A detail from one of John Leech's 1843 illustrations for a Christmas Carol.

This month’s session is hosted by Phil Hardy of Twitter fame (@Filrd) who blogs at Beersay.

“There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size, and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration.”

People often misunderstand these lines from A Christmas Carol, and they’ve been misused a million times to accompany images of plump roasted birds.

In fact, at this point in the book, Cratchit’s impoverished family are sitting down to a miserable Christmas meal, the centrepiece of which is a scrawny goose that they’re making the most of. The point is that Cratchit is a good man who tries to find the best in things, including Ebenezer Scrooge, and so has the true Christmas spirit in his heart, regardless of his poverty.

With that in mind, we were thinking about how important it can be to put beer snobbery to one side at Christmas.

If your eight year-old niece buys you a ‘Beers of the World’ selection pack from BHS, chill down those 330ml bottles of Fosters and San Miguel and bloody enjoy them. It’s a thoughtful gift.

If your Uncle Bert offers you a bottle of Greene King IPA in a clear bottle, take it with gratitude and show how much you appreciate it, because that’s someone reaching out, asking you to share a moment of good cheer, in the bleak midwinter.

If your Dad takes you to a pub for a swift one on Christmas Day and all they have is keg John Smith’s, savour every drop: you’re with your Dad in a pub on Christmas Day, you lucky devil.

Just enjoy the Christmas present and maybe next year you’ll get a bigger goose.

We haven’t taken part in the session for a couple of years, mostly because we found ourselves struggling to fit in an opportunity to, e.g., drink a particular type of beer before it rolled around.

Anyway, it’s time to get back in the saddle so here we are again to talk about the art of beer labels, caps and coasters, for this month’s session hosted by HopHeadSaid.

We have a particular interest in commercial design and illustration and when it relates to beer, all the better. We’ve posted about it on more than one occasion and have been really enjoying this excellent blog about beer branding recently.

The image above is one of our favourite bits of beer-related design and, perhaps not so coincidentally, comes from one of our favourite breweries.

What’s not to like? There’s sans serif typography (we have some sympathy with the Helvetica nerds), a simple colour scheme reflecting the flag of Franconia and an equally simple graphic. All of this reminds us vividly of their pub in Nuremberg and their beers, all of which are also simple, unpretentious and clean.

You’ll note that the image above is a bit rough. It needed some restoration because this beermat, along with a stack of others from Germany, the Czech Republic and Belgium, lives in our kitchen and gets used every day. It’s a little bit of Nuremberg we can enjoy every day. As a result, it is covered in beer stains.

Mind you, that Satan cap art isn’t bad either, and nor are the twin labels for the Brooklyn/Schneider collaborations.

This month’s session is hosted by Musings Over a Pint, who’ve asked us to share a tripel.

Now, we share nice beers with each other all the time, so to make it more interesting, we thought we’d try to share a tripel with someone else. Unfortunately, beer blogging Friday came round quickly and we were left trying to incorporate the session into our post-work Friday drink.

Bailey made a valiant effort by getting his workmates to go to the Old Monk, which used to have Belgian beer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t anymore.

Tripels aren’t that easy to get hold of in your average pub (even if you accept that they exist as a style) so I thought about it a bit and decided that we could perhaps get the spirit of The Session if not the exact beer and took one of my very best friends to the Jugged Hare on Vauxhall Bridge Road to share a bottle of Fuller’s Vintage Ale. That makes it the second time this special beer has featured in a Session post.

This was from the 2007 batch; despite being relatively “young” the flavour was well-developed and rounded. Malty biscuits and marmalade were beautifully balanced with a slight musty hop flavour. My friend said; “that’s lovely. Fruity, syrupy, like wine”.

I prefer Vintage Ale to any tripel I’ve had yet, and more to the point I got some quality time with a very good friend. So, mission accomplished. Bring on the weekend.

If you want older vintages, the Mad Bishop and Bear at Paddington station are selling 2005 bottles. Bailey and I got wasted on them just before Christmas while he was waiting for a train to Somerset. Anyone spotted any older vintages in pubs in London?

Boak

The cap from a bottle of Rothaus Tannen-Zaepfle beer

This month’s Session has been set by Lootcorp 3.0 and is on the subject of German beer.

…the goal is to dig a little deeper and write about how German beers and beer culture have worked their way into your life (and hearts)…

We’ve already blogged about this — our conversion to good beer took place in Germany, so it’s a pretty key part of our beer-drinking lives. We try to go there at least once a year, and I’ve even started learning German so I can have all those fascinating conversations with Franconian brewers about their mashing schedules.

It’s a bit easier to get a regular dose of German beer culture in London, now that Zeitgeist has opened up. So to celebrate this month’s session, so we popped along there.

Zeitgeist is aimed at homesick Germans, so the beer list reflects what Germans actually drink. Therefore most of what’s on offer is the usual mass-produced, nationally available lagers — Bitburger, Warsteiner, Koenig Pils etc. In a shrewd move, reflecting the tendency of Germans to boast about their local beer, they also offer a number of big “regionals” – eg Gaffel Koelsch (on tap), Schloesser Alt and Tannen-Zaepfle, by the Baden-Wuerttenberg state-owned brewery.

Last night, we had a little virtual tour round Germany. We started in the former DDR, with Wernesgruener, before moving to the far north-east west for some Jever (seriously cheesy website, BTW). I don’t think we’ve actually blogged about this before, which is surprising, given how much we drink it. There’s just something about its bitter kick that makes us come back for more. Tastes a bit like hay, in a good way.

Gaffel Koelsch went down well. While it’s not our favourite koelsch, we prefer drinking this one fresh out of the barrel than drinking a tired bottle of a better one. It’s always refreshing, and drinking it next to Wernesgruener and Jever brings out the malty, fruity flavours.

Then down to Baden-Wuerttenburg, where we sampled Eichbaum and Rothaus Tannen-Zaepfle. The Eichbaum was pretty dull (too much hopfenekstrakt and no hops?) and the TZ was OK. When we were on holiday in Heidelberg, we drank it there and noted that it’s a lot fruitier than other pils. It’s drinkable enough, but really not terribly exciting, unless you’re from the area and feeling homesick.

Finally, into Bavaria for Schlenkerla Maerzen. Mmmmm. Frazzles and fruit. Does it for me every time.

Boak

Well, the reason for today’s choice is quite easy – the only candidate we had in was a Fullers’ Vintage Ale from 2005. Is it more common on the other side of the pond to have limited edition beers? I can’t think of many British breweries that do it.

The trouble with these limited edition, made-for-aging beers is deciding when to drink them. The longer you’ve had them in, the harder the decision gets. You need an occasion to justify it, and what better occasion than raising a glass to fellow beer-bloggers across the globe. Oh, that and the promotion one of us got this week.

The aroma of this 8.5% beastie was overwhelmingly of alcohol, specifically a sweet sherry or Pedro Ximénez. Like PX, it coats the tongue with sugar and fruits – we got hints of apricot and cherry. We didn’t notice a lot of bitterness at the end, and in fact the finish was a little on the sour side.

I’m not sure our tasting notes bear any resemblance to what Fullers say about this vintage, suggesting perhaps that it hasn’t aged that well — or that we, and the people we bought it from, haven’t aged it very well.

Still, it left a pleasant warming feeling in the belly.

Rather than go for a particular style, we raided our stash for Christmas beers.

First up was one that’s intrigued us for a while – Chapeau Christmas gueuze from Brouwerij de Troch. Now I always think of gueuzes as being a pretty summery drink, particularly when they’re lovely and fresh on tap. So the very existence of this beer seems anti-seasonal and in the spirit of the session. Reviews on Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate range from “weird” to “rank”, so we really didn’t know what to expect. It’s not actually bad – it smells and tastes like a fairly uncomplicated cherry beer, one of the sweet ones. If you’ve had, and liked, Timmerman’s or Boon Kriek, you won’t be disappointed. We’re not sure what’s wintry about it – maybe you’re supposed to mull it?

So onto Glad Tidings, a “spiced milk stout” from the Chiltern Brewery. I’ve heard many great things about this brewery but have never tried their stuff on tap or in bottles – strange considering they’re not that far out of London. This Christmas stout is 4.6% and has a gorgeous head. This is a very interesting beer – we can’t quite decide if it’s genius or amateur. They’ve rather gone to town on the Christmas spices, which dominate the nose and the aftertaste. There’s also a strong fruit flavour – probably from using oranges? Or maybe plums? It tastes a bit peachy, almost sour. It’s got a great body too, and a head that lasts – we have condition envy! Worth trying again, and definitely worth getting our arses out to deepest darkest Bucks to see what else these guys are up to.

Remaining in the UK, we have Hepworth‘s Vintage Christmas Ale. They claim this 7.5% beastie will keep for years, and we wonder if we’re being premature drinking it two years before its best before date. It pours a glorious clear red, with a nice creamy head. The taste is difficult to describe, but it’s extremely fruity and warming. I was reminded of something like Bigfoot Barley Wine, except without the C-hops, if that makes sense. It has a gooey body, with a really good solid malt flavour. It’s a little nutty with hints of vinous fruits and oranges, and a beautifully balanced hop flavour cuts through but doesn’t overwhelm. Lovely stuff.

We were going to have a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale to top the evening off, but I can’t see how it would beat that. So we’ll leave it there, with the long chewy aftertaste of Hepworth Christmas ale lingering on.

Boak

We’ve posted about various festivals we’ve been to in the past, from the enormous Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) to a cosy little event in a pub round the corner. Here, in no particular order, are our thoughts on what makes our ideal beer festival;

Size of venue

Small and cosy. Aircraft hangars are great for putting in as many beers as possible, but they make it difficult to generate an atmosphere.

Mind you, large beer tents seem to work in Germany. In fact, outdoor festivals are a great idea, although not so much in Britain with the rubbish weather and the diva-like nature of cask ale.

Range of beer

The range of beer will obviously be related to the size of the venue. We’re quite content to have a smallish range – anything more than about six beers counts as a festival to us! It’s more important that it’s in good condition, so that when you give it to your non-ale-loving mates, there’s a chance they might actually like the stuff and come back for more.

Punters

Mixed. It seems to make for a better atmosphere when you have non-beer-geeks there as well. This is why we like small festivals in local pubs.

Reason for being

It should not be a cynical marketing trick, like Heineken’s Identikit Oktoberfests in Spain. Ideally, it should promote real ale to new punters, although foreign beer festivals like the recent cracker at Zeitgeist are also OK by us!

Food

Essential for mopping up all the beer, but also quite a handy tool for drawing in non-beer geeks. I’ve had lots of great food at festivals recently, with events such as the Pig’s Ear being a showcase for local(ish) small producers.

Entertainment

Difficult, this one. Without wanting to descend into predictable folkie-bashing, I’ve seen some dreadful live acts at beer festivals. Live bands can work really well, as Bailey found out in deepest darkest Somerset, but when they’re bad, they’re horrid. If festival organisers are going to bother with live music, they need to make sure they book real crowd-pleasers.

I quite like oompah bands, but I think you can only get away with them in Germany, where everyone knows the words. In Muenchen steht ein hofbrauhaus, eins, zwei, g’suffa!

To summarise: we’d like beer festivals to emphasise the “festival” a bit more – it should be something that’s fun and brings people together.

Boak

Firstly, apologies for the delay in writing this up, but we wanted to do it justice. We’re very pleased with both the number (43, we make it) and the quality of responses. We’ve gone back to re-read several of them already. Incidentally, if we have left you off – sorry, it’s not intentional, and do let us know!

It’s been absolutely fascinating getting the insight into the people behind these great beer blogs. We’ve all come to “good beer” from very different places. As well as contributions from all over the US, we’ve had posts from the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, Argentina, and Lithuania.

However, some themes do emerge…

Sudden epiphanies

One of the reasons for suggesting the topic is that our epiphany seemed so sudden — during a week-long holiday.

Al at Hop Talk writes about the moment at a barbecue when he realised that two beers he’d thought were more-or-less the same actually had distinct characteristics. A lightbulb moment.

Maeib describes something similar. He was interested to discover several different styles on one day, in one pub, which piqued his curiosity. He’s been on a quest for the perfect beer ever since.

Kieran Haslett-Moore from New Zealand had his big moment on a train when he drank his first Emerson’s and realised beer could have character. He is now one of the keenest proponents of cask ale in his hemisphere. So that would be a life changing moment, then.

Wheat beer is a great introduction to decent beer, and it was an American version which brought Jon at the Brew Site on board. He describes Widmer Hefeweizen as “thick, yeasty, bready, crisp, bracing, and the most delicious beer to pass my lips ever” and says it opened his eyes. Yes, that does indeed sound very tasty.

The Beer Nut‘s conversion came shortly before he actually drank the fabled beer, when a polemic printed on the back of a menu at the Porterhouse in Dublin roused his passions. Fortunately, the beer was good enough to justify the rhetoric.

Rick Lyke underlines a point that came through in many people’s posts — the beer that turns you on doesn’t have to be that great, just better than what you’ve been drinking before. In his case, he flashed the cash as a 17 year old and spent nearly four times as much as his mates buying a German import which blew his mind. He’s never looked back! The same goes for Chipper Dave (great nickname!) who had his head turned by a humble bottle of Labatt’s Blue and then again, a few years later, by Guinness. And Eric Delia isn’t ashamed to admit that a can of Miller Lite set his heart aflutter. At the age of 10. Crivens.

Stacey at Hodoeporicon (her first Session) tells us that she “got it” when she drank Schooner, a poorly regarded Canadian beer. It’s not that the beer was especially great — just that it was something other than Bud Light. Now she is “the person who brings good beer to the party & orders draft or cask ales when everyone else is pounding Buds“. From little acorns…

Jay Brooks was stationed on Staten Island with an army band (!) when he tried Bass and Guinness and realised that there was more to beer than light American lagers. If you want to read more, see his semi-fictional memoir of a beer drinker, written in 30 days as part of National Novel Writing Month.

Dr Joel tells of his first sip of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in the car park at a gig, which left him dazed and confused and in love with hops. If you decide you love hops, you more-or-less have to give up on bog standard beers, right? And, on the flipside, Thomas at Geistbear Brewing Blog tells us that he had his head turned by a malty dunkelweizen, whilst studying the language in Germany.

Another touching tale of teenage experimentation comes from Heath, whose excellent post sees him admit to something lots of us do — choosing his first batch decent beer based on how cool the labels looked! Not a bad way to go about it, if his list is anything to go by.

Knut Albert discovered an interest in beer whilst travelling around Europe with a gang of friends as a young man. Being a friendly type, he got talking to some British lads in a train station on the continent (he shared a melon with them…) and found himself a few days later drinking Young’s Special with them at a pub in Sutton. Sutton!?

And the last of our batch of people turned on by beers they’re not so keen on these days, Pivni Filosof, who was so used to boring Quilmes in his native Argentina that when a new beer came on the market which was brewed to the Rheinheitsgebot (as opposed to containing “who knew what”) he couldn’t help but be impressed. Then he moved to the Czech republic…

Gradual enlightenment

For Chela, enlightenment was a gradual process, including formative periods in London and Edinburgh. Immersion in a particular beer culture did the job, in other words, which is also true for Stonch, whose six months in Prague rewired his tastebuds and brain.

Dr Fabulous (not his birth name) was similarly seduced over the course of years by beers from abroad, but consumed most of them at home, finding in them a hint of the exotic which was hard to resist.

Alan at A Good Beer Blog is a bit fed up of the navel-gazing of recent Sessions, but nonetheless tells a fascinating tale of drinking beer, getting to like beer, and then, after several years, discovering that there a beer scene was emerging which he wanted to be part of. He read an article in the Atlantic Monthly which gave him a glimpse of “what beer could be” and hasn’t looked back.

David at Musings over a pint was drinking “better beer” along with the bog standard stuff for ages without making a particular distinction and, after time, just stuck with the good stuff. No blinding light there. And Stan at Appellation beer (founder of the Session) narrows it down to five incidents over the course of nearly 40 years. Lew Bryson also lists several occasions when it might have happened, or nearly happened, but decides ultimately that the terminal moment was when he started to take notes and keep a diary. To note: Lew’s loyal fans have started recording their own “turning points” in the comments, making his post a session within a session. Take a look!

Brewmaster Matt had a few steps along the way, but thinks several years of being interested in beer all came together on a wine-tasting tour of Europe which ended up as a beer-tasting tour of Germany! That’s what we like to hear…

Martin, the Electric Landlord, was slowly converted by repeated exposure to one beer (Holt’s Bitter) in one pub (the Crescent, Salford) as a student. Is there such a thing as a monogamous beer geek? And if so, what does that make tickers and scoopers? The swingers of the beer drinking world?

The Beer Philosopher also got into beer gradually at college, but the best part of his post is about the moment when he nearly got turned off beer for life, drinking a very cheap, very generic beer with a friend as a thirsty 14 year old.

Which brings us to one of our favourite posts, from the Black Cat Brewery in Ireland. Thom not only took a while to get into beer, but worked bloody hard at it, too. He didn’t, stricly speaking, like the beers he was tasting, but really wanted to. Eventually, Erdinger Weissbier took him by the hand and showed him the ropes with appropriate care and gentleness…

The time, the place, the people

Martynas from Lithuania tells us that, despite drinking baltic porter/barley wine for breakfast as a student, he didn’t really get into beer until he found himself working as cheap labout in Yorkshire and got into the habit of washing the dust from his throat with pints of real ale. Incidentally, we bought a bottle of the breakfast beer he mentions today — we’ll let you know how that goes!

Yorkshire seems to exert a magical effect on potential beer lovers. Andy over at Beerbuzzing grew up in Tadcaster, home of Sam Smiths, so just couldn’t avoid decent beer. He joined CAMRA to get into festivals on the cheap.

Rob at Sophisticated Brews had a relatively late moment of clarity at the age of 41 when he joined an outing to a ball game which stopped off at the Goose Island brewery on the way. He says that, there and then, he “realized how crappy the stuff I’d been drinking was”. Mmmmm. Goose Island. Gargle.

Jessica, the Thirsty Hopster, drank beer at first because everyone else was doing it and she didn’t want to be a pain in the arse. And if she was going to drink beer, she might as well find one she actually liked — which turned out to be Magic Hat No. 9.

Mario at Brewed for Thought also got into beer because he was trying to make friends in a new town and the local pub just happened to have amazing beer. If he’d gone to university in a different city, it might never have happened. Shudder. And Buttle got into beer because he lived around the corner from an import specialist called Beers of the World and thought he might as well have a nose around. Those are both great stories of how making the most of what’s going on in your town can change your life for the better.

Finally, there’s Steve, who was taking part in a USC tailgate (it’s like a foreign language…) when, under the influence of a tasty Sam Adams, he rashly agreed with a fellow sports fan that they should try to drink as many different beers as they could. He didn’t realise quite what a commitment he was making…

Homebrewing

A number of people have come to good beer via homebrewing. Legendary home-brew guru Charlie Papazian gives his story here. It’s also and important part of the story for Rick at the Brew Blog, Keith at Brainard Brewing, and Wilson at Brewvana, who was also lucky enough to be born with “the beer gene”. Nicolino at Cerveza al sur de Ecuador in a Spanish-language post mentions hombrewing as an important factor, but also credits the Argentinian economic crisis of 2001; apparently this led to overnight cessation in imports of foreign beers, and subsequently a rise in homegrown microbreweries!

Finally, there is the unclassifiable. Troy at Great Canadian Pubs and Beer reports on how his obsession started with fascinating empty bottles he found in garbage trucks (that’s rubbish lorries to us Brits). Rob from Pfiff! tells us that he was bred on the good stuff, and couldn’t get his hands on crappy macro-brew if he tried. Lucky devil. Similarly, Paul Arthur skipped the fizzy lagers, making his way to beer via single malt whiskies and fine wine. The beer that did it for him was Ommegang Abbey Ale, which we’ve always wanted to try but never seen on sale in the UK.

Flying Dog Brewery tell us about their founding here.

Stephen Beaumont wrote a lovely post, but his site is down right now. We’ll update as and when.

Estoy escribiendo este post en español, pero necesito un poco más tiempo…

The next session will be hosted by Thomas at Geist Bear

Also, we’ve been having a massive spam attack, so I’m worried we may have deleted some genuine links by accident. Please check that your comment has appeared where you posted it, if not then please leave another comment or email us.

Boak and Bailey

Versión castellana

It’s January, not many winters ago. We’re in the Altstadthof, a brewpub in Nuremberg, and we’ve just decided that the “Rothes” beer we’ve just drunk three pints of is the best beer we’ve ever tasted. We look at each other and decide we’ve fallen in love with beer.

We decide we want to learn more about it — how can the “lager” we’ve been told is the root of all evil be so wonderfully varied? How do they make this amazing stuff? And so an obsession is born from a brief winter holiday.

We picked Nuremberg for a destination as (a) the flights were incredibly cheap (b) it seemed like an interesting place, especially if you like history and central European winters. I also booked a few days “surprise” holiday in the lovely Hotel Nepomuk in Bamberg, as a birthday treat for Bailey. I chose Bamberg because I’d heard it was pretty, and had a recommendation for the hotel in question. (It’s a classy joint — fellow beer-blogger Evan Rail celebrated his honeymoon there recently.)

So we planned a trip to the beer mecca that is Franconia, without beer being a motivation, and without really knowing much about beer at all. I’m not saying we’re experts now, but at the time we didn’t know our Dunkel from our Dunkel-Weiss, and nor did we care. In those days we drank real ale, but also “normal” lager. We weren’t sufficiently interested in beer to pick a pub on the basis of it, let alone a holiday destination.

That changed with this holiday.

We noted from the guidebook that Bamberg was famous for its breweries, and that people visited from all over the world to try the products from the nine (or is it ten? or eight?) breweries. That’ll be fun, we thought, gives us something to do. The rest is a bit of a blurry haze — I couldn’t tell you which ones we visited without seeing them again (at least two were shut) or what beers we liked. I remember Rauchbier, but I don’t think I liked it particularly at the time. I remember being surprised and bewildered by the different names and types of beer, and trying to work out what the difference was between a pils and a helles.

By the time we got back to Nuremberg, we were eager to try everything we could get our hands on. Then came the afternoon in the Alstadthof, and we were hooked.

We’re going back to Nuremberg and Bamberg in a couple of months, armed with a bit more knowledge. We’ve already been back to the Alstadthof, and the Rothes is still our favourite beer in the world.

For more on drinking in Nuremberg, see our post from June last year.

For the session announcement, see here. Let us know about your entry by leaving us a comment here or sending us an email – boakandbailey “at” gmail “dot” com

Boak