Canned drink, won't drink?

James over at the Summer Wine Brewery was on Twitter on Sunday pointing out a list of canned craft beers that are available in the US. He was suggesting that this is something that will be picked up by the UK 'esoteric' beer scene (I'm only quoting that because I like the word and it hopefully sidesteps more 'definition of craft' debate.)

£25 wine under screw-cap.
Tetra next?

I think that it is pretty much inevitable that more and more breweries in the UK will start to use cans for quality beer, but equally as inevitably there will be a discussion about whether or not cans are a suitable container. I won't go into the prospective benefits of cans, I think that's pretty well documented, but it does strike me that this discussion will run along similar lines to the screw-cap versus cork argument that has been running for years in the wine industry. As with screw-caps, one of the biggest barriers to convincing consumers to buy expensive beer in cans will be preconceptions, some of which will be based on the image that cans have rather than genuine suitability. Compare some domestic wine industries where there is something of a movement in favour of tetra-packed wine, but in the UK consumer research has suggested they're simply not something people would buy, and it's not because consumers have checked the science behind it.

What I think it boils down to in the wine industry (putting aside questions of suitability for long-term ageing) is that if the screw-cap is good enough, it is a far more effective closure than even the best quality cork, but by the same token a bad screw-cap is simply a bad closure. Hence the parallel with beer. Just as putting your beer in a clear bottle suggests you don't really care about what state the beer is in by the time it gets to your customers; using an old-fashioned, non-coated can suggests the use of cans is probably just a way of getting things done on the cheap. As ever, the proof of the beer is in the tasting.


Still, I wonder if the toucan can make a comeback? (Pun intended)

A Rose By Any Other Name...

Well far be it from me to say that Shakepeare, through Juliet in this case, was wrong, but it wouldn't 'smell as sweet' because apparently you can't smell sweetness. It would, of course, still smell like a rose, so as an analogy it's perfectly correct, and I'm definitely not about to advocate the re-writing of Romeo and Juliet for the purposes of a bit of discussion on taste.

When I was sitting the tutored tastings for the wine diploma there was some discussion about the notion of whether or not you can smell 'sweet'. This had nothing to do with the shower facilities at the local hotels, as it turns out it's about associations. When we think something smells sweet, it's because we're associating that particular smell with something that tastes sweet. In wine tasting metaphors are of vital importance, and to a slightly lesser extent the same applies in beer tasting - and that only slightly lessened because of what you can add to beer. Thus, a Sangiovese can smell like cherries, as a beer that has never been anywhere near a grapefruit can taste like grapefruit.

Some good, some bad? Or just... different?

With a nod to Boak & Bailey and their referencing longer articles for further reading here's one on the confusion of taste and smell. It talks about how the palate can be distracted by the nose, and vice-versa, even if in the experiments they talk about rating how sweet things smell, which further confused me since as I understand it the first real detection of sweetness occurs on the tongue - we're back to the metaphorical again I think.


All of which leads me on on to this video. I don't think it's particularly revelatory to say It's the most interesting video on the subject of spaghetti sauce I've ever watched, and if you can spare quarter of an hour or so to watch it it might well influence you next time you get into a discussion about whether or not a beer is 'good.' If it's not enough to realise that our bodies are far from perfect at tasting things, then is it further damning to think that maybe we don't even know what we like? I'm off for a coffee; dark and rich, naturally.



Video stumbled across because of a re-tweet by Juel Mahoney.

'These views are mine, and not those of the BBC.'

Now in my case this is demonstrably true. I don't work for the BBC, and I never have, so no issues for me there. If you follow some of the people who do work for the BBC on Twitter though, you'll know how large an audience they get, and I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that while their views are personal, the fact that they're on the TV or radio just might get them a larger audience.

My point? Well, Twitter's a strange beast at times. I've been involved in a conversation today about this piece, which caused something of a furore when I asked Melissa Cole (amongst others, my wife being one of them) whether they thought it made a fair comment about women as customers. It was originally re-tweeted by a very well-respected figure in the wine industry. I follow him because he led a superb class on Italian wine I took as part of my wine diploma. I was interested in reading the article because it was written by my ex-boss. Now, however much a claim to fame being my ex-boss is, I think it's pretty safe to say it isn't the reason why Julian Grocock is writing on the 'Inapub' website. No, it's because he's both a licensee, and chief executive of the Small Independent Brewers Association. So there is the problem. If you say something that is, shall we say, controversial, and your reason for being considered worth listening to is because you are the head of something, then anything you are documented as having said will always reflect on your organisation. Is that fair? Probably not, but it is human nature.

Gnomes: small.

I know some bloggers can get quite caught up in their reader statistics, but being a 'person worth listening to' seems to me to be both blessing and curse. Sometimes people will listen to you; then you have to be careful what you say. It might be worth bearing that in mind next time you're wondering whether your next blog post is worth writing because nobody will read it. Here's to the little guy!

Long Bank Holiday

This weekend I don't intend to drink anything that's from ANY commonwealth country. Cheers!

Session Beer

A rather amusing (to me at least, even if not deliberately so) rant about what defines a session beer on Ding's Beer Blog got me thinking about drinking habits.

For me the point about session beer is that it is pretty vague, it suggests a certain approach to a day enjoying the pleasure of beer rather than your day job which might well be worrying about fractions of percentages. I'll concede you might be a bit cross if you ask for a session beer in a pub and they want a tenner off you on producing a pint of some sort of triple imperial rocket fuel. In the end though it's a legal requirement to show the alcohol content of drinks served - and it's that you should be relying on rather than a bit of ethereal nomenclature - assuming you believe the label of course. If you can't work out that a 7% beer is going to get you more drunk if you throw multiple pints of it down your neck in a short space of time than a 3.7% beer would, you probably shouldn't be drinking at all. Similarly if a pub put up a list of 'session beers' on a chalk board that weighed in at six or seven percent they'd not exactly do their credibility much good but, rather like asking for a session beer without clarifying the abv first, I think that's pretty unlikely.

Beer. Friends. Session.

I'd suggest a session beer isn't simply defined by abv - some fruit beers in particular come in at a low strength, and are perfectly enjoyable, but I'd suggest even the more ardent fan wouldn't want to be drinking pint after pint of them.* By the same token, a drinking 'session' could consist of a bottle of Chimay while reading the Sunday papers or people watching from your seat outside a café  - the beer taking the place of a glass or two of vino da tavola in another universe, presumably that European one that 24 hour licensing was supposed to transport us all to.

And now? The sun is trying to shine, and I think a beer and a session of quiet contemplation and conversation beckons. With the right approach any beer can be a session beer (to misquote Aleheads), if beer's just a route to getting hammered, none of them are.

* Yes, it's a generalisation and I'm sure there are exceptions!

Figures Fuel UK Alcohol Debate?

The British Beer & Pub Association’s Statistical Handbook 2011 has suggested that drinking in the UK has been falling since 2004, according to an article on the Drinks Business website.

Leaving aside my suspicions of such statistics and their interpretation, there is one assumption that I would be perfectly prepared to make with respect to this survey: It won't get any press coverage.

This is a shame - it would be good to see this picked up and analysed - but if it turned out to be accurate and without bias, then it would hardly fit in with scare stories about 'Binge Britain,' accompanied by the usual photos of drunk women in short skirts sitting on a pavement/drunk men bleeding on a pavement that keep us informed (providing we read the Daily Hate) about how broken Britain is. Thus, it becomes a non-story before it even gets started, and consequently the debate never happens... Back to the scaremongering. Now, where did I leave my blue WKD?