Peak Murky?

What does everyone think? https://t.co/Du7YavEXW5

— AffinityBrewCoSteve (@Affinity_Steve) July 28, 2019

We started off, quite a while ago now, with the odd opaque pint being presented to drinkers. These were usually from new breweries in London and the south, following the then American tradition of cask conditioned beers being presented with what was termed "opalescence". As explained to me by a brewing friend of some substance, Jaime Jurado, this was how American brewers and the American public, back in these relatively uninformed days, perceived as the way that sort of beer was meant to be.  (You could probably take the meaning to be a sort of milky/hazy sheen.)  Then though - and I'm talking early noughties, most American beer was presented in the usual crystal clear way. West Coast IPA was a clear beer then as were most American "craft" beers.

I think it was Robbie Pickering who first coined the term "London Murky" and then it was rather unusual to see deliberately hazy beers, championed by a few and regarded with a mixture of indifference and horror by most of us "traditionalists", but the beer itself was well enough brewed, with my main objection being that it - pun intended - muddied the cask conditioned waters and undermined the convention built up over many years, that a problem pint was identified by sight first of all, if it was presented as less than clear.  There was more or less a nationwide acceptance on both sides of the bar that this was a starting point about a case to answer on a beer's saleability. In short the increase in hazy beers eroded the customer's position and allowed barstaff to say something that had largely been eliminated; "It's meant to be like that."  My own view was that this was the thin end of the wedge and that sooner or later there would be no line that could confidently be drawn.

Fast forward a few years. Small breweries have multiplied and tastes and fashions in beer have changed. Craft has pushed the perception envelope to the extent that anything goes, with some beers being indistinguishable from fruit juice in appearance.  Indeed many have fruit juice added to them.  This was always going to be a problem in so much as experimental beers are chucked out to trade and nobody has any real idea of what they really were drinking in terms of what the beer should actually taste like. This is of course very convenient to the brewer, but not for the customer, who often has to pay a premium price for something that may not be to his or her liking, or, more importantly one that he or she suspects is faulty. Now there is little recourse to changing such a beer for something more acceptable. The answer is likely to be "It's meant to be like that!"

Yesterday this was raised on Twitter by a peeved customer, Seth Bradley, who had received over the bar the samples shown in the photo.  I leave them to speak for themselves.  Follow up tweets  such as this illustrate my point:

It gets us nowhere though. Breweries dump out beer and advertise that they have dumped it out, to what end? I've raised issues before and been told "yeah we were unsure about that beer" or "we weren't happy with that one". Pressure to make ends meet Vs economising on quality.

— Mark (@millionbevs) July 28, 2019

Are these really well designed, properly brewed beers with a profile and recipe that is planned and brewed for?  You'd kind of doubt it wouldn't you?

What's the answer to these colloidal solutions when the rule book has been thrown away? I don't know for you, but for me? Avoid them like the plague.

You can read Jaime's credentials here.

I once asked Charlie Bamforth about cases less bad than this. He said the line has to be drawn before a beer looks like chicken soup. Too late.

Muddying the Waters

I was struck recently by the tweet below from blogger @Super Crushy about that vexed old subject, beer clarity.

I've been getting the occasional twinge and thinking I need to write something in response to all the people bemoaning the lack of clear beer and then I remember that I wrote this two years ago.

I have definitely not had enough of the haze. https://t.co/RLo6Hxfrr7 pic.twitter.com/acRxmKJsbi

— Super Crushy (@femtobrewster) May 4, 2018

Never being one to pass up an opportunity to respond, I, err, responded with a tweet and then the following conversation took place:

 Tandleman‏ @tandleman May 4

Boo!

1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes

 Super Crushy‏ @femtobrewster May 4

I think people should focus their efforts on highlighting badly made beer, rather than just complaining about beer styles they don't enjoy.

1 reply 1 retweet 0 likes

 Tandleman‏ @tandleman May 4

No argument there but I quite like responding in kind to your proselytizing.

1 reply 0 retweets 1 like

— Tandleman (@tandleman) May 4, 2018

If I may quote Pete Brown about the current state of cask beer "Cask ale’s health has recently gone into severe decline. Over the twelve months to February 2018, and in the twelve months before that, cask volume declined by over 4% each year – that means almost ten per cent of the entire cask market has vanished in the last 24 months."

I have been banging on about the quality of cask beer at the point of dispense for a long time now and as cask ale declines (the battle isn't won - if you think it is, stop reading now) so my question is this. Does the confusion sown by murky beer, often unlabelled as such, help or hinder the fight for quality cask beer and the need to find more people to drink it with confidence?

This isn't a pop at Super Crushy. She is entitled to her point of view and in fact is hardly alone in finding nothing unacceptable in beer that isn't clear.  I merely wish to point out, as a veteran cask ale drinker, one aspect of the law of unintended consequences, though equally, I don't suggest that the decline in cask beer sales is entirely down to intentional murkiness.

I do suggest, whatever your personal taste and whatever it does or doesn't do for craft beer, that it doesn't help the cause of cask beer much at all.  What do you reckon?

At one time if beer was hazy/cloudy, it was sent back.  Both sides knew the score.  This was an accepted norm which has now been overturned and not I'd venture, without disadvantage.

Sorry about the rogue bullet point. Can't find a way to get rid of it.

The Colour of Murky

This beer is murky I said to the barman
It's meant to be like that he replied
I ain't drinking that muck I insisted
As the craft beer fad crumbled and died.

— Cooking Lager (@CarpeZytha) November 20, 2017

I've always had my worries about murky beer and even quite hazy beer, though slightly hazy beer doesn't bother me that much.  What has though always concerned me, is that in the case of cask conditioned beer, it, pun intended, muddies the waters. Not so long ago, in the days of certainty, you knew where you stood. If a hand pulled pint had more than a slight haze, back to the bar it went. There was never much by way of argument. We all knew the rules and beer should be clear.  Any haze had your radar twitching and murk would never be tolerated.  Not so much now.

It kind of started for me in 2001 in Portland Oregon at Rock Bottom Brewery where to my horror the cask beer was cloudy and it was meant to be. My good friend Jaime Jurado, now Director of Brewing Operations at ‎Abita Brewing Co. and then Director of Brewing for the company that owned Bridgeport in Portland explained to me that "opalescence" was rapidly being considered a desirable feature in cask beer within the US. In a subsequent private tour of Portland Brewing Co and a tasting, this was confirmed. Deliberate murk has a long history.

Fortunately this tendency lay dormant - more or less for years and when I served beer at the Chicago Real Ale Festival in 2007, I believe what beer that was murky was more by poor handling than deliberate intent.  Arguments about taste abound - see Ed's blog here - and empirical evidence is hard to find - but where there is an absence of "yeast bite" I can live with it - pointless though it is - but my concern about "It's meant to be like that" being used an excuse certainly haven't gone away.  I rather doubt if I'd be given an exchange in many places and frankly, with the norm having been altered and fudged, I could hardly expect it to be.  A quick call to the brewer might well be an anwer, but I'm uncertain if that is the best way round it.

At the recent Rochdale Beer Festival we had about four beers where there was no indication on the cask that the beer should be hazy. So we left them, tasted them when they didn't clear and having found no obvious faults, put it on sale with a warning.

If you can't beat them, join them I suppose, but it doesn't leave me with a comfortable feeling.

Despite Cooking Lager's amusing ditty, I doubt if craft beer will crumble and die due to murkiness. 

London brewers still seem to lead the way in deliberate murkiness. London Murk indeed, though I reckon the influx of American brewers into the UK a few years ago and American influences on brewing here in the aUK had a hand in it, both directly and indirectly.

Where there's Murk, there's Brass

The controversy over hazy/cloudy/murky beer continues apace.  Twitter is full of photographic examples of beer which is so densely cloudy it looks like chicken soup, while all the while those posting said photos proclaim what a lovely drop it is.  There isn't much light I can shed on this phenomenon other than to suggest, mildly, that this has become a fashion that at its best can be described as bringing a new, open minded interpretation of beer presentation to the drinking public,  or at worst a con on the gullible with experimental beer, or a batch gone wrong, or even a brewer who doesn't know what the heck he is doing, pushing out bad beer at top dollar prices.  It's a thing though, so how should we react?

The simplest way is not to buy the stuff if it offends you, but of course it isn't that straightforward.  In the days before murk, it was easy. You got a cloudy or even hazy pint and you took it back. You knew that beer was meant to be bright and if it wasn't you returned it and asked for an exchange. In those days that was the norm. Customers knew it and bar staff knew it. It wasn't an arguable point. There was a rule - a clear rule if you like.  Nowadays there are those, rightly or wrongly that don't fine their beer in the belief, again rightly or wrongly, that by not fining the beer, the customer gets a "better" pint.  Now of course the flaw in this argument is that it is very subjective. Some like the added taste that not removing solids from beer gives - and that taste isn't all or always good - and some consider, me among them - that the flavours become imprecise, muddied if you like. Overcoming inbuilt norms, is not an easy thing either way.

There are brewers, good ones who take beer seriously that fret over this, but usually they have a tendency to go one way or another. You know the beers and you can choose accordingly. Ah, Yes. If you know the beers you can, but what about when you don't and most customers don't? Well, you rely on the brewer putting an explanation on the pumpclip, or the barstaff telling you (assuming in these days where quality control at the point of dispense has seemingly become the job of the purchaser) that the barstaff either know or care.  Never has it been easier for those selling a product that isn't quite right to say "It's meant to taste/look like that", especially as it sometimes is.

This, like it or not, is a particular problem for cask conditioned beer. I know some brewers haven't fined their beers for years, but they use an appropriate yeast and they allow the beer time. They may even re-rack almost bright into conditioning tanks and, providing the beer has enough viable yeast for a secondary fermentation in the cask, why not? Who cares? Certainly not me. The issue though is that with so many brewers of cask beer around now, some beers are frankly not worth drinking on taste alone, but if in addition they are cloudy, the customer is put in a position where he or she has to argue the case at the bar. Not good. Years of certainty over beers look and appearance count for nothing now.

What about craft beers? Well, here there may well be a different case to argue. Beers in this genre tend to be a lot more edgy, a bit more experimental. I read recently of a huge number of kilos of fruit pulp being added to beer. The brewer advised Twitter of the fact with pride. And why not?  I am not against such things - the Belgians have been doing it for years after all. Mind you they produce in the main very pin bright fruit beers - but we aren't Belgian here and in these cases, the resultant beer, cloudy as a fruit juice is what is intended and of course, here there is little argument. It is likely sold as what it is to those who have a fair idea of what they are getting and they pay and enjoy accordingly. That's fine by me.

So is this an issue and why is it happening? Most likely because it can happen and we have a new wave of brewers and drinkers who don't feel bound by a previous norm. They like it that way. That's fine, but brewers and publicans, please tell us in advance at the point of sale, in the case of cask conditioned beer at least.

London Murky is possibly the founding source  of this, but is separate and possibly more dodgy manifestation of this trend. It inspired the title of this piece in a way.

This blog piece which lends itself all too easily to dodgy puns, was at the back of my mind for a while. It was brought to life by an inability to sleep this morning and this piece here, where this issue seemingly precipitated a very unsavoury incident.

Back to Unclear Beer

It is ages since I did a poll and I haven't got the hang of putting it up on the newer version of Blogger that I now have, so apologies to the person that voted.  It wasn't meant to be published until I'd done this bit. Sorry.

When you are doing this, it is difficult to get the questions as right as you'd like, but hopefully I have included most scenarios.  Anyway, while in the main it is just a bit of fun, it does have a serious background and purpose.


I may draw conclusions from it and use it at the CAMRA AGM.  So get voting.

See also my earlier blog here and blogs from Phil and Paul  who also have views on the matter.  I do urge you to read them before diving in.  They do tend to be supportive of clear beer, so if there is another link to the opposing view, let me know and I'll include it.

 .