Category Archives: Beer

SIBA Great Northern Beer Festival

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The SIBA Great Northern Beer Festival, organised by the Society of Independent Brewers in association with CAMRA, is taking place this weekend at the Ramada Piccadilly, in Manchester, but I sneaked off on Thursday to take part there as a judge in the Northern regional beer competition. These events are a serious business. Storing and piping 260 different cask ales to the hand pumps is difficult enough, but this year the “cellar” was above the festival hall, so the “python” of pipes carrying the beer emerged from the wall over the heads of the bar staff. Organising the judges, and making sure they get the right beers at the right time, and in good condition, is a huge undertaking. I’d be lying if I said that the judging itself was anything less than a great pleasure, but it’s a serious business too, supporting independent brewers making glorious beers.

Below are a some photos from the day, including Hawkshead brewer Matt Clarke receiving his “Champion of the Competition” award for his splendid Windermere Pale Ale.

Stout and Porter

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At a family gathering at the weekend I was asked what the difference is between Porter and Stout. This is a common question, and one I’ve always answered by suggesting Porter is usually, but not always, lighter coloured, less alcoholic, and sweeter than ales labelled ‘Stout’. Having drunk Stouts that might have been Porters, and Porters that might have been Stouts, I’ve never been entirely convinced that they were actually all that different, or confident that my attempt to differentiate them really worked. A little digging turned up this 2009 piece on Martin Cornell’s excellent Zythophile blog, in which he traces the parallel histories of Porters and Stouts, showing exactly that uncertainty. Interestingly, he begins his piece by saying that this question is one of the top ten search terms leading visitors to his site:

I’m not sure that there was ever a point, even when porter was at its most debased, when you could point to any truly distinctive difference between porter and stout except to say that “stout” meant a stronger version of porter. Indeed, for much of the past 300 years, to ask “what’s the difference between porter and stout?” would have been like asking “what’s the difference between dogs and Rottweilers?”

The extract above, from the ledger of the brewer at Liverpool’s Cains brewery, on Stanhope Street in 1867, confirms that Porter was, and is, a kind of Stout. Here the brewer begins by saying that on March 2nd 1867 he brewed a “XXXX Porter” using a combination of pale, brown, and black malts, but his closing statement gives it away: this was “a good fermentation and excellent Stout”. Perhaps a brewer might like to comment on the hops used in this brew: 130lb of Hereford (1865) and 130lb of Kent (1856). That’s not a misprint: brews in this ledger often include hops a decade old, or older.

So the answer to the question seems to be that Porter is a kind of Stout, but that what makes a Porter Porter (and not Stout), is open to interpretation. Is that clear now?

Beer Defects iPad App

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The Beer Defects iPad app, produced by Applied Sensory, is a guide to the various “off” flavours in beer. Primarily aimed at those who review or taste beer, it is essentially a digital version of Applied Sensory’s Defects Wheel for beer. The app itself is a rough and ready affair, consisting of two main menus, such as the one above, from which the user selects characteristics by sensory experience, or from a list of chemicals. A third ‘general’ menu gives information on such subjects as good sanitation techniques and ‘Diacetyl’. Clicking on a sensory description takes you to a page showing the causes, and possible treatments of a given defect. It is simple, and quite efficient.

On the whole this is a useful app, but it has some drawbacks. For one thing, it forces the iPad into portrait mode, rather than allowing the orientation to switch as the device is rotated. And for another, the formatting of the text is crude. While some attention has been given to the way the app looks, it does not seem very polished. In fact, apart from the convenience of having an app on the home screen, there is nothing this offers that wouldn’t have been possible in an ebook. This feels very much like version 1.0, and doesn’t really take advantage of what the iPad has to offer. For example, a landscape mode might show the menu and the information page side by side, while links within pages might make the information more usable. A further improvement might be to do away with the Back button, so that switching between pages could be done by swiping across the screen, which, on the iPad at least, seems the natural way to do it. Back buttons are for web browsers. I hope there is more development, because a general note taking, scoring, and sharing app for beer reviewers would be extremely useful.

As far as the quality of the information goes, the handful of facts I checked seemed to be accurate, but I am neither a brewer, nor a chemist. I will certainly refer to this during ‘Baron ratings’ and will no doubt learn quite a lot from it.

The Beer Defects app is available for iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. There are more screenshots, and links, on the Applied Sensory apps page.

Spitzbergen Ale

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In late 2009 and early 2010 Scottish brewer Brewdog engaged in a tit for tat battle of super strength beers with German brewer Schorschbrau. First came a 32% abv beer from Brewdog, named Tactical Nuclear Penguin. Schorschbrau followed up with 40% Schorschbock, which Brewdog quickly trumped, in February 2010, with Sink the Bismarck, a beer that came over the horizon at an astonishing 41% abv.

At the time, these freeze distilled beers seemed like something new, but there is a precedent from almost 400 years earlier, recounted by William Scoresby Jr., in his Account of the Arctic Regions (1820). Perhaps one of these two brewers might like to try the following:

Seven Dutch sailors who wintered in Spitzbergen in the year 1633-4, were exposed to such a degree of cold, that as early as the 13th October, casks of beer placed within eight feet of the fire froze three inches thick, and soon afterwards became almost entirely consolidated. In all cases of beer, ale, wine and spirits freezing, it may be observed, that the aqueous parts only freeze so as to become solid; whereby, even in ale or beer, the liquor becomes concentrated in the centre, until almost as strong as spirits.

When you think about it, there is only one way Scoresby could have known that.