A Popular Misconception

Our pub, along with another, had a trip around JW Lees Greengate Brewery on Wednesday night. They are the kind of thing a brewery such as Lees does as a reward to its tenants and customers from time to time, though the gap between visits is usually rather long.  Such events include a tour round the brewery and after a few pints in the Brewery Cottage (the hospitality suite) poured by the Area Manager and the hosting pub tenants - off we went. Now I've been around there quite a lot in various guises and each time I learn something new.  This time one of the Brewhouse Team - a production brewer if you like - took us round. I know him a little and he asked me not to ask awkward questions. As if I would. That wastes valuable drinking time, but as we walked back to the Cottage we chatted about Lees Original Lager and Carlsberg which are produced at Greengate. "Of course" he said, "you won't approve of lager."  He seemed surprised when I advised him that I'm a huge fan of lager and of Lees Original and that I regularly drink lager home and abroad.

This idea that Camra types all dislike lager is a quite common misconception.  It is like the misconception that Camra members don't drink pasteurised bottles, don't drink keg and don't drink cans. "They certainly don't drink craft" is the mantra. Now a few die hards mightn't, but actually most of us do drink keg beers (carefully selected of course) and most of us certainly drink lager to some extent or other lager.  Returning to craft keg, in fact in areas outside London, I reckon some craft bars are both literally and figuratively propped up by Camra members in a way that would surprise most people. (London is a different case, but it will still happen there.)

While cask beer at its best is unbeatable, not drinking lager is inconceivable to me for one.   Well made lager is an absolute delight and those that sniff at lager are missing out in a big way.  

What did I learn this time?  Well, while I knew Lees made no cask beer for anyone else since they stopped doing Burton Ale, I found out that they brew Tetley Keg Bitter, Greenalls Bitter and Ansells Bitter (both keg).

They also produce Carlsberg Lager for Carlsberg to supplement Carlsberg's own production, as well as for their own estate and free trade.

Do We Like That One?

I'm not a drinker of own brand beers really. I kind of think they are likely to be not very good with one or two exceptions.  These exceptions are usually where a very good brewery has been commissioned to produce a particular kind of beer as part of a range.  But what about those low end "cooking lagers" which aren't brands, but are set up to compete with "brands"?  The nice people at Aldi sent me some beers for me to find out for myself.  A pretty unusual task for this writer, but I thought it might be fun and that I might learn something.

Now I'm a fan of Aldi.  I like many of their things, though like all supermarkets, you have to pick and choose. I have bought beer from them in the past, more of which later, but not their canned offerings,  competing with the big boys on taste and bettering  them on price.  On a sunny Saturday afternoon, me and E decided to give them a whirl. I set them out in order of strength and one at a time, off we went.

First up was Galahad Lager. "Crisp and Refreshing" is the claim for this four percenter. The beer itself pours a nice clear gold with a lasting white head. E picked out the metallic nose straight away. High carbonation and a thin body followed with a touch of wheat spiciness and a slight lemony taste. The verdict? You could do worse actually and it does what it says on the tin. Crisp and refreshing? Yes indeed.

No range it seems these days would be complete without a French 25cl stubby bottle. Brasserie Premium is just such an animal and displays all the usual faults of the breed. All taste and character has been brewed and filtered out to leave a thin, brasso like fizzy liquid. Buy on price only.  At 4.5% Lowenstein gives every impression of being brewed in Germany, down to the rheinheitsgebot conformation, but it is brewed yet again in France. All barley this time and you can smell it on the toasty nose, but it is let down by thinness,  lack of a hop presence or any depth or body from the malt.

Last up is St Etienne which is set to compete with Stella. So brewed in Belgium then? Sorry, no. France again.  I read up on this one on the web and it seems it used to be brewed in Belgium, but now isn't. Commentators have noted the tail off in quality.  The beer manages to be both sharp and sweet simultaneously. It has a bit of a wet dog nose, no hop presence and sort of dies in your mouth.  Pretty horrid really and not as good as the Galahad.  E chucked hers into the hedge after a few sips.

Now I pointed out above that I used to buy beer from Aldi. That beer was Wernesgruener Pils, a real classy German Pils, alas no longer stocked in the UK.  I'd recommend that Aldi find a decent German import again in 33cl bottles, or re-stock Wernesgruener. Branded German beer is cheap as chips to buy and even with UK duty added, well worth the effort.  Those of us who aspire to something better would certainly appreciate it. Those that just want a cheap quaffer could do a lot worse than buying the Galahad.

Oh and maybe don't have all your own brand beer brewed down to a price in France. 

I do know that from time to time Aldi does have branded German lagers in stock, but these tend to be offers in half litres.  

This Is Lager?

It isn't often that I disagree with the Beer Nut when he describes and recommends a beer, above all because I rate his beer tasting notes as second to none and therefore his recommendations as ones to be taken very seriously indeed. As I neither have his dedication nor inclination, I'm generally happy to enjoy his tastings vicariously and of course, being a lazy git I'd rather sup beer than write tasting notes. So very unusually and with a caveat, I'm going to tentatively disagree with the Beer Nut over this post about BrewDog's This. Is. Lager. (TIL).  The caveat is that the Beer Nut describes the bottled version in his post and I have been drinking the draught version.

Now given my poor views of the state of cask beer in London,  I tend to drink a heck of a lot more lager there. And a lot more gin too.  Drinking cask beer in London (an aside in this post) is far to often the triumph of hope over experience, with its attendant coming down to earth with a bump.  This brings me back to TIL. I was very pleased when BrewDog introduced it and looked forward to it when I heard it was coming to JDW. But it is so variable.  All too few times the beer is clean, hoppy, full bodied, mouthfilling and refreshing and all too many times,  metallic, ridiculously over-carbonated, brasso like and weedy.  I asked E whose palate is excellent and who likes lager nearly as much as I do, to describe it. She summed it up thus: "It's usually too harsh. I used to like it, but I don't now". How can this be?

I offer two explanations. First the old BrewDog problem of inconsistency of product is one possibility and this may or may not be the case. I just don't know. The second and possibly more likely one, is that I'm drinking it in the wrong place. I drink it in Wetherspoons. Why should that be an issue I wondered?  I turned to a friend of mine who manages a leading JDW for his thoughts.  "It doesn't turn over as quickly as it needs to to be fresh and consistent" he said.  "And most people just don't like it."  So is that the explanation?  One piece of evidence for this, in this neck of the woods, came on Saturday in the Art Picture House in Bury.  This Is Lager was being offered (or was it remaindered?) at £2 a pint. E had a half and didn't have any more. She didn't like it.  I tasted it and found it thin and unappealing. Going back to the Beer Nut, I'm not quite so tentative when I say I am somewhat taken aback when he says "Put it in a grown-up serving size and you'd have a rival for Pilsner Urquell"

I disagree. On draught at least, for me and in my opinion, This. Is.Lager doesn't have the same complexity and consistency as PU. Moreover, to me, it just hasn't got the sheer quality of PU. Maybe though I'll have to find a bottle one day to see how that stands up.

Perhaps someone that regularly drinks it in BD pub could give their views? On the plus side, and thinking on, at £1.99 a pint, it is most certainly "Craft Beer for the People"!

I note too that BN had a few eyebrow raised comments about his views and some support.  That's interesting.  Maybe he just got a very good bottle of it?

Real Lager Back in the Day

Boak and Bailey have an interesting article on the issue of the CAMRA view of lager many years ago. They are right to point out at the start of it that it is more than one of simply regarding lager as "fizzy piss."

Last night I received the attached scan from our Regional Treasurer who was involved with Bury Beer Festival back in 1980.  The list of beers is interesting and it is is gratifying to see that of the 12 breweries (an amazingly modest number by today's standards) no less than 5 remain in production.  That however is not the main point of me reproducing the original programme.  If you look down to Lees there is a lager offered for sale. With an explanation.

Mudgie is always banging on about the poor quality of the lagers produced by regional breweries and he is, in the main right. These were really ales - Kolsch like - in that they were warm fermented by top fermenting (ale) yeast and then cold conditioned before pasteurisation and kegging.  Some were truly awful.  Lees had Tulip Lager and while now, in a modern lager brewery, they produce excellent lagers, it wasn't always the case.

My contact does not say if the thirsty hordes, no doubt including CAMRA members, in a fit of nihilistic doctrinal purity, refused to drink it, though somehow I doubt it. Beer Festivals were still a bit rare in those days.

Click on the image to enlarge. I was also sent an amusing tale which I'll publish soon.

No Mean Time

London in the sun.  What could be nicer?  Well Manchester in the sun obviously - better beer to be had - but culture? That's a different issue and  London has it all.  After a (half) day out with Tyson and crew, we decided on a trip to an old haunt - Greenwich.  Two or three ideas.  A walk in the park, a look inside the old Royal Naval College, a quick shufti at the Cutty Sark - it was built in my home town of Dumbarton don't you know and there is still a pub on the High St with the same name - and a couple of restorative beers in Meantime's Old Brewery, a place, to which somewhat neglectfully, I hadn't been.

We enjoyed the walk, I thought the Naval College and whatnot delightful and unfussy. They even allowed you to sit on the banqueting seats to allow you to stare more comfortably at the impressive ceiling. The Cutty Sark was rather antiseptically impressive, though like a hammer where you have replaced both the head and the shaft, you have to wonder if it is indeed the original hammer at all.  All that sightseeing and walking about in the sun makes you thirsty, so our arrival at the Old Brewery was welcome.  Outside was a sea of bodies in the grass and in the beer garden.  I observed closely.  A mixture of plastic and glass gave me an inkling that likely you were meant to use plastic outside, so I wondered what would happen.  Inside we found a decent spot in a corner. It was going like a fair busy, but the staff were cheerful and kept good order.  I put my barman through his paces by asking for a couple of samples even though I knew what I would likely have. He was professional and friendly, offering decent advice despite the hordes.  Good stuff.  I settled on North Fresian Lager, a Jever-alike, but really rather magnificent, with good body, freshness, bitterness and a hopsmacking finish.  What's not to like? Well perhaps the £5.20 a pint price?  OK. Certainly the £5.20 price, but it was good. Very good. E was much less impressed with her Pilsner which did seem dull.  Or was that just dull in comparison. She rapidly switched to the same beer as me.

The place was heaving and we watched the dynamics of it all. It seemed that you randomly got glass or plastic and nobody was stopping anyone going outside with glass.  Service was friendly and efficient. My three rounds were all in glass without me asking.  Top marks.  I did have a couple more tasters, but nothing much impressed beer wise.  Perhaps I was spoiled by the North Fresian? Service was brisk and friendly, décor was comfortable to imposing, with the brewery conditioning tanks, clearly signed with exciting forthcoming beery attractions being a high point.

So overall?  I (we) had a good time, thought the North Fresian excellent but expensive, thought the service good all things considered and hopefully when I come back on a quieter day, I'll have more interesting beers to choose from.

It's nice. I liked it. Save up and go.

I didn't experience any of Tyson's bizarre occurrences on this occasion.

Prague

It's five years since I've been to Prague and I dare say things have changed.  I'm off there on Monday for a few days with some of my more cultured friends.  They'll be seeking out classical music and museums and while I'm not agin either, I'll be looking for a decent glass or two.

Now I know some of the usual suspects - sorry highly recommended pubs - and know too that IPAs and God knows what else will abound, which should really interesting,  but I'd like some really good lager too, so I need some more specific advice as follows, if my readers would be so kind:



Where does a decent selection of (non PU and Budvar) lager exists and what should I drink there?

Where can we go for decent beer and food where we won't be smoked out?

Which pubs - even really good ones - are the most smoky and should be avoided on that basis?

What's the best around in the area of Rybna, Praha 1?

Can anyone help?  I'd really be most grateful

I also found 700 Kč in notes in my house.  Hope they haven't changed the currency. Should buy a few beers

Tegernsee

For years now we have sold Tegernsee Spezial at the Great British Beer Festival.   As a consequence, each time I go to southern Germany, I promise myself I'll go there, to the source, to see the place for myself; each time, I overlook it and don't, but this year I did. Train from Munich to Tegernsee, five of us on a Bayern Ticket and I was sorted. Set in gorgeous countryside, Tegernsee is a large lake, 2,500 ft above sea level and about 12 miles from the Austrian border. It is more than a bit nice and it has a rather good brewery when you get fed up of all that lakey gorgeousness.

The brewery and beer hall are pretty damn big.  One thing the Germans don't do by halves is beer and beery things. (Well they do do half litres, but you get my point I'm sure).  The Tegernsee Brewery's record of beers sold in one day is 3600 litres.  They won't run out of beer either. They keep 14,000 litres chilled and ready to go. As I said, they take their beer very seriously there.  

We normally sell Spezial at the GBBF, but I started, as we all did, on the Helles. Clean, herbal and very drinkable. But that wasn't my mission. No Sir.  Spezial was required and procured. It was indeed special, with a more full bodied and bitter taste and dangerously drinkable despite being 5.6%. It made the rain, which temporarily marred a lovely day, all the more bearable, particularly as we were under cover. Well most of us were. I seem to recall Tyson got a bit wet. Collateral damage if you like.

It wasn't exactly a sentimental journey, but it was along those lines. Go there if in the area. It is very highly recommended.

Being an hour outside Munich, the beer was around a euro cheaper too.

Good Show Chaps

I had a bottle of Avery Brown Dredge last night. We were in the Port St Beer House (freezing as usual) and Tyson insisted. And he paid, such was his insistence. I was expecting not to like it that much, as I thought somehow it might be a bit sweet and sticky given its strength, but I was delightfully surprised to find it just the opposite, being astonishingly clean (I like clean in a beer) and certainly drinking more like a five and a half percenter rather than the 7.5% it is. The hops come shining through after each sip and really showcase the Saaz hop; the malt balance was excellent and the finish had just the right length and hop flourish.  It is a lovely beer with a great deal of elegance and sophistication.

So what else is there to say except, buy* it. It is really good.
 
*Better still, have it bought for you!

World's Best Lager

You can forget all your fancy continental lagers, your carefully brewed to exacting spec rheinheitsgebot German pilsners and helles, put the leading UK lager Carling firmly back in its can and reach for the best. That is if you live in Greater Manchester. So what is this wonderful specimen of the brewer's art? Why none other than Holt's Crystal Lager.

Yes Joey's finest fizz beat off strong challenges from all over the world to take the gold gong in the international keg lager 2.9 to 4.7 abv category at the prestigious Brewing Industry International Awards. Holt's Chief Executive Richard Kershaw said (cuttingly) "Our Crystal lager won over the judges in a blind tasting and beat off competition from beers around the world, including Carling, Fosters and Carlsberg. The gold medal proves that taste and quality are more important than brand advertising.

So there you have it. The world's best lout. Official. Mind you, you'll have to find a Joey Holt's pub to sup it in.

Sorry about the shitty photo, but that's Holt's for you.

Proper Lout

It is bottom fermented, unfiltered, unpasteurised and lagered for three months. Served cold and from a keg, it's bloody excellent too. Way better than most British brewers lager efforts.

Of course Tony Allen of Phoenix knows how to brew good beer. That helps a lot.

More Lout

Fresh from my second trip to the Isle of Man in two months, I come back to find that Stella are launching a new beer called "Stella Black". The 4.9 per cent beer, which is not actually black, but pale and golden like most other mass produced lagers, will be brewed in Belgium and imported to the UK. One cheer for that.

Reading the hoots of derision from the trade in the comments area on both the the Morning Advertiser and Publican sites, it seems there might just be a credibility gap for them to overcome, but be reassured. In addition to its other redeeming features - well I suppose it might have some - but the press release doesn't say what if anything they might be - there will be "a reverential pouring ritual”. Yes that's right, a reverential pouring ritual. That's got me hooked.

Now call me an old cynic (please do), but unless by some miracle this stuff is actually good and even if it is, it's got "This is going to bomb" written all over it.

Now altogether, sing the song. "Ste-lla Blaaack Label"

Lout

I was called to the bar yesterday to watch England. A couple of friends persuaded me out of my solitary existence to watch the football with others. It was in a pub near me, but one that I don't normally go to. I don't care for the place or the beer quality, though in fairness last week when I nipped in just before the last England game to sample the atmosphere and the beer, the bitter was cool and excellent.

Not so yesterday. It tasted off, as if it had been heatstruck before ever reaching the cellar and the Coronation St was a cloudy insult. Both were way too warm which gave a clue. What to do? The family of my friends were there before me and agreed it was poor and they switched to Carlsberg and San Miguel. I tried the Carlsberg. Horrid. All carbonic bite and an odd corn edge. The San Mig was slightly spicy as if a dash of unmalted wheat had been lobbed in. I was tempted, but instead had Lees house lager, Golden Original. It didn't taste of much, but was smoother, fuller and maltier than the Carlsberg. A hefty dose of noble hop would have made this pretty good. I had a few of those and finished off with a San Miguel. It wasn't so bad either, but not something I'd like to repeat often.

I reflected on a few things. Annoyance about the cask beer - this just shouldn't be happening; that this was the first session on British lout I'd had in the pub for over 20 years; how bloody expensive the stuff is.

No wonder they all drink it at home.

And no, I didn't complain. My friends are friends with the manager and I wouldn't have embarrassed them.

The "L" Word

My attention has been drawn to an article written about beer, by Oliver Thring, a food blogger. It appears in the On Line Guardian and if I may say so, misses at least a bit of the point when he asks the question, "Handcrafted lagers are making a comeback despite opposition from the real ale lobby. Is Camra right to dismiss these beers, or is it just snobbery?.

On the main assertion, does CAMRA "dismiss these beers?" and does it oppose them? I rather think not. The leap of logic, present in so much of the stuff written about CAMRA, usually concerns what CAMRA should do, rather than what it does do, and, the mistaken assumption that CAMRA is an umbrella organisation for beer. It quite simply isn't. CAMRA's role, as defined by its constitution, is to promote and defend the interests of cask conditioned ale. CAMRA's Iain Loe, puts it maybe a bit more bluntly than I would, when he says "We appreciate high-quality products, and we wish good luck to these brewers. But if you want to build relationships, don't come to us and say 'We started producing beer in the last five minutes and now you have to change everything you believe in' - it's a mixture of naivety and arrogance."

Thring then goes on to conflate cask and non cask lager, quoting in the piece blogger Mark Dredge, in his praise of Harviestoun (a cask lager producer) and finishes by asking if we should be given the opportunity to enjoy these "distinctive and interesting beers", as if their availability was somehow conditional on CAMRA approval.  Beer writer Pete Brown chipped in commenting " I was judging at a CAMRA beer festival recently and there were three cask lagers on - conforming to CAMRA's dispense rules. They were classed as 'speciality beers'. Yeah, that's right - lager, that unusual, hard-to-come-by niche beer.".  Doesn't that sound reasonable until you examine it more closely? CAMRA, unlike organisations such as the American BJCP   with its 23 different beer styles, has only a limited number of  categories of beer. (Ten since you ask). There isn't one for cask lager,  though  I don't see why they wouldn't be classified as "golden ales", but whatever they are, there isn't a lager category, as there isn't enough of it around to justify such a category. Simples?

My belief is that lager, in both its cask and non cask forms, is a welcome choice when I see it in the pub. What is really important is to wean people on to quality beer, whether lager or ale, but that's another story and a very difficult thing to do in this country where pile it high and sell it cheap distorts the quality/price equation. The emerging small lager brewers are likely to remain a niche for the foreseeable future - that is the role of small producers in this country, like it or lump it.  To ask CAMRA to somehow give them a leg up by changing all they believe in, is not only naive, but an ask too far. They must stand or fall by their own ability to penetrate a market which is likely to be indifferent to them. An inconvenient truth?  Maybe, but the market will decide.

CAMRA is far too often an easy target for those who wish things beery that are, weren't so.  Words and attitudes by a few are distortedly  taken to be representative as a whole. I am sometimes drawn to defend them, not just by my membership, but by a sense of fairness - of redressing the balance.  In this case, it is simply that the case against doesn't stack up.

The founding of LOBI ( Lagers of the British Isles) would seem to acknowledge that there is a need for an organisation to represent new wave lager brewers , though I read a comment elsewhere by John Clarke that "Interestingly I understand that Taddington Brewery, producer of arguably the UK's finest lager, have declined to join LOBI".

Campaign for Real Lager?

Seems CAMRA is going to get a run for their money. An English lager brewer is attempting to launch an organisation that would be to lager what the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is to cask beer. LOBI - catchy innit - it stands for Lagers of the British Isles will be launched by summer if current canvassing is successful.

LOBI is the brainchild of Staffordshire's Freedom Brewery and aims to "let British bar owners, the British public and indeed the world, know that they can sell and drink micro-brewed British lagers with confidence." They aim to change the perception of British lager as a "mass produced drink with little individual character."

Well good for them. If it shoves a few Carlsbergs or Carlings off the bar, it would be a good thing. Do you think it'll take off?

I tried all three of the Freedom lagers at the Northern Bar Show. I liked the pilsner, but the organic and dark weren't as good.
The Publican has the story here

Kate Garaway is a Lager Drinker

Now I don't watch GMTV, so haven't had the pleasure of seeing Kate, but she is bonny and seems a good sport. She doesn't drink wine, preferring lager. On the F Word which despite myself, I like, she was asked to choose between various lagers. She preferred Asda's Price Right one to Carlsberg's most expensive beer in the world. Not sure what that tells us about either beer, but the Carlsberg looked flatter than a witches tit. She rightly rejected a pizza flavoured beer then tried a "yard of lager". Hmm. I have heard of a yard of ale, but whatever. She got most of it over her chest, but regretfully wasn't wearing a T shirt. Gordon Ramsay got it all over himself too, but who cares about him.

Maybe Stonch should send her some Moravka? Could be just the boost it needs!