The Road out of Flanders

I saw an image about ten years ago in Michael Jackson’s Great Beers of Belgium: It was of the huge striped foudres/Foedern - the ageing vessels beer is stored in in Roeselare, Flanders. These giant oak vats stand in a hall worthy of Wagner’s Gotterdammerung. The brewery was Rodenbach and my first taste of it was a few years ago in the Cafe Arcadi in Brussels. I ordered a bottle of the standard Rodenbach. The thing I remember most is the depth of the beer - it felt like I was draining through the larval galleries in an oak beam. It was sour just short of wincing. It was sweet in a way that sugar can’t be. There was something thin yet fulsome about it. For as many notes as you could chase in one direction, there were contradictory notes to pursue in the other.

Two of the brewers of today’s three beers in this vertical tasting are within spitting distance of each other in Belgium. The third is in Texas: Jester King from Houston is a self-proclaimed fan of Brasserie Thiriez and has taken inspiration from their brewery at Esquelbecq in the heart of French Flanders. Sadly I’ve never had any of their beers but now have a reason to hunt them down. There are few world beer styles that command the reverence of Flanders red ales.

I’ll start this taste-off with Rodenbach. The brewery has been absorbed by Palm Breweries.

http://palm.be/nl/page/bieren/masterbeers

Rodenbach Brewery: Grand Cru (bottle 6%)

It pours a dark crimson/rosehip red and has a brimstone oil of a head. On the nose are notes of red wine vinegar, raspberry balsamic, redcurrant and molasses. The first sip reveals that the fruit balsamic continues on the palate along with Port and blackcurrant jam. It’s carbonated like a Saison. There is a time lapse in the tastes in this beer - the notes come after a 2-second lull each time like cloves and allspice.

Its soul is the bletting and sharpening as well as the the turning and decaying of red fruit. There is also a toffee apple character and the stickiness associated with it. It causes a little post sip wince which just keeps sending you back to the glass.

As someone from Britain, I regard countries like Belgium and Ireland in a similar vein to us. We are each twisted cousins from the same dysfunctional background. I am struck by the familiarity and yet startled by the sheer alienness of both cultures. We were all weaned from the grain rather than the vine and all too aware of the hungry gap in winter and the skeletal trees. We’re acquainted to the cold and the damp - the mildew and the osmosis; all conditions that necessitated the brewing of our beers.

The Verhaeghe Brewery has a monarch depicted on the bottles of its best selling beer who looks just as depressive as us Brits. I feel sorry for the 15th Century Duchess Mary of Burgundy - she’s the goth on the label holding what looks like an equally moody sparrow hawk. Her face looks as radiant as a wet weekend in Ghent and to be able to enjoy Duchesse de Bourgogne fully, turn her bleak, judgemental stare away from you. She died after being squashed by a horse - her body possibly emitting a rasp in the process. There’s a mixture of sombre tragedy and cartoon strip humour that can only come from Belgium and its tradition of bandes desinees.

http://www.brouwerijverhaeghe.be/en/duchesse-de-bourgogne

Verhaeghe Brewery: Duchesse de Bourgogne (bottle 6.2%)

The ale’s a dark resinous red like blackberry jam and sports a swirling khaki head. Bubbles can be seen erupting across the surface of the head - strong carbonation again. It’s verging on gassy. There is a restrained charcoal and clove aroma that keeps itself low. On the palate it’s very tangy with a taste like sarsaparilla or dandelion and burdock.

The lasting impression is of fig syrup, cloves and red wine going stale with a dessert wine stickiness. It leaves a sweet brown sugar coating on the teeth. You can actually taste sugar in this.
This isn’t the grand cru like Rodenbach - that needs to be taken into account.

The winter conditions in northern Europe that lead to the seasonality of beers like Saisons are pretty much absent for Jester King but it also proves that beer, even taken out of the narrow constraints of its origin, can be beautifully crafted thousands of miles away. The climate in Texas could hardly be more different to the overcast dome of Flanders and yet that’s where their inspiration comes from. The whole of Belgium could fit inside Texas about 10 times and yet the small Benelux kingdom constitutes an entire planet where beer styles are concerned.

http://jesterkingbrewery.com/beers/#beers_354

Jester King is a mythic brewery that lives in the internet. The website’s rammed to the barn rafters with images of beautiful glowing ale in stalked glasses on hay bales, wooden tables, rustic fences and sun-bleached casks. The trees are always in leaf. Dappled sunlight is forever scattered across the yard. There is an abundance of fruit, of fungi, of squashes, of happiness, of everything. The images make me drool into my own lap.

Jester King maintains a brilliant website and blog. All ingredients and methods are published for each beer they brew and they raise the bar for beer artwork. I’ve only had a beer they’ve been involved in brewing once - Farmhouse Table. It was a collaboration brew with Kernel in Bermondsey. I got hits of hay off the aroma and a note of milk of magnesium. I’ve not had a beer like that since.

Jester King: Ambree (bottle-conditioned 4.5%)

This beer has spontaneously fermenting yeast in so what was bred in the Edenic garden of Texas has now passed through me. It decants a glowing apricot amber with a perfect white hop oil. Carbonation streams up the glass sides. On the nose, it’s a reminder of the other two but sweeter. I get toffee, pear drops and fruit balsamic. I can also smell malt which I couldn’t with the other two.
The first impression I get isn’t actually the taste but the sensation of the mouthfeel - it glides across the palate like silk. The carbonation effects this beer differently too - it really lifts it like a tonic water giving it a real levity.

It takes a few moments for the notes to register and I get orange and lemon flesh, star anise, dilute lime cordial. It’s not sticky. There’s no syrupy dimension to it. There’s also something on the palate or the nose like heather honey. It all resonates where it’s been lifted to - the roof of the mouth.
From the medieval catacombs to the Texan sun. Lighter fruits come through: apricots and peaches and a lemon squeeze finish. This brew actually reminds me of the restraint and fruitiness of a British bitter of all things! The flavour is accumulative like a pint of best. It even has a neat Assam tea/bergamot edge. 

The words “inspired by” are far superior than “re-creation”. With re-creation, you don’t have the parameters for experimentation the brewers who made the beer you’re trying to recreate had. The largely local ingredients, wood and microflora in Flanders produced the best product in their space and time only. Ingredients from a separate terroir, more modern equipment and a wildly different climate will paint a different picture though an expert brewer might still capture the original soul. Also, what comes about through inspiration can be greater than the thing that inspired it.

I announce a draw in this vertical tasting between Rodenbach and Jester King. The beers, though sharing some initial similarities, are wildly different. The aged red Rodenbach is the epitome of a grown up stale to be sipped. The Ambree opens up doors between that style and light sessionability and could act as a tasty table beer.

Here is the mad and inimitable Jonathan Meades with a short documentary he made on Belgium in 1994. Those of you indifferent to or ignorant of Belgium prepare to have your weekend enriched. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYygyyD5s-0

Other taste-offs:

Heavy Rye Beers
Black Roasted Beers
World Saisons
Kölsch
Tea-infused Beer
Strong Black IPAs

Bread and Marmalade

On a recent haunt to The Mermaid in St Albans, I opted for a pint of Encore by Lacons Brewery in Great Yarmouth. It bills itself as a bitter and has won multiple World Beer and Society of Independent Brewers awards. 

Lacons is a surreal tale of a brewery coming back from the dead after almost half a century. The original brewery dated back to 1760. In its heyday, a railway siding was even built in so its beer could ride directly out to its wide audience - much of it in London. Whitbread took it over in 1965 and closed it just 3 years later. The rights to use the name were bought from a subsidiary of AB-Inbev by Wil Wood in 2009 and the original Lacons yeast was obtained from the National Yeast Bank. Brewing began in earnest in 2013 and here it is again live and frothing.

Lacons Bitter (cask 3.8)

It was light clementine in colour with a Daz white lather on top. It retains this head right to the bottom. The beer’s delicate but tasty. I’m reminded of chewing through the rind in golden shred marmalade. Also on the palate are notes of apricots & peaches - dappled sunlight that gives hope during the cold wet February outside. It has a bitter aftertaste and a frugal body. This is not to say that Encore isn’t balanced because it is. It’s just unashamedly light and optimistic being hopped with Citra and Centennial. I approved of it so much I had to return to get the pump clip.

Encore made me think about what a bitter is and moreover what bitter has been, but inevitably what bitter is becoming.

A very short walk away I could order a pint of the oldest Hertfordshire bitter doing the rounds: Country Bitter by McMullens. It was first brewed in 1964 and retains the same recipe. Country Bitter has a really earthy leaf litter aroma - an association I make with many traditional English beers. It's as malty as it is orangy. Compared with Encore, it would be like drinking caramel because of the primacy of the malt which has little counterfoil. The dryness and bitterness are noticeably absent compared to today’s brews.

Both beers are self-proclaimed bitters. Both are a combination of the same four principle ingredients. Both are from the large interpretation of East Anglia too. Would a drinker from 1964 have recognised Encore as a bitter? I doubt it. Too much citrus and too much levity. It would have seemed foreign.

I come back to the idea of a session bitter. Beer, as has often been noted, is bread. In terms of malt, the analogy here speaks for itself - when sessioning beer it becomes the food. Because there is now greater choice on the bar, because people generally drink less and because beer is tilting towards the more potently flavoursome and experimental world of craft, people session beers less - especially in full pints. It’s in this context that the malt abjures from its throne and the hops slide their eager buttocks into the warm grooves instead.

On the same bar in The Mermaid, dispensed from a neighbouring pump is the pub’s house beer: Citra by Oakham Ales in Peterborough. Golden and garish, this strong grapefruit punch of an ale is one of the most popular staples around. By a slow gradated creep from dark and malty to pale and alpha-acidic, will we soon come to regard Citra as a bitter too? The suggestion seems outrageous but the chasm between Country Bitter and Encore is much wider than the narrow strait between Encore and Citra. I suppose the same could be said about the crossover of many beer styles but it’s especially true for bitters, pale ales and IPAs: they blend into each other with no agreed defining thresholds to cross.

I’m much more fond of Encore than the ales I cut my teeth on like Bishop’s Finger, Arkells, Badger Ale, Morrells, Morlands, Brakspears or Wadworth 6X. Encore isn’t a recreation of them in my view but a reinterpretation of bitter itself. I find that more and more new breweries take this direction rather than the thicker maltier option - focus has switched from the bread to the marmalade. What it does share is bitter’s reputation for balance and subtlety

However you might categorise Encore, I thoroughly recommend it and think that for bitter to survive, be more refreshing and appeal to a broader palate, it needs to be like this.

The Perfect Pub part 1 - Naming a Public House

The Perfect Pub 

1: Naming a Public House

The Draw:

As a child in the mid-1980s, I remember summers spent in the back of a car watching Cornwall go past the window. My father and his friend are keen birdwatchers and we’d shuttle from coast to RSPB reserve. There’s an image I’ve harboured for years from these outings - I’d see it pass from my low vantage point in the backseat: a hanging sign of a man pulling a bucket out of a well and floating in that bucket, a severed human head. The pub in question was The Bucket of Blood (B.o.B) - a St Austell pub near Hayle and it gave me the creeps. Though fascinated, I willed the car to keep moving on.

Googling the sign now the image is more restrained. An astonished man spills the contents of a bucket which are red. I sought to confirm my memory with Cornish residents and am thankful to beer writers Boak and Bailey as well as Rod Davis the pubs officer for the local branch of CAMRA. They don’t recall it. My father and sister seem to remember the severed head too when I prompt them. The power of suggestion?
There are two theories to the pub’s name: firstly, a local drew up a bucket from a well. It was filled with blood and he realised there was the body of a murdered man at the bottom (some accounts go further and suggest the victim worked for revenues & customs). 
The other version says it was simply that tin in the ground turned the water red and the name derives from that - it was even used to brew a dark beer. Oddly, these competing theories are posted on St Austell’s corporate website for the B.o.B and the B.o.B’s own website. I’m sceptical about the butchered body story as I think it reflects a template we like to impose on Cornwall: the county has been romanticised into a lawless hinterland more than any other part of Britain has. The locals become complicit in smuggling, the black market and ship wrecking. I can’t say the word cove without thinking of clandestine tunnels, the full moon and flint pistols. Daphne du Maurier has a lot to answer for. 

Whether or not my recollection is accurate, the title causes a buzz and immediately draws questions. These signs jut out from buildings or are stuck in the ground like beacons in time and space. Meanings and relevance are often lost and back-engineered but the character - the attitude endures. My child’s memory, however much I’ve embellished it, has stuck with me for decades. The perverse thing is I really want to go to that pub now. The repulsion has matured into attraction. 

History and Place:

The Great Northern, St Albans

On London Road in St Albans is a pub called The Great Northern. I can’t think about the pub without also thinking about the walk from St Albans to Hatfield. This is because the free house is situated just down the road from one of the access lanes to that walk and because it’s named after what that track was in a previous life: The Great Northern Railway. The main line linked London to York but it had many local offshoots. St Albans’ opened to commuters from 1865 to 1951. The line continued just for freight until 1969 and then the tracks were removed completely. The train’s trajectory, so to speak, still exists as the Alban Way and is a pleasure to both walkers and cyclists. It’s a long, straight, deeply sunk gangway mostly under tree cover. You can actually walk past the concrete and wooden remains of the station platforms which you encounter at around chest height. The original platform station for London Road is now a children’s nursery but the building is completely intact - one of the best preserved in the country.
There are quite a few pubs in England called The Great Northern for the same historic reason. It perfectly links up place with past.

To continue with St Albans as an example, the following pubs also link their titles to local history: The King Offa (now closed) is named after the 8th Century monarch who probably founded the original St Albans Abbey. The Chalk Drawers Arms is named after the workers who mined chalk from the surrounding hills. The Six Bells reflects an archaic bell mechanism in the nearby parish church. The Duke of Marlborough (now closed) takes its name from the owner of Holywell House which was located opposite the pub until 1827. The Garibaldi is named after freedom fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi who visited the city in 1864. Though they all forge historic links, I can’t attach any personal experiences to any of them in the same way. The Great Northern therefore has the biggest effect on me because of the long walks in summer. The more you remember the connection, the more the connection is embedded. 




What used to be part of the GNR - now the Alban Way

There is one more pub that links directly into its own past but also links beautifully to the next section: Ye Olde Fighting Cocks that used to be a cockfighting pit.

Pub Title Crimes:

An alternative name for the aforementioned pub could be The Old Misunderstanding. It would be spelt thus:

Ye Olde Mifunderftandinge

You might be aware that in older texts, the letter “s” is often represented as an “f” making the word succour much more fun to read out. If I were to read misunderstanding as mifunderftanding and say that that’s how they used to pronounce it, I’d obviously be wrong. Similarly, when we see “ye olde” and pronounce it “yee oldee”, we’re not pronouncing anything archaically either. In Tudor times, a letter that used to be in the English language - the thorn - got replaced by a “y” which looked similar in printing cap. Therefore when we see “ye olde”, it’s actually pronounced “the old” just like it is now. I’m much more irritated by this souvenir biscuit tin nostalgia than I should be. It seems to be a misconception that started on these shores too - we bastardised our own mother tongue into this ruff-collared tweeness!




Known locally as the fighters (not ye olde fighters)

Resetting the Trend:

I think it’s a shame that we don’t link our pubs to local or contemporary things as much as we should or used to. Occasionally thought is given, though. A bar in the middle of London’s financial district is called The Arbitrager. I’d never understood what the title meant (still not completely sure now) but it’s to do with making money from exploiting the differences in the buying and selling of commodity prices. It captures perfectly what makes the area around it tick. 

A few pubs changed their names to The Duchess of Cornwall following the last Royal wedding but it’s not imaginative enough. We need to be taking our cues from real life events that are out of the ordinary. Last year for example, the keys to The Carlton Tavern in Maida Vale were left with contractors so they could complete cosmetic work to the interior on behalf of the owner. The landlady returned to find the pub demolished! This caused a public outcry and Westminster City Council ordered it to be rebuilt. It just so happens that during the First World War, the pub was also demolished by a hand-dropped bomb from a German Gotha aircraft. Once rebuilt again, The Carlton Tavern should be renamed The Gotha and Wrecking Ball or The Bomb & Bulldozer and hopefully outlive them both.

To come back in my home town, the legend associated with Saint Alban is that when the Roman executioner cut Alban’s head off, the Roman’s eyeballs popped out of his head and landed in a bush while the saint’s head bounced down the hill. From this treasure trove of possibilities we could have An Eye for a Bush, The White Stick & Gladius, The Severed Saint, The Bouncing Bonce or The Eyeballs & Squirrel.

In 1832, the rector in charge of the church’s restoration funds, Mr Small, stole all the money in the account and legged it. It was at the time the largest bank fraud ever committed in England. Here we could go with The Rector’s Swag, The Clergyman’s Flight, Sod the Roof or The Empty Coffer.




Bag o' Nails is reputedly a corruption on Bacchanals

In 1870, the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott saved the abbey’s tower from sudden and total collapse but was forced to direct the repairs from his sick bed: The Architect’s Bed, The Timbers in Haste, The Cracked Tower. You get the picture.

So let’s bring it into the present day. Last year in Fontmell Close, St Albans, a huge sinkhole opened up overnight and made national headlines. The surrounding properties had been built on ground that up till the First World War housed brick kilns and the raw material was mined from directly underneath them. The hole was eventually filled with concrete and bore holes were made around the site to try and gauge what’s actually underneath. I’m pleased to say that nobody was hurt. The pub titles here could be The Sink Hole, The Concrete Plug, The Brick Kiln’s Ghost or The All Fall Inn. From the point of view of one of the homeowners, The Motivated Seller.

In Britain we have developed a bizarre way of naming our pubs - free from any kind of restriction. This culture is completely unique and unregulated though susceptible to imitation and meme. Struggling to think what I can compare it to, the closest I can think of are the titles of novels. The name can be literally anything - descriptive, ambiguous or satirical. It can be a concrete noun (The Boot), a notion (The Load of Mischief), a saying (The Hung, Drawn and Quartered), a corruption (Bag o’ Nails from Bacchanals) or a comment (I am the Only Running Footman). Admittedly, the majority plump for the unimaginative: Royal Standard, Cross Keys, Red Lion, Queen’s/King’s/Duke’s Head, White Swan, Black Bull, Fleur de Lys, Rose & Crown, Victoria, Albert, Royal Oak, Globe, Fox, Crooked Billet et cetera. There might be an interesting tale behind pubs bearing those names, but it’s the oddities that stand out. If the illustration stops people in their tracks too like The Bucket of Blood, it becomes all the more potent.

More about what makes a perfect pub here

Rye Monster Ruckus

Rye beer has become increasingly popular over the last few years; a regular in brewery portfolio line-ups. I often have it on cask under 5% ABV. To over-generalise, I get an initial peppery taste from the head. As you down the ale, a deep candy sweetness develops and it’s usually thick-bodied - too filling to make it sessionable. The preceding thoughts are what I’ve come to expect but I want to see what shapes the mad hands of craft brewing can pummel it into.

This monster rye ruckus starts from 7% ABV and climbs to 10.6% and I suspect it’s going to depart from the usual script. Both Ryesing Tides by Siren Craft Brew and Double Rye IPA by Brouwerij Kees categorise themselves as rye IPAs. Rye Smile - a collaboration brew between Weird Beard Brew Co and Hanging Bat Brew Co calls itself a Rye Wine - second cousin to our Barley Wines.

Ryesing Tides IPA - bottle conditioned 7% ABV    
http://www.sirencraftbrew.com/our-corebeers/seasonal-ipas/

Double Rye IPA - bottle conditioned 8.5% ABV
http://www.brouwerijkees.nl/Beers_1_-_English.html

Rye Smile - bottle conditioned 10.6% ABV
http://weirdbeardbrewco.com/#!/beers.html
http://thehangingbatbrewco.com

Cracking open:

Ryesing Tides has been hopped with Smile (a new one for me) and Mosaic. 

The ale pours the colour of polished pinewood. On the nose there’s a bouquet of bitter orange zest and pale apple flesh. The analogous orange continues into the first sip as the pith hits the palate. Very quickly, you sink into a clay-like seam of sweetness. There’s even a touch of caramel. It has an amazingly clean body - it’s like drinking in high definition Blu-Ray. It has adequate carbonation to keep itself refreshing but overall it’s very steady and matt. The notes you get within the first minute remain constant throughout the sitting. The only added note I get is of a faint chalk aftertaste that just adds to the boreal seam analogy. The alcohol comes through gradually as a happy warmth.

Kees’ Double Rye IPA, apart from rye, was malted with Pale malt. It keeps the identity of its hops a secret but does divulge they’re American. The beer’s also been dry-hopped with bittering and aroma hops. 

It glugs into the glass mid-amber. You inhale a sweet orange mousse. This is also the beer I get the cracked black pepper hit off when I initially sip it; a hors-d’oeuvre as it gives over to lemon pith and a chewy fruity bitterness. It goes beyond citrus, though. There are cherries and cute little red fruits - the tangiest, lightest and friendliest you can think of.
Kees’ beer’s body is a vat completely filled to the goiters with fruit. You sip it, there’s a pause, and the notes start to rise again like the voices in a children’s choir coming back to the chorus.

The Rye Smile uses Pale, Munich and Crystal malt as well as rye. The hops are Centennial and Columbus. 

The liquid decants a crimson blood/beetroot and is garlanded by an off-butter lily head. This head will remain, gluey and glossy, right to the bottom of the glass with near-geological stratification. The menacing aroma is of alcohol lurking under the cover of brown sugar. There’s a more pungent sourness too that the alcohol carries: stewed rhubarb. On the first careful swig, the alcohol is still apparent. There’s a touch of citrus but it’s subservient. The boozy warmth remains its main character.
This beer’s body is very malty and it mops up some of the strength. The mouthfeel is very thick and  quite oily. It’s obviously a different style to the other two beers. When you drink this ale, there’s an uncomfortable feeling like someone you can see at the periphery of your vision staring at you on the tube.

Conclusion:

Ryesing Tides seems to be a rye beer cross-bred with a summery golden ale - it’s illuminated, malty and balanced. Out of the three beers, it most brings to the fore the best of my experiences with cask rye. I have had this via that dispense before and compared it to itself on key keg. Cask is hands-down the best way to experience it. If this vertical tasting had been from tap, it almost certainly would’ve won.

In my opinion, Rye Smile doesn’t carry its own alcohol. There’s a difference between feeling the blushing-cheek effects of alcohol and actually tasting it. All ales were drank neat in this experiment. If I’d matched this beer with a garishly sweet almond flapjack or paired it with something like an intimidating stinky blue cheese, it might’ve worked as a balance between aggressors.

Kees Double Rye IPA  does not in any way feel like you’re drinking an ale with an 8.5% ABV soccer punch. It has levity. It has an easy-drinking refreshment. It ends dry, making you want to slake your thirst again. It stays lifted right to the end - even into the yeasty sludge. A lot of experience has gone into this. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a beer by Brouwerij Kees and it’s the winner in this heavy rye shoot-out. Seek it out!

Other Taste-offs:

Black Roast Beers
Flanders Red Ales
World Saisons
Kölsch
Tea-infused Beer
Strong Black IPAs

Herne Hill

Last weekend I decided to get on the train and visit Herne Hill. Previously, I’d agonised over how to walk there from Brixton Tube station knowing I’d probably get lost. I then realised that from where I live - St Albans, I simply have to stay on the train past where I’d usually disembark in London. On a weekend the cost is only £10.10 with First Capital Connect. I know a lot of north London and work for a central London Council. Going deep into south London is a voyage into the unknown for me. I’ve driven from Vauxhall Bridge Road in Westminster across the river to Elephant & Castle before. In my mind, everything simply plunges off a waterfall after that.

When the train crossed the Thames and the built environment just carried on, it caused genuine excitement. Herne Hill belongs to the Manor of Milkwell. That title - seemingly out of a Thomas Hardy novel - is so warm and nurturing. Surely the folk in Milkwell know how to brew well too. That’s what I was counting on when I planned this trip.

From the station, Canopy Beer Co and Bullfinch are the easiest two breweries to find in London. You exit Herne Hill station (there’s only one exit - an added bonus!), turn left so you see Brockwell Park, cross the road to follow the railway buildings on Norwood Road and walk for about a minute until you see the sandwich board. You’re at the first of the two tap rooms!

The Canopy Beer Company in the best possible way has a jumble sale feel to it. It also reminds me a bit of a creche with the primary colours and fabrics. Curtains, canvas, astroturf, fairy lights, empty key kegs hanging like balloons and mismatched furniture make me feel like a child discovering a den in a primary school. I love it. Their brewing capacity is 4 barrels on average 5 times per week.

I started the session with their take on a Kolsch which they’ve candidly named as such too (it has Protected Geographical Indication and is guarded by Kolsch Convention stormtroopers in Cologne). Champion Kolsch’s badge is ice blue with what I believe to be a suited penguin. The beer reminds me of fruit peelings and is cool when it hits the tongue and well carbonated. There’s a grassy hoppy aroma. Hopefully it’ll be back in summer when it’s needed the most. It was a good opener.

The brewery is currently looking for an additional IPA for its permanent range and have struck upon a fantastic idea: let the consumer have a flight of four potential candidates for immediate feedback. I consider myself a verreophile (a glass freak) and was smitten by what can only be referred to as a row of ale buds or beer baubles - the cutest glassware I’ve ever seen. Each holds a quarter pint. Squeal!

The potential IPA additions were labelled A,B,C and D and the following notes are deliberately in the wrong order. To have the experience, you’ll just have to get yourself down to the Canopy tap room and drink the flight yourself.

In a mixed-up order, the first was dark amber with a musty aroma like you might expect from a more traditionally British IPA. No high citrus notes. It was strong and controlling and could easily masquerade either as a strong bitter like Fuller’s ESB or even a German Alt. The richness clung to the top of the palate and throbbed there. I thought the ABV might be quite high on this (I found out later it wasn’t - it just came across as heavy-handed).

The next beer had a light breezy pineapple and peach aroma. It was pale amber in colour. I got a very smooth silky mouthfeel. Fruit salad juices were awash on the tongue. It did bitter up after a few minutes but on the whole, one of the fruitiest beers I’ve tasted. Spiritually, it was more of a fruit cordial and too easy going for me to think of it as an IPA, tasty though it was.

“Number three” was a liquid with no discernible aroma. On the tongue it was fruity & easy. It even reminded me of the Champion Kolsch. The mouthfeel was a little milky and it was the lightest of the four beers. It didn’t really have an IPA’s weight. Conclusion: it got away with the P and A but not the I in IPA.

Finally, a blazing oak-hued ale - beautiful to the eye. It didn’t impart a loud aroma but I got dark/red berries like you might discern from Bramling Cross hops. This one was thick-souled, resinous and tangy with a touch of Earl Grey tea to boot. Bodily, it was quite cakey and the aroma became Brandy-like. In short, it was my favourite.

I’ve always found that taste and preference is completely subjective but I was surprised to hear that a group of women debating their own flights on the next table were rounding on the same conclusion as mine. When I gave my verdict at the bar, it was confirmed as the most common preference and so looks to become the new India Pale Ale soon. 

I was about to leave but I noticed that a beer had been recommended for Tryanuary on the board so I let it bend my arm. Milkwood Amber Ale is a 7.2 ABV light orange & slightly hazy beer. It had spirity esters, tropical fruit juice and produced a blush of alcohol to the cheeks. Clementines & apricots blossomed on the palate. It was a warm nourishing linctus for the cold weather.

On tap there was also a porter, a pale ale and a wheat beer but I needed to spread the booze out to last both breweries. A quick visit to the smallest gents I’ve ever been in and I was on my way. Fortunately, the second tap room was as easy to find as the first.

Bullfinch Brewery is actually inside the section of railway bridge that abuts against the railway arch the cars drive under. I missed the entrance at first - a narrow door in the corrugated iron frontage with plastic fly strips. You push through and find yourself blinking in Santa’s grotto. The room is dark, illuminated by candles on the tables and fairy lights suspended from the high ceiling. The punters already installed can’t help but stare at you like you’ve just stumbled into their opium den. There is a built-in bar rather than the open plan one Canopy has and it reminds me of a back-lit NAAFI serving hatch. The brewing capacity at the new venue is 5 barrels twice per week.

I settle in for my first Bullfinch beer in a long time. I did know their beers from when they shared premises with Anspach & Hobday on Druid Street in Bermondsey. It seems to me a lot of cloudiness has been sorted since then. The light-coloured beers were much clearer. 

Black Wolf Black IPA was my first re-introduction and is everything you could want from the style: black fruit pastilles bleed their juices, roast coffee granules smoulder on the inhale with a squeeze of citrus juice for sharpness. It has levity - the carbonation balances what’s otherwise quite an oppressive ale. The dark side is coffee creme, the light side zinging Victorian lemonade.

This is the day for tasting flights so I go for one of theirs (Canopy win as far as glassware is concerned here - Bullfinch employs the standard straight glasses). I opt for their Rypa - the beer I most associate with Bullfinch. Next to it Milou - a Saison and then their Rosendale Bitter - the only of the trio on cask.

Again, the Rypa (5.8 ABV) has much more clarity than I remember from their original haunt. It digs deep - dark amber, profound and resinous from the rye malt. A touch of pepper on the initial taste followed by a candy sweetness. It’s sticky, tangy and dry like a fruit punch.

The Saison (6 ABV) is more elegant. It’s a pale yellow. I get a hint of elderflower or vanilla on the nose. It’s well carbonated and the most refreshing of the three beers. Overall, it has a vague almond profile too.

The Rosendale Bitter (4 ABV and named after Rosendale Road where the brewery is situated) doesn’t smack quite as hard as the others but this is often the case when you mix the coolness & front-of-house carbonation of key keg with the comparative gentility of cask. It’s light amber with a hint of apple & white grape. It doesn’t come across as chewily bitter (but the after the Black Wolf, it couldn’t possibly).

I could feel my limit being reached, and as I hate waking up on the train in Bedford, I was ready for my last beer. Wolf is an American pale ale (5.8 ABV on key keg). It’s a hazy amber and has a milky consistency with a butterscotch dimension. I get mouthfuls of satsumas and apricots. After a while, the malt does come through to temper the piercing fruit edges. The coolness makes me think of orange ice lollies and glace cherries too. It’s a bouncy castle of new world hops.

In both tap rooms things shook, rattled and tinkled as trains rumbled over the their roofs - a phenomenon I’m increasingly associating with tap rooms in London. Currently, there are around 20 breweries under railway arches in the capital. Another ten or so are within shaking distance of locomotives.

I skirted around Brockwell Park on the way back to the station. I’d like to investigate it when there’s more daylight. I’d also like to visit The Half Moon Pub to see its amazing interior. It’ll hopefully reopen in summer now it’s been saved by Fullers from becoming residential flats. Herne Hill’s a fantastic place to visit.

I urge everyone on the First Capital Connect line to take a day trip to the Manor and do the short brewery shuttle. Canopy and Bullfinch are so close to the station and to each other - it’s so utterly stress-free and good ale abounds. To all inhabitants of Herne Hill, I would also urge you to make a day trip to St Albans where I could show you around the best of its 50-odd pubs. In either direction, £10.10 is a good value day out (beer not included).

Wetherspoons

“Oodjoo support?” There was a pause. I became absorbed by my newspaper - my nose almost touching the print. Perhaps the question hadn’t been directed at me.
“Oodjoo support?” I couldn’t blank the guy anymore. I could feel the smouldering whites of his eyes. I’ve never followed football and the question “who do you support?” in my experience, has never been about the Civil War. I looked up like I’d just noticed him and my mouth spoke before my brain had been briefed.
“I’m a Gooner.” This wasn’t true. A manager at work was a supporter of Arsenal FC which is where I’d come to hear the term. As circumstances would reveal, it might have been the best answer -  imagine if I’d said Spurs.
“Good man!” He grinned. He had a shaved head and a few days’ worth of stubble. He was probably in his late thirties. At the time I was in my early thirties. There was a rosiness and glow about him like post-coital bliss. In this case it was simply the effect of alcohol early in the day - just the right amount to force a conversation on a complete stranger. He proceeded to roll his sleeves up to show off Arsenal tattoos on his arms. He then pulled at his collar to show Gunners etchings around his throat. Next he pulled up his tracksuit legs - Arsenal Football Club wound around his calves like sibling snakes. He started to expose his stomach at the same time I started going a pallid green; further tribal loyalty emblazoned on his gut - some of the detail tucked into belly folds and canopied by hair. I started breathing again when I was certain that was far as it went. My mouth offered positive feedback but I didn’t hear the words. I was fortunate he hadn’t buried into my lie. 
He went off to sit at a table by the railing that overlooked the escalators and lower floor of the O2 Centre on Finchley Road. He lit up - in those recent but very distant days you could smoke indoors. It marked the end of his interest in me but not the end of my interest in him because a few moments later I heard a young child’s voice: “Happy Birthday grandad.” I looked up through my fringe, still in article submersion mode. A little girl had joined him and leapt up onto his lap. Grandad?! He was only a few years older than me.

This encounter was in about 2006. It has nothing directly to do with Wetherspoons but it happened in one and I like replaying and embellishing my memory of it. When I think of Wetherspoons, I think of that guy (who is possibly a great grandparent by now).That particular branch in the O2 Centre closed a few years ago and the space is now occupied by chain eateries. Although it wasn’t the first time I’d been into a Wetherspoons, it was the first time I was conscious of it being one. I had started getting into cask ale and a pint often cost around £1.60 in there. It had a huge television screen either playing sport or MTV. The venue was a rough crescent around a circular bar and half of it consisted of vast window panes looking down onto Finchley Road. Watching the crawl & trickle of traffic and people from the anonymity of the gods was the part I enjoyed the most. It was therapeutic. It was a lofty venue as Wetherspoons often are and it linked itself into local history: Sigmund Freud was depicted on the walls of the O2 Centre pub. Close by is Maresfield Gardens where the pioneer psychotherapist lived.

The Crosse Keys EC3

Around London there aren’t many bar chains that could take on huge venues - it’s a carve-up between All Bar One, The Slug & Lettuce, Nicholsons, Fullers, Wetherspoons and possibly O’Neills. Nationally, Marstons might be the only other candidate able to take on voids of these magnitude. A side-effect of the size might be the loss of any kind of intimacy as a place. Corners of the pub can be cosy but the whole cannot. By no stretch could you associate one with being in a landlord’s/landlady’s home environment. There is no-one to hold court, nobody living upstairs. Tragically, there is no pub dog and they’re not permitted. The running model is more like a restaurant chain.

I never expect to get served in order in a Wetherspoons. I’m on the short side and it’s a lifelong gripe of us hobbits when ogres that arrived at the bar after us get served first. It doesn’t matter though because I’m anticipating it. The tendency for ‘Spoons to have such long bars where multiple queues accumulate and the staff relay up and down them might contribute to that. This service is also where it most sharply deviates from a (good) pub - the workers here are on shifts and rotating from kitchen duties to bar work as shift leaders dictate. Employees, newly started, are often still getting accustomed to the bar. They’re never rude - just trying to keep up. Working in a pub requires skills that are honed. A busy bar requires focus. I’ve only had the experience working as a volunteer and my mind cannot do the money arithmetic without me using my fingers to count. I struggle to keep tabs on order of arrival so I know it’s no easy task. It’s often the case that the person pulling that hand pump back in a ‘Spoons is doing it for the first time. This isn’t a problem with me. A first pint pulled should be an occasion to celebrate. The service I’ve always found polite but flustered.

The beer quality on cask has never been an issue for me and it’s plentiful. An amazing range of local and national breweries are represented. It has good keg and bottled/canned beer at low prices. For the past few years, cans of The Crisp, Sweet Action and Bengal Tiger by Sixpoint Brewery in Brooklyn, USA have cost just £1.99 each. Now there is also 13 Guns by Crafty Dan (Thwaites Brewery’s own experimental micro). It has good lager too and when you’re with a macro brand lager drinker, it’s roughly half the price a regular pub would charge you for say, Staropramen.

Wetherspoons also hosts a unique annual event: an international beer festival whereby brewers from across the globe come to Britain’s breweries to craft beers on native mash tuns. This is an unprecedented phenomenon and to me, is the pro that exonerates all of Wetherspoons’ cons. Not only does it initiate this international collaboration, but the beer ends up being sold to the customer at excellent value. There are also foreign brewers that showcase in Wetherspoons. We’ve already mentioned Sixpoint but increasingly I see Stone Brewing - a Californian brewer with huge renown and their beers are actually casked!

In 2011 we moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire. At the time, it boasted two ‘Spoons. The Watered Barn is still there but the Cross Keys on Chequer Street closed, briefly became a cocktail joint called Bar Baroque before closing again and becoming a branch of the restaurant chain Bills. Back in that winter, we went in during the morning as we didn’t have the internet set up at home so used their Wi-Fi instead. We saw individuals sitting at the windows spotlighted by the low morning rays as they nursed their pints. It’s something that cannot be separated from Wetherspoons - there is a despair in the atmosphere, particularly early in the day. When I’m out, I’m a voyeur whether I’m sat in front of a coffee or a beer. I like to people watch and as I look about, so do they. In Wetherspoons it can be depressing. Everyday alcoholism goes back in Europe further than any written document and it’s a good time to pause and take stock of yourself.

(…..) His nails are yellow, over-familiar with Players Navy Cut. He draws them across his face and drags them through his grey thatch. The movement is friction and abnegation, choreography to a deflating sigh. A chance look at his reflection in the window - glistening eyes staring through the blue tobacco fog of early afternoon. Broken white spines have built up in the ashtray and buried themselves. The place is yawning and empty apart from him and several bowed heads to which none gives acknowledgement to the other. The silence only amplifies the solitude; it improves the odour. The ale’s not yet imparting the fuzzy edges of any warmth. He’s not yet at the stage where the alcohol will become the spirit of the public house like the holy ghost from the father, but each step on the journey there is the bottom of the pint pot anew. In time, he’ll radiate the same rich colours as the beams, settles, bar top and leather sofas and feel as if he belongs - a gay blushing face in a Brueghel canvas revelling with the rest of the burghers. That time will take some hours to come. It will also take some hours to come tomorrow and the day after. In the meantime, he stares at the glass until it goes out of focus.

Thomas Shepherd - Life and Death in Soho 1953

I’m being depressing here, but those were the warts accompanying the proverbial all.

I can tell a Wetherspoons pub from roughly 100 metres away. It isn’t what the building looks like as they come in many guises. It isn’t the outside decor or any obvious logo either. It’s a panel showcasing drink offers either in the window or, more commonly, on a sandwich board outside. The background is black and the typeface is like a digital calculator - a drinks promotion from a 1980s version of the future. On closer inspection, each of the letters is a seven-dash “8” where each segment can be blacked out to make a chosen letter or a number. That kind of applied thrift could only be piloted at ‘Spoons.

I’m impressed by the range of buildings a Wetherspoons can commandeer. It can simply be an old pub where little change is necessary but it could also be an abandoned cinema, an ex-bank, a ballroom, a theatre, a gin palace, a Bingo Hall. Large public buildings - the original purposes for which are often bygone (like the ballroom or Gin Palace) would either have to be demolished, restructured as flats or offices or taken over by another big chain because they’re too big for anything independent.

The Knights Templar EC3

Not only does Wetherspoons claim sites of former glory, but actively builds new pubs. In Hatfield, new build pub Harpsfield Hall has recently opened using parts of aeroplane fuselage to construct the bar. Some of the seating rounds are propellor casings from a Boeing 747. The aeronautical theme reflects the fact that Hatfield used to be the home of British Aerospace. One new ‘Spoons is also currently being built from scratch in Welwyn Garden City. 

Common architectural and decorative idioms include wooden beams, glass walls, marble pillars, cupolas, illustrated ceilings, chandeliers, “upcycled” materials to reflect local heritage (e.g the aircraft fuselage), vaulted ceilings, arched windows, back-lit bars, winding staircases and heavy iron-framed front doors.

The lavatories are often an event in themselves. Superficially, they are often ornate - majestic even. When you zoom in on the small detail like the screws, joinery or panelling, though, the polish comes off. I’ve also heard sounds from the plumbing system that sound like something’s trying to tread water to stay alive. If everyone flushed at the same time the building might implode. The decadence is skin deep but come on - they’re toilets not the Romanovs’ winter palace! First impressions are still impressive.

I recently found myself staring at what seemed to be an Andy Warhol artwork: the same image multiplied into a tableau; it was an army of metal condiment cradles in The Crosse Keys in London’s financial district. Each ketchup bottle was in the exact same corner of each cradle as was the mayonnaise, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper. It became a primary coloured condiment kaleidoscope. I’ve seen this mesmeric display spread out on surfaces in every Wetherspoons.

There is free wi-fi, affordable food (served until 11pm) and loads of comfy seating in your average ‘Spoons. Some of the sofas are so unctuous and glistening you can’t help but worry about the amount of human lipids they might harbour. In terms of DNA, they might actually be more human than sofa.

The Waterend Barn St Albans

People watching again, I spied a small party get together. Five people - all in their sixties or seventies. They were genuinely happy to be together as they shared family gossip. One was in a wheelchair. By the look of them, they didn’t have much money coming in. They each had a drink on the table and in time, five platters arrived at the table. The laughter continued as red-faced, they got stuck in. It got me thinking: where could a small group meet up in the warm at a proper table, have a few pints and a meal together in St Albans if you’re just drawing your pension or on minimum wage? Basically, only in a Wetherspoons pub. In this neck of the woods, like in most of London, a pint is £3.60 - £3.80. I don’t eat out often, but a meal in any other pub is as dear as food in a restaurant. Credit is due to ‘Spoons for being the only place not just in St Albans, but in many towns in Britain that can water and feed a group on a budget and I often see older groups doing exactly that.

(…...) and so to the comfort of the local Inn. Our four sat at table: Sarah and James now twenty-five years wed sit with their back at the wall. Thomas being a jack of legs, perches in the thoroughfare causing a nuisance to the flow of titubant grog-hounds that frequent The Kings Arms. Peter, the oldest of the party by a score of years claims this privilege by his proximity to the fire. To its ale and Brandy the quatrain applies itself and shares fervently in each others’ news till the eggs in the melon-bed hatch. Peter chased his thoughts up and down at booming pitch. The leaderly glint in his eye was ever present but he was free to own affairs of late had conspired to lessen the weight of his purse. The brewing of ale in London could be a treacherous gift to inherit and he had feared that the whole business might end in the waters of the canal. Sarah and James fair fell back in astonishment at this news but the weight was light - still far from the debtor’s prison was dear Peter.
The lot then fell to Thomas who, determined not to be eclipsed by Peter’s racontage, spoke of his family’s fortune in the East India Company and the present company listened to, dewy and still. Were they four strangers then these surmises might seem as competition but each member was bound by the blood of Aldwych. (………) For an instant they were put to silence by the arrival of four tranches of roast beef and fig pudding. The hawser of the conversation, so to speak, slackened amidst the sounds of mastication, indeed any inveigling soul might’ve sworn the served cattle themselves there chewed the cud! Soon talk returned through airborne gobbets of said beef and running tears of laughter mined from the sincerest of cores. The four Aldwych children in the warmth of the inn’s thermical hearth were once again reunited in their parochial gang!

Hilary Chadwick - The Travails of the Hop Garden 1872

If there’s any conclusion I can come to about Wetherspoons it’s that it’s a British institution that caters for the widest possible audience. I know very little about the trade but as a business it has a curious model - often occupying a site in a town and shutting in order acquire the lease of bigger venues in the same street when they become available. This is more of a local business model - even a brewery model. People that have little money to spend actually have a well maintained venue to be served in. 

Some pubs are closing whilst others are going craft. The latter obviously interest me but with the craft beer comes the craft price bracket. As such, I don’t think a lot of the original punters go back. Well-kept cask ale and good (and indifferent) keg ale is in abundance in a Wetherspoons. A lot of the employees will be jobbing whilst studying so it’s probably a place most of the team won’t work for long. It keeps buildings used and functional even if they weren’t pubs to start with and overwhelmingly it’s the local community that patronises them. They don’t seem to play music so you can have a conversation in them but you’re unlikely to banter with the staff themselves. My final thought on the matter takes me back to my local ‘Spoons in St Albans.

Skyline, Barbara Weeks 2005

The Watered Barn is a unique structure: originally it was two separate barns, the larger a 17th century building from Wheathampstead, the smaller a 16th century outhouse from Hormead. They were moved and reassembled in the 1930s and 1960s respectively. The artwork (pictured above) is called Skyline by local artist Barbara Weeks. It represents the land around St Albans and as a keen hiker, I can vouch for the fact she has captured the local landscape perfectly. It’s a huge fabric installation hanging on the wall. Each septet wedge represents a glimpse of the architecture, shallow hills and repetitive monoculture seen around Hertfordshire and across East Anglia to the coast. Suggestions of the Norman cathedral especially can be picked out. Pubs often have framed prints of their towns from the past but this artwork is special. It can’t have been cheap and I feel it shows a commitment to the city the pub’s in. 

The Real Deal

An advance apology: the following text uses the word “real” 32 times (including that one).

The above image shows three glasses of beer in various states of demolition. The rose-coloured brew to the left was a raspberry Saison by Partizan Brewing. The middle beer was Luxury Stout by Weird Beard Brew Co. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the identity of the amber ale but it was the only one of the trio that can be considered real. On this occasion, it was also the least memorable.

Let me take you back a few years to when I discovered a website called Quaffale. It lists brewery openings and closures in Britain. I remember finding Brewdog from Aberdeenshire and next to it in green luminescent print: “NOT REAL”. I knew the brewery couldn’t just be a rumour - I’d actually seen bottles of their beer. Did it mean it was another brewer posing under an alias? The explanation was on the website itself: Brewery From Which Most Of The Beer Produced Can Not Be Defined As Real Ale. Around the same time I noticed a little speech bubble on a bottle of Hook Norton’s Double Stout. It said “CAMRA says this is real ale”. It was the beginning of an education. In both cases, the beer was “real” or “not real” because of secondary fermentation - or lack thereof - in the vessel of dispense.

I have started becoming uncomfortable with the term real ale. This isn’t a rant and no unpleasant incident has happened to put me off. It’s a term I’ve been aware of most of my life. It conjures up images of flush-cheeked bearded men, an open hearth and foaming tankards. Little did I realise then I’d become a keen imbiber of the stuff in the future and I can’t deny that the term carries a little nostalgic warmth. Instead, this is about things changing.

The realisation I don’t want to use the term anymore came last year in a Craft Beer Company pub in London. I looked through the beer menu (are there another two words that complete each other so beautifully? Actually yes - pub crawl) to see which beers stood out from the cask & keg lines - not to mention which I could afford. It struck me that, were I to use the word “real” in this setting, what would it mean in terms of experience? It wouldn’t mean real as opposed to fake or good as opposed to poor. It would simply mean “on cask”. When there’s skill, time and dedication put into non-cask beers and they’re tasty, carbonated, refreshing and arguably more innovative, the word real becomes meaningless. I can no longer reconcile the term to mean a beer that stands out as a guarantee of quality - enhanced over other beers on the bar.

Real is a problem word. True would be just as problematic. One definition of real ale could be a spontaneously fermented drink consisting of barley malt and herbs - but not hops - according to word usage from the 15th Century. Our Yarrow, Mugwort and Ground Ivy Gruit would’ve been the “real” ale as in original or traditional. The addition of hops coming over from the Low Countries would’ve made it un-“real”. If we took a more Teutonic view of beer, a more Reinheitsgebotty stance, the real could denote that only malt barley could be used - never rye or oats. An oatmeal stout or a rye ale, therefore, couldn’t be real as they would break purity laws. So what does real mean for us now?

It seems to me that CAMRA itself is putting less stress on what is and isn’t “real”. I recall when each brochure from a beer festival bore a panel asking “what do we mean by real?” In that question is an admission that it probably deviates from the dictionary definition. The literature now stresses the political and campaigning side more: to keep pubs open, to reduce the amount of tax on a pint, to help the local economy etc. Also, as mentioned in a previous post, to be manageable, the staple served at CAMRA beer festivals only just qualifies as “real” by it’s own definition. Re-racked beer has had the yeast largely removed.

The term “real” itself was originally a fumble for words to fit into an already-established acronym: CAMRA - The Campaign for R….  Ale. The R had started out as Restoration and was later changed to Revitalisation. Midlands campaigner Peter Lynlie suggested “real” in 1973 so as to be more pronounceable when inebriated. Frank Baillie, author of The Beer Drinker’s Companion wrote about real draught ale around the same time as opposed to the newer keg dispense taking over; was the term a drink-fuelled conflation of ideas?

Ale is also produced across the globe. Cask ale is unique to Britain and should be cherished but our neighbours’ ale is real too insofar as it exists, is held in high esteem and care is taken in making it. In this context “real” just sounds arrogant and where brewing is concerned, the world is becoming an increasingly small neighbourhood.

I can no longer reconcile the word real with a guarantee of beer quality in bottles or cans either. Bottle conditioning is still crucial when it comes to letting beer age but I’m tired of letting a 330ml bottle stand for days only to see a rivulet of yeast trickling into the glass as soon as I start a careful pour. It’s still drinkable but it’s not as the brewer intended it to be drunk. The finer notes become lost like the detail in an over-exposed photograph. Crystal clarity turns to lemon curd and this happens with some of the U.K’s most rated breweries. I know this is a bottling issue but I’ve come to prefer the slogan “drink fresh”, especially when it’s a pale well-hopped beer. Consume it as close as possible to the bottling date while the flavours are still zinging. Like tap dispense, the “real” has been superseded by the consequences of its impact. In other words, the effort to improve bottled beer has led to better methods than the original cure. Also, the yeast does give me some stomach upset the next day - it’s alive and fermenting in my gut - perhaps making me “real” in the process.

Cask beer: something to be utterly proud of as this particularly hop-forward quintet demonstrates in The Boot, St Albans.

Imposing the word “real” back at CAMRA’s inception made sense at the time but the context has changed. In a way, my opposition to using the word actually reflects the strength of the campaign started by Michael Hardman, Jim Makin, Graham Lees and Bill Mellor almost 45 years ago. A good measure of a cause’s success is to make itself obsolete by defeating the factors that made it necessary to start with. Though CAMRA can never reach that celestial goal, it’s been as successful as possible for a consumer group to be. The Big Six have gone and the primacy of bland fizzy beer has been checked in Britain. Real used to be a superlative that rose proudly from the competition but what defines quality is now constantly being revised.

Would CAMRA have to change its name? I’ve read snippets of this debate in regional CAMRA news publications - usually about whether the initials should be altered to include the words craft beer. I don’t think any change would be necessary. The word automobile is archaic now - the “auto” specifying that the carriage powers itself by motor rather than being horse-drawn yet neither the RAC nor AA changed their names. There just ends up being a little bit of history in the title.

I believe we should be giving our pub ale the respect it deserves by calling it cask ale or cask beer. Aurally, it also sounds less whiny than saying real ale and requires too much slovenly tongue lolling for my liking. Cask ale - almost onomatopoeic - the handpump sliding back after the first pull. 

When non-geeks ask me what the difference between a keg and a cask is, I inflate proudly as I explain what the belly of the cask is for and how the beer’s alive. Cask ale can often be bland but where the holy combination of brewer’s passion and cellaring skills align, cask speaks for itself. You tilt a glass from a beer engine to your lips and a sensation like a glowing Turner sunset lights up across your palate, it comes into focus, you breathe in the elements interacting and the life thriving inside the vessel it was drawn from. You can call anything real, but this experience could only be cask.