Celebrate Burn's Night with Whisky Beers!

After all the stress of the penultimate test match coming to a draw I thought I ought to do some work, so please find below the latest info on the next Meet the Brewer at lovebeer@borough.

Award-winning Scottish brewery Harviestoun, based in Alva at the foot of the rolling Ochil Hills, is renowned all over the world for its immensely drinkable beers and now you can meet head brewer Stuart Cail for an early Burn’s Night celebration in London this January 23, with a range of the brewery’s beers and a wee something to nibble on after in the form of the ‘chieftain o' the puddin-race’, Haggis, with tatties & neeps.

Always renowned for its innovation, the brewery is widely acknowledged to have produced one of the first blonde beers, in the shape of Bitter & Twisted, which helped kick-start the rediscovery of the delights of real ale by lager drinkers, and is still leading the charge on exciting beers to this day.

More recently beer (and whisky) lovers on both sides of the Atlantic have warmly received the various versions of the brewery’s complex and esoteric delight Ola Dubh. The name Ola Dubh means Black Oil, and is a gloriously dark, rich thick 8%ABV beer aged in different Highland Park Whisky casks.

The beer comes in 12, 16, 18, 30 and 40-year-old versions* and is ideal as a digestif or paired with strong cheeses like Stinking Bishop or Époisses (*the years refer to the age of the whisky casks the beer is aged in).

The tasting will also include Ptarmigan cask ale, the seasonal brew Haggis Hunter and a comparative tasting of the brewery’s award-winning Schiehallion in both cask and bottle format, much to the delight of co-proprietor of Tickets are just £15 and there are currently two tasting events scheduled, on Saturday January 23 at 1pm and 3.30pm, but tickets are already in demand by word of mouth alone, so more announcements may follow.

Tickets are available from Utobeer or the Rake (14 Winchester Walk, Borough Market, London, SE1 9AG) by emailing melissa@love-beer.co.uk or calling 020 7378 9461.

*this post is for my beer tasting business*

Relax

Right, I'm watching the final throws of the test match and am finding it very stressful, which made me think that if I was to have a beer to calm my nerves (not that I'm going to, by myself, at home, at 3.30 in the afternoon!), what would I have to drink, so I've put a list of my top five relaxing beers below, I'd love to know what you all think.

1. Fuller's Chiswick - when the day needs to be to washed away with a pint or four!
2. Dark Star HopHead - for bunking off during summer afternoons to sit in the pub garden
3. Ola Dubh 16 - for weather like this, preferably in front of a real fire, bung it in a brandy balloon and savour for ages
4. Goose Island Bourbon County Stout - a chocolatey Bourbon cuddle in a glass, serve as above!
5. Rochefort 10 - to be savoured with friends (no website I'm afraid)

Diet, What Diet?!

Okay, I know at this time of year I'm supposed to be living off rarified Alpine air and misted vitamins for four weeks but I'm afraid all it does is make me really grouchy, tired and unproductive - so I've decided not to go for an all-out diet this January.

Instead, with a little advice from the lovely Gina at Ethos Coaching who's married to the awesomely acerbic Eddie from Utobeer, I've set myself a goal instead - I want to lose a dress size by the end of February.

I've decided to do this through alternating daily light exercise with a day's murderous exercise, eating more sensibly during the day, cutting down on dinner portion sizes and being a little more abstemious in my drinking (not a lot mind you, but when you drink as much as I have in the last three months a little is actually a lot!!).

However, what I've decided NOT to do is to completely deny all eating pleasures and, as I've got a half-hundred weight of potatoes left from Christmas and I hate wasting food, we're having bangers & mash with Exmoor Beast Onion Gravy for dinner tonight.

I'm pretty sure that you don't need me to tell you how to make mash (although I do heartily recommend getting a potato ricer, it's the one of the few pieces of kit in my kitchen I now could not live without) and I'm not yet making my own sausages (although a bigger kitchen and that could become a reality very quickly!) so I'm just going to focus on the gravy!

Exmoor Beast Onion Gravy (will work with any brown/dark beer)
Three large onions
Two sizeable garlic cloves
GOOD stock (I'm using duck but that's just because it's in the freezer, would prefer beef)
One bottle of Exmoor Beast
Pinch of sugar
Three sprigs of fresh thyme
Seasoning

1. Chop your onions in half, peel, cut into 1cm thick half moons
2. Place in a medium-hot deepish pan with some groundnut oil in it
3. Keep stirring until the onions start to soften
4. Add pinch of sugar and a splash of stock
5. Cook the stock out
6. Add garlic, thyme and half bottle of Beast and reduce to lowest heat
7. Allow onions to caramelise (takes at least 30-45 minutes)
8. Add rest of stock and cook until thickened (if you're struggling to get it thick then slake a little cornflour with a bit of the gravy in a glass/bowl/ramekin/whatever! and then add back into pan
9. Taste, season accordingly (I like a lot of black pepper in mine) and pour over whatever you're serving it with!

If you add more stock and serve with slices of baguette with melted Gruyere on top you've got onion soup!

Europe to Get Stoned?

Well, somehow before Christmas I missed the announcement that Stone was contemplating opening a brewery in Europe, so I thought rather than just re-hashing the news (given that most of you have probably already heard) I thought I'd leverage the fact that Greg Koch (right) didn't stand his round at the Falling Rock when I was at the GABF* to duff him up for some further information.

Just to precis this, basically Stone has announced that it is thinking about opening a European brewery, something probably a bit smaller than they have now (which is perhaps why my suggestion of retrofitting the Leeds Tetley brewery wasn't even acknowledged) and are looking for thoughts and proposals on this.

But I wanted to know a little more about why they were thinking about this. Are they looking for super-universal domination, are they being super-green or is Greg just wanting to show off his multi-lingual talents?

Read on to find out what he had to say:

Me: What’s driving this decision? Is it economic? Environmental? Both?

Greg: Actually, the challenge and adventure is the #1 driver. Yes, we feel it is a good environmental and (will eventually be) a good economic decision, but ultimately we want to have fun.

Me: What’s you largest European market?
Greg: No good answer to this as we only export anecdotally. We only currently export to Sweden and the UK, both are minimal. We won't ship meaningful amounts of our "fresh" year-round beers due to Europe's bothersome ideas that beers need to have a 12-month date code on them. We refuse to do this since we only approve them to be 3-months old before we don't want them sold any more.

Me: You mention that the beer would be more regional, does that mean you are thinking about making different beers at this new brewery for the market?
Greg: We would brew to our style. There's already plenty of beers being brewed "for the market." If you look at the UK, for instance, that means fizzy yellow beer (based on volume). We don't make fizzy yellow beer.
We won't make fizzy yellow beer. We don't make boring beer. We make Stone beer. I would say that the majority of Brits would be disappointed in the beers we will be making if we go forward with this project, based upon the beers that the majority of the Brits drink. But on the other hand, I don't expect the majority to even know we exist as the majority of Europeans don't seek out the unique and special, they just do what what the telly tells them...just like the majority of Americans. Our beer isn't, and never will be, for them.
Me: Would it be the Stone brand or a spin-off a la He’Brew/Coney Island?
Greg: We intend to make Stone beers.

*In fairness, I probably owe about 20 people beers from various events but I have to take a shot at Greg when he's not in the room because he's too damn smart to try and take the mickey out of any other time!

Bitterest Pill

Oh dear lord, just as the Americans are beginning to get over their obsession with making stupidly hoppy beers for the sake of it and I thought the more US-inspired UK brewers doing the same without balance had called themselves to heel too, someone comes along and markets a beer as the bitterest in the world!

I'm sorry but YAWN! It's all very well saying that this beer is the most bitter in the world but perceptually you're never going to know it.

Realistically it's actually the ratio of bittering units to ABV (or OG depending on your technical bent) that's the player in how bitter a beer is percevied i.e. tastes - for example a standard British bitter of 4.2%ABV might technically have around 40IBUS but you could then put exactly the same IBUS in a barley wine and you'd barely register any bitterness.

Besides, I'm pretty sure that it's generally accepted that once you get above 60IBUs it's irrelevant anyway because all you taste is bitter itself, you can't discern different levels - I can't find my notes on the sensory training I did right now but will dig them out for verification, if anyone knows better please do contradict me.

Sorry to sound like a misery guts, particularly because I like other PitStop beers that I've tried and the owner seems like a stand-up guy.

It's just that I panic a bit when I see this kind of thing because it makes me worry that we're going to start getting into a ridiculous arms-style race around how many IBUs brewers can pack into beer because a)we're going to see a lot of the new generation of real ale fans flocking back to bog-standard lager because it will alienate too many of them and b) I'll get stuck drinking them all the time and be miserable!!

Howe Makes You Strong!

Well, these should be an interesting experiment - if you think BrewDog were a little mental, check out what Stuart Howe is planning for his homebrew kit!

To be honest, adore & respect the man as I do, I'm a little worried at the concept of an offal beer - although it could finally give me the answer to a question I've long wondered about.

You know how, wherever you go in the world, you get given a drink that is (invariably) some sort of local firewater with something gross in it like snake's blood, butterfly saliva or beetle's gonad and the bartender & locals always go into fits of laughter if it's ordered, make lots of rude gestures and follow this with a variation of the phrase 'makes you strong!'?

All right, it's normally aimed at blokes but, given that nearly all my travelling is done with fellas, (it's the job people, get your mind out of the gutter for this bit) I've heard it in about eight different countries and read about a lot more.

So, my point is, perhaps this has just enough disgusting ingredients for the UK to finally have something that falls into that cateogry - or perhaps that'll be the shellfish stout?

Well, there's only going to be one way to find out!

Pubs U'll Like

The Brown Dog in Barnes has earned a lot of accolades over the years, so I'm sure they're not that bothered about my penn'th worth but I do feel you should give praise where praise is due, and it's a lovely pub.

We spent New Year's Eve in there having a couple of quiet pints of excellently kept Twickenham Original (4.2%) - an excellent supping bitter with a lovely nutty Amontillado end to it - and Winter Cheer (4.5%), a warming, dark, slightly spicy pruney flavour, with a fresh bitter end.

The food is always good value and top quality, the service is always friendly and they always have two handpulls on, which I've only ever had to ask for a replacement due to it having gone, once.

I've also got high hopes for Citizen Smith in Putney from the people who bought you Lost Society and Lost Angel in the Clapham/Battersea area.

It's got a good beer selection (although they do seem to be trying to hide their cask selection at every available opportunity behind an array of napkin/straw holders and cocktail menus) and you can choose from Sierra Nevada, various Meantime and Aspall's on draught, amongst others, and although they only had Sharp's Nadelik when I was last in (in top nick in their defence), I usually see an array of different guest cask beers on offer and I've not had a bad pint yet.

They've also got a nice idea about table service where possible; the only problem with this is that a) they don't seem to have enough staff on to do that until about 6-7pm in the evening and b) if you want to be a predominantly beer-led bar, encouraging people to sit down and wait for their drinks whilst you slice lemons for the cocktail menu tends to annoy beer drinkers - and given that when I have been in the last four times it's been 99% beer drinkers I'd suggest that judicious decisions on immediate service would be more advisable.

However, those are the low points, the pizzas are good with some standard and truly bonkers toppings strewn throughout the menu and it's a significant improvement on any of the premises' previous incarnations and the beer is very well priced, so if they can get the service element right then I've got high hopes for them indeed.

That's all for now folks, stay warm out there!