Scotland – Page 9 – A Good Beer Blog

BrewDog And Skull Splitter Face Humourless Tribunal

Following up on a story we discussed last May, tomorrow’s edition of The Independent tells the sad tale of how both BrewDog and the Orkney Brewery, makers of Skull Splitter, have had a ruling made against them by the shadowy Portman Group – described by The Independent as a self-regulating industry body. Which sounds a lot like another way of saying their competition. Their larger duller competition.

It decided Rip Tide’s description as a “twisted merciless stout” would be associated with antisocial behaviour, while the claim that Hop Rocker was a “nourishing foodstuff” and that “magic is still there to be extracted” implied that it would enhance physical and mental capabilities.

The wisdom did not stop there. Apparently, Orkney’s Skull Splitter “was associated with violence and also could be a reference to its effect on the drinker’s head.” However silly, these macro-saft makers with gavels actually have the power of persuasion and can use that power to affect the marketplace they and their powerless competition work within. Can you see a problem with that? Orkney has issued a press release that says this turn of fate may lead to the brand being pulled even though it is a former Champion Winter Ale of Britain. The BBC has more on the Skull Splitter story.

BrewDog is taking the even higher moral ground by calling for the shadowy Portman Group to be scrapped, according to this story. James Watt, managing director of BrewDog is quoted as saying ‘”[i]t is alarming that an unelected, unrepresentative industry cartel can simply crush the foundations on which our democracy is built.” Can I have an amen? I believe reference to the Declaration of Arbroath is of comfort to we Scots in moments like this.

Full disclosure: James Watt writes me emails once in a while, is named after my Dad’s hometown’s favorite son and is giving prizes for the photo contest. And I like him and his company more than the shadowy Portman Group.

Another Variation On Nutty Nutty World Of Fearmongery

This stuff is too unbelievable to not post for your consideration – with a big tip to Paul:

In a letter to the company, the Portman Group has warned that BrewDog’s products are potentially in breach of its official code of conduct. David Poley, the Portman Group’s chief executive, told The Scotsman: “We have asked this company to take remedial action to address potential problems that have been highlighted to them. “If a company fails to remedy the perceived breach, the matter will be formally referred to our independent complaints panel and, if a case is upheld, we will issue an alert advising retailers not to stock the product until it has been amended.”

Whew – what’s that smell?!? The only issue I have with the article is the claim that BrewDog’s beers are in Canada but as to the rest of it, crazy. Note that the Portman Group is a trade organization which will mainly represent firms who may be losing market to the innovative if cheeky lads from BrewDog. A very good point is made as well as to who is responsible for making cheap booze available to the market – other members of the Portman Group.

You know you are doing something right when this sort of stuff comes crawling out of the woodwork. Read BrewDog’s full response here.

Craft Or Kraphtt: Sam Adams Scotch Ale, Boston Beer, Mass

Stan was rightly giving me grief the other day or at least a lesson in life when I spoke of the Sam Adams line of beers. I didn’t mean to be mean and I am a delicate flower in the face of such dressings down – but, as you all know, I am working with what I am thinking about beer pricing and value. To that end, I’ve suggested five general categories of beer quality. What is the goal of the five point scale? I suppose it is as useful as a Top 25 Brewers list or using the numbers 1 to 10 to rate a beer: it is a means to give order to things. And it is supposed to give order based on deeds not claims – sure, subjectively (as that is the essence of the experience of beer) but not to bash as I live in a post-sticks-and-stones universe. Further, taking up the challenge of Matt at Rutgers, I drove into another country and bought up not six not eight but seven different Boston Beer brews to make sure I had a clue.

Scotch ale is something one would think is very important to a Scot yet it is neither the national drink or the other national drink. There are plenty of examples in the archives and they share that sweet, toast and smoke malts the style is known for. Surely a nod to style that is otherwise defective can send a beer teetering from craft down into kraphtt, no? So – what with this one, 5.4% with a best by date of April 2008? If smell alone could win the day (and who amongst us has not thought that thought before?) this one would surely stand proud as craft with the deep apple butter aroma it gives off. Chestnut ale under a rocky lacing tan head, goes down in a rich wave of sweet malt (butterscotch, pear, apple butter, licorice, and maybe even blackcurrent) tempered by the burnt toastiness of blackened malt with a hint of twiggy hops, perhaps Fuggles, in the end. A lovely brew. “Tha’s a braw bricht brew the noo!” Oor Wullie would say…if he ever grew up to be old enough to try one.

A solid effort and one that makes me offset the same brewer’s white ale over there on the other side of line between craft and what is not quite craft. And, as part of a variety twelve pack for 14.99, great value. 19/20 BAers agree.

Knut Goes To Scotland

The trend of splitting up European nations into smaller units seems to be over for the time being. There is Kosovo, of course. And then, possibly, a part of a union that has lasted for centuries, and where nationalism seemed to us outsiders to be mostly a joke. Scotland. I’ve been in Scotland before, but that was about twenty years ago, so I looked forward to a brief visit in August. The last time I went to Edinburgh, this time I had an invitation to go to Glasgow. It is actually a city that’s very easy to get to from Oslo, Ryanair flies several times a week to Prestwick, and even if a $1 ticket ended up being $100 for a return ticket, including taxes and charges, you can hardly complain about the price. And the secondary airports used by Ryanair and other low cost carriers are actually very comfortable, you get through security in seconds rather than hours.

And an extra bonus is that you leave Prestwick airport via a walkway to the railway station where you get a splendid view of moorlands, stone houses and the Irish Sea. If you are lucky, you will also have picked up a bottle of Scottish ale from Peckhams delicatessen in the terminal building.

-You cannot drink this in the airport, sir.
-A plastic glass? For the train? Here you are! A Styrofoam coffee cup for the train journey.

The train is filled with Norwegian golfers, and the landscape seems to be split evenly between heather, grazing land for cattle and golf courses. Looks like a successful mix. I enjoy my bottle of Dark Island Dark ale. A rich ale at 4.6 %, it has treacle and spices. I find myself wondering if a stronger version of this would have been even better. I am lucky to get hold of a bottle of the same beer aged in whisky barrels the next day, which now waits in my cellar to be tasted.

Arrival in Glasgow forty minutes later. The Toby Jug is right across the street from the Central Station, and the Friday afternoon crowd is well into their pints. I manage to squeeze both myself and my suitcase into the pub, and enjoy two halves of cask Scottish ale, Kelburn Red Siddy and Pentland IPA. Both are fine beers, though maybe a bit on the sweet side for my liking. But I can’t expect every brewer to have as much of a hops hangup as myself. I find my hotel and meet up with the rest of the ratebeer crowd, who have done an Edinburgh pub crawl and are quite jolly when we order dinner. I try my best to catch up with them, and over a period of 30 hours or so, I manage to see quite a few of the pubs of Central Glasgow – at least the ones where there is cask ale on tap.

And how is the scene? Basically, you have two types of pubs selling cask ale. You have the Wetherspoon chain pubs, large establishments where the architecture is often impressive. they tend to be converted banks or offices, often with fine details intact. The crowds are, however, not quite as stylish as the pubs. The business concept is to offer cheaper drinks than the competition, including beer. This means you have a busy just-after-office-hours type of crowd in the early evening, who tend to behave themselves. Later you get the serious drinkers. Large pitchers of vodka and Red Bull, Endless supplies of alcopops and cider. Day-glow green shots ordered by the dozen. But, even late on Saturday evening, these pubs were not full, which means that there are too many of them in town, or, even, that the punters want something else, even if they have to pay an extra 50 p for a pint. In addition, you have a number of smaller pubs. The Toby Jug has been mentioned, The Horseshoe Bar looked inviting, too, but did not hold any temptations ale-wise. If you want the best range of well kept cask ale in town, you should head straight for the Blackfriars. You may have to fight for a table, but I can assure you it will be worth it. A good range of Scottish beers on tap, and, at least when I was around, there were some amazing bottled beers, too. Ask for Tom, and tell him I sent you, he’ll get you something special.

The brewing scene? There seems to be breweries just about everywhere – the Hebrides, the Orkneys, you name it. The most exciting beers I got to try came from Brew Dog, a micro in Aberdeenshire. They age some of their beers in whisky casks, with magnificent result. They sell bottled beers by mail order in the UK, and I intend to have a dozen bottles waiting for me at the hotel the next time I land in the UK. Of the cask ales, the Kelburn beers, brewed in Glasgow, are widely available, and they seem to do a fine range.

What else? You understand approximately 50 per cent of what people say to you. Maybe received pronunciation was not such a bad idea after all. You feel slightly retarded when you try to make out what they actually try to tell you in their broad accent. The pub food was good, though I did not get any haggis. Luckily the same Peckham shop at the airport had some, so I have some plans involving haggis, beer and whisky. But I had a full Scottish breakfast, including black pudding. A bit too rich to have every day, though!

Paul Tells A Tale Of Two Beer Festivals

Bury St Edmunds Corn Exchange, home of the East Anglian Beer FestivalThe East Anglian Beer Festival takes place in my hometown of Bury St Edmunds at the end of April. As it is on my doorstep, so to speak, it’s a must visit event. I normally pay a visit everyday, but this year was different. This year I’d planned to visit two different beer festivals in one week. Not only that but also several hundred miles apart to boot.

The East Anglian Beer Festival is what it says on the label “celebrating the best of East Anglian ale”. Now, apart from a singular trip to the Great British Beer Festival in London a couple of years ago, my beer festival attendances have been restricted purely to East Anglia. As a consequence I get to try a lot of local ales. Because of this there were few new beers to get me exited at this year’s EA festival. Not a problem as I had only a brief time to sample. Here’s what I sampled:

Maldon Gold from Mighty Oak – 3.8% – A bitter golden ale floral and lemon undertones. Hoppy with strong hints of sweet vanilla.
JHB (Jeffrey Hudson Bitter) from Oakham Ales – 3.8% – The colour of donkey wee, this ale tastes better than it looks. Light in colour, subtle in taste, hints of PLJ or lemon marmalade.
Windswept from Oulton Ales – 4.5% – Sweet dark copper coloured ale. Mass of flavours including honey and prunes. A most excellent ale.
Bitter from Winter’s Brewery – 3.8% – A bland could-have-been-anything sort of ale. A very boring beer. A distinct absence of the “advertised” fuggles taste. You can’t win them all!

The next day we set of for Bonnie Scotland. We planned to break our journey by a stop off in the Lake District. Keswick was our town of choice. I had hoped that staying at what was a traditional coaching inn would have given me the opportunity to at least have a decent ale-a-errific nightcap in pleasant surroundings. Not so. Three hand pumps but no real ale on. I was told that there might be some on later, “when it cleared.” What concerned me was how the bar steward tried to persuade me to have John Smith’s Creamflow, a disgustingly bland nitro-keg beer that I’d cross the street to avoid. When I said most certainly not, he looked totally bemused and went on to say that it was the most popular selling bitter in the country and that it’s always consistent. Well, in terms of quality I suspect suppositories are also consistent but I would recommend them as a substitute real ale either! He then went on to dis real ale because it sometimes went sour. They presumably don’t have a fast enough turnover, but with a salesman like that I’m not surprised. The man clearly knows fuck all about real ale.

In a situation like this there’s only one thing to do. Reach for one’s trusty Good Beer Guide. Bingo! A recommendation: The Dog and Gun also in Keswick. The Dog and Gun is a proper pub, four real ales, flag stones on the floor, a local’s pub with bags of atmosphere. Plus it serves good honest well cooked pub grub. I sampled two of their fine ales:

Yates Bitter – 3.8% – Distinct bitterness, a really good session beer, with some maltiness and no hint of hops.
Taste Ascent – Keswick Brewery – 4% – Very bitter golden ale. Too bitter for my taste. Hints of marmalade, again bereft of hoppiness.

…Hullo Jimmy. I’d like to introduce Jimmy…

The following day it was back on the road to the land of my Nana, north of the border. It was my first trip to a Scottish beer festival, nay my first visit to any beer festival north of The Wash and an interesting affair. Nosier, most certainly, and with a different demographic to the English beer festivals that I’m used to attending. East Anglian folk tend to be quite reserved, so the loudness and the extrovert nature of the locals I found needed a bit of adjusting to.

My raison d’etre for attending beer festivals is to try something new, as I intimated a little difficult in my hometown, but I suppose for those less dedicated or less travelled, that only attend their local beer festival, local beers are probably quite a novelty. Local beers for local people!

This was obviously the case at the 20th Paisley Beer Festival. The festival was spread over two rooms, one for Scottish ales and the other housing “foreign” ales – predominantly English ales. It came as no surprise to find that the hall containing the Scottish selection was more densely populated than the “foreign” hall.

The Caledonian Brewery Pipe band was at the festival, enjoying a few bevies and playing for the punters. There seemed to be an even greater mood of national pride at the time. It was just before the Scottish election so, as a consequence, the pipe band went down a storm with great cheers going up after each number. I was under the impression that this sort of thing was for tourists only, but clearly the local crowd loved it. Even more astonishing to a sasenach was the average age of the festival goers. It was a great deal lower than that of the festivals I normally attend in England. In my locale, youngsters would never be as enthusiastic about something as folksy as a pipe band. Not only was the average age a lot lower than in England, where beer festivals tend to be the domain of middle-aged bearded blokes in jumpers, but a large proportion of them were women. Young women in their late teens or early twenties, not wearing their vests and balancing precariously on frighteningly high heeled shoes, and seemingly able to out drink many of the men.

Here’s what I tasted at the festival:

Arran Blonde from Arran Brewery – 5% – A pale golden beer with that distinct hamster bedding flavour we’ve all come to know and love.
Piper’s Gold from Fyne Ales – 3.8% – A dark golden ale with an initial refreshing bitter taste and not a single hint of hops to be had.
Avalanche from Fyne Ales – 4.5% – A very pale and hoppy seasonal beer, perfect for supping on the banks of Loch Fyne.
Riptide from Brew Dog – 8% – A malty, smoky chocolately ale with traces of liquorice. Warming like liquid coal or a sharp intake of breath by someone with a 40 a day Capstan Full Strength habit.
Lia Fail from Inveralmond – 4.7% – A dark beer with a well-balanced sweetness, malt and slight chocolate tones.
Red Cuillin from Isle Of Skye Brewing Co – 4.2% – Smooth, well rounded dark copper malty ale. Also with burnt butterscotch musings.
Kelburn Red Smiddy from Kelburn Brewing – 4.1% – A red ale, complex in character with a dry bitterness and a citrus finish.
Cuil Hill from Sulwath Brewers – 3.6% – A light copper ale with bursts of malt and hints of honey.
Stairway To Heaven from Triple fff Brewery – 4.6% – The only “foreign” beer that I tried and I’m ashamed to say the best that I tasted at the festival. A pale brown ale with lusciously ripe mouthfuls of raspberries and blackberries. All that glitters is gold!

A great festival with a friendly and lively crowd. A wonderful trip.

Is Twisted Thistle An IPA?

I picked up this beer while on the road and I was immediately in a fix, dealing with cultural confusion. As a son of Scots I know that Belhaven is a fine and reputable brewer of Scots ales bought last year by Greene King… yet I know IPA is not a Scots style. I have discussed this before in relation to Deuchars IPA but this beer – or more particularly the comparison between the two beers makes their labelling as IPAs a wee bit problematic.

Look – here is what I thought about Twisted Thistle. When I had it the other night I wrote:

Caramel ale under light tan foam and a thick cling and ring. A very fruity ale, berry fruity but mainly crusty sweet country loaf of bread. Rich with some smokiness and creamy yeast. Then it opens into light dry fruit apple and raisin with a note of honey. Grapefruity hops balance but in a recessed position, a subordinate role. Definitely more like a pale ale in the zzap-tastic north-east US scale. But richer.

Then note what I concluded about Deuchars in October 2004, a year and a half ago:

You can see they are really different ales, Deuchars being is light and crisp while the Belhaven IPA was to my mind more like a Bombardier with a lighter touch on the same heavy elements, especially the dry fruit characteristics – dry apples and light raisin rather than, say, figs and dates but still dry fruit.

Don’t get me wrong. Both are good bevvies you should try. My point is IPA is becoming a very broad term, so broad I am finding it a little meaningless as an indicator of what I will find when I pour the bottle. Terms like “stout” and “mild” or “dubbel” do not generally pose this problem for the thoughtful buyer facing a new beer. It reminds me a bit of white wine and the labeling of them according to grape varieties which became popular in the early 1990s. People then came to say they like Chardonnay or Merlot but then were surprised when this Chardonnay or that Merlot was nothing like the wine they could they recognized. Like with IPA, too much is due to the actual wine making techniques for the comfort of those wine drinkers relying on the label for guidance. Key terms then become the opposite of what they were meant to be – they come to deter rather than attract.

So try Twisted Thistle. It is not a Scots style /80 or wee heavy or an IPA or like Deuchars IPA. But it is really really pleasant.

Post Post II

Post “post-9/11” that is. I am trying to note if I see any markers for the ending of an era. Whether you think that that terrible day was caused by the alignment of a great number of extraordinary unlikelihoods giving the terrorists a clean run they would never have gotten on any other day or whether you think the years since 9/11 without a repetition of the horror are as a result of the winning of the war on terror, there will be a time some day that will be after the post-9/11 era.

I noticed the events in Edinburgh this week, the protests against the G8 and the echoes of the violence to the Battle in Seattle and wonder if that is one of the markers.

Update: weeks later I realize I have another post called Post Post so I dub this Post Post II.

Historic Ales of Scotland

Alba Pine, Fraoch Heather, Ebulum Elderberry, Grozet Gooseberry

I buy this four 330 ml bottle boxed set every Christmas at the LCBO for no doubt an exorbitant price given all the fancy packaging. What I do not understand is why the beers in this promotional package are not otherwise available as singles. What exactly is being promoted? Anyway, the best thing is that these are all good beers and worth comparing even if each is more or less a unique style on its own.

These beers are made by Heather Ale Ltd. which also brews a full range of cask ales under the “Craigmill Brewery” brand and bottles Craigmill Swallow IPA. It is located in a 18th Century water mill on the river Avon, near Glasgow, in Strathaven, Lanarkshire. The web site for the brewery has a shop for readers in the UK to try and does indicate that single-brand cases can be bought, including cases of Kelpie, a seaweed beer, which is not included in the fourpack. Here is what I think of the four brews that are:

Alba Pine Ale: The label tells me that:Alba is a “triple” style ale, brewed to a traditional Highland recipe using the sprigs of spruce and pine collected in May 1998. This complex rich tawny ale is best drunk at room temperature from a wine goblet. Ingredients: malted barley bree, scots pine and spruce sprigs.I remember thinking before I had tried this ale that I had better brace for something resembling a 1960s institutional floor cleaning liquid. Nothing of the kind. This brew is very well structured with a big malt and sweet pine green front end. It is pretty apparent that there are no hops leaving any bitter edge. Rather the spruce and pine leaves a slight astringency and aromatic heat in the mouth that serves the same function as hops, cutting the cloy of the malt. While the brewer uses the word triple, implying a form of strong Belgian ale, I think that the malty and herbal taste at 7.5% is more analogous to a Belgian dubble.The beer is reddish brown with a very nice tan head that faded quickly unsupported by the low carbination leaving just a rich rim inside the glass. There is lots of woodsy fruit in the glass as well as some whiskey, perhaps smokey notes. At the Beer Advocate, all but 5% of 105 reviewers give it a thumbs up, something I would not have expected for such a unique ale. The finish is orange peel, butterscotch, some heat yet a fresh juiciness quality that would make this rather more-ish if it were available-ish from the LCBO-ish.

Ebulum Elderberry Black Ale: black ale this beer calls itself. It is really an oatmeal stout with fruit flavouring but that is besides the point – the point being that this is very good stout. Elderberry is an ornamental plant here in Canada which grannies grow on their front lawns and make jelly from in the autumn. It is a lovely small fruit bush and, when mature, very productive providing masses of the tart, woodsy, dark grapey berries. It is not that far off a blackberry or what some call a thimble berry but , unlike those, is not shaped like a dark raspberry. It is the perfect compliment to the roastiness and silkiness of an oatmeal stout. The bottle says:It is a rich black ale with fruit aroma, soft texture, roasted grain and red wine flavour, with a gentle finish. Ingredients: malted barley bree, elderberries, roasted oats & barley and hops.It is interesting to note that there is no style called a “black ale” though there is a central European one called Schwartzbeer – but it is a lager. Beer advocatonians pick up the red wine comment and compare to port. Given the truly vineous nature of lambics and other soured beers, I think this is a bit of a red herring but it is not devoid of merit. Again, it is utterly beyond me why the LCBO does not stock the 500 ml bottles as a standing order when it brings this boxed set in each Yule.

I am confused as to the use of “barley-bree” on the lable as I understand this to reference a finished ale, implying I think incorrectly that the other ingredients are infused into that finished ale. I do not think that is the process being employed here given that roasted oats, unmalted, would create a problem with stability if it were merely infused.

Grozet Gooseberry Lager: This deep straw coloured lager pours out quite still, the white head diffusing immediately. The berry flavour is much more forward than in the Ebulum giving a very tangy prominant overtone. It is citrusy – a combination of lemon/orange/lime. The bottle tell us that the ingredients include malted barley bree, wheat, gooseberies, hops, bogmyrtle and meadowsweet – the last two being traditional Scots wild herbs used before hops came to the UK in the 16th century. Unhappy beer advocatonians do not appreciate the goosebeery flavour but as the best dessert I ever ate was a gooseberry-pear pie, I am not worried. The gooseberry matches the tang of the wheat very nicely.

Fraoch Heather Ale: Heather is a lovely thing and, being a Scottish immigrants kid who grew up in New Scotland, a pretty pervasive symbol in my life. Unlike hops, which is a robust annual vine that can grow to hundreds of feet, heather is a low bush that grows in pretty marginal rough places. It has both a sweetness like clover, twigginess and floral blossom aspects. This comes out in the ale, which is otherwise a fairly neutral low-medium pale ale. There is some fruit in the grain which joins with the sweetness of the heather nicely. There is an lavender-orangey thing to it but woodsy rather than fine. The finish is just off-dry and flavourful. Beer advocation is positive. From the brewery’s website, this interesting technique to infuse the beer is explained:

Into the boiling bree of malted barley, sweet gale and flowering heather are added, then after cooling slightly the hot ale is poured into a vat of fresh heather flowers where it infuses for an hour before being fermented.

For me, that is a better use of the infusion description. This one would be a very good every day ale if it were actually for sale here…every day.

So all in all an interesting four pack worthy as an introduction to this interesting brewery. People thinking to make things interesting.

Deuchars IPA, Caledonian, Scotland

India Pale Ale did not originate in from Scotland, though the Scots brewers were early adopters of most English styles as a matter of survival. This very light ale for an IPA has something of the Scots roast barley bite and a slight smokey yeast there as well as a very nice bright orangy flavour, likely a combination of some challenger hops and the very fruity standard Scottish pale malt, Golden Promise. As you would expect from a Scottish beer, it is soft, made of low acid water. As the brewer’s site quotes from the formidable author on ales Roger Protz: “above all a drink with enormous drinkability.” OK…sometime beer writers are a wee bit at a loss for words.

Low and behold, it was the Champion Beer of Britian in 2002. That is a pretty snazzy claim to fame. This is an award given out by the Campaign for Real Ale or CAMRA annually. CAMRA has a rather involved history well documented at its excellent web site. Deuchars IPA also has a rather involved history is terms of its name which is all explained at the brewery’s web site. This beer advocatonian review is spot on:

A golden blond color, a little pale for an IPA. The head was small and patchy like most cask ales and left excellent sheets of lace. Carbonation was sparse with two distince sizes of bubbles, enormous ones and very tiny ones that form tight beads. This combo looked awesome. The aroma was of sweet malts with some citrusy hops. I also detected a sourness, maybe the cask was a little old. The taste was of bread, honey and subtle floral hops. There was also a solid bitter base and some pleasant fruity esters. The mouthfeel was crisp and light.

As a brew from Scotland, it will not particularly introduce you to the ales of Scotland. As an IPA, it will not particularly introduce you to India Pale Ales. But is it a very nice soft pint, a leaver of very lovely laces and one that Ben can actually find in his local shop because it is at the LCBO. Well worth a look.