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March 28, 2024, 03:18:11 PM

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BEERS #2 - Beyond the Pale

Started by Shoulders?-Stomach!, March 30, 2020, 03:56:03 PM

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Shoulders?-Stomach!

That will be an interesting one for your first try.

Jerzy Bondov

Bloke from the local micropub brought round a bag of Atlantic Honey Ale. Got it hanging up in the garage, nipping out there with a glass to pour a lovely pint. Not sure how long it'll keep in a bag so best drink it fast I think.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Kirkstall were doing a new beer last night, Jasmine Table Beer, 3.5%. Unusual but somewhat effective. At £4 a pint a fairly cheap table beer too.

Funny that tafelbier was originally dirt cheap and the purpose was it was light, went with food and washed down pleasantly. I only saw it in the wild once in Brugge where it was served with lunch, the place was a cheap as chips charity run operation that was really good but sadly no longer exists.

I wonder if it was Piedbouef Blonde, will never know.


Ferris

I'm certain I've seen a tafelbier in the wild somewhere, Lyon maybe? Hmmm.

Edit: may have been Dijon, they're into all sorts of mad shit there. Have you see their mustard? Got bits in it.

Chedney Honks

I had a couple of these the other day.



Not my usual thing but really delicious.

I could drink that all day I reckon and still do my job as a minibus driver.

TrenterPercenter

I had one of these the other week and wasn't really that impressed tbh.

Chedney Honks

I have a lot more refined palate, though.

The Kernel Dunkel impressed me too, wasn't expecting much for a UK attempt at the style but loved it.

Chedney Honks

I'll look out for the Dunkel before my next shift, cheers.

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Chedney Honks on April 14, 2021, 02:38:54 PM
I have a lot more refined palate, though.

From sucking on all those prepubescent rocks I'll bet.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

For any Sarth London people, The Bull & Finch seems to stock Tier 2 & 3 Franconian kellerbier. Bit pricey but it might work out better with free local delivery.

phes

Went to The Bridge last night. The Virtuous tasted of burned rubber and the milk stout was kegged so came out pretty cold, and only got colder because is was fucking baltic after about 8pm. Odd choice of drinks in this weather but I guess that's unpredictable, along with the lockdown easing, so kegged beers make sense in that respect. Apparently they had some kind of explosion in the brewing process that knackered all the dissolution

purlieu

Had my first proper pub visit yesterday. A pint of Shiny's beautiful 4 Wood, a lovely nutty bitter. Then a nitro chocolate stout, because chocolate stout. That was another Shiny, actually. Both great, and just a nice experience to have fresh English beer again after the best part of six months.
It's only one place in the town centre doing cask beer at the minute, as almost every central pub has no beer garden. Annoyingly, the two pubs near my house - both with decent sized beer gardens - seem to have decided to stay closed for some reason. So getting a decent pint either involves a lengthy walk to a pub I've not been to before, or hoping there's a spare table at the one pub that has cask (and that's a matter of luck - I've walked past and seen it with 30-40 people outside, sat and stood around its five tables).

phes

#1393
My local often has Shiny beers and the 4-5% Pales have always been really solid. Tonight I have a Au mahr's and hummel Kellerbiers, kloster sud dark lager, Deya Saturated in Mosaic and Scene Scene all from Raynville offy in Leeds.  Can't wait to bust open the dark lager before the sun sets 

Chedney Honks


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Had an Ayinger Winterbock for £3.80 sat outside at Beer Heroes* yesterday. £3.80 ffs. I was laughing in between the gulps.


*brave boys

Chedney Honks

I have no concept of pricing as I haven't been in a punt since last February, I'd say. Is that a rip-off or something?

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Chedney Honks on April 18, 2021, 09:46:37 AM
I have no concept of pricing as I haven't been in a punt since last February, I'd say. Is that a rip-off or something?

It's a 6.7% bock, fairly unusual beer to find around and there's 500ml of it. That's an absolute steal. You'd be paying £6+ish normally. £3.80 gets you a bang average cask pale ale in most chain pubs outside London nowadays.

I paid £5 for a Paulaner Ur-Dunkel and same for a Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest Marzen elsewhere earlier in the day, which is more along the lines of ordinary prices. Actually reasonably cheap for the latter.




Shoulders?-Stomach!

As if to demonstrate the point we just passed some Hollyoaks place where a bottle of Erdinger is £6.50. That's pretty grim.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Drinking Schremser Zwickl in the sun @ £3.20 outside Beer Heroes in Chester. Rinsing life. Try and get a drop more of life out, none left, all gone.

The flavour, pure unfiltered joy. Lingers for a good 30 seconds meaning you can sip it and take every moment in, while it also has such a downright pleasant crispness you could neck the stuff. This is the sort of brewing that is actually not truly understood. They haven't been working on this shit for centuries just to be fucked over by some upstart chem students from Portland.

purlieu

Quote from: Chedney Honks on April 18, 2021, 09:46:37 AM
I have no concept of pricing as I haven't been in a punt since last February, I'd say. Is that a rip-off or something?
Given that a pint of Carling can very often fetch more than £3.50 these days, absolutely not.

Chedney Honks

I wouldn't baulk at paying a fiver for a good 500ml bottle in a shop but I honestly can't remember whether pubs are cheaper or more expensive than bottle shops. It's mad but it's honestly can't remember. Never going in a pub again in a this country.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/brewdogs-next-decade-james-watt/

If you want to piss yourself off then read the latest spewings of the manbaby James Watt as he 'takes the fight to Big Beer' 😂😂😂😂

QuoteThis is our time. This is our opportunity to change the world of beer and the world of busines forever.

James

BrewDog = serieose busines

Ferris


Shoulders?-Stomach!

One thing you can say is that BrewDog's corporate messaging really does feel like an extension of his wanking hand.

Tyrannical little Napoleon cunt likening himself to Tesla and Amazon, even cravenly admiring them. Fall down a well.

Ferris


Shoulders?-Stomach!



phes

#1408
Interesting indeed. One thing I learned when looking into this is that apparently the same beers that are sold in both supermarkets and bottle shops do not necessarily have the same ingredients or brewing process. Corners being cut with scaling to supermarket of course. It had never occured to me that this might happen and that your £3.50 supermarket can might be a different drink to your £5.50 bottle shop/brewery shop/tap room can. I'd assumed that what we were seeing with poor quality supermarket craft beer was that beer suffering across the board. Not the easiest thing to investigate because so many bottle shops refuse to stock beers also stocked by supermarkets

phes

#1409
I tried to find the selection box last night but it wasn't available in either of the Tesco Express close to me. So either the release of that is lagging behind the release of the individual cloudwater beers or it's only available in larger stores. They said that it would be available in around 1,000 stores.

I tried three off the four available cloudwater beers, the pale, session ipa and ipa. They were unremarkable but of a slightly better quality than the Vocation, the Northern Monk and the Brewdog stocked in supermarkets. All three are quite similar and the session IPA and the IPA both use the same hops, and the pale uses mostly the same. I'm not sure they offer enough to justify stepping up from the £1-1.50 330ml cans to a £3-3.50 440ml can.

It is a fascinating turn of events because the way that they've gone about it suggests that - apart from the obvious economic benefits - they want to outsource their core range. Having followed cloudwater over the years I suspect this is about more than just marketability and I think it says something about what craft beer buyers are looking for in bottle shops and tap rooms. It maybe goes some way to explaining why so few craft Brewers have maintained a core range of beers without moving them to supermarkets or taking corporate investment. The trend seems to be to brew new beers, rather than refine existing ones. This does for once look like a move to offload something they're not interested in, take a cash investment and refocus on what they want to do (and presumably what's marketable to the craft scene). What will be interesting is how they go about dealing with the conflicts, moving forward. Will they continue to only provide supermarkets with a basics core range to protect their craft product, and how will they react as supermarkets continue to offer a greater range of craft beers that at least appear to offer the more unique properties of craft beer. Several years ago when supermarkets stocked a couple of beers like Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn Lager and Punk ipa, I'd have said that a trickle-down effect from supermarkets wasn't a completely laughable concept, but their range has expanded so much that is hard to imagine many supermarket shoppers asking 'where can I get more of this'.

Going to go and read the statements of these various breweries now as it seems Vault City are also going into tesco

https://vaultcity.co.uk/blogs/news/the-tesco-conversation?fbclid=IwAR0zT_vn_WvWK8EKa0KufEfMvaJhRLCtq_PHlKRC0wWyVmk8LpODbpHp1Fk

Edit - This blog by Dave Haywood contradicts my thoughts and he believes that bottle shops will indeed struggle without the core beers

https://ahoppyplace.co.uk/cloudwater-19/?fbclid=IwAR1qtHXWmypnZ6imNMwGlWmapASWcVC8T18S9hasHmS3Q2XDXf1v4qaJwCk

Quote"If a customer, new to craft, comes into our independent store, asks for Cloudwater and only gets shown beer that costs double or triple what they paid in a supermarket, we lose that potential customer. We lose credibility. It's better to not be associated, and when asked, simply say "We don't sell the big brands that are available in supermarkets – but we have this other beer from someone else that we think you might like"