More focus needed on freshness and fridges
The desire for fresh beer is something that’s important to every American beer drinker yet, as residents of the British Isles, it’s not something that’s part of our beery landscape – but why?
The main reason is because of refrigeration (or lack of it) in the UK and Europe. Many British breweries actually brew beer that is the equivalent of UHT (heat treated) milk – it’s beer that has been filtered and pasteurised to remove any live ingredients from it. This ensures a long best-before date can be put on the bottle and so the two biggest enemies of fresh beer (light and heat) can’t degrade the beer as quickly.
In America, breweries producing top-end brews create beers that will never see a temperature above 6 degrees and will pack their beers full of hops in a way that simply couldn’t happen in the UK. This is why those visiting California will come back with stories of beers that simply blew their minds and are left wondering why we can’t produce the same kind of beer at home.
There are several British breweries that are trying to give us the big-hop payload and the first and foremost would be The Kernel in Bermondsey. Five years ago, they began producing unfiltered, unpasteurised, über-hoppy beers that were a million miles away from standard pub beer. From this point onwards, their innovation spread to other breweries and we’ve now got a fine selection creating unpasteurised beer – but still without any refrigeration.
I was in a London bar a few months ago and saw a bottle of Stone’s Ruination (one of my favourite beers) and paid the £6.50 asked and then looked at the bottle. Firstly, it was already three months beyond its ‘enjoy by’ date and I knew that it had spent its life outside of its intended refrigerated environment.
The beer tasted okay but it was a shadow of its former self. It made me consider what an appropriate level of ‘compromise’ would be before the beer was no longer acceptable and how it’s impossible to know when in a regular bar environment.
This is why the UK needs to begin seriously considering the effect that poor refrigeration has on our drinking culture. Every single bottle of American beer you will encounter has been compromised due to lack of refrigeration and every single bottle of UK brewed beer has been created to survive without refrigeration. Both of these outcomes do the British beer drinker no favours.
BrewDog recently brought in some of Stone’s ‘Enjoy By IPA’ which has the expiry date of the beer featured heavily on the label. The idea being that the freshness of the beer is foremost in the consumer’s mind when purchasing and drinking. They held a series of launch events across their bars and their inventory sold-out in record time. People were motivated to pay £15 for a 660ml bottle and make the journey to drink the fresh beer.
So, do we deserve better? Personally, I believe that until we’ve reached a point when someone picking a bottle of American or British beer can be confident that it’s served without compromise then we’re still failing our customers. Things have to change…
Andrew Morgan, founder of The Bottle Shop
I guess it depends on what the operational and financial objectives are. Mad to one, not to others under specific circumstances.
Shelf turds. Interesting retail-terminology.
Freshness is more critical than cold storage. While most American brewers and distributors will store beer cold, most package stores have a limited amount of refrigeration space. I recently purchased a bottle of Stone Enjoy By 7/4/2015 where the boxes were sitting in the middle of the floor and it was still quite good. Hop aroma and flavor are the first things to go in a beer, but if the beer is still young it is usually okay. Sadly retailers are stuck with “shelf turds”, aged hoppy beers that discerning beer drinkers will not buy after checking the production date.
If brewers in the UK want to brew hoppy, American styles I would agree that cold-storage is essential. If a hoppy beer sits at room temperature for weeks or even months before being tapped at a pub or put in a refrigerator at home, the volatile hop oils will have already degraded.
Not sure how common canned beer is in the UK. A can is impervious to light and oxygen, both help the beer keep for longer. Now that canning equipment is available on a smaller scale, many small brewers in the states are starting to can or are can and keg only.
Not sure about your £15 comment. There is no reason why a beer cannot command a price at that level. A wine at £15 is absolutely nothing special whereas a beer at that cost can be world beating. A bargain no less.
Anyone who pays £15 for a pint of beer really does need to take a long hard look at themselves, Any hoppy beer is past its best after 12 weeks in the bottle regardless of temperature. Cask ale is seldom served below 10 degrees (neither should it be) and when looked after properly is as fresh as you like.