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: Beer People

What a fantastic topic. It’s no surprise that this month’s session is hosted by Stonch. Of all beer bloggers I think Stonch best gives an insight into the people who drink with him and some sense of the social group that they form.

The guidelines for this session say pick someone you know and paint a portrait. I have certainly met and got to know a lot of people through the world of beer, however I have decided to focus not on the well known brewers, publicans or journalists I have met but on those I drink beer with the most, the boys.

The Boys- the history

When I say The Boys I refer to a reasonably finite group of friends. Most of them I met at school, many of them I have known for over ½ my life. As far as beer drinking goes the core is made up of Dr Mulchin and G with a relatively recent arrival in the form of Pete, Pete hasn’t been around for even a decade yet you see a new comer.
Mulchin, G and my own early, although not first, drinking was done together. It usually involved cans of cheap suspect lager downed in the car parks of under age music venues. Once we left school the beer got marginally better as did the venues for drinking it. By the end of my university days I was home brewing and enthusiastically exploring what different beers the world had to offer, the Dr as he is now but wasn’t then was starting to identify the relationships between the science he was studying and the booze he was downing, while G was drinking everything and rating how socialist it was.

Thursday Night Drinks – an institution

It was during the first dubious days of my homebrewing that the institution of Thursday night drinks began. With a late start on a Friday and a full wallet on a Thursday, we would congregate usually at my flat but sometimes at a bar and catch up with what had been going on with each other thru the week. There would be what we would call sh#t talking which involved good natured ribbing and nonsensical concepts. Sometimes Thursday night drinks would be a low key affair with a few beers and an early end, other times bottles Stroff and Absinth would make an appearance , or pints of imperial stout and the repercussions would be felt for a day to come
It was once I bought my first beer engine and put in the first little bar at my old flat that Thursday Night Drinks finally became tied to drinking beer and not other liquors. Thursday Night Drinks continue to this day, sometimes it’s just the 4 of us, sometimes it’s a full house, it’s always worth doing.

The Tastings

On one Thursday every month we attend the beer tastings that are run by Geoff Griggs at Regional Wines. The tastings attract a varied crowd of regulars, notably the ‘Indian Embassy’ crowd lead by local drinking personality Tosh, White Rino member David and of course our own motley crew. The tastings provide not only the chance to drink some beers we wouldn’t normally be able to but also a chance to catch up people we don’t see through the rest of the month.

The Trips

Several years ago Dr Mulchin, G and myself set off around the South Island for 14 days of debauched beer hunting. The trip had a very specific set of rules laid out. Every pint was counted and the second someone said fancy a pint the rounds system was instigated and would not be ended until we had gone around the world. While I put a hold on all shaving for the duration (nothing new there, hairy and proud, Stonch bring back the beard!!) Dr Mulchin refused to wash and most unbelievably of all G ceased eating, 14 days (15 actually by the time we got home) without anything to sustain him but beer and milk, we always suspected that under the socialist façade he was really a catholic; he got the dates for lent all wrong.
More recently we did a similar but shorter trip with Pete included around the North Island.

I apologise for the rather rambling portrait of a group of people most of you will never know, these are my best friends and sitting down to a pint with them is one of my favourite things, which I think is what life is about.

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.

The Session – Doppelbock

These sessions are getting harder and harder. There are few quicker ways to make my eyes glaze over and none more effective at inspiring me to words not out of place in a Spitfire ad than to mention German beer to me. I have little interest in German beer, when I can avoid it, I do.

Doppelbock of course isn’t the worst beer style in the world, however when I drink it I cant help but think ‘this would be so much better if you swapped the lager yeast for an ale one and the German malt and hops for English’ lovely ! a Strong ale, sorted. Alright, enough with my prejudices I should give this a stab.

Outside of judging the only bock I have had in the last year was related to the cheese beer tasting I ran last summer, I have had no doppelbock at all in the last year. I was looking for a match for Meyer Old Gouda, not surprisingly there was an abundance of ale styles already pencilled in for the tasting and I knew I should really find something that was stylistically from the continent. The beer I wanted to use was actually not from Germany but from a former German colony, Namibia. The Hansa UR-Bock is a pretty fantastic example of the style from the most unlikely of locations.

Namibian Breweries Hansa UR-Bock 7%

Pours a dark red with a white thick head. Aroma features bready malt, a tussocky/honeyish German hop note and some fruit. On the palate the bready character is continued, joined by sweet toffee and a hint of roast, the finish is malt accented but does clean out from the hops.

In the end Regional Wines couldn’t source enough UR-Bock for the tasting so we went with HB Maibock and that combination turned out to be one of the best of the tasting.

Fingers crossed that next months host picks a topic closer to my heart, cheers/