A Cocoa Wonderland

The Annual General Meeting of the Foreign Beer Bars (BSF) from the Great British Beer Festival took place earlier this month in Sheffield.   We meet to plan how we'll do things next time and review what we did right and what didn't go so well at the last event. Like all these things, it doesn't just happen, but is thought through as much as it can be and it all takes place through considerable human effort.  I haven't told you about it as I've been ill ever since. Not through too much beer, but caused by a viral infection from which I am slowly recovering. Still, I am better enough to mention a couple of things before they fade like all endearing charms tend to.

There were three of us attending from Manchester, but one didn't make it out on Friday. He was ill with a viral infection. You can see where this is leading can't you?  Still, a mere 50 yards from our rented front door was, glory be, a Thornbridge pub, the Bath Hotel. Now how's that for lucking out?  The pub itself was a delight and even luckier was that it had two rather unusual and excellent cask beers on. We called in with the aim of trying a couple of halves. Melba IPA (5.2%)  had more peach juice flavour than most peaches do. If you like a beer that is just peachy, well this is your man. It was peachier than a peachy thing, but still refreshing and tasty, though perhaps just a little overdone. We enjoyed it but moved on to Cocoa Wonderland (6.8%).  Now it isn't at all often a beer stops me dead in my tracks, but boy did this do so.  It was stunning. Like a bitter chocolate ice cream with so much depth and complexity, we were rendered speechless.  The brewery describes it as "a full bodied, robust porter with natural mocha malt flavours from the complex malt grist, complementing the decadent additions of real cocoa beans to the maturation process".  Well, if they say so. It was just a chocolate infused dream of a beer. Those that reckon that cask conditioning can't handle this strength of beer needed to be there. No carbonic bite, just a tight creamy head, a melting chocolate malt body and all that wonderful flavour.  Truly magnificent. The best beer I've had this year by a considerable margin. We had to stay for more and indeed returned for more later.

I'll tell you about other aspects of Sheffield in another post, including our trip to Thornbridge Brewery itself and a bit about where the meeting took place, but I must first mention another fantastic pub.  The Red Deer, an unspoilt traditional pub just off West Street.  Not only is it a lovely multi roomed boozer, but it has the kind of easy going atmosphere and mixed crowd that makes you want to stay for more than one. So we did of course. We sought the barman's advice on some of the local brews and he knew his stuff and couldn't have been more helpful.  We settled on Stancill Stainless after being reassured by said barman.  Described as "Unfined, vegan and naturally hazy." our antennae were finely tuned into trying to discern something decent amid the murk. Instead we were presented by a perfectly clear, beautifully balanced best bitter, lush with malt and with a big Cascade hop hit. Poise, balance and elegance.  Class in a glass in fact.

So, three things if not learned, reinforced. Cask conditioning can be just the dab for rather strong beers if the brewery and cellarman know their stuff. Unfined beer does not have to look like chicken soup if the brewer and cellarman know their stuff and good pubs and good beer, when mixed correctly in the right proportions, attract the right crowd and are a winning combination.

Simple stuff really, but highly recommended for great beer and great pubs.


Note the Gilmour's Brewery window in the Red Deer photo.  I understand too that the Bath Hotel has its interior listed as being of national importance. I can see why.

I won't mention the very unwise kebab, or how messily it was eaten either.

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.

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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.

What Do You Make of This?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the nearest JDW to my flat in London and remarked on how much it had improved.  Seems I may have spoken too soon about the Goodmans Field.

A couple of weeks ago we popped in on the way home and though I can't remember the beer names, I ordered pint of whatever this guest beer was.  It was extremely murky.  I queried it and asked for a replacement.  The next guest beer was identically murky, as was the beer from a third pump.  The poor barman obviously had no idea what was going on and asked if I'd like to see the manager.  I would.  I was assured that I had just struck an unlucky co-incidence and that they had all reached the end of the barrel at the same time.  I may just have looked doubtful.  "Hmm" I thought. "OK. I'll have a London Pride".  You are probably way ahead of me.  It was like electric soup.  Another co-incidence I was advised.  So I had a pint of the cruel Heineken.

A couple of days later I called in again, reasoning that it would all be new beers by then.  My ordered pint of Vale Misty Hop was cloudy.  I wasn't going through all that again, so tasting it gingerly, it wasn't that bad.  "Misty Hop" I thought. "Wonder if it is meant to be cloudy?"  The Blogosphere didn't know, so I emailed the brewery. This what they said "Misty Mountain Hop should be served crystal clear."  Now my first thought was to bubble this mob to Cask Marque and I will if next week when I'm in London, I call in and there is the slightest doubt about the beer.  But it may just be they had a disastrous weekend in the cellar and its a one off. I'm a kind sort underneath, though there is no excuse for selling under par beer, which they were quite blatantly doing. My second thought was about the Misty Hop.  I had thought that this might have been one of those daft beers that are meant to be served cloudy?  I didn't know and the name hinted that it might.

Nonetheless when an old hand like me can be well and truly fooled by the possibility of badly kept beer being this new fangled "unfined beer" or whatever they call it, what's happening to other poor innocents?  Are they being fooled too?

I'm not a fan of unfined beer as you can probably tell.