Sun Fest 2012 at the Rising Sun

Hello,

      yesterday I braved the threat of downpours and the rigmarole of travelling right across the city to go to the Rising Sun beer festival "Sun Fest" on Fulwood Road, Nether Green. The festival is still on today all day by the way.

One thing I noticed straight away was that it was in fact, sunny. it really was bathed in the golden glow of sunshine as I arrived, and to my surprise, it didn't rain apart from a spot or two all the time I was there. Well done to the organisers for dabbling in a bit of harmless dark arts to ward away the rain.

The other thing I noticed was it was rammed. I got there earlier than planned at just gone 5PM but it was twenty minutes before I got my first drink. Since the festival had grown inexorably since my last visit I assumed any one of the four tents I could see would house the beers but the beer tent is behind the ones visible. I found it by following people with empty glasses, then got directions to the ticket tent, and then queued 5 deep at the bar.

I envisaged this might at least keep me sober if nothing else, but at 15 minutes a drink I wondered if I'd clear my £8.00 token card before closing time. The card, if you haven't been before, is basically circles indicating a pound and squares for 5 and 10p amounts which are marked off with a pen every time you buy. You can hand the cards back in if they are unfilled and get the money back or donate them to the festival Charity.

Anyhoo, my fears proved misplaced since it soon became obvious that the sea of punters ebbed and flowed liked the tide. The next half I went to buy took less than a minute., walking straight up to the bar and getting served. By now I also worked out that the references against each beer were U, M, L and B, meaning their height on the stillage, and the numbers ran numerically from left to right. So to save time you could, usually, head for where you knew the beer was. Ingenious.

I bumped into Steve, erstwhile scholar and libator from the Red Deer the other night, and we got chatting and making our way through the beers. On my first card I tried the following :

Brown Cow Cowasaki Pale, 4.3
Barley Bottom Cobbydale Stout 4.0
Downton Apple Blossom Ale 4.3
Dark Star Saison 4.5
Oates Golden Oates 4.1
Raw Dark Peak Reserve 2011 6.0

The latter beer took me onto my next card, and was a useful tool in guiding my mate to a next beer. Because by this time I'd been joined by Carlos, Wee Keefy and Jambon and they were made aware straight away of the tricks, idiosyncrasies and rules and set out to get refreshments. Carlos found it ten thick at the bar inside so his quest for a pint of lager was thwarted, but we had noticed there were some Keykeg beers including a Hop Studio Pilsner, so we sent him to the tent to get some.

Unfortunately, after we had secured ale, he was told after about 10 minutes queueing that the lagers were only served in the pub, even though this was listed on the beer list as being in the tent (I have studiously re-read every word and it doesn't state its in the pub). Luckily he'd had a taste of the Dark Peak and had that but considering that the Kirkstall Framboise was on in the tent this omission didn't make sense.  Surely, put all the Abbeydale ones in the bar plus two or three in the tent, (as they did), and all the festival beers, including Keykegs in the tent? If you queue for ten minutes for a beer that all along was at the end of a totally different queue that's poor.

Anyhoo, this annoyance was tempered by the realisation that Carlos had a taste for some darker beers so he got to try the excellent Kirkstall Black Band Porter and the legendary Abbeydale Black Mass.

The rest of my tipples were :

Tydd Steam Golden Kiwi 4.1
Crouch Vale Yakima Gold 4.2
Dark Star Revelation 5.7
 Abbeydale Black Mass 6.66

I didn't fancy finishing on the Black Lurcher (not that its particularly much stronger than the Black Mass...) but anything dark delicious and dangerous is ideal for the final drink so the Mass was an obvious choice.

Black Mass action

Highlights of the festival beer wise were Crouch Vale Citra, Barley Bottom Cobbydale Stout, Dark Star Saison and Revelation and my favourite beer of the festival was the Raw Dark Peak Reserve. That said, there wasn't a beer I didn't enjoy, and the range was excellent. It was also interesting to note the benefits and drawbacks of gravity dispense - the Revelation was far better than on handpump, but the Saison not so good. Does this realisation sound familiar in terms of vessels chosen to dispense from?

And finally, I have to say, considering the huge numbers of punters, the volunteers behind the bar did the unenviable job of serving everyone about as quickly as was possible with admirable efficiency and patience.

So that was my visit to the 2012 Sun Fest, another triumph of beers and space and luck with the weather. As I said its still on today so get yourself up there and try some of what's left.

Cheers!

Wee Beefy

Old Worthy Brewery, Old Worthy Scottish Pale Ale

Hello,

    I have been lucky enough to receive a bottle of a beer from a new brewery, currently brewing on a contractor plant until they can get their own plant up and running on the Isle of Skye - their address is in Uig on the bottle, but am unsure exactly where their own brewery is intended to be located.

Looking around on social media it seems O.W have been in existence for sometime, certainly in terms of brewing and trialling beers and getting out there to publicise and market it. They have targetted sales in Finland and Sweden and have been busy sending out samples in the post to beer writers and stockists in the UK, prior to their official launch in August.

If you want more info about the brewery and its ethos their website is up and running but not fully  finished, so I suggest your best bet is to sign up at their website so they can send you some info. Nick at the brewery certainly seems happy to talk about his product, and the relationship between whisky and beer. You can also find them on Facebook here or on Twitter here .

These are the details of what I found when I tried my botttle earlier:

Brewery : Old Worthy Brewing Co. Limited
Name : Old Worthy Scottish Pale Ale
Strength : 5.0%
BCA/none BCA? : none BCA.
Purchased : Sent by the brewery.

Colour : gold, not as light as I would expect, with a hint of Pilsner Urquell in its appearance.

Carbonation/Pouring : Loud fizz on opening - pours well leaving a goodly head at the top.

Aroma : Not as strong as I expected, given the ingredients, but smoky malt predominates, with a strange salty hint.

Taste : Wow! -  a good start with lots of smoke, malt, whisky and whether or not I'm tasting it because I know its an ingredient, but there is peated malt. Its actually quite an alcoholic flavour, but I think that is a trick of the brain, telling me that if it smells and tastes of whisky (and it does, but not overly so) it must be as strong.

A hint of honey is noticable in the second mouthful, mellowing the smoky peat slightly, and there are other lighter malt flavours, perhaps because of the pale malts used. There is even a taste that somehow reminds me of sea air, which I am puzzled by, but overwhelmingly its that peat and malt which stands out.

Interestingly, for a pale ale, there doesn't appear to be much hops. Its bitter, yes, but it seems more down to the smoked flavours. As you continue drinking the whisky notes recede slightly and the beer takes on the flavours of a more malty pale bitter, but it never loses that edge.

The peated malt, whch comes from the Ardmore distillery, is the stand out characteristic, and having initially been quite alarmed to see both honey and wheat in the mix on the bottle label I think both of these ingredients are in there to tame and compliment the assertive peat flavours. I think without the slight sweetness of the honey and the refreshing benefits of the wheat the beer may have been too harsh.

I tried a pure liquer from Kilchoman distillery that had the addition of hedgerow fruits, and the balance of the inredibly strong alcoholic kick of the spirit and the sharp and sweet fruits is a clever mix. So it seems that peat needs sweeter softer flavours to mellow it out a little.

Head retention - good, it follows the beer down the glass before breaking into islands after about 15 minutes, having started full and billowy on pouring.

WBrating : 7.0
I like the fact that this is a bold flavoured beer and an interesting concept. Its not a whisky beer, its a beer made with complimentary ingredients from the whisky making process. It loses marks slightly for requiring a bit more hops, not that it needs loads, but there is quite a dry aftertaste which perhaps a full on warm fruity hop might remove, as it doesn't help the peat. Its certainley distinctive however, and the initial taste is impressive.

I'd like to try a dark beer made the same way, I think that whisky cask aged stouts seem to work well so it follows that this approacjh would suit a porter or stout, and I think one interesting thing I noticed was that it would make an ideal gateway beer to a stronger brew. If you were tasting a few 4 - 5% beers and wanted to move onto something hefty I think this is strong flavoured enough to allow you to jump a few percent and go straight for a really strong beer.

Ultimately, I want to see it in cask - roll on August 2012 I say.

Wee Beefy

Range Lust

Evening,

     Range Lust - (Colloquial; Et: Bloggers, Eng.) - the desire by publicans and drinkers alike to see ever increasing numbers of beers in pubs irrespective of consumer demand or beer quality.

Above is a definition that despite its professional looking template does not in fact come from the dictionary. I'm sure that if enough printed media types started referencing it there may eventually be a begrudging reference in the OED and some exploration of what it actually means, but for now I'll attempt to provide an example of how range lust presents itself...

I visited a pub in the North East last year, which made several boasts about its extensive beer range. There were probably 16 handpumps all in use - on a Tuesday lunch. Christ, I thought, they must have some throughput, yet there weren't many punters in to keep the ale flowing, with inevitable consequences.

Me and Wee Fatha tasted 6 beers before we found one that was palatable. In the end, of the three tried halves we bought and the two we recklessly purchased untried, only two ended up being good throughout the drink. Of the others, two were OK, and one was tired and about to be taken off (hopefully). Really they could have just had 4 beers on and we could have chosen a pint each of one of the two decent ales.

The above may seem like a good example of range lust, if not its epitome. It may also seem like it isn't a major issue, given that few pubs even have that much bar space. Except, there's another manifestation of this problem.

When new isn't new enough

There are now, using childish exaggerations, 147 million different breweries in the UK, producing an average of 20 beers each, meaning that there are approximately 3 billion different brews available in the UK at any one time! This is brilliant of course, (not least because I made it up) since it means that all styles imaginable are covered (and some you perhaps can't imagine) and generally, the huge diversity of breweries affords free houses the opportunity to stock an astonishing array of beers.

This sounds like a familiar rallying cry. And yet the above uUtopian beerscape is precisely the problem.

Recently I found myself becoming very picky about the breweries who's beers I was interested in drinking. More than that, I was regularly finding myself faced with banks of new breweries beers that seemed to be on sale for no reason other than their embryonic status. And worst of all, I found that I had no faith in the likelihood that any of these new breweries would deliver.

As a result, I have regularly eschewed the pleasures of numerous CAMRA vaunted real ale oases with hundreds of years GBG inclusion between them, to go to Dada, The Sheffield Tap, Shakespeares, and The Rutland Arms. All of them sell new brewery beers, of course, but they tend to be good ones, even those I've not heard of, and crucially the newer beers are supplementing established, quality beers.

Granted, these aren't the only pubs I've been to recently by any means, and they aren't the only places I've enjoyed visiting. However, they have consistently provided beers from breweries that I trust and who's beers I enjoy. They have also, excepting the small (but by no means bad) range at Dada, managed to offer a large range of well kept and interesting beers, and crucially most of my absolute favourite pints this year.

Why this matters is because I believe that the sheer mass of available brews in the UK is the reason why I find all too many new and often deservedly rare beers from brewers guilty of running before they can walk - lets face it, some pubs seem obsessed with selling only the newest beers over reliable favourites, often from breweries who only welded the last pipe to the fermenting tank the weekend before. 

That so many pubs seem to favour this beer selection policy shows that "range lust" is not just about numbers of pumps. Its about the clamour to sell (or taste) a beer before anyone else.

The problem is, this market force then creates its own momentum - so many pubs striving to always have the newest or the highest number of different beers on (perhaps to sate the desires of tickers, or scoopers, or chronic(a)lers, or whatever they are called) drives the unchecked and unsustainable expansion seen in microbrewing, whilst creating a demand for beers from frankly average or crap breweries.

Essentially, pubs want newer beers, newer beers means newer breweries, newer breweries means....more newer beers, and  in my experience, less good quality beers. If pubs are desperate to sell new or rare average beers, then (some) breweries will oblige, to the point where in the end, the benefit of extensive beer ranges becomes its very antithesis.  It seems the more beers there are, the less of them you want to taste.

 I am not suggesting that there should only be established breweries on the bar, but a better mix of established, reliable and quality new brewers represented equally. Seeing overly familiar tat like Greedy King IPA makes me sigh, but seeing their XX Mild, next to Fullers ESB, Jaipur and Brodies Citra would be far better than some of the nonsensically named homebrew that makes up the majority of beers in some real ale pub's range.

No-one wants there to be no outlets for smaller more groundbreaking breweries, but ultimately, less range lust will cut off the air supply to the more rubbish beer producers and improve the beer drinking experience for everyone.

Avoid lust at all costs!


Wee Beefy