm already over 1300 words – no wonder this has taken days to research and write... Merry Yule and Frohe Weihnachten, everyone!

London, City of Beer with Food

There was a bit more to the London City of Beer launch last week than I mentioned at the time: after introducing the project to the assembled media, we were treated to a London beer and food tasting – well, all the beer was from London, but the food wasn't, although it was all from the British Isles.

Lead by writer and campaigner Roger Protz, this was all about getting the message over that beer goes brilliantly with food, and is often a better match than wine. As Roger said, “I've never understood why Stilton is served with Port – it's a horrible combination. Cheese and IPA is a match made in heaven!”

He added: “The interesting thing about British beer is how many different hops brewers use for bittering, flavour and aroma. Most Continental hops tend to be a bit one-dimensional, and then the brewers only use one variety per beer.”

Here's the menu, with Roger's suggestions of what goes well together:

1. Fullers (Gales) Seafarers Ale with smoked salmon on crisped sourdough wafers – basically thin toast. Somehow the salmon brought out the fruitiness of the beer, while the beer deepened the salmon.

2. Sambrooks Junction with salt and peppered mini sausages. The beer, with its roasted barley and malty notes, cut through the slight fattiness of the sausages to reveal them at their meaty best.

3. Fullers ESB with leg of lamb, roasted pink with rosemary and thyme. The classic Fullers marmalade notes plus ESB's dark dried fruit beautifully contrasted the sweetness of the meat.

4. Meantime Wheat beer, in small champagne-style bottles, with Cooleeney (Irish) soft cheese. The spicy and faintly tart hefeweizen was an interesting match for this Camembert-style cheese. I wasn't convinced, but others thought it great.

5. Bengal Lancer with Yarg (Cornish) and Cashel (Irish) cheeses. This beer was a better match for cheese in my view, its assertive dry yet fruity hoppiness both the creamy and salty cheeses.

6. Fullers 1845 with a selection of white, milk and plain chocolate mini-ingots from Hotel Chocolat. Some people might have gone for the obvious here – a porter, Fullers London Porter even! - yet the rich fruitiness of 1845 demonstrated that sometimes a little contrast serves to show up each partner's best points rather than their worst ones.

During all this, Roger kept us entertained with a string of anecdotes and background information. For example, we learnt that ESB is a UK trademark of Fullers so there are no other ESBs made here, whereas in the US it has become a popular generic style, and that Bengal Lancer had its first success not in the UK but in Scandinavia – apparently the Fullers marketing people didn't think it would sell here, so they shipped it to Sweden instead. Bizarre.

He did also repeat the IPA myth though – that India Pale Ale was originally brewed stronger than other beers to help it survive shipping to India, which it wasn't. Sure, early IPAs were maybe 7% or 8% ABV – but so were the other pale ales of the time, according to historians who've dug into the brewers' logbooks. Pete Brown, in his book Hops and Glory, suggested that the special character of IPA may actually have come from a variety of the Estufagem baking-and-sloshing process that produces Madeira wine. I'd love to try a classic IPA that's been through Estufagem, if anyone fancies making one...

Anyhow, the food was excellent, and in the circumstances it was just as well that it was sample portions rather than a slap-up meal, as the latter would have taken longer and probably would have detracted from the beers rather than enhancing them.

Yes, a lot of Fullers beers in there, but we were in a Fullers pub! And apparently while more breweries had been invited to participate, they had not been able to do so for various reasons. I'd love to think that there will be a “next time” for them to have another go at attending. Here's hoping.

In the meantime: beer with food. You know it makes sense.

Plastic fantastic?

I've been meaning to write about this year's London Brewers Showcase at Vinopolis for a couple of weeks now, but other things kept intervening - most notably the Twickenham Beer Festival.... (Congratulation, by the way, to Hammerpot for winning Beer of the Festival for its truly excellent Bottle Wreck Porter.)

The first thing you noticed at Vinopolis was just how many breweries London now has. It may even be up to 20. Most are members of the London Brewers Alliance, but the main LBA website is woefully in need of updating as it is missing a bunch of them: East London Brewing, By The Horns, London Brewing (=The Bull brewpub), London Fields Brewery, and my local Botanist Brewery, to name but five. (There is a decent-ish list in this article though.)

The second thing that caught my attention though was just how many were using plastic casks. These have been around for a a few years, but I wasn't aware of them being very successful. Their advantages are low weight and low cost, plus of course they don't get nicked and melted down by metal-thieving scumbags, but they had a reputation for being more fragile and likely to split.

"Plastic casks are a lot more reliable now - all the recent London start-ups are going for them," said Alex Bull of By the Horns. 

Fullers head brewer Derek Prentice agreed, but added that bigger brewers will most likely stay with metal for now - if only because if he tried running plastics down an automated filling line, their light weight would probably have them bouncing off and careening around the hall...

One other reason why they work for the smaller brewers could be that their beers are not so widely distributed - even if a cask leaves the brewpub, in many cases it stays within that company's small pub estate. That means less heaving casks in and out of lorries and dropping them on pavements.

Other problems remain though, most notably that the other bits and bobs involved - the shive and keystone - were originally designed for use on metal casks, not plastic, and of course how the materials bind together will vary. This was demonstrated at Twickenham where we lost one plastic cask due to the keystone blowing out overnight and another was withdrawn by the brewer because the shive was no longer airtight. So, more work still needed, eh?

Happy birthday CAMRA!

An excellent afternoon out yesterday at the London CAMRA 40th birthday party. We took over the Counting House - the Fullers one on Cornhill, in the Square Mile, not the JDW - for a superb range of beers from a variety of London brewers, plus a few speeches, and pub quiz where all the questions (pretty much) were about the history of CAMRA and yours truly's team didn't even feature in the top 6...

The Fullers beers on offer included the brand new Black Cab Stout, which was launched last week. On Twitter, John Keeling said, "Many people are surprised we have made a stout considering we already make a porter.We are a London brewery by the way." Yes indeed, and don't forget the Double Stout...

Anyway, Black Cab is a lovely stout, black with brown hints and a beige head, then roast malt, milk chocolate and a hint of red fruit on the nose, and a roasty dry yet sweetish body with burnt fruit, plus hints of fruitcake and toffee. Perhaps a little sweeter than I normally go for, but I'll definitely be trying it again!

Others on offer, according to my failing memory, included Brodies American Brown (which is quite excellent), Twickenham Sundancer, Sambrooks Powerhouse Porter, and Redemption Trinity. (There was also one from London Brewing, AKA the Bull Highgate's pub brewery, but I forget the name and the Bull's website appears rather broken...)

Hmm. You won't see that sort of range in a Fullers pub very often, methinks.

As well as speeches from various CAMRA folk, including one by regional director Kim Martin who ably summarised the London branches' desire to see the Campaign embrace craft beer rather than rejecting it, our host Richard Fuller gave a good summary of the history of Fullers and its relationship with CAMRA from 1971.

All in all, an excellent event, and I wish I could have stayed longer!

Splitting the Atom

It's been a low-key launch, but Fullers has joined the growing group of brewers taking advantage of the government's new tax break for sub-2.9% beers. Its offering is Mighty Atom, which is gradually making its way through the pub estate, and is currently in the Princess Royal in Brentford, among others.

I had a pint today and rather nice it was too, if it little light-bodied as you'd expect. The landlord said he expects it to go down well with the football crowd, especially those who drive over but still fancy a pint or two. Damn, yet more furriners nicking our parking spaces every other Saturday!

Fullers Past Masters no.2 - Double Stout

Fullers recently launched the second in its series of beers from the archives: Past Masters Double Stout. Organised by the Fullers Fine Ale Club, the launch took place at the brewery shop, where John Keeling introduced the beer to a packed audience, and beer writer Melissa Cole then led a tasting of both Double Stout and the previous brew, Past Masters XX.

Based on a recipe brewed on 4th August 1893 and weighing in at 7.4%, the Double Stout is already gorgeous – it poured a deep red-black with a head like a fine espresso crema, and I detected cocoa, a little coffee and hints of tart red fruit on the nose. Others commented on tasting molasses, a slight salty dryness, and an almost savoury liquorice note.

It will improve with age, and may also increase in ABV, John said. He added: "This beer will age – they designed it to age in 1893." The XX (an 1891 recipe) is already mellowing well after nine months in bottle – the fresh gingery notes have eased off, with hints of honey and orange juice emerging, plus perhaps a slight earthiness.

John added that he had just returned from an enjoyable trip to Marble Brewery in Manchester, where he collaborated on a 6.8% Marble-Fullers tawny ale. "If it's successful, we might bring the Marble brewers here and do a Fullers-Marble beer," he said.

All of this fits in with Fullers interest in trying new things, which John said is older than we might think. "People think American hops are new to this country," he said. "Our brewing book shows we were using them in 1891." He added that his brewers are also doing more barrel-aging experiments – "We have put some XX in cask and are waiting to see how it turns out."

And he said that the next Past Masters recipe is one that's especially dear to his heart – an Old Burton Extra, as brewed in 1956 on the day that he was born, and aimed for release on his birthday this coming September.

(This entry is based on a story I wrote for the upcoming London Drinker magazine. Click through to the big photo if you want to read the bottle notes...)

New historic beer range from Fullers

While visiting the Griffin Brewery yesterday, I learnt that Fullers plans to tap the interest in historical beers by digging through its old recipe books to launch a new line called Past Masters. The first in this series is a 7.5% strong mild (as the brewers apparently describe it) or strong ale (as the marketing chaps prefer to call it) called XX and based on a recipe from 1891 - September 2nd, 1891, to be precise!

The Fullers brewers worked with beer historian Ron Pattinson to identify modern equivalents of the 1891 malts and hops. They also had to find ways to compensate for the differences between 19th and 21st century sparging methods, temperatures and brew lengths. The XX recipe also incorporates sugars at the end, which today's Fullers beers do not.

XX will be available in bottle very soon - it's not on the Fullers website yet but it is already listed on Ratebeer (edit: no it's not - as there were no actual ratings for it, one of the moderators deleted the entry. It's restored now though!), and I'm told it is announced in an issue of the Fullers Fine Ale Club magazine "First Draught" due to reach subscribers this week. It's intended to be bottled-only, but I'm told there may be some "extremely limited edition" cask XX.

They're about to start work on Past Masters no.2, which will "probably be a strong double stout". Each of these beers is likely to be a single batch only - they're something of a labour of love for the brewers.