luka

Well-known member
was drinking brodies at their pub in leyton friday. got so drunk im probably never able to go back. downing pints of 10%stout. very badly behaved.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
was drinking brodies at their pub in leyton friday. got so drunk im probably never able to go back. downing pints of 10%stout. very badly behaved.

TBH any publican fool enough to serve beer that strong by the pint is asking for some pretty rude behaviour.

I'm drinking this:

beer_80407.jpg


right now. Not a widely-known brewery but it's pretty good, doesn't taste gimmicky. I'm glad I warmed it up a bit from the fridge, even on a day like today.
 

luka

Well-known member
i quite liked them for their wild west approach to running a pub. its nuts in there. i really reccommend a visit. TWO POUND FIFTY A PINT. and your pint could be 10%. if you like chaos you must go.
 

luka

Well-known member
i think the kernal is beyond reproach really. changed my attitudes to beer completely. ive had nice individual beers from the other uk lot but none as consistently interesting as kernel.
 

Immryr

Well-known member
i dunno if interesting is the right word for kernel. they don't really do anything that is unusual or out there, they just make very very good beers.
 
who here has go into home brewing?

I've done plenty of kit beers- it's the beer version of making orange squash, albeit 100 times more labour intensive. Most have turned out pretty bad. There's a fine line between leaving it long enough (or at a high enough temperature) to achieve a decent carbonation... and leaving it too long and it becomes infected. Infected beer is still drinkable though, just tastes crap. I have since learned though that if you have a batch of beer that is disappointingly flat when it's supposed to be 'ready' just leave it sitting for 6 months and it will clear to a decent drink.

-Is there a new school of thought in brewing that has turned around the old belief that bitter tasting sediment at the bottom of the bottle is a bad thing? Because for me Brewdog are spearheading this attitude. Their beers taste like they've been badly poured into a glass even when they haven't. I could write it off as trivial if it wasn't for the fact that their beers are taking up so much shelf-space.
 
Last edited:

Immryr

Well-known member
who's old belief is that? sediment in the bottle means that it is bottle conditioned and is a live product like cask ale. even boring old traditionalists, who think any kind of beer over 4 percent is crazy and that fuggles and golding are the only hops, will tell you that bottle conditioned beer is better.
 
The aim is not to disturb the sediment as it tastes bad, hence why you store bottles upright, don't shake them about, pour slowly down the side of the glass, leave the last centimetre in the bottle and leave your pint to settle for a few minutes. To my mind Brewdog beers taste choc a block full of that unwanted dead yeast. Most breweries don't build an entire range of beers with that characteristic and end up in the top tiers of the independent beer league.
 
Last edited:

viktorvaughn

Well-known member
I can never get excited by Kernel. Their beers go from alright to really quite nice, but the stylishly minimalist packaging / naming strategy means I can never remember which one's which, and frequently don't bother.

No way! I know what you mean about the confusing ness over the names, they seem to brew so many IPAs and Pale Ales with different hop combinations, or sometimes even the same combo but a different %.

The recent SCANS and SCCANS (I think that's what they were! initials from the hop types) are amazing if you see them anywhere, and thier Export India Porter is sublime - a kind of cradling broad taste of classic porter with this spritely green hoppyness laid over the top of it....delish.

Thier brewery if pretty cool for a trip cos you can get the beer at the normal retail cost and sit there are drink them, bring some lunch in...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The aim is not to disturb the sediment as it tastes bad, hence why you store bottles upright, don't shake them about, pour slowly down the side of the glass, leave the last centimetre in the bottle and leave your pint to settle for a few minutes. To my mind Brewdog beers taste choc a block full of that unwanted dead yeast. Most breweries don't build an entire range of beers with that characteristic and end up in the top tiers of the independent beer league.

I think it depends very much on the beer. Most UK styles are traditionally served clear but there are loads of continental types, especially anything wheaty, where it's mean to be cloudy and are even instructed on the bottle to pour it in such a way as get to the sediment into the your glass.

This enormously hoppy Belgian ale:

hopus.png


comes served with a beer glass and also a special shot glass, the idea being that you pour 9/10 of the beer into the glass and the last drop into the shot glass, with this thick sediment of yeast and hop extract in it, and if you're so inclined you can finish by doing a shot of this hyperhopped beer. Which is kind of a novelty but actually quite good, in a bracing sort of way.

With UK cask ales, I find that cloudiness affects the look much more than the taste, unless you can actually feel pieces of grot floating around in your mouth, which isn't nice. People say that drinking cloudy cask beer gives you the shits something terrible the next day, but I haven't found that one cloudy pint causes any problems.

Unrelatedly, I spent the w/e in London and am seriously starting to wonder whether this US-style 'craft beer' invasion is entirely a good thing for beer quality and choice. So many of them just seem like a caricature of a British or continental beer style, they're often very expensive, they can be offputtingly strong (esp. in the summer when you want to quaff) and are invariably served far too cold. OTOH, I had a pint of pretty good stout that was only £3 in an American style brew-restaurant (brasserie, I guess) off Kinglsand Road yesterday.
 
Last edited:

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
The recent SCANS and SCCANS (I think that's what they were! initials from the hop types) are amazing if you see them anywhere, and thier Export India Porter is sublime - a kind of cradling broad taste of classic porter with this spritely green hoppyness laid over the top of it....delish.
I continued my efforts to get interested in them the other day, and had the stella IPA and the Export India Porter and thought they were both really good but in a non-exciting sort of way, if you know what I mean. Whereas the De Molen smoked thing I had the same evening was amazing.

Other things: I've been getting into Oakham beers again recently. They're really good - I like their bloody-minded "MORE HOPS PLEASE" approach. I can never quite figure out whether they've got craft / hipster cachet, though - lots of hops, but branding not very on-trend.
 
Last edited:

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Other things: I've been getting into Oakham beers again recently. They're really good - I like their bloody-minded "MORE HOPS PLEASE" approach. I can never quite figure out whether they've got craft / hipster cachet, though - lots of hops, but branding not very on-trend.

When I worked at the erstwhile Head Of Steam in Euston, I don't think I ever saw beer fly out of a pump faster than this one time we had a really spectacular barrel of Oakham JHB on. My god, that stuff was amazing. Their pump clips and bottles do seem to be very much on the real ale side of the real ale/craft beer divide. Hipster caché can get to fuck when you've got beer that good, though.
 
Well even if the Hopus shot glass thing is a novelty it can't be any more gimmicky than the Guinness two-pour torturous wait or the fake mexican lime in the bottle neck trick- gimmicks sell. I'd certainly give it a try but I suppose the chances of ever seeing it for sale are slim to none.

To be honest I'm just surprised at Brewdog's success given their extreme bitterness that clearly isn't to my taste- was wondering if it could be defined into a particular beer category- their marketing spiel seems to be that they are focussed on creating beers that are a little bit less ordinary and more flavoursome. At the end of the day I'm just trying to educate myself in a complex field. Like, why have newkie brown never released a draught version that isn't as watered down as the bottled version? Is there a name for the 'flat' beers that are ubiquitous in beer festivals but are rarely seen in a real pub, etc.

And aside from all that: this is the one for me when it comes to Northern Irish brews. Completely new company with only one beer in the range- they got it right first time round. Won't win any UK wide awards but it's a step in the right direction, professionally done beer on a small scale. You could probably count the number of pubs & off licences this is sold at on both hands- probably NOT coming to an East London hipster friendly bar near you and all good record shops

559144_267574473355444_1041874548_n.jpg
 
Last edited:

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
In fairness, Guinness does have to be poured in two goes, otherwise the head is just ludicrously large and you're actually ripping customers off for a sizable volume. Although it certainly doesn't take two minutes, as claimed in their silly adverts. Guinness Extra Cold (was there ever a more pointless beer?) can be poured faster, which I think is the reason a lot of pub chains push it so much - I've seen bars that only have the extra-cold variety.

And the lime/lemon wedge traditionally served in Mexican beers has nothing to do with the flavour and everything to do with keeping flies out of the bottle.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
When I worked at the erstwhile Head Of Steam in Euston, I don't think I ever saw beer fly out of a pump faster than this one time we had a really spectacular barrel of Oakham JHB on. My god, that stuff was amazing. Their pump clips and bottles do seem to be very much on the real ale side of the real ale/craft beer divide. Hipster caché can get to fuck when you've got beer that good, though.
It occurred to me the other day that possibly the reason that there's so much air chatted in the UK about "craft beer" vs whatever is not, as is commonly claimed, that there's no definition of "craft beer" over here, it's that there are about four, to whit:
* good beer served from kegs, not casks
* beer in an "extreme" and unconventional style with strong flavours or high ABV
* beer with hipster-friendly branding
* beer brewed by people who are passionate about producing a quality product
and that a number of people tend to lose sight of (or deliberately ignore) the fact that none of these definitions are, in fact, equivalent to one another.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
According to The Angel & Greyhound in east Oxford (an otherwise reasonably priced - for Oxford - Young's pub), it means 'costs the best part of a fiver a pint'.
 
Top