Cheers MJ

A year ago the renowned beer writer Michael Jackson passed away, I wrote about it here. A year on and Geoff Griggs and Regional Wines and Spirits ran 3 memorial tastings celebrating MJ’s life by exploring some of his Desert Island Beers, next month Regional Wines will hold a tasting celebrating his favourite Whiskeys.The beers included Pilsner Urquell, Marstons Pedigree, Coopers Sparkling, Schnieder Aventinus, Orvel, Duvel, Rodenbach Grande Cru, Traquar House Ale, and Thomas Hardy’s Ale. I attended the Thursday tasting and then afterwards I enjoyed a beer I’m sure MJ would have appreciated Emersons Smoking Gun, a 7% abv smoked beer that certainly hit the spot,

cheers to Mr Jackson.

The Session- Beer Evangelism

The start of my beer evangelism can be traced back to the winter of 1998, I was in Dunedin train station waiting for the Taieri Gorge Tourist Railway to depart. I was in the south on a family holiday, the next time I would visit would be in the quest of beer. I took the train with my mother who is always keen for a beer or two. We scanned the menu to make our selection, up until then the drinking on our trip had been dominated by the ubiquitous CD and Speights. The name Emerson’s immediately took our fancy as it shared its name with the street where my family home is located. One sip and my experience of beer changed utterly. Unlike the sweet unchallenging New Zealand Draughts I was used to this beer had a strong malty presence, a marmity yeastyness and definite roasty finish, in other words it had character. Upon returning home I started hunting out more beers like this one, first ones from the big two like Monteiths Black, Guinness and Speights Old Dark, but soon beers from smaller breweries like Founders Long Black, Emerson’s Oatmeal Stout and pretty much anything the supermarket or off license had that was dark and rich.

It wasn’t until I stumbled across a copy of Michael Jackson’s 1988 New World Guide to Beer that I started to hunt out and learn about styles of beer that weren’t dark. At the same time I was starting to homebrew and like fact that music never sounds the same after you have worked in a music studio, so to my understanding of what I was tasting in beer developed changed.

My taste in beer developed again dramatically in 2001 when I tasted my first pint of real ale at Galbraith’s in Auckland. This was beer at its most drinkable, glorious peak, extremely complex, and yet utterly sessionable, my fate was sealed.

The Session- Barley Wine

A Question of Style

There is often a fair bit of debate about where the line is drawn between old ales and barley wines. The beer I have chosen for this session, Gales Prize Old Ale, is often considered to be an old ale and indeed contains the word old in its name. However it seems to me that both World Beer Cup and BJCP style guides for Old Ale and Barley Wine have a vary wide scope. The contemporary ‘old ale style’ seems to draw its ancestry from sweet dark fruity Burton Ale at the lower end of its gravity and strong aged tawny October Ale* at the top, quite a range!

The contemporary ‘barley wine style’ also draws its ancestry from October Ale, with American versions showing a family resemblance to another of October Ale’s descendants, India Pale Ale. I would argue that there is no significant difference between strong old ales and barley wines.

A Very Precious Beer

In March 2006 the Horndean Brewery was closed following the purchase of George Gale & Co by Fullers in 2005. It was widely believed that following the closure of the brewery Prize Old Ale ,which relied on antique equipment, would be lost for ever. Fullers announced during the following year that they did intend to continue production of Prize Old Ale and then after I raised the issue on beer-pages here Fullers PR manager Georgina Wald confirmed that a Chiswick brewed version was about to be bottled.

Whether Fullers have been successful at matching the character of Horndean brewed Prize Old remains to be seen, what is for sure is that the only Horndean brewed Prize Old Ale I am ever likely to drink in the future sits in my cellar.

The Calvados of the Beer World

Michael Jackson once compared Prize Old Ale to Calvados apple brandy from Normandy. The beer certainly does display an enormously complex range of fruit and vinous aromas and flavours which slowly develop, meld and change as the beer ages. Horndean Prize Old was bottle conditioned by simply running the ale into bottles un-primed with only its residual yeast count to give it condition. As I have discovered with certain vintages of my own Merchant of the Devil Imperial Stout bottling in this manor accentuates the esters and promotes vinous oxidative characters to form in the beer.

With my own experience of Calvados being non-existent (I’m more of a port man myself) my description of the 2004 vintage went like this:

Big vinous fruit aroma, hints of caramel , and nutty malt. On the palate the vinous notes turn decidedly raisin, with hints of prunes and alcohol warmth, surprisingly the malt weight is relatively low with dry alcohol cleaning things up nicely. A truly exceptional beer.

Michael Jackson also once wrote of Prize Old Ale “Is there any beer that better accompanies a roquefort or stilton?” on this I am in complete agreement.

*October Ales or Beers were strong highly hopped beers brewed in the Autumn to mature through the winter and spring and be tapped in mid summer when the heat made brewing small beers
impossible.

A Pint and a Book , marriage made in heaven.

“The yeasty fruitiness, suggestion of sweetness in the Pale Ale malt and the hoppy acidity attain a height of complexity”

That’s how the late Michael Jackson described a cask conditioned English bitter when the cask is at its peak. Well that’s exactly how I would describe the pints of O.S.B. I drank tonight while reading the new book from Mr Jackson, the “Eyewitness Companions Beer”.

This corny-cask of O.S.B. is just coming to the end and its tasting brilliant. The hops are just starting mellow, there is the faintest touch of sour acidity, the malt sweetness is just peaking through on the palate, before a firm bitterness begs another sip, and then another pint. The changes from when the corny was first tapped are staggering, this is the magic that turns perfectly normal people into real ale obsessives.