Cloudwater - The Return of Cask

Readers will be aware that like a sinner repented, Cloudwater Brewery has returned to the cask fold after a period in the keg wilderness. It is good to see them back and to note they will shortly be joined by that other recidivist - sorry - returner to the shining path - BrewDog. Is this the shot in the arm that the ailing cask cause needs?  I'm not sure, but it can't do any harm can it? Actually in the case of Cloudwater whose decent intentions are rarely called into question - certainly not by this writer - no it can't. In the case of BrewDog, let's wait and see.

Cloudwater has been seeking out pubs where their cask credentials are such that they will look after the beer properly, going as far as having a little interactive online map where you can seek out those who know how to coax the best out of beer from the wickets. Additionally, a vetting process, which while hardly the Spanish Inquisition, at least gets enough information about prospective sellers of the amber nectar to judge whether they'll turn it into flat vinegar or not. Good idea. Quality at point of sale is paramount and Cloudwater are to be praised for making such efforts as they have in the name of a quality pint.

One such pub whose cask credentials are proven beyond doubt is the Flying Horse in Rochdale, CAMRA's Greater Manchester's Pub of the Year.  On Wednesday night they had all four of the new beers on so as it is one of my usual Wednesday haunts, I nipped in to see what was what.  This was rather a low key affair, with the pub being little busier than it normally is, though I noticed one or two local members of CAMRA throwing their heads round the door, specifically to try the beers.

On offer were Pale, DDH Pale, Brown Ale and India Porter. I started with a pint of Pale, a 3.8% golden brew which was decidedly murky. My companion had the same and we sipped cautiously. First impressions were good with a burst of fruit and hops, but as the head subsided, the beer was a tad grainy and watery and sadly became less enjoyable.  It lacked the cleanliness and distinct flavours that I'd hoped for. Frankly I blame the needless opacity of the beer - but see below. This beer cried out to be cleaned up.  Cautious by now, my next beer, DDH was ordered in a half portion. This looked and smelt similar to the Pale, but with a slightly soapier nose. The taste was more of the same with the hops not seeming to get along with the malt. The increase in alcohol to 5.5%  was evident, but didn't help the cause that much. Again the beer seemed muddy, a little thin and imprecise. I didn't care for that one much at all.

I was getting worried by now. Brown Ale (4.6%), hardly my favourite style was next. Having had a taster and observing its pin bright clarity though, a pint was duly ordered.  Now this was more like it. Full bodied, resinously hoppy throughout and with clean and distinct flavours, this was a beer of tremendous complexity and vibrancy. It was multi layered and classy and quite possibly the best example of a brown ale I've had in years. A lovely beer.

Buoyed up by the Brown Ale experience, India Porter was next. Would it reach the heights of my previous one?  It did and in fact soared above it. No mean feat. Again clear, very dark, full of condition and a head a dormouse could have walked over without sinking in, it looked a treat.  Frankly this is a stunningly good beer. A booming joy from start to finish. Resinous hops throughout, delicious dark malts and such a clean tasting beer. A modern take on porter which knocks all the sweet, dull efforts you normally see into a cocked hat. It had great drinkability too and at 5.3% I felt its strength was pitched just right. I loved it.

So what does this tell us? A few things. Cloudwater can brew bloody good beer and haven't forgotten how to do cask.  The two beers I didn't like prove little. I and my ilk aren't the target audience for them. They are to keep their core audience onside while introducing them back to cask with something familiar.  While I didn't like them, plenty will and I have little doubt they turned out as intended. Cloudwater are too good for that not to be the case. Getting not one, but (if you include BrewDog) two two high profile breweries back in cask production with an enhanced committment to quality at the point of dispense can only be good.  I look forward to more; just tone down the cloudiness guys. To me it makes the beer taste cleaner and that is a good thing, though I reluctantly accept its all pervasive influence these days.

Conclusion? Mine's a pint of India Porter if you are buying. Even if you aren't, it still is.

So we have Cloudwater back on board cask wise and BrewDog too. I'll try that next week in London and hope for the best.

 I'm glad I tried these beers at the Flyer. Tremendous condition is assured there.  All beers were a very reasonable £3.50 a pint. In fact for the quality of the Brown Ale and the Porter, worth a fair bit more. Apparently they had sold very well during the day, which is good news.  

Does This Look Nice?

Before I go further, I will declare an interest. I like Camden Town Brewery.  I would like them even more if they'd continued to brew excellent cask beers such as Inner City Green, but there you are. You can't have everything.  But I still like them a lot.  I drink their beers in London when I see them.

Yesterday they announced a new beer on Twitter and proudly showed a photo of it.  Given a couple of less than complimentary comments from me and @Robsterowski, they said that it was the photo looked bad, not the beer and replaced it with a better photo.  They seemed further surprised by another couple of tweets saying, again, that the beer still didn't look good. Or in fact, that it looked awful.  They then went off for a beer, no doubt shaking their heads with disbelief at such heretics.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of cloudy, soupy, beer as many of my readers will no doubt know*.  A bit of haze is fine and no, I don't include hefe weizen in this, the clue being in the name. Now some will just say "Fuck off Tandleman, you have form here".  And I do.  It's a fair cop Guv. But I still reckon this colloidal beer doesn't look in the least appealing, no matter how it subsequently tasted.**

If you want a bit of haziness, fine, but frankly, I don't even understand how they get finished (fully fermented and conditioned) beer this cloudy. Or more importantly, why you'd want to.

The beer is a Swedish Pale Ale called God Help Save the Elk. 

* Curmudgeon also talks about soupy beer here.

** I fully accept that your mileage may of course vary.

Clear As a Clear Thing

I posed a question on the 14th of this month about unclear beer and what people thought about it.  Despite what some thought as the loaded and pejorative way in which my pole was framed, nonetheless it came out with an err... not exactly clear answer. Well sort of.

Out of a respectable 163 votes, no less than 51% had some doubts about beer which isn't clear, while the biggest single answer was "Not if it tastes good to me".  The results are below.

Not if it tastes good to me	66 (40%)
Depends how murky it is	15 (9%)
Yes I mind. Beer should be clear	17 (10%)
If it is craft keg, I don't mind, but I expect cask to be clear	9 (5%)
I would like to be warned in some way before I buy and then I'll decide	53 (32%)
I don't know enough about the subject to make a correct decision	3 (1%)

Taken together with Mudgie's similar poll which shows an overwhelming majority would like to be given an indication beforehand if the beer isn't meant to be clear, (I'm staying well away from the word "warning"* at this point), it seems that the general dissatisfaction about the situation needs to be addressed in some way.  That may be the end, but what might the means be?  Now I have to confess, that as a mainly cask drinker,  that I'm not quite so bothered if keg beer is cloudy or not, though in most cases I'd just like it to be no more than a hop haze.  (I have already expressed my views that the case for finding good things in your unclear beer is at least as likely to be counteracted or outweighed by the bad). But when it comes to cask I'm firmly of the view that the beer should be clear, or have no more than a slight haze caused by hopping, or maybe by lack of finings, though that's a more complicated argument. 

So back to means.  Should CAMRA, through its AGM, try and do something about this given the confusion and possible undoing of years of campaigning?  I thought maybe, but having talked to many veterans recently, the difficulty would be in finding the correct form of words for a motion and the appropriate sanctions - though I don't rule out trying.  Taking a different tack, I somehow doubt that most pubs will adopt a voluntary code as it were and I have the same reservations about breweries doing it either.  Seems the only thing is for the customer to have the onus put on them to ask if they care enough, though given the paucity of beer knowledge amongst many bar staff, seems unlikely to put minds to rest.

The case for not letting this rest is well put by Mudgie and funily enough, by Cooking Lager. This quote is telling and one with which I agree "it is all too easy for a defect to masquerade as a feature. And it’s hard to avoid the thought that promoting the virtues of cloudy beer is another way to create a divide between the crafterati and the general public."

Despite what a healthy 40% allege in my poll, it isn't all about how it tastes to an individual.  There are bigger issues at stake.

* Despite dislike of my use of the word "warning", that's exactly what people mean when they say they wish to know in advance.

Not A Fan

London Murky may well be my favourite beer descriptor of 2013, so well done to Robsterowski who I think can safely be said to have first coined it.  I don't care for murky cask beer myself, though I am a little more inclined to forgive it from bottle. (Well I might be in certain circumstances, but that's a separate post.)  My reasons for my dislike of cloudy cask beer are twofold.  OK. Maybe more than twofold, as my mind is racing into three plus reasons.  Firstly, to me at least, it doesn't look right.  Secondly, again to me at least, it doesn't always taste right.  This I admit may be in my mind (though not always), as I remain unconvinced that there are more good things than bad things floating around in the gloom. While mostly these are spent yeast cells and  proteins, I don't feel comforted by that, as I don't care for yeasty tasting beer. There are other by products of the brewing process that can remain in suspension too, such as tannins, starch, oxalic acid and more, that may well account for some of the haze.  These are just some of the bad boys.

My third reason is confusion.  I have already written about this and would add that there is something else. A fourth reason if you like. There is a temptation, which I think I have seen in action, for bar staff to attribute to any beer which is hazy or cloudy, the phrase "It is meant to look like that."  Now this may be just a guess, or they may be being disingenuous, but it all adds to the confusion. How do I know whether what I am being sold is working beer that hasn't finished its secondary fermentation, rather than one that is meant to be cloudy?  Nor do I know if the brewer is just incompetent. Truth is, I don't know other than by my taste and experience why it might be cloudy.  And I could well be wrong and on dodgy grounds for complaint if I'm not happy. To my mind, this all adds an unwelcome variable to me as a cask beer consumer and one that I didn't have to take into account before.  Before if the beer was cloudy, I took it back. What we are getting now isn't nearly as straightforward. Of course you can just dismiss me as an old fuddy duddy and say that I should learn to live with it.  Well I'm not so sure about that and am minded to do something about it.

The CAMRA AGM isn't a million miles away and I might just put forward a motion about how this confusion, which I see as (in the main) detrimental to cask beer, should be addressed.

Visual stimuli are very important to beer. Yes we do drink with our eyes.  We decide a lot about a beer before we even taste it.