What the (Austrian) Hell?

Hell, or more properly Bavarian or Munich Helles*, has been growing in popularity across Germany for several years now. Pretty much every brewery that used to major on Pilsner** now offers a Helles too. 

So when I learnt that Austrian brewery Stiegl had also released a Hell, I was intrigued. Partly because Stiegl already has a Munich Helles-style beer in Goldbräu (5%), but also because Austria also has its own, slightly different, beer styles, including one called Helles. 

Which would Stiegl Hell (4.5%) turn out to be? As luck would have it, the nice folk at Stiegl’s UK importer, Euroboozer, stepped in to help me try to answer that question. They’ve just introduced Stiegl Hell to the UK market, so were kind enough to send some over, along with a branded glass. 

And it’s intriguing. It's pale gold with a light malty sweetness on the nose, along with just a touch of raw bread dough and a hint of floral perfume, all of which one might expect in a Munich Helles. But then on the palate it’s crisp and hoppy-bitter, with hints of dry grass and herbs from those ‘noble’ Central European hops – more like a Pilsner now, except that there’s also smooth malt with a slight sweetness, not the breadiness one might get in Munich, and just a touch of stickiness on the finish.  

I’d have this down as an Austrian-style Helles, then, but feel free to go and judge for yourself: I’m told Stiegl Hell is already available on draught from Frontier Pubs sites around London, as well as Bonehead in Birmingham and Junkyard in Nottingham, while retailers carrying the 500ml bottles include Beers of Europe. Expect that list to grow as Euroboozer pushes it more. 

*Hell or Helles simply means pale or golden, so it can be used in other contexts, while Munich Helles refers to the actual style of beer. German brewers tend to be cavalier about the distinction though... 

**Pils itself only came to dominate the German market in the 1970s, displacing Dortmunder Export. Coincidentally, that was also when Bitter lost out to Lager in Britain. 

Brew//LDN '23 round-up part two

As well as enjoying the beers, of course, it was a great opportunity to talk with the brewers and brewery staff, both about the beer and about what’s going on in their parts of the industry. Magic Dragon was a new one on me – turns out it used to be Plassey, and it's Wrexham-based so I guess that explains the dragon! As I was enjoying a sample of his Black Tiger black IPA, head brewer Richard Lever mentioned that his beers had won SIBA and other awards, so we had a chat about what attracts microbrewers to competitions. 

"I enter the ones I like," he said. "I also want to find out how they do - if you don't put a beer in to be judged, you don't get feedback." He also mentioned that his beers are mostly cask but that this is changing: "We're quite new in keg, but we are starting to do more – North Wales is opening up to keg." 

How long, I wonder, before they're in the same position as London and other cities, of trying once again to rescue falling cask sales?

 
Some aficionados disregard Drygate as 'crafty macro' because it's part-owned by Tennents and does several supermarket-friendly brews, such as Disco Forklift Truck. It doesn’t help here that the latter recently had an ABV drop "to make it more approachable", which is typical macro behaviour. 

Yet at the same time the other owner is a bona-fide micro, Williams Brothers, and Drygate's beers are good regardless. As well as the regular brews, head brewer David introduced me to the latest in their one-off series, a rich and heavy 9% stout called Big Purple One.

Full of caramel, coconut and hazelnut notes, it’s his interpretation of a certain purple-wrapped hazelnut and caramel sweet found in a popular boxed chocolate assortment, and yes, it’s delicious. Somehow it manages to get the flavour right, yet actually be less sticky than the original, with a warmth that takes the edge off the sweetness. I’ll take a bottle of this over a handful of Q****** S***** any day!

Almost exactly six years ago, the legendary David Bruce toured myself and some fellow visitors around the shiny new brewhouse at West Berkshire Brewery, along with its then very newly installed million-pound bottling and canning line.

It was an impressive and ambitious setup, so I was saddened to hear a year or two back that WBBrew had hit financial trouble. I don’t know whether it was due to over-extension, a somewhat me-too product range, the pandemic, or more likely a combination of all of those.

Either way, it was very good to see that the brewery has survived. It was eventually bought out by the Yattendon Estate, which owns the surrounding lands, and has now been rebranded as Renegade, which was the name West Berks had used for its craft line.

I tried a couple of the Renegade brews that I didn’t recognise. Blackguard is a very nice creamy-burnt stout, while festival special The Void was something I’ve not seen before – a Cold IPA that’s also a Black IPA, a combination that I found worked remarkably well.

There’s a lot of confusion written and spoken about Cold IPA, but essentially it’s an IPA brewed to be crisper and cleaner. That typically means brewing it cooler, and sometimes with lager yeast, but it still has the malt bill and hopping of an IPA, which is what differentiates it from the hoppy lagers that some people call IPL (India Pale Lager).

Some claim it’s about showcasing the hops, and yes, the hop character does usually come through well, but what The Void showed me was that it can also make the malt character – in this case, a roasty-dryness with a burnt tang – come through a little more clearly. The result was unusual, with some unexpected but very pleasing characteristics. 

You can read part one here and more from Brew//LDN 2023 here Hungarian Voodoo is a sweet surprise and here Start-up brewer shows Spooky quality. 

Start-up brewer shows Spooky quality

One of several new breweries I met at BrewLDN was Spookton Brew Co. Based on the Wirral in Cheshire and less than a year old, it was one of the two runners-up for the festival’s Accelerator prize for best new drinks brand. 

Founder and former homebrewer Jon Pugh already has several Spookton brews under his belt, even though he doesn't have his own brewery yet – he currently uses the brewkit at Farm Yard Brew over the border in Lancashire.

It is very much a social enterprise – they donate 5p to a good cause for each can or pint they produce. Most recently Jon also did an Orange and Lemon Pale Ale for Brave Noise, the international movement which advocates for a safe and discrimination-free beer industry. Ingredients for this were donated by Crisp Malt and Lallemand Brewing, and the proceeds will go to Beers Without Beards, to help fund mentorships for women in craft beer. 

So, what about the beers? Among those pouring at Brew//LDN was No Worries If Not, which is nominally a West Coast IPA, with caramel notes, drying hoppy bitterness and a touch of toast, but also with a modern and very nice fruity-hoppy twist.

I also managed to get my hands on a couple of cans. Struggle Bus is a classic Black IPA – dry-sweet and burnt, roasty and piney, with a light malty stickiness on the finish. Lovely! After that, Spookton’s interpretation of Brave Noise is lighter, fruitier and more easy-drinking. There’s citrus and a touch of funk on the nose, then juicy-dry hops and citrus mark out this beery St Clements.

Sadly, I didn’t get to sample Octuple Threat, Jon’s 8% Double IPA, nor earlier brews such as his hazy IPA Imposter Syndrome or Gloom, his oatmeal stout, which I think are currently out of production. You can order the current range of four on Spookton’s website though, and they’re now in some bottle shops via distributor Eebria. 

Hungarian Voodoo is a sweet surprise

I was not expecting to meet a Hungarian brewery at Brew//LDN this year, but there it was: the confidently-named First Craft Beer from Budapest, with a bar of its own and a range of brews on tap. They say the name is because when it was founded in 2017 by two brothers, they reckoned it was “the first new wave open-view brewery in Hungary.” Which I guess reminds us that it’s possible to claim pretty much anything if you define your criteria carefully enough. 

Anyway, it seems the beer market in Budapest is pretty big, despite it having a relatively small population. Like so many European craft breweries, First produces international styles, including ‘all the usual suspects' – on tap here were a Pils made in collaboration with a Czech brewer, two IPAs, a Fruit Sour and an unctuous dessert Stout.

Their 5.6% Voodoo IPA (how long before the New Belgium lawyers come calling, I wonder?) was relatively mild, hoppy-bitter and sweet – too sweet for my liking, but as the server explained, Hungary has always been Eurolager country, so drinkers there have quite a sweet tooth. 

Fruit Locker's actually pink, but the lighting
 in the venue is utterly weird so you can't tell!

Lightly fruity and piney, the Triple Flower Power IPA was also pretty sweet, though as it’s a 9% Triple IPA, the alcohol and bitterness helped cut through the sweetness a bit. Fruit Locker. which they describe as an Imperial Pastry Sour, was 9% and rather sweet too. But it was properly tart as well, with sour cherries, tangy currants and a warming booziness adding a good balance, making it for me an unexpectedly pleasing brew.

Apparently, most of the brewery staff are home brewers. They are all able to contribute ideas, too, so the idea for the rich and dark Dessert Storm – another 9%er – came from "one of the guys on the canning line." Fully in the modern pastry stout tradition, it's like Tiramisu in a glass – creamy and sticky-sweet, with notes of coffee and chocolate syrup. The best of the bunch? Maybe, but the Fruit Locker is in there too. 

Brew//LDN 2023 round-up

I know I’m coming back to it a bit late, but this year’s Brew//LDN was great fun, as I expected it would be. The trade session started out quietly but was heaving by its end; I only saw the first couple of hours of the public evening session, they weren’t too busy but they certainly weren’t quiet either.

Yes, there were a few big companies acting crafty, and several contract brewers or importers playing the branding game, but there were also plenty of genuine micros, both modern and traditional craft. I spent most of my time hopping from bar to bar, mostly aiming for breweries that were new to me or that I’d not seen for a while. Here's some of those that caught my interest.

Jawbone Brewing is based not far from me, and I did visit the brewery to buy cans a couple of years ago, not long after it opened. Since then it’s expanded considerably though, opened a taproom and brought out several new beers. The Highs & Lows Callista Pils I tried here was maybe a bit corny for the style, but I really do want to get over there and check out the taproom.

I wasn’t sure if mead-maker Hive Mind was new or not – it looked new, but there was also something familiar there. And sure enough, it turns out this is the new name for sparkling mead specialist Wye Valley Meadery who I’d met before.

Chatting to Kit, one of the founders, he explained the change – they’d found that localism works well when you’re selling locally, but once you start trying to sell further afield it can count against you. Anyway, as Hive Mind they’re now offering a set of their four core meads, colourfully packaged in an equally attractive box – look for reviews of them here soon.

Something I'm still learning about is NoLo – no-alcohol and low-alcohol beers – so when I met brewster Pam Honeyman (left), of Monty’s Brewery in Wales, I wanted to hear her story. It's hard to tell her 1.2% Semi-nude Bitter from a regular light ale – she explained that she brews it rather hot to modify the fermentation and yield an ABV of around 2.5%, then liquors-back (adds water) to reach the target strength. Rather interesting and clever, I thought. 

Next, I'll write up some of the longer conversations I had, learning other stuff that was new to me and which might also be new to you.

And yes, the Printworks lighting was weird all day long. A heavy orange overcast in most areas, plus blue in a few, all of which made it very hard to take decent photos. Most odd! 

You can read part two here and more from Brew//LDN 2023 here Hungarian Voodoo is a sweet surprise and here Start-up brewer shows Spooky quality. 

London's summer of beer, 2023

We are gearing up for a summer of beer, both here in London and elsewhere. Does London have the most beer festivals of a UK city? I don't know, but it would make sense if it did. 

Beer and industrial chic at Brew//LDN

We kick off – not counting local real ale festivals, that is, like the one I'm typing this at – in four weeks time with Brew//LDN, in its final appearance at Printworks in Rotherhithe* on Friday 5th and Saturday 6th May. Expect rows of small brewery bars and others, often built out of rough wood and/or industrially-styled to match the venue. 

The event begins with a trade session on the Friday afternoon – it's quite a big event for publicans and others to meet new producers of food and drink, then it's open to the public that evening and the following day. 

"The best value day out in London, at the UK's largest and most diverse craft beer festival," the organisers claim, ambitiously but not unreasonably. Tickets are a shade under £30 per session, or £25 each if you buy six – and those prices include the booking fee, for which I applaud the organisers, as I’m fed up with being stung extra for rip-off ‘booking fees’! The ticket includes live DJs and music, but not the beer, which averages a fiver a pint or so, or the street food vendors.  

I've been to Brew//LDN several times, admittedly mostly for the trade session when it’s quieter and the actual brewers are often in attendance. I’ve always enjoyed though: it’s friendly, with a good variety of beer and beer people – and often some discoveries to make. As well as new beers, in the past I’ve also met interesting new mead, spirits and liqueur producers there – that's one of several ways it's diverse. 

Beers in the Fuller's brewery yard 

One I missed when I first published this blog – because although I had been told it was on again for the first time in four years, I didn't have the actual date yet – is the London Brewers Alliance festival, on Saturday 17th June**. Even better, this excellent event is back in the brewery yard at the Fuller's Griffin Brewery, thanks to former Fuller's brewing director John Keeling pulling some strings, I believe! 

JUST IN: The LBA festival has been postponed "Due to circumstances beyond our control"  – it's now booked for Saturday 16th September. I'm rather disappointed because I was looking forward to it not for Kingy's birthday, but as an early Fathers Day treat! 

The 2018 LBA festival

A change this time is they're switching from a single six-hour afternoon session to separately ticketed afternoon and evening sessions. Hopefully this will even out the numbers  – in 2018, the last time I was able to get along, the entrance queue really built up as the afternoon wore on. It's more breweries too, up to 50 from 40 last time, all LBA members and each offering two draught beers at a time, mostly keg but I expect some bright cask beer, and a few bottles and cans as well. Tickets aren't cheap at £40 per session, or £75 for the day, but that does include all your beer samples for four hours per session, and the inevitable souvenir glass. See you there?

The next biggie is of course the Great British Beer Festival, once again at London’s Olympia and this year running from Tuesday 1st August to Saturday 5th. There’s publicity for this all over the web (and Facebook) so I probably don’t need to go into detail, except to say hundreds of real ales plus some “real keg” and the foreign beer bars. Lovely!

August is London beer month

Immediately after that – so if you’re planning a trip to London, make it that fortnight – is London Craft Beer Festival with four sessions across Friday 11th and Saturday 12th August at Tobacco Dock in Wapping. It’s brought to you by the folks from We Are Beer, who also run the Manchester and Bristol craft beer festivals. 

Woodfest casks

Tickets are a shade over £60 for most sessions. That looks steep, but this is a US-style all-inclusive event, so the ticket includes your beers as well as admission, music and a glass (though not of course food or anything else). It’s mainly keg beers from the UK and abroad, but there’s also a Cask Yard, and this year they’re also planning a focus on the new Blackhorse Mile breweries of Walthamstow. I’m looking forward to it, having not been for several years. 

A late entry onto this festival list isn't huge, but it is a 'national event', technically at least! It's the 4th National Woodfest of the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood (SPBW). with more than 30 beers not just in casks, but in wooden casks. Last year I enjoyed the 3rd Woodfest, which was held in Twickenham. This year it's actually just outside London, in Egham, but it's still only a shortish train ride out. 

Undoubtedly there will be more – I know there’s various fringe events planned for the first two weeks of August, for example, and then there's all the CAMRA local festivals such as Ealing, but I think that will do for now. Cheers! 

*This is the former Harmsworth printing factory, which printed newspapers until 2012, then became a music and events location, and is now sadly due for demolition so the owners, British Land, can build offices instead. Yes, more offices, of which London already appears to have a surplus. I really despise property companies sometimes – no, most of the time. 

 **My diary tells me this is also the King's birthday, but while it would make a great birthday outing for you or me, I fear his security would eff it up for the rest of us! 

Can craft mead break into the big time?

Where next for mead? Or perhaps it’s more important to start with “What is mead, and what should it be?” 

I don't just mean what's it made from – I suspect many people know it's got honey in – but thinking about what defines it, and how varied it is. Because if your idea of mead is just that super-sweet syrupy stuff you see in some souvenir shops, then it's time to think again. 

Authentic, local and sustainable values

“The general mead story is a very compelling one around sustainability, authenticity and localism – we are very interested in sustainability, we’re supporting bees and all pollinators* with 10p donation per pint,” said the eponymous Tom Gosnell (left), speaking at a ‘meadia briefing’ ahead of last month’s British Mead Festival at the Gosnells mead taproom in London’s Bermondsey.  

“It has opened up a lot more in the last 10 years, but there’s still a lack of knowledge,” he added, with some people wondering if it will be 'like drinking honey.'

“The average consumer may not understand what mead means at all,” agreed James Lambert, MD of the other big UK producer, Lyme Bay Winery, which makes mead alongside grape and fruit wines. “We are seeing demonstrable consumer demand, with growth in excess of 10% year-on-year, there’s demand here and abroad, we’re seeing more searches on our website,” he added. 

“But within that, the biggest challenge – the one we’re struggling with – is the gatekeepers. Who do you talk to?” He explained that with restaurants, supermarkets and so on, there’s category buyers for wine, cider and beer, but there’s no one responsible for mead. 

But standards and definitions are currently missing

James Lambert

Another problem is definitions, the two meadmakers agreed. You can’t define it by strength, for example – Lyme Bay’s meads are rich honey wines of 10% to 14.5%, while most Gosnells mead is much lighter, at around 4%, and of course they’re aimed at rather different audiences. James said Lyme Bay sells a lot of bottles through garden centres and the like, and is the sole supplier to English Heritage, whereas it’s not unusual now to see Gosnells flagship Wildflower Mead on tap in pubs and brewery taprooms. 

And at the moment, in the UK it’s not even required to be made from at least 50% honey – although most craft meaderies use 100% honey, and James said Lyme Bay’s is about 55%, some of what’s sold as mead is mostly made from other ingredients such as grape wine or sugar, with honey added more as a flavouring than a fermentable. 

There’s a good reason for that, of course, which is price. “Honey is expensive, and there’s not enough of it in the UK, so we use honeys from elsewhere in Europe and especially from Mexico,” James said – apparently the Yucatan is famous for its honey. 

One way around this is to make session meads, as Gosnells does, but even at less than one-third the ABV of the heavy honey wines, they’re 100% honey so still not cheap to make. Tom noted though that where Lyme Bay pays duty at wine-rate, “the 8.5% tax-break [due in August 2023] will help us, we’ll also be able to take advantage of the draught relief.”

Seeking a sweet future

“What’s the future of mead?” asked James. “The challenge is to get consumers to understand what it is first, only then can we start to differentiate. Chilled and neat in a wine glass, or slightly warmer, we’re starting to see traction in cocktails too. Our sweeter style lends itself well to that.”

Tom agreed. “We give pubs simple cocktail recipes that are easy to make behind the bar,” he said. “It keeps the mead tap busy.”

Looking further ahead, if the UK follows the US, as it has for craft beer, we may well see quite a few more meaderies. When I first encountered American craft mead almost 20 years ago, at a presentation in Denver alongside the Great American Beer Festival, there were perhaps 30 producers present. “Now there’s maybe 1000 in the US,” says Tom. “There’s a lot of session mead – their session mead is more like 7% though!”

And with mead – unlike most wine – offering many of the same positives as beer and cider, such as craft, authenticity and localism, it’s going to be an increasingly attractive option for bars and consumers alike. That’s sweet news for the mead-makers, as long as they can work out how to make it pay. 

*This is a reference to recent news reports that, with so many more people taking up beekeeping during the pandemic, there is a risk of honeybee overpopulation. The problem is that honeybees are far from the only pollinators around – there's also various other bee species, moths, etc – but they are very efficient, so the danger is that they'll outcompete the others and cause species declines.