The Craft Beer Cometh

Some are nice, like when breweries do a good porter or stout or the occasional genuinely nice one due to being based on a really good bitter from the outset. But yeah "you don't understand" is usually the last refuge of those kind of people.

 

Actually saying that, my dad made some "yuletide ale" from a Ken Shales recipe (c.1967) and it's actually really nice. Reminds me somewhat of St. Austell Vintage Smugglers Ale. It's a dark bitter, but it's about 7-8% with a nice level of hops and a quality almost like the one you get when a beer's been aged in rum or whiskey casks.

 

Tell me about it. I'm so sick of the pallid brown guest ales that have long been served by my local "real ale" champions. Especially the Weatherspoons. Most of their guest ales taste like sour vegetable water.

 

pint of twiggy brown from the sorry brewery and half a vegetal tones from coming soon please!

 

I love good old fashioned bitter and mild, for a night or lunchtime in the pub there's nothing to touch them.But as you say, they need to be good. As with sausages, bread, cheese, ham they can all range from the regrettable to the sublime.
I like balance in my beers , I like them to appear "polished".........I know what I mean but can't easily put it into words.Too many - most in my experience- golden ales are very one dimensional.Others flatter to begin with but then lose my interest before I've finished the glass.A polished beer is one where you want another and another after that, each seems to taste better than the one before and even put on weight.

 

Yep and there are too many shite ones around. Open your mind maaaaaan.

 

You mean like Zywiec?

 

There's a lot of shite beers of all descriptions. Read the main threads in BA to see that craft beer does not equal good beer.In fact the more extreme a beer the more scope there is for shitedom.

 

You have to occasionally try it to know if there are bad craft beers. Anyway I wasn't even referring to craft beer, just anyt beers that aren't bitters or milds. The simpler and more one dimensional a beer is, the easier it is to get right.

 

As I have. In fact I have been involved with "craft" since before it became the fashion.But I still love the milds and bitters.That isn't to say I dislike the others but I don't place them on a pedestal because they aren't milds or bitters.I judge each on its merits.

 

You should try some recent stuff then. You say you judge each beer by its merit yet you always say how you prefer milds and the like over "fashionable" beer.

 

Are you joking? I've been doing this for years.And I still like my milds and bitters. And stouts.Am I supposed to go off them? And when I try a DIPA and find it nothing special am I supposed to say how good it is? I know DIPA isn't a new style but just an example.

 

Interpret it like that if you want mate.

 

Sorry if I came over a bit sharp, but I've had so many of the "new wave" stuff (generally try them when I see them) which frankly don't deliver. Which is of course true of a lot of bitters. Milds though seem less prone to be below par.
It is a matter of taste. It's no good expecting an aficianado of classical music to go to rock concerts ,or vice versa.As long as we all can find what we like that's good.

 

I was blown away by Hawkshead's Brodie's Prime which to my mind was an English porter taken to US levels of flavours. Cannot believe the low number of reviews of their beers ( and that in BC we are lucky to get them).

 

They're not widely available outside the Lake District, even the specialist off licences i visit only get a small amount of the core beers occasionally. Last time I was in the Kendal area I had a hard job finding anything beyond Lakeland Lager.

 

Yeah, fantastic brewery. Drinking their beers at various scenic points around the Lake District is one of my highlights from this year.

 

I was in the lakes for a couple of days over xmas, annoyed I didn't drink any hawkshead!! took a pic of their pub too and of the rest of the village


I had a few coniston IPAs and old man ale and another one. lovely drops.