The Beer Moment

11pm, Friday night, and it's hot. OK, it's the East Midlands, so it's probably not hot compared to many places where last drinks are being consumed, but it's late spring, and it's the first warm Friday that heralds the approach of summer, and in a low-ceilinged bar, it most certainly feels hot.

All of a sudden a pub that's been muddling through that early-year graveyard period while people are watching their waist-lines and keeping worried eyes on the household budget comes out the other side. A week ago half of the four strong bar staff team were cleaning shelves to keep themselves busy, tonight late sunshine in the pub's beer garden has meant the same four and the bar management are hosting last week's regulars and an awful lot more. The shelves are being cleared again, but this time it's because all the glasses are out there in the balmy evening air being emptied over many, many conversations.

'Why haven't you got more staff on?' cry the newcomers. 'Where were you last week when it was below freezing?' mutters one of the staff, under their breath of course.

But it's 11 O'Clock, or maybe five after once the queue's been finally served. There's a respite before the task of clearing up with a horribly short-handed team begins. A nod to a regular customer, one who was here in the cold and recognised that tonight was a good night to be on the other side of the bar, and so was generous enough to offer a drink... and a cold beer is poured into a rare nucleated glass that was squirrelled away at the back of a shelf to make sure it was dry, and not hot from the washer.

Fifteen minutes. The perfect amount of time to drink a much-needed pint. That's a beer moment.

Cheers.

Many thanks to Pete Brown for hosting this month's session.

What Drives Beer Bloggers?

This month's beer blogging session is hosted by Brewpublic and the question being asked is 'What drives beer bloggers?'

I've been meaning to do a bit of a review of my first few months of beer blogging, and so this seems like a bit of an opportunity. It's probably entirely self-indulgent so you might want to stop reading now.

I was chatting on Twitter to a fellow blogger the other day and he was thinking about packing the writing in.* His suggestion was that the world doesn't need another rubbish blogger. I've read similar sentiments from others while not referring to themselves - there's some pretty negative stuff in some beer publications that seem to delight in denigrating new bloggers in particular. Amidst all the talk about beer snobbery that goes on, this is the sort that for me is the really damaging kind, knocking people for daring to be enthusiastic rather than keeping silent. On the other hand getting into beer blogging has also lead me to chat to some really interesting people - I've learned a lot from others and their many different styles of writing - and I'm ever grateful for the support I get from many of those that make up a great on-line community. Were it not for them I may well have given up already so they're definitely a driving factor!

I'm under no illusions about how good a writer I am, or how many people read what I write anyway, but, as I suggested before in reference to writing about wine, I'm not going to get any better at writing by not doing it.

What motivates me isn't the numbers, it's the beer and the infectious excitement surrounding it. You only need to read up on things like last week's #impoff event to get the idea. I enjoy beer, and at the moment I am enjoying writing. Simple I suppose. As to the future? Well Sturgeon's Law already suggests I'm probably in a large majority with the rest of the other rubbish, and I don't need established authors telling me that I should stop because they've been 'writing for longer than I've been alive' - and so some sites I've just learned to avoid. Maybe there is another law that suggests I'll give up - but I won't just yet.

* If you're reading, don't!

Edit: If you haven't read Andy's superb analysis of the #impoff evening, you should. Also a slightly 'different' account of the evening from Phil.

What makes local beer better?

This is my contribution to The Session #61, as hosted by Hoosier Beer Geek in Indianapolis.

In the interests of doing something different (and since I've got a spirits exam coming up and so it's what I'm reading about at the moment) I though I'd take a bit of a diversion and think about the alternative to having local styles of anything.

I'd like to think that anyone who is serious about getting into beer flavours is broad minded enough to think about flavours other than beer. The exploration's the thing, and without people being resourceful enough to use what they have around them, and having the pride to say 'this is good, this is worth keeping' the world would be a very dull, homogenised place. Think about Jarzebiak Rowan berry vodka, Krupnik - flavoured with wild honey and spices, Wisniowka - flavoured with wild cherries. Whether you, personally, like them or not you have to appreciate that they are part of Polish history and culture, rooted in the Tatras where the raw materials come from.

Similarly without local variation we'd have no intense, aromatic rums from Jamaica sitting on the shelves alongside light Cuban rum. Without geographical origin being important how could you differentiate between row upon row of Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot blends.

So what makes local beer better? Well, the fact that it is local, and without local beer styles having been (however historically) important we might all have no choices to make as consumers. The fact is, an alternative to local beer being important is just far too boring to contemplate.

Growlers Galore

This is my contribution to The Session #60, as hosted by the Washington Beer Blog.

I can't really write about growlers, I even had to look up what they were*, although I had a vague idea. My knowledge of American beer culture is obviously way behind the times.

I don't even own one. Well, unless you count this fella...

Maybe next time

* I wouldn't recommend doing this with a google image search... Some terms are not the same all over the world.

I Almost Always Drink Beer, But When I Don’t…

This is my contribution to The Session #59, as hosted by Mario over at Brewed for Thought.

The first thing to declare is that it's not necessarily true, or at least not all the time. Certainly at the moment while my other half is rarely drinking I am tending towards beer. For me beer offers a range of flavours to be explored and I enjoy doing the same with other things, particularly wine (I have spent two years studying for the Wine and Spirit Education Trust's Diploma) and, through personal preference, whisky. At other times I am happy to explore other things - a friend of mine became UK ambassador for Armagnac, which I found fascinating too.

If you regard this as heretical then that's fine, but I'd hope most people who really appreciate beer do so for the flavour, and so why close yourself off to other things just because they are made from grapes, or have been distilled?

So with this in mind I have already got a regret for 2012. I've had to let my membership of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society elapse because of that bane of all flavour explorers - cash! For those of you not familiar with the SMWS, they buy individual casks of whisky (occasionally other stuff) and bottle up those single casks as a one-off. So every whisky they put out (unfiltered, at cask strength*) is part of a genuinely limited run, when the cask is gone, that's it, it will not, and can not ever be seen again. Their tasting notes, as compiled by a tasting panel, are the most enjoyable stand-alone tasting notes I read anywhere (and that's across all genres). Having been a member for a while, and having been to some of their tasting sessions, I have had some of the most amazing whiskies, and I hope to be able to return to the fold soon. If you are interested in whisky at all, check out the website and have a look into joining - particularly if you think you'd be able to make their hosted tastings, they are fantastic evenings out.

I will continue to enjoy the whisky I have left, and to be inspired into running better wine tasting evenings and writing better beer tasting notes by these guys - cheers for the good times!

A Caravanserai on the Silk Road aka 35.58: 26 years in cask, one of 294 bottles.

* Geek note: All the bottles are packaged in the same way, simply with a number for the distillery, and a number for the cask, along with a few details of the cask itself. Between us, me and a like-minded friend managed to work out what all the distilleries were for ourselves (too much time on our hands.)

Guilty Secrets

My first contribution to The Session (#57)

I had to have a think about this one. I grew up in Yorkshire, where obviously all the beer was perfect (hmm). It wasn't until I went of to University that I got my first exposure to indifferent beer – and then that weird fizzy stuff which, I had to have explained to me, was lager.

It occurred to me to think about the guilty pleasure side of things. When I worked down in a London Oddbins which was next to a video shop, we used to try and match wines or beers with films, so I think what I'm asking is what is the ideal beer to go with the kind of film you might flake out of concentration (and probably consciousness) in front of, an accompaniment to the cerebral level required to fully absorb the delicate nuances of a mid-nineties Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster.* The film you rent to watch with some friends, that you're probably going to talk across rather than actually watch.

The great thing about great beer or a deep, complex wine is that it encourages thought, reflection and deliberation. However, if at all times you are analysing or deliberating and, almost by default, ignoring everything else life has to offer, then you are missing what it really does best, which is enhancing life. Even us beer geeks should sometimes ignore the beer, ignore what's playing on the idiot box, and enjoy the company we're in.

Recommendations? Polskie piwo dobre – 'nuff said (that's the limit of my Polish, and even then it's probably wrong!)

* For the record, it was Pirates of the Caribbean which stopped this sort of thing. Un-watchable no matter how many beers I'd had.

The Session #57 is hosted by Steve at Beers I've Known