Falmouth Beer Festival

Princess Pavilion

Melvill Road

Falmouth

Cornwall

What serendipity that the organisers of the Falmouth Beer Festival, back in October, should decide to hold their annual gathering on the same weekend I was visiting my parents in Cornwall! Now, enough joking around, here are the beers*:

Pennycomequick (4.5%) (on the pump pictured top): A Cornish stout of distinction from Skinners, smooth and malty.

Cornish Blonde (5%): Another suppable Skinners beer - wheat one this time - from the redoubtable Truro-based brewery.

Spingo Special (6.5%): From the Blue Anchor Brewery in Helston, Cornwall. Unforgettable blue cheese aroma with an intense, complex malty bittersweetness on the palate.

Choice fact: This beer was brewed for the first time to celebrate the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana. Special indeed.

Grandma's Weapons Grade Ginger Beer (5.5%) (above): From Wheal Maiden Brewery in Cornwall. Almost flat, cloudy in appearance. Supplies a fiery gingery kick, with a slightly syrupy sweetness on the finish.

Leveller (4.8%): From the Springhead brewery in Nottinghamshire. This one was dark and smoky with a toffee finish.

Rock Own (4.4%): Balanced and biscuity. Thanks, Sharp's.

Sam's Sweet Cider (6%): My token cider came from Devon's Winkleigh - a faint fizz, very appley and nicely sweet but not a great deal going on.

* Due to my less than intact tasting notes I've included a mix of programme notes and my own observations. The point is, I liked them.

Great British Beer Festival 2010

Just like Glastonbury, the Great British Beer Festival is one of those great British occasions I'd always meant to experience but had never got around to. Unlike the lure of mud and repetitive beats, however, the pull of real ale* is still as strong as ever, and I swiftly recruited a couple of ale-keen accomplices to join me on my mission. Before we went, I checked out a neat feature on the Festival's website that showed the best rated beers on offer, and printed off a list of targets. Perhaps recklessly, we'd chosen to ignore the standard advice about avoiding the fifth and final day of the festival - and went on the Saturday anyway. This meant a good many of the ales and ciders, particularly the international ones, were all gone. Interestingly, a separate concern - that Saturday would be overcrowded - was off the mark. Perhaps most of the serious beerheads had got their fill by then. Or maybe the hype about the crowds kept the crowds away. In any case, we waited no more than a minute for a beer all afternoon.

As we entered the giant hall in Earls Court, the sheer scale of things took me by surprise: the GBBF is truly a big deal. Tons of bars and food outlets stretched out before us, with scores of beer pumps and hundreds (thousands?) of good natured drinkers. Below are some of the beers we tried - some recommended, others random punts - with an exclamation [!] marking my favourites.

O'Hanlon's Yellow Hammer (4.2% abv)
Pleasant, easy, not bitter, fruity.

O'Hanlon's Port Stout (4.8%)
Roasted coffee, smoky.

Thornbridge Hopton (4.3%) [!]
English pale ale.Slightly sweet, mild, biscuity, malty.

Fuller's Brewer's Reserve Oak Aged Ale (8.2%) [!]

This one (finished in Cognac casks!) we queued up for - only one cask released each day - and our one-third pints (the maximum each person was allowed) offered a curious diversion from the more conventional ales.

Aroma: Cognac, fruity, raisins.

Taste: Smooth, syrupy, thick, brandy richness, not too sweet: luxury.

Castle Rock Harvest Pale (3.8%) [!]
Winner of the GBBF's champion beer of Britain award. Hailing from Nottingham, one of the most chuggable we found.
Blonde, honey, hops with sweetness, refreshing, delicate.

Thornbridge Craven Silk (4%)
Hoppy, golden, sharp, elderflower bitter.

Emelisse Imperial Russian Stout Bowmore (11%)
Dark, sweet.

Gregg's Pit Thorn SV

The only perry we tried, from Herefordshire.

Sharp, thin, light.

Harveys Olympia (4.3%)

Citrussy, whiteish, like Hoegaarden.

Liberation Ale (4%)

Smooth, chuggable.

Rosie's Rampant Ram Blend [!]

A cider from Denbighshire
Wonderful, thick, tiny carbonation, brandy essence, appley, sweet, desserty.

* REAL ALE (as defined by the Campaign for Real Ale) is top fermented beer that, following fermentation, is put into a cask with yeast and some residual fermentable sugars from the malted barley. The beer undergoes a slow secondary fermentation in the cask to produce a gentle carbonation. By contrast, keg beer, or "brewery conditioned beer" is chilled, filtered and pasteurised following primary fermentation. It's then put into kegs and served with added gas - usually a mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen - which results in harsher carbonation and, sometimes, compromised flavours.

Burrow Hill Cider

Pass Vale Farm
Burrow Hill
Kingsbury Episcopi 
Somerset TA12 6BU

Burrow Farm Pressed Somerset Cider is the real deal, which is why it's sold in what look like petrol canisters, straight from the barrel. We picked up this blend of "at least" 11 varieties of vintage cider apples from the farm itself, on a trip to the Westcountry. As we were browsing in the farm shop two cars pulled up, separately, their owners walking in with multiple empties demanding refills "for the weekend".

As for the contents, this 6% cider (we went for the medium one) was slightly cloudy, as you'd expect from proper ciders, with a golden hue. The aroma was fresh apple and farmyard spice and it tasted of ripe apples, with the faintest spritz; dry, but balanced.
The farm, in a place called Kinsbury Episcopi, is also responsible for producing an interesting range of cider brandies (on which more soon), as well as The Somerset Pomona, a delicious blend of cider brandy and apple juice. They is good apples.

Scrumpy

I'm beginning to get the idea now. Slightly cloudy, often still, appley (I know that sounds obvious, but have you ever tasted Strongbow?), and hiding plenty of booze behind a silky exterior. Welcome to the world of scrumpy cider.

Scrumpy in general refers to traditional ciders made in the south and west of England, taking in Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. This one in particular, Scrumpy Cloudy Cider (7.5% abv), came from Herefordshire-based Westons, and was consumed very appropriately in an authentic Herefordshire garden (pictured above). Worryingly, the brew appeared to resemble fellow Westons scrumpy Old Rosie, responsible some years ago for what I remain convinced was the worst apple-based hangover ever to be endured by man. Nevertheless, I pushed on, in the national interest.

The label on our flagon of Scrumpy Cloudy - "matured in old oak vats for a full and fruity flavour" - recommended tilting the bottle here and there to disrupt the sediment for a properly cloudy experience. The liquid was dark orange in colour, with aromas of smoky apple and wood, while the taste was fizz-less, with a medium-dry tartness giving way to a sweeter finish.

The day was especially hot, so some of us put ice in the cider to help it down. Like Old Rosie it was deceptively boozy - apple juice with a rather agressive edge, but fortunately this time I was able to recognise when it began to tighten its grip on my person, and after a couple of glasses I knew it was time to move onto the vodka.

Cornish Orchards Cider

If you're ever foolhardy enough to host an evening of Cornishness in honour of St Piran then by gosh you'd better be armed with a decent supply of Cornish cider. Cornish Orchards, which observant readers might recall played a leading role in a certain Wassail not so long ago, produce a decent selection of ciders the old-fashioned way, on a farm in Liskeard. Stranded in London, the only way to get at them was over the internet, which is how we came to receive a large box of their appley wares in the post.

Getting to the point, Cornish Orchards' medium Draught Farm Cider (5.2%) - which can be bought in five-litre boxes - smells of apples alright. Golden yellow, no carbonation; this was essentially apple juice with a slightly dryer finish - quite sweet, but with an edge. Top cider!

Their flagon of Farmhouse Cider described itself as medium too, but this tasted sweeter and smoother than the draught, despite it being a tad stronger (5.5%). Popular with womenfolk.

Finally, the Black & Gold Pear Cider (5%), smooth and carbonated, was on the dryer side, and didn't taste an awful lot like pear.

In sum, Cornish Orchards shows what great feats can be achieved with a few apples and, er, some other stuff. Should I ever want to celebrate St Piran again I'll know where to go.

Val de Rance Cider

Creperie Bretonne
67 rue de Charonne
75011 Paris
France

You can tell when you've got a good cider in your hands when it tastes like an eruption of apples. The bottle of Val de Rance we tried, on a waitress's recommendation, was their drier one (Bouche Brut, 5%), but you wouldn't know it from the sweetish, slightly carbonated apple drink that appeared before us, alongside four well-used ceramic cups: quaffable wasn't the half of it. I pity people whose experience of cider stretches only to the fizzy, fake varieties found at most British pubs - the kind of commercial compound whose relationship with real apples, if any congress occurs at all, is surely nasty, brutish and short. By happy contrast, when the 450 Bretton apple producers behind Val de Rance insist their cider is the product of a "slow and natural" fermentation process, you can almost smell the devotion.

The Bree Louise

69 Coburg Street

Euston

London NW1 2HH

 

My first experience of The Bree Louise - Camra's Pub of the Year 2009/10 - was a fleeting visit to see what all the fuss was about. This Euston pub is best described as a permanent beer festival, with all that implies. Ale is a priority here and the beer list is constantly being amended as one cask is emptied and a new one put on (check the website for updates). It's busy - we went on a Wednesday and it was pretty much standing room only - but again, standing is fine when I'm distracted by ale. The only downside is the incessant sport they insist on showing on a giant TV (don't these people have televisions at home?). Still, nice to know there's a place to go when I feel like drinking something different.

On my brief stop I had a Winter Meltdown from the West Sussex Dark Star brewery. I'm a huge fan of Dark Star's Hophead (3.8%), a light, citrussy golden ale that somehow tastes creamy too. The Meltdown (5%) was a very different drop - dark coloured, with rich malt, slightly sweet fruit (like a mince pie?) and a mildly bitter finish. Later Googling revealed it was brewed with chocolate malt and cask conditioned with stem ginger and other "warming spices". Just the thing for a freezing spring like this, although as soon as the sun comes out I'm back to Hophead.

M, in her continuing experiments with cider, settled on a Bounds Scrumpy (4.8%), a cloudy apple draught  from Herefordshire-based Westons, which a tough critic might have described as dry to the point of vinegary.

Woodchuck Cider (Pear)

Recent times have been good to pears. Not since the days of Babysham has the fruit been such a powerful force in the world of booze. Sales of so-called "pear cider" have risen ten-fold in the past couple of years, led by brands like Magners, Brothers, Gaymers and Kopparberg. I'm a big fan of the Swedish Kopparberg in particular - quite sweet but very refreshing (no ice needed) but until recently my top choice was Woodchuck Pear, from Vermont, which has the sweet and the sharp working in harmony like a fine pear orchestra. I say "until recently", because I recently discovered that Woodchuck isn't even made from pears - it's an apple cider with added "natural pear flavoring". Is it unreasonable for me to feel cheated by this revelation? Can it really be a pear cider if the pear is merely an afterthought?

It turns out that controversy reigns in pear matters in a way probably unimagined outside the pear fraternity. A lot comes down to labeling. The traditional name for the pear-equivalent of apple cider is "perry". The National Association of Cider Makers (NACM) says a perry must be made from at least 75% pear juice (25% apple being tolerable). This is where things get complicated. Magners, for example, has based an entire (and entirely nauseating) advertising campaign around the claim that its pear drink is made from "100% pear" (a campaign mocked to death by Stewart Lee). But while the juice from which it is made may be all pear and no apple (or guava, for that matter), is that enough to secure it perry status? In a word - unlikely. The NACM prohibits the addition of sugar, colouring and flavouring, while Magners' fondness for sugar, colouring, malic acid and sulphites is a matter of record.

For the purists, like Camra, any industrially produced, carbonated, sugary substance is out of bounds; snubbed as nothing more than fizzy pear juice for the "inexperienced or undiscerning". For them, a proper perry must be produced naturally, from perry pears only, and neither carbonated nor pasteurised.

Where all this leaves Woodchuck's prospects, I'm not sure. Pear-shaped, presumably.

Wassail

Fifteen Cornwall

On the beach
Watergate Bay
Cornwall
TR8 4AA

Forgive me, but if someone had asked me only a week ago what a “wassail” was I’d have guessed a rare species of bird. Now, thanks to Jamie Oliver’s posh seaside restaurant, Fifteen Cornwall, I am – for the first time – delighting in the wonder of this delicious hot cider drink and saying, unequivocally, this is no bird.

Fifteen’s Cornish Wassail is "Cornish Orchards farmhouse cider mulled with locally pressed apple juices, star anise, clementine and honey". Mine was warming and fruity: not tart, mind, and not too sweet neither. I couldn’t tell you how it was prepared – I was planning to ask Jamie but he was nowhere to be seen, and his youths were probably too occupied overcooking pheasant to help me with my research.

Then again, and this is simply a suggestion, try throwing all of the above into a pot on heat, and see where that gets you.

Forget mulled wine – well, leave it on the back hob a while – and let's all fill our wassailing bowls instead.

Pig's Ear Beer + Cider Festival

Ocean
270 Mare Street
London E8 1HE

To the East End, for my second ever beer festival (the first having been stumbled upon during a Deliverance-style canoeing expedition in rural Herefordshire a couple of summers ago). The Pig's Ear (Cockney rhyming slang for beer, innit) is an annual event organised by a local branch of CAMRA.

Rocking up on Saturday afternoon, the fifth and final day, we soon realised many of the drinks advertised in the programme had been drunk already. First lesson learned: while music festivals save the best acts til last, beer festivals work differently.

Having bought our branded Pig's Ear pint glasses for £3 each (refundable on return), our group set to work on the dozens of real ales, cider and foreign beers still available. Fortunately, while the only measures were pints or halves, ‘tasting’ before buying was encouraged, so in theory no one had to end up with something they hated.

My first choice - recommended by one of the many knowledgeable stewards manning the mile-long real ale bar after I requested "something light" - turned out to be my favourite of the day.

Castle Rock's Harvest Pale (3.8%), brewed in Nottingham, was light and flavourful at the same time. A golden colour (pictured) and, as I think they say in these situations, citrussy, grassy and slightly hoppy.

Fearing my taste for light ales might be considered unadventurous by the committed real ale drinkers in the house, I moved on to some more ‘challenging’ brews to show my willingness.

An hour or so after we arrived our group of four expanded to seven, and since everyone was willing to share, a lot of sampling was done.

Our amateurish tasting notes included the following:

Ciders
Springfield Medium Dry (Monmouthshire, 8.2%) – “Tastes better than it smells.”
Rosie Rampant Ram Whisky Barrel (Denbighshire, 7.2%) – “Christmassy - contains real whisky!”
CJs Medium Dry (Monmouthshire, 6%) – “Slightly carbonated, appley.”
Rosie DDD (Denbighshire, 6.6%) – “Very dry, very little apple taste.”
Sarah’s (Herefordshire) – “Uncloudy.”

Foreign Beers
Schlenkerla Märzen Very Smoky Lager (German, 5.1%) - "Sausage infused." (pictured below)
Lambic Cantillon Gueuze (Belgian, 5%) - "Interesting."
Girardin Framboise (Belgian, 5%) - "Aaack."
Ij Scharrel Ij Wit (Dutch, 7%) - "Yummy wheat beer."
Mikkeller Big Bad Barley Wine (Danish, 12%) – “Heavy and syrupy.”
Mikkeller Santa’s Little Helper (Danish, 10.2%) – “Santa should get another helper.”

Draught Beers
Bollington Dinner Ale (Cheshire, 4.3%) – “Better with dinner?”
Brewdog 77 Lager (Scotland, 4.9%) – “Pretty tasty.”
Brodie’s Amarilla (East London, 4.2%) – “Yeah, okay.”
Castle Rock Harvest Pale (Nottingham, 3.8%) – “Really tasty, light.”
Teignworthy Real Ale (Devon, 4%) – “Watery, bland.”
Stonehenge Pigswill (Salisbury, 4%) – “Light and mild.”
TSA Scotch Mist Wheat Beer (Scotland, 5%) – “Fruity, flowery, herbaceous.”
Grainstore Phipps IPA (Rutland, 4.2%) – “I’m ready to leave now.”

What an afternoon. We left after four hours and many beers and rewarded our efforts with a Turkish meat feast to soak up the booze.

Admittedly, despite trying to expand my beer horizons, I came away with my preference for drinkable pale ales intact. A steward described one of the full-bodied German beers as “more admired than enjoyed”, which I think neatly sums up many we tried. While I don’t mind being tested when I’m tasting, I prefer to be delighted when I’m drinking.