Before German IPA, was there German brown ale?

Did I miss something, and there was a Bock festival in the UK last year? I've just enjoyed my second English Bock in not very long, the first being Bateman's English B Bock (part of its craft ale relaunch, and recently spotted on the shelves in Sainsbury's) and this one being a collaboration between Dark Star and Saltaire - it was brewed by the former in Sussex but bottled with a Saltaire cap.

Interestingly, both are top-fermented ales which means they are probably closer to the original mediæval north German Bocks than the bottom-fermented copies developed in Bavaria which are now the German standard. Equally interesting is just how much they remind me of a rich brown ale - but a rich brown ale brewed in the modern style and using German hops.

Part of that might be that they were made by English brewers of course, but I can't help wondering if there isn't also a historical message in there. That's because it makes absolute sense to me that there would be a similarity between English strong dark ales and German Bocks, because they were from related traditions. In this reading, only with the late-1800s Bavarian Colonisation and the ensuing Lager Flood did they diverge significantly.

It really makes me wish a few more German brewers would look back to their own heritage if they want to go all Craft and innovative, instead of simply aping the Americans. It's as if the first thing a German brewer does when they want to jump on the Craft bandwagon is an approximate copy of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale - and I specify SNPA because it's the most widely available and popular US craft beer in Germany, so to many people it epitomises craft beer.

The Dark Star/Saltaire Bock is what a German brewer might get if (as suggested by fellow bloggers Boak & Bailey) they tried doing a modern twist on the North German classic. It's rich and earthily malty, with a decent and distinctively German spicy hoppiness, and with notes of toffee, liquorice and cocoa - and unlike many current German Bocks, it has a great bitter-sweet balance to it.

Brewery honours for Kissingate & Twickenham

Congratulations to Kissingate Brewery and Twickenham Fine Ales. At Kissingate's Spring Festival yesterday, they were presented with three awards and four certificates between them.

Gary & Bunny from Kissingate, R&H branch chair Charles

I was there with Richmond & Hounslow CAMRA to see Kissingate head brewer Gary receive the Beer of the Festival certificate from our most recent Twickenham Beer & Cider Festival for its Six Crows stout.

However, our chairman had also been tasked with making a second award – the Silver in the London and South East regional Champion Beer of Britain golden ales category went to Twickenham Fine Ales for its Naked Ladies bitter.

Stuart & Gary accept the Nooksack award

Why was Twickenham's head brewer Stuart at Kissingate yesterday? Well, the two breweries collaborated a few months back on Nooksack American Pale Ale, and yesterday they also received a shared Beer of the Festival award for this from the recent Sussex Beer & Cider Festival.

And yes, it was a classic English spring day – scattered sun to start, then came a mighty rainstorm to wash everyone indoors and under cover (hence the awards being done in a jam-packed brewery tasting gallery, rather than out in the air), and finally more sun so the Morris dancers could at last do their stuff.

Local provenance or distant novelty?

At the Brewer's Dozen launch, I got to spend some time talking with Sarah Barton, the boss of the eponymous Brewsters Brewery and Derek's brewing partner on the new beer – and serendipitiously also with a fellow guest, Dave Bailey, head brewer at Hardknott. We chatted about 'the state of brewing' and of course the cask/keg debate.

“We're doing craft keg as well now,” Sarah said, adding that it wasn't so much to reach venues that have keg lines but can't handle cask ale – it was more of a style issue, whether that was beer styles or drinkers' styles.

“It's partly for the beers it suits – for example we have a Helles lager now – and partly to appeal to people who for whatever reason won't go for cask ale,” she explained.

Yet for all the fashionable interest in craft keg, cask ale remains her focus. “Cask is very exciting at the moment,” she said. “It's moving away from a fuddy-duddy image, and local provenance is taking over.”

I wondered if this tied in with what I'd seen in other markets, most notably Germany, where local provenance is sometimes the main thing that differentiates a brewpub's identikit Pils from its macrobrewed rivals.

She said that a big thing here in the UK is that it applies to top quality crafted ales as well. “We used to do a lot of swaps with other breweries in other parts of the country, so we could offer a bigger choice,” she said. “But now people are saying we don't want other beers, we want yours.”

Talking to Dave, however, it seems that local provenance has its limits – and that they are mostly price-based. “The local beer market in Cumbria is incredibly price-sensitive,” he said. “There's probably people knocking 40% off our list prices, whereas we can sell to London for list price.”

OK, that's partly the big city desire for novelty, plus a slightly fuller purse, but is there more to it that that? After all, London has plenty of local breweries now – as does pretty much every other city in the country – and there are London pubs which specialise in London ales. Maybe it's that some breweries have a 'local' image and others don't. Thoughts, anyone?

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....

News snippets

A few bits of news gathered at and around the KGH event included that Twickenham Fine Ales brewer Stuart Medcalf (left) has revived the original recipe for Sundancer golden bitter. As a result it's back to the crisp, aromatic and lightly astringent beer that won a silver medal at the 2007 GBBF. Excellent! Twickenham is also now brewing a 'house beer' for Kew Gardens – this is on sale in the shops there and I'll try to get a bottle soon.

Also in bottle now are the soured beers that Twickenham's former brewmaster Tom Madeiros (now at Quercus in Devon, incidentally) brewed in collaboration with Belgium's Alvinne and De Struise breweries. These have been ageing in barrels for two years and have been bottled both straight and as a blend to smooth out the sourness and add depth.

With all its specials and six seasonal ales a year, Sharp's is now brewing a lot more than just Doom Bar, which has reportedly become the UK's no.1 cask ale. Formerly 95% of Sharp's volume, Doom Bar is now 85% - but of course overall production is up over 50% too, so that's still a lot more Doom Bar. The next best sellers for the brewers from Rock are Cornish Coaster, Sharp's Own and Sharp's Special. Oh, and there's a new American Pale Ale called Sharp's Atlantic due out in a couple of months.

While talking to David of Kew Brewery about his search for a brewkit, he mentioned that M&B has indeed sold the Botanist brewery, although not to him. Coming past the Botanist later on, I saw that the brewkit has now gone.

More to come...

Kew's mini-beerex hits the spot

Went to a great Meet the Brewers session at the Kew Gardens Hotel last night – and yes, that's brewers in the plural. OK, not everyone presenting was an actual person-who-brews, but there were several of those present, including Dave from East London Brewery (ELB), Stuart from Twickenham, one of the Sambrooks brewers, and David who currently assists at Weird Beard but was there to showcase trial beers for his projected Kew Brewery.

Several other breweries were ably represented by their local sales folk, including Hogs Back, Meantime, Truman's, Sharp's and Greene King, the latter two showcasing their craft ranges, including GK's Belhaven beers. Some were pouring bottled beers, others had brought their draught beers in minicasks or flagons.

Some of the memorable beers included what I'm told was a barrel-aged version of Hogs Back's A over T (Aromas over Tongham) 9% barleywine, all winey and herbal-bitter with a raisiny sweetness, Sharp's Honey Spice IPA – more pale ale than IPA, albeit at 6.5%, but crisp with hints of orange and with the honey-spice subtly restrained, and Belhaven's 7% Scottish Oat Stout, dry-sweet with treacle, coffee and chocolate notes.

On top of all that, the KGH itself had an extra bar in the corner allowing it to offer a varied selection of well over a dozen cask ales plus several cask ciders – and this extra bar is staying around for a few more days. That's because the mini-beerex was the kick-off event for its beer and cider festival which runs until Sunday 27th, and promises 100 different ales over the five days, with three-thirds 'tasting bats' available as well as pints.

The KGH is just a short walk from Kew Gardens rail & tube station and is worth a visit – even more so while this festival is on. If you're in the area for beer, there is also Fuller's Tap on the Line by the station, and check out the Good Wine Shop in Kew village for an interesting selection of London-brewed and American/international bottled craft beers.

Talking casks and kegs, with By The Horns

By The Horns was one of the first of the "new wave" of London breweries to commit itself to cask ale, while many of its approximate contemporaries took the (in many ways) cheaper and less complex path of kegging. So when the opportunity arose last week to visit the three-year-old brewery with a CAMRA group, I was eager to see how it has evolved, especially since it too is now kegging...

Clearly, the overall quality of its ale has not declined since its Diamond Geezer won beer of the festival at my local Twickenham Beer Festival in 2012, and the range has expanded. The most obvious change though is the brewery tap - when last I was there, probably two years ago now, founders Alex Bull and Chris Mills simply put some casks on gravity alongside the brewkit, plus some bottles and glasses on a table, and they opened to the public one Saturday a month, if that. 

They have now moved all the fermenting vessels - and they are up to five of these - into a second industrial unit nearby. That has freed up space to put in a proper bar, done in the modern 'recycled wooden chic' style, along with four hand-pumps, half a dozen keg taps and a couple of small fridges. There's even a few tables and stools, a table-football game, and not one but two loos! The five-barrel brewkit is now behind Perspex, and they are open six days a week for off-sales (bottles), with the bar open Thursday-Saturday.

Head brewer Alex says that while some 85% of their business is still cask, there are many places that want to offer a locally-made craft beer but which only have keg lines. So they are also using 30-litre Keykegs and Ecofass kegs - the former are disposable while latter are reusable.

Both types are in effect a giant bag-inna-box, with the beer in a plastic bag inside the keg. Alex explains that although they are physically kegs, the beer is still pretty much 'real' - it is not carbonated or served under pressure; instead it is brewery-conditioned and primed as you would for bottling, and forced out by compressed air injected between keg and bag. "Beer definitely can condition - undergo a secondary fermentation - in a keg," he adds.

We were able to try half a dozen ales, in all three dispense forms. Stiff Upper Lip, a bitter golden ale, was on cask, as was a new release called Ol Blue Eyes CInaTRA - this is brewed with Citra hops as the name implies, and is in the modern pale ale vein, with tropical fruit notes to complement the citrus bitterness.

On keg, we tasted Bobby on the Wheat - I was a little reluctant as I'd not found this especially interesting in the past, but it turned out that while the name's the same, this is actually a new recipe. Now at 4% ABV, it's a dry-hopped wheat ale, sort of like a hopped-up Hefeweizen Leicht. It has a refreshing hoppiness and a lightly spicy body. Alex says he's pleased with the new version: "The extra carbonation lifts it a bit, and the dry hopping works better."

And from bottles we tried Gift of the Gab, Lambeth Walk, Mayor of Garratt and Hopslinger. The former is a coffee milk stout - Alex says it starts as just a milk stout, made with British Pioneer and First Gold hops, and is then aged on oak and freshly ground coffee for two weeks. As well as some chocolate malt, I spotted some roast barley in there too - the latter is what gives Guinness and some other stouts that burnt-bitter edge. The result is delicious, anyway!

Lambeth Walk is a rich caramelly beer with hints of cocoa and toffee. It's sold as a London Porter, which I'd tend to go along with, but one or two in our party felt it was closer to Old Ale in style. Hmm! Mayor of Garratt is a toffeeish and faintly nutty London-style bitter, and last but not least, Hopslinger is Alex's interpretation of an American IPA, with plenty of dry hoppy bitterness plus touches of toasted orange and tropical fruit. 

All in all, it was a very enjoyable couple of hours and it provided a good catch-up, both on By The Horns specifically and on the state of craft ale in London more generally. Thanks again, Alex!