Around town with Amateur Drinker
Bizarrely, in a beer column, the two most pleasing incidents in the last few weeks actually occurred when I went out not planning to drink beer (it does happen!) and largely stuck to that agenda.
Not just about the wine
The London Wine Fair, an annual event that bills itself as one of the world’s leading wine trade events, is an Aladdin’s cave with over 10,000 wines from around the globe. Until two years ago it was homogeneously devoted to wine.
Last year a few brewery stalls shockingly appeared, with subsequent questions about what the reactions of the old-school wine trade would be. Clearly they were positive, as in 2015 there was a dedicated beer section: Brewhouse had brewers including Siren and Wild Beer exhibiting.
Equally dramatic was the change at Taste London, the annual Regent’s Park food and drink festival, now a regular summer fixture, and which has successfully spawned both a winter offshoot and similar events around the world.
Previous years has seen the drink side of the equation focus on wine, particularly bubbly, artisan spirits such as Sipsmith, novelty drinks such as Thunder Toffee Vodka and cocktails. There was very little of any interest on the beer front.
This summer saw a fantastic change: eeBria had a stall selling Moor, Brew by Numbers and Buxton amongst others whilst HonestBrew were pouring BeaverTown, Five points and Yeastie Brothers. Beer is not and never will be the primary point of Taste but in 2015 quality beer should be a given at a food and drink festival.
This pub is the future
This is a great metaphor for how I would love to see the beer scene evolve: Although I love special beer-events and meeting fellow beer-lovers, my over-riding dream would be a situation when interesting beer is a given and served as normal in pubs. A good pub always requires an eclectic mix of people and similarly it is great to have a crowd not just comprised of beer-geeks, which is clearly not the case at special events. (At the moment, I think the Old Fountain is the best example of where we should aim).
Onto specific events, Mother Kelly’s has made a real effort in the last few weeks: A meet-the-brewer with Elgood’s, optimistically but not unreasonably described as “Britain’s answer to Lambic” was an excellent tasting session. Four Pure and Original Gravity magazine shared a launch of the former’s summer seasonal Skyline American Wheat and Dry Hop Pils and the latter’s 4th edition; the venue was buzzing with many familiar faces. Finally, the debut of this year’s BeaverTown/Wild Beer collaboration, the blueberry Blubus Maximus, a worthy successor to 2014’s raspberry Rubus Maximus, and immediately installed as one of my girl-friend’s favourite beers.
Top US import
Two chains also showed that they can still produce the goods: Craft Beer Co threw two birthday bashes, a 1st for WC1 (highlight Magic Rock Old Cherry Bearded Lady) and an Italian-themed 4th for EC1. They left me with the fanciful notion that, if their expansion continued to 52, we could see a weekly birthday celebration somewhere in the country! BrewDog, Shoreditch hosted Ballast Point with both the original Sculpin and its grapefruit cousin exceptional, and probably rivals for my beer of the month.
I missed the official launch of BeaverTown’s “Power of the Voodoo” triple IPA but was delighted to see it on at Duke’s BBQ the next day, although 10% did seem a bit much with brunch! I did however make their first Summer Sour which was blessed with perfect weather.
Both the Earl and St. Clement’s Phantom went down very easily. However it added to the disappointment that I will miss Siren’s sour event due to holiday.
Reporting from the front-line – Amateur Drinker manages to get along to all the beer things you’d like to but couldn’t.