The new champion: Coniston no.9 Barley Wine

Well, no-one can complain that this year's Champion Beer of Britain is too golden, or yet another mild! Coniston no.9 Barley Wine is an 8.5% chewy and warming hunk of a beer - not exactly a monster, but at the very least a large furry beast. It's also the strongest beer ever to win CBoB.

The award, announced just an hour or so back on-stage at the Great British Beer Festival by Roger Protz, went to Coniston Brewery's no.9 Barley Wine, an 8.5% beer so exclusive that it doesn't even feature in the brewery's promo leaflets.

David Smith, a jug of no.9, & the CBoB shield

Once the beer's creator, David Smith, had recovered his composure a little, I asked him about its background and how it fits with the brewery's other products. He said Coniston's beers have been getting stronger, from its start with a 3.6% bitter.

"This is more in the vein of Gold Label, or perhaps Sam Smith's Strong Golden," he added. "It is quite light for a barley wine, but nicely balanced, with enough malt and not over-hopped."

 It is only brewed once a year at present, in the autumn, though they are looking at adding a second brew in spring. This could explain why it won overall gold here, but not at the Winter Ales Festival back in January - it is now almost a year old, and the maturity definitely shows through in its rich and winey character.

The only drawback to adding a second brew is the length of time it needs, David said. It needs nine days to ferment, and they sometimes need to re-pitch it with fresh yeast halfway through to renew the fermentation.

He added that, as well as helping to revive a historic style of beer, Coniston also uses a trick familiar to brewers from a century ago, which is to add some freshly fermented ale - in this case the 1998 Champion Beer of Britain, Coniston Bluebird - to each cask to enliven it again for its cask conditioning.

The beer itself? I picked up syrup, smoke and treacle on the nose, it's got touches of seaside and a syrupy, faintly oily body, then a dry finish with burnt marmalade and a well balanced hoppy bitterness.A worthy winner.

BeerViking at GBBF

I will be at the Great British Beer Festival next week, in search of stories, writing work and beer, mostly in that order! On Tuesday I'm taking part in the Champion Beer of Britain judging, then after that I plan to do some blogging and news writing from the festival floor.

Of course, thanks to the ongoing economic disaster that is the Olympics, GBBF has been displaced from Earls Court back to its former home at Olympia. I can't say I'm too sorry – Earls Court was bigger, sure, but it's a horribly noisy space with ghastly orange sodium lighting. And given all the news reports that London is all-but deserted, thanks to people fleeing the corporate and political ego-fest that is Stratford 2012, Olympia ought to be big enough...

Actually, that's an important point to make – if you've been thinking about coming to GBBF, but were put off by fears of transport chaos and rip-off pricing, think again. Many of the hotels and other businesses that thought they could whack up their prices for the summer are having to hastily retract, and there's some considerable bargains on offer as they desperately try to pull in customers. And as far as transport's concerned, we ought to be OK as we're on the west side of town, away from avoid-at-all-cost hotspots such as London Bridge.

See you there....

Peat and honey: Old Worthy Scottish Pale Ale

It's not often that I get a bottle of ale in the post – and while I'm here in Germany it will probably be even less common! So it was a very pleasant surprise to receive a carefully-wrapped bottle of Old Worthy Scottish Pale Ale just before we left London.

It's all part of a promotion for a new brewer on the Isle of Skye, although until it gets its own kit set up, Old Worthy Brewing Co. is contract brewing on the 20-barrel plant at the Isle of Skye Brewery. The bottle was a gift from Nick Ravenhall, who set up Old Worthy to create a distinctively Scottish beer, made with a portion of peated malt as whisky is – but not trying to go down the barrel-aged route. It's also the only beer Old Worthy will offer, at least for now.

Scotland has a great brewing heritage – back in Victorian times it was a big source of Pale Ale for the India trade (IPA, in other words – which also makes this my IPAday post!), albeit mostly from Alloa on the east coast, not Skye on the west. And whisky starts its life as ale, although it is not hopped. Old Worthy, which claims to take its name from the “old worthies” who worked at the distilleries, adds both hops and a touch of honey.

The beer pours a medium-gold colour with a big foamy white head, and yes, there's the honey and a little smoke on the nose, along with a touch of biscuity malt – Maris Otter is the variety used – and a faint note of dry hay from the hops. In the mouth, there's more malt and honey, juicy to begin with but rapidly turning drier, the hops then come through more strongly in a dry and faintly spicy aftertaste. The smokiness comes through again at the finish, but it's quite restrained, and all in all Nick's achieved a very nice balance here. My only reservation is that my sample was a bit gassier than I like.

Nick's also been promoting Old Worthy to craft beer fans in the Nordic countries – in fact by the look of it it's gone on general sale there about a week earlier than its UK retail launch, which is due next week. (I'm hoping that means it'll be at the Great British Beer Festival, like me...)

A tasty slice of tart: Hardknott's Æther Blæc 2011 Sigma

Inspired among others by Belgian classics such as Lambic, Gueuze and Rodenbach, and more recently by experimental American craft brewers, there is a barrel-aged and sour beer revolution underway. It won't be on everyone's radar - or to everyone's taste - but if you enjoy drinking something a bit different then it is definitely something to look into.

This example, from Cumbria's Hardknott Brewery which has been building itself an outstanding reputation for powerful, flavoursome ales, came to me as a very kind leaving gift when we were moving from London to northern Germany last month. Now we're mostly unpacked, I thought it was about time for something a bit different from the Pilsener, Weizen and Dunkel that pretty much sums up the local beer culture here.

Listed as a 7.8% Imperial Stout, this particular batch of Æther Blæc spent six months maturing in a 1982 Inchgower malt whisky cask - I had bottle 520 of 540. The result is fascinating - a black beer with a coffee crema that's not sour as such, but it has a light fruity tartness on both the nose and in the mouth. Also on the nose are vanilla, peach, treacle toffee and wood, all of which are to be expected from the barrel.

Then in the mouth there is an initial dry lemony tartness, followed by a touch of roast coffee and a sort of tart peach note with hints of strawberry and plain chocolate. Finally, the finish brings the treacle toffee and lemon flavours back, before sliding into an unusual dry smoky fruit character.

Perhaps it’s not ’style’ for an Imperial Stout, but it’s delicious and fascinating stuff. Interestingly, for me it comes across more as sour than barrel-aged, although it's clear that the former derives from the latter. In contrast, many other barrel-aged beers, especially branded ones such as Innis & Gunn, are more about getting wood flavours into an otherwise regular (ie. non-sour!) beer.

Perhaps tart beer won't be to your liking - but perhaps it will, if you give it a chance. Belgian Lambics already have a keen following, while in the US so many drinkers have acquired the taste that brewing giant Molson Coors has allocated a chunk of its giant facility in Golden, Colorado to producing sour and barrel-aged beers. Who knows, maybe its UK operation Sharp's, which is already doing Belgian-inspired Tripels & Quadrupels, might follow suit.

Winding down

As blogging tools go, the Blogger Android app is not impressing me. It's crashed several times, usually as I was trying to post. Add the fact that I was also trying to chat to people, and I've not got much posted today!

It's been a good day otherwise, though. From the Draft House we moved to the Rake, then Brew Wharf, then got a bus up to Holborn and walked to the Craft Beer Co, then took the tube to Euston Square for the Euston Tap. We've had cask ales and keg beers, from 3% to 11%, from pale gold to deep black, and almost all have been excellent. Several people said how much they'd enjoyed discovering new pubs, and there was lots of fruitful discussion of what constitutes good beer.

A Crafty Crawl

10:55 - The train is pulling into London Bridge station and I'm not late yet! I still have to walk over to Tower Bridge though - we're meeting in the Pommelers Rest

for brunch, then strolling up to the Draft House Tower Bridge for the main start at noon. I'll try live-blogging as I go, but can't guarantee how long I'll manage!

Deep in the Surrey Hills

We took a bank holiday trip down to Denbies Wine Estate just outside Dorking yesterday, to give Mini-Viking his first look at where Mummy and Daddy got married. Needless to say, unlike our wedding day, it tipped down with bank holiday rain which made the planned vineyard walk highly impractical. Still, he enjoyed running around inside, and also watching the land-train drive off on a vineyard tour.

Fortunately the rain was little hindrance to visiting the new home of Surrey Hills Brewery, around the back of the winery in former storage sheds. The brewery moved here last year after being snowed once too many at its former countryside home, deep in the eponymous hills.

The move also allowed an upgrade from the former 17 barrel plant to a 30 barrel one (copper and mash tun pictured above), enabling them to get ahead of demand at last. There's five fermenting vessels (below), although brewery boss Ross explained that they can't use them fully due to a slightly unusual method of production – after fermentation, the beer is racked off into a second fermenter for two days. He said this isn't really long enough to count as conditioning, but it means that the yeast is more evenly distributed throughout the brew, giving a better result and more even cask conditioning – I guess it kind of homogenises the beer.

The brewery is open to visitors Monday to Wednesday from 10am-3pm, and Thursday to Saturday from 10am-5pm.On tap yesterday were the two regular beers, Ranmore Ale and Shere Drop, plus the current seasonal, the deliciously hoppy Greensand IPA. They sell the Shere Drop in bottles, and also all their current beers in plastic jugs containing multiples of a quart – we can confirm that a quart of Shere Drop disappears surprisingly quickly!