Will Hawkes has been writing excellent beer-related columns for some time now and we should all support his efforts in writing about beer as if it is a mainstream, normal thing that ordinary people are interested in, rather than some bizarre niche interest.

This article is particularly interesting because Will has managed to elicit comments from the founders of CAMRA on current debates around ‘craft keg’. As we read it, they dismiss the idea that CAMRA ought to campaign for it out-of-hand, while apparently confusing it with Fosters but, ultimately, they do conceed that there might be such a thing as good keg beer.

Their comments on the sandals and beard image of CAMRA members echoes Tandleman’s post on the same subject and subsequent comments . They suggest that a very small number of distinctive individuals are stealing the limelight and defining the whole organisation, which chimes with our thinking.

We’ve been out of action with flu this week. When you’re on Tamiflu, you’re advised to avoid booze. That’s surprisingly easy because one of the symptoms of the flu is loss of appetite which, in our experience, extends to alcohol.

In fact, the thought of drinking still makes us feel a bit queasy.

Let’s hope that lingering side effect passes soon or this blog could end up being a bit pointless.

It’s easy to think of Adnams as a rather stolid, big, unexciting regional brewery. They have some lovely branding and design and have been very innovative in ‘green brewing’ but, nonetheless, the beers of their’s you see most commonly in London are quite conservative in their flavour.

They’ve obviously decided to go beyond Bitter/Broadside/blonde beer, though, and (with thanks to Steve the Beer Justice for the tip off) are now brewing a wide range of monthly specials in continental styles, starting with a Koelsch-style beer.

Next month, they’re rolling out a Belgian abbey-type ale, and there are German and Belgian-style wheat beers in the pipeline. They’re also going to take on Guinness next spring with a dry stout.

Innovation doesn’t just need to mean ‘turning up the volume’ or putting coconut in your beer — more subtle experiments with hops and yeast can be just as mind-expanding — so we’re looking forward to trying these.

We emailed Adnams to ask where these beers will be on sale in London, and Danielle sent us this list:

The Carpenters Arms
73 Cheshire Street, E2    6EG

The Brewery Tap
69 High Street
Wimbledon Village, SW19  5EE

The Queens Arms
11 Warwick Way
Pimlico, SW1V  1QT

The Wenlock Arms
26 Wenlock Road, N1    7TA

The Old Dairy
1-3 Crouch Hill, N4    4AP

The Pineapple Public House
51 Leverton Street
Kentish Town, NW5   2NX

The Wimbledon Club
Church Road, SW19  5AG

Locale is the Campaign for Real Ale”s accreditation scheme for pubs which sell local beer. We think it’s a great idea.

It’s really made a difference in our local, the Nags Head, Walthamstow. A few weeks ago, two of the ale pumps on the bar (those for Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde Mild, from Essex, and Fuller’s London Pride) sprouted eye-catching Locale tags. People seemed to like the idea of drinking local beer  and so sales of those beers apparently increased.

As a result, one of the other pumps has now been given over to an even more local beer: Brodie’s Red, brewed a 10 minute walk away, in the back room of another local pub.

It tasted great — better than in the William IV, I’m afraid to say — and we think signals the start of a beautiful friendship between Walthamstow’s best pub and its only brewery.

When you hear that he’s entered into business with a brewer to produce Fossil Fuel Ale using this ancient, super-sturdy yeast, it just gets cooler.

Apparently, it acts like ale yeast at first, fermenting furiously at the top, before sinking to the bottom to carry on working.

Read the whole story at Wired.

And Alan spotted this last year, of course, well before Wired got onto the story…

But I can’t help but be reminded of the kerfuffle around this advert, from the same parent company, three years ago:

Given how clear the rules are about linking alcohol with increased attractiveness or confidence, these can’t be mistakes. I’ve seen the Courage ad more in the news today than I have in paid for advertising slots anywhere in the last few weeks. Contrived controversy = free publicity.

The biggest drops are in sales of Kronenbourg 1664, Stella Artois, Carlsberg Export and Grolsch. Sales of John Smith’s Extra Smooth and Carlsberg (ordinary) are up.

Their say that the current ‘drink-aware climate’ and England’s absence from the European Championship are the main reasons.

The first certainly sounds plausible to us. People we know seem to be much happier ordering a shandy or a ‘weak beer’ than they were a couple of years ago.

And, of course, there’s been a huge defection to cider from beer, as witnessed by booming sales of Strongbow.

Kasteel Cru beer in its little pretend champagne bottle

Marketing magazine brings news this week of a new pink version of Kasteel Cru, aimed at women. They’re calling it a ‘rose’. Where does the idea that women will only drink pink beer come from…? Gulpener seem to have the same idea, too.

Kasteel Cru is a quite pleasant if unexciting lager made with champagne yeast, so already aimed squarely at people who don’t like big pints of ale.

Still, better than putting brown food colouring in wine to make blokes drink it, eh?

Anchor Porter

We’ve been invited to this Beer Exposed event in London at the end of September. I can’t quite work out what to make of it.

The good side – lots of brewers from around the world will be there. That said, the choice is a little weird — as well as excellent breweries from Britain (Fullers, Exmoor, Harvieston), Belgium (Liefmans, Westmalle*) and America (Great Divide, Goose Island, Anchor etc), there’s also a lot of dull “world lager” — eg Tsingtao, Quilmes, Cristal from Cuba and no less than four bland Polish breweries. Although, if Zywiec bring along some Porter, I’ll be first in the queue.

The mission of the event is to “explore, educate, enlighten”, and to this end there are various talks and walks run by various beer celebs. Star turn for beer geeks must be Garrett Oliver, doing various sessions on beer with food, including beer & cheese and beer & chocolate pairings. Many members of the British beer-writing gliterati are also there, and some of the sessions look very interesting indeed.

But… the whole thing smacks a bit of “beer is the new wine” to me. There’s quite a hefty entrance fee — £14 in advance, £17 on the door, which doesn’t include any of the beer walks or talks. Lots of the talks are focused on beer and food. There’s no-one over the age of 30 on the promotional material. There’s even a bloody dress code. Although if this is mostly to stop the sexist t-shirts, I don’t mind so much…

There’s also no mention of real ale, which is perhaps why I’ve not seen much mention of this in official CAMRA press or on their website. They do have a stand there, though, so hopefully real ale is not going to be entirely neglected in this sensory exploration. While I firmly believe that there are some great non-real beers in the world, real ale is an important and uniquely British part of the beer story.

So — an interesting radical approach to extending the appeal of beer, or a pretentious marketing exercise? Are tutored tastings and food pairings the way to enlightenment? If this kind of exercise helps people learn about wine, why not apply it to beer?

We’ll go along with an open mind and report back…

Boak

*are they bringing monks??

Beer Exposed is on at the Business Design Centre in Islington from 25th-27th September. You have to pick a four hour slot to attend. You can find a full schedule of events, plus details about the speakers, sessions and who’s exhibiting on the Beer Exposed website.