Going Dutch

It’s the European Beer Writers & Bloggers Conference this coming weekend, and I'm looking forward to seeing friends old and new. This year we are in Amsterdam, I’ve actually been here in Holland (yes, Nord-Holland, not just the Netherlands) since Monday, and nice it is too.

Maibock x Weizen, anyone?

At least the beer isn’t as flat as the landscape, though there isn’t too much else to say about a choice of Amstel, Heineken and Hertog Jan – the latter is the local AB-InBev property, and is probably the least uninteresting of the three!

Yesterday I discovered a few more: several from Texels, plus Sanctus Adalberti which claims to be an abbey beer from nearby Egmont – until you read the label and discover it’s really brewed in Belgium (at De Proef, the contract brewery also used by Mikkeller and many others). Oh well!

All were drinkable, although none really stood out. I will try a couple more of the Texels when I get the chance though, as they show promise.

The march of the little brown bottles

A seismic change is underway in the German beer industry, and few things demonstrate it as clearly as this: the original doppelbock, the classic Paulaner Salvator, is now in 33cl bottles.

The standard size for Salvator, like almost every other German beer, has been a half-litre bottle - or latterly for some, a 50cl can. There were a few exceptions - Einbecker for instance, with its stumpy 33s, the flip-top 33s of Flensburger, and of course the little green bottles of Becks - but at least they had an individual look. But more and more now, instead you see the brown long-neck 33 that's become an international standard.

It certainly looks like the Craft Beer revolution over the last few years in Germany has played a big part in this change. Perhaps to position their beers more as connoisseur items, or maybe to disguise their higher prices (which, to be fair, are at least partly due to using more and higher-quality ingredients), the new-wave craft brewers have generally preferred the smaller bottles. And when the macrobrewers went crafty, such as the cloudy brown Kellerbiers of Köstritzer, Krombacher and others, they too went into 33s.

That the German macrobrewers are also now shifting their mainstream products - some Pils brands have been available in both sizes for a while, but only a few - is telling. Again, part of it will be to increase revenues - selling a 33 for 99 cents is €3 a litre, versus maybe €2.20 a litre last year.

Another part though will be the changing expectations and preferences of drinkers, especially as beer becomes less of a generic commodity and more individual. Few people want to quaff a half-litre of something special; instead we prefer to savour something more like a half-pint, which for the Imperially-challenged is 284ml.

My one sadness in this will be if it turns good beer into less of a sharing experience. A 50cl bottle can easily be shared between two or three, or four at a pinch. Try sharing a 33 four ways and you start to look like craft geeks at a ticker-fest...

Norman de Biere, or She aims to Conquer

I’ve taken part in several Battle of Hastings re-enactments, so it was bound to pique my curiosity when I was contacted by a Normandy brewery about to launch its vegan beers into the UK market using 1066-themed branding. More curious still was its Franglais name – Le Brewery – and French-free website.

So it was off to The Rake, the pioneering craft beer pub by London’s Borough Market, for the UK launch, to try the beers and meet the people behind them. It turns out Le Brewery is an expat operation, set up by Steve Skews in 2001 with help from brewing consultant David Smith, who also developed the recipes. They sourced a second-hand 10 barrel brewkit in Britain and shipped it over to Normandy to brew mainly for the British expat community there.

April enjoys Lady Edith

What’s changed now is the ownership. Steve was looking to retire, while entrepreneur April Chandler was looking for a farm – she had moved to France with the intention of growing organic vegetables. To switch from farming to brewing vegan beer and importing it back into the UK as a health drink is not an obvious career route, but it’s one that April is doing her very best to make work.

It helps that she has the zeal of a convert – to beer, that is. A health enthusiast who has written a book on workouts and another on cocktails, the latter focused on good quality, healthy ingredients, she used to think beer was beer. She says that all changed when she met Steve and he helped her realise just how natural and healthy is craft ale (the French call it Biere Artisanale, which Le Brewery has wittily anglicised to Art Is An Ale).

“I didn’t understand at first, because I didn’t come from the beer world.,” April says, “but then I brewed with Steve and it was like, Gosh!” So with David Smith still advising, Le Brewery is back in production with a professional brewer and a range of eight beers; they also have a cider made for them locally in the semi-sweet Normandy style.

Only the cider, called Queen Edith, and two of the beers – Mysterieuse Lady and Norman Gold – are coming to UK supermarket shelves though. Norman Gold is a classic golden ale, with light dry and spicy notes over a sweetish malt body, while Mysterieuse Lady is rather more unusual, being an elderflower ale with a high proportion of wheat in it. Very perfumed and a little sweet in the finish, it’s smooth, lightly fruity and had an interesting distant tartness.

Le Brewery's Norman Gold

Le Brewery’s production is real ale, most of it bottled-conditioned in 75cl cider bottles with champagne corks and wire ties, plus a small amount of cask ale for those few bars in Normandy that know how to look after it – again, it tends to be an expat thing, says David. The two beers for the UK are not brewed in Normandy, however, nor are they real ales. The UK trade will get 330ml bottles containing filtered beer brewed at Wadworths. (April says she plans to import other beers in the range for specialist beer shops – Le Brewery already exports to the US.)

I’m not normally a fan of licence-brewed beers. Whether it’s Russian-made Carlsberg, Sam Adams from Faversham, or Bud and San Miguel brewed just about anywhere, it suggests to me that the brand is more important than the beverage. Still, while Le Brewery is definitely trying to build a brand, you have to cut it some slack because you can’t supply the likes of Tesco from a 10-barrel kit. They would have to contract the UK-bound brews out somewhere, and I guess that given the customs issues it makes more sense to contract-brew in England rather than France.

I expect the beers to do well – “free-from” products are in vogue, they’re well made with a twist of individuality, and they look good. It helps too that April is a professed optimist. For instance, faced with the prospect of Brexit, her reaction is that maybe it will ease the crap she has to deal with from assorted customs regimes. Her take is that the EU and the Single Market are too much orientated to favour the big corporations, and that leaving could change that*.

It’s also really nice to see another brewer commercially promoting proper beer as what it is: a healthy, natural product. Sure, Le Brewery isn’t the first to do it, but another voice in the choir is always welcome. Cheers, April!


*I can’t help thinking though that the real issue is simply scale and regularity. From what I hear, once you are exporting a full pallet – or better yet, a full lorry – and doing it regularly, things smooth out.

As an aside, this highlights that, with the exception of the personal import allowance, the Single Market is a flat lie as far as the drinks business is concerned. Even commercially exporting beer from Germany to the Netherlands can be a challenge, never mind getting it across the Channel. The tax and duty regimes around Europe are so wildly, utterly, ludicrously different – usually for no reasons other than fear, emotion and religion – that it’s impossible to harmonise.

Beer beer beer...

It's the 24th Egham Beer Festival this weekend - it's not 24 years old, mind you, they get the number by holding it three times a year. If you're in the London area I thoroughly recommend it. It's held in the Egham United Services Club, which is just a short walk from Egham BR, and it's all real ale (there's a discount on entrance for CAMRA members). There's eight ales on handpump in the club itself, with dozens more on handpump and a gravity stillage in the yard out back.

One of the things I like about it is that it usually features an excellent variety of beer, including several rarities or festival specials - this year there were two or three breweries I'd never even heard of before! The other thing that marks it out, but I hadn't quite put my finger on until now, is just how well kept the beers are. Even the stuff outside is usually in tip-top condition. Sure, there's the occasional duffer, but they're a tiny minority.

My favourite beers of the festival were all London or Thames Valley brews, as it happens. Husk Pale, from Silvertown in East London, was peachy-malty with hints of white wine and an astringent bitterness. Shadow of the Beast from Elusive Brewing, a very recent start-up located near Siren Craft Brew in Finchamstead, was a gorgeously rich Black IPA, burnt-bitter with treacle and pine notes, and Dove Tree was a fascinating collaboration brew from two of my 'locals', Park Brewery in Kingston, and Kew Brewery - badged as a White IPA, it had aromas of peach and bergamot over a dry-bitter yet creamy-textured and fruity body.

The only regret was that some of the most intriguing beers in the festival programme had not yet been broached when I was there on Friday afternoon. The festival runs until Sunday though, so you may still have a chance to catch them!

65 beers in one day – easy, right?

Off we go for round one

Judging at the International Beer Challenge for the first time was both hard work and great fun. You might expect the latter for something involving gallons upon gallons of beer, but not the former, right?

Well, look at it this way: our table was just one of ten, each of which had around 60-70 different beers to taste. Every one of us judges needed to taste each of our beers and discuss it, before deciding if it merited a bronze, silver or gold medal. That’s a lot of different flavours to assess – then try to clear off your palate, ready for the next one!

As usual with beer judging – I’ve judged other competitions before, but not one on this scale – the beers were presented in groups. Some of these were obvious, for example a tray of British-style pale ales and bitters or one of Hefeweizens, while others were defined more broadly – by the use of cherries, say, or by being gluten-free. The beers were all anonymous, and because they can be from anywhere in the world, the chance of accurately recognising one without any clues was pretty slim.

The most interesting bit was the interplay with the other judges, who in my case included another writer, a beer sommelier who also runs beer tours, and two people working in beer retail. For each beer, we’d examine, sniff, taste and then write notes, before discussing its medal-worthiness. Sometimes the accuracy of their descriptions or flaw-spotting was startling – the exact tropical fruit aromas, say, or that a sample was oxidised – while on occasion I’d spot a flaw before they did.

The IBC asks you to judge each beer on its individual merit – “would you recommend this to someone else?” – rather than ‘judging to style’, as you do for the big American competitions. Judging to style means each entry not only has to be a good beer, but it also has to fit the often hair-splitting technical definition for the style of beer that it purports to be. The best-known style guide is the US-originated Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) listing which you can download or find in mobile app form.

Still going, several rounds later

If you are planning to taste several different beers, the general rule is to start with the lowest in alcohol strength and work up, and that’s how each grouping was presented to us. Mostly this worked well, though occasionally you’d get a stronger-flavoured one in the middle of the group and have to nibble a cracker and sip some water (actually we sipped a lot of water!) so it didn’t affect your judgement of the next one. The alternative rule for beer tasting is to start with the subtler ones and work up to the stronger flavours, but of course you have to know what beers you are drinking to do that.

Fortunately we got very few that were either faulty or lacking in some other way, although we also only got a few absolute gold-medal crackers. Almost all were competent, and a decent proportion were ones I’d happily order again – if only I knew what they were, of course. The oddest was probably the soured Dunkel – I like sour beer styles, but this one didn’t quite hang together well enough, so we requested a fresh sample from a new bottle, and yup, it wasn’t meant to be sour...

So, a really interesting day’s work, and a very impressive effort by the organisers at Agile Media, which publishes several drinks-related titles, such as Off Licence News and Harpers Wine & Spirit. I was especially impressed by the patience and dexterity of the servers bringing us the samples, and by the thoroughness and efficiency of the organising staff, who ensured we both got and turned in all the right paperwork at the right time.

A box of hoppy little Duvels

Almost ten years ago, a Belgian brewery launched an dry-hopped version of its signature strong blond ale. Intended as a one-off, it sold out within just three days – after which its fans demanded it be brewed again. The brewmaster agreed, on condition that they could gather 10,000 signatures. In short order their petition had 17,000 signatures, and the legend of Duvel Tripel Hop was born.

It took three years, but eventually Duvel brewmaster Hedwig Neven was as good as his word, and he rebrewed Tripel Hop, complete with its distinctive Amarillo third hopping. This second release was a success too, and in 2012 he made the beer an annual special – but using a different third hop each year. (The two other hops used in each annual brew are the same as in regular Duvel, which means Czech Saaz and Slovenian Styrian Goldings.)

Needless to say, the beers became fan favourites, with each new release eagerly awaited by beer lovers. Duvel Tripel Hop even helped inspire a new beer style or description: Belgian IPA. It is a term that Hedwig Neven and other traditional Belgian brewers don’t much like, though – to Duvel, it’s still a strong blond ale, albeit a hopped-up one.

But the fans faced a problem: while you could compare each new release with your notes from past years, comparing the actual beers wasn’t really feasible. Sure, you could save bottles from year to year, but hop character wanes with time, so comparing a fresh brew to one that’s two or three years old would be quite unrealistic.

The original rebrewed

So when it came time to brew the sixth edition, the Duvel folks had an idea – why not rebrew all the others as well and let people compare them? And that’s exactly what they did, packaging six 33cl bottles as a boxed set and making a game of it, inviting drinkers to vote for their gold, silver and bronze medallists.

Sadly, they then went a step further. The plan is that the winning variety will become the new permanent Duvel Tripel Hop. On the plus side, this means the beer will be available all year round, but the downside is it also means no more annual variations. I guess they figure that, in today’s hop-driven market, if they can get a boost in sales to the wider market it will compensate for losing the mystique and the fan following.

That’s the story, but what of the beers? I was lucky enough to be invited to taste all six varieties at a Duvel-hosted event a little while back, and it was fascinating to see that while they were the same base beer and they obviously had a lot of similarities, that one change in hopping had quite dramatic results.

For instance, #1’s Amarillo offered up aromas of sage and pepper alongside a peachy aroma, and gave herby-spicy notes on the palate, while the Citra hops instead gave #2 distinctive aromas of grapefruit pith plus a bitterness of bitter lemons and dry grass.

My favourite!

I’d had #3 – the 2013 edition, with Sorachi Ace – when it came out, but was happy to try it again and compare notes (the two brews matched well). It’s another spicy and dry-bitter one, though this time with aromas of citrus and mint leaves. Mosaic hops gave #4 hints of orange, mint and melon on the nose, the peppery bitterness less aggressive, letting the malt show through a little more for a bitter-sweet finish.

With #5 (Equinox), the new brew diverged a little from my previous notes. There’s still hints of Saison funkiness and pear drops on the nose, and touches of tangerine and honey on the palate, but this brew seemed a little more fruity and the honey notes verged more toward caramel.

Using an experimental hop called HBC-291, from the Yakima Valley, #6 is the new edition for 2016. I found it rather more subtle, smooth and less bitter than the other five, with faint notes of rosemary and ground pepper on the nose and a light lemony tartness.

It was also intriguing after the tasting to compare notes with the other tasters and see just how varied our top choices were. It was a difficult choice, but Mosaic was my favourite, just ahead of Equinox and Sorachi Ace, but others preferred Citra or even the original Amarillo version.

Now we wait to see the results of the popular vote. In the meantime, several online shops still have the six-packs in stock (eg. Beermerchants) if you fancy making your own choice. I also hear some people have experimented with blending the different editions, typically all six together (HexaHop?) but it could also be interesting to try mixing them in pairs...

My thanks to Duvel for supplying free beers and arranging the 'vertical tasting', and my apologies for how long it's been since I last posted here!

When is a brewery not a brewery?

Brewing kit at Ubrew

London now has 101 breweries, according to recent figures. Except that it doesn’t – talking to CAMRA folk in the know*, their estimate is that at least 10 to 15 of the brewing companies are actually nomad brewers**, who brew batches from time to time at one of three or four sites where you can go along and rent a commercial-grade brewkit. The best known of these ‘open source breweries’ is Ubrew in Bermondsey.

Then there’s another half a dozen that are ‘resting’ for whatever reason, and a few more where you have two brewers sharing a brewkit. This all means that the total of actual physical breweries is probably still in the 75-80 region.

That means it has pretty much stabilised in the last couple of years. There have been a few closures, but they’ve been more or less matched by new openings – often with the latter using the brewing kit sold off by the former.

The nomad issue echoes a conversation I had at London Drinker Beer Festival with a couple of brewers from more established (and here I mean a few years, not 100 years!) breweries. As one of them noted, “Ubrew is messing up the market. The beers are still good, but it confuses things because people are saying they’re a new brewery when they’re actually using Ubrew.”

Sour grapes, or are the nomad brewers genuinely sowing confusion in the market? Their beers certainly look the part, but does actually owning the brewkit make a difference to the quality?



*London CAMRA (of which I'm a member) tracks its local brewing closely, even though a lot of it isn’t real ale. It’s partly for completeness and partly because even breweries that mostly do keg beer often also do bottle-conditioned beers and cask-conditioned specials.

**Nomad has become popular as the least potentially-offensive of the available terms. ‘Gypsy’ as preferred by the likes of Mikkeller, is regarded by many as pejorative, and ‘cuckoo’ has unpleasant connotations – would you put up with a cuckoo brewer in your brewery if you knew they were planning to elbow your own chicks over the edge of the nest?