Adam Croft

It looks as though Christmas has come early! This morning I took great delight in accepting a delivery of beer from Daas – an organic premium Belgian brewer. Out of the two I received, I decided to review the Daas Witte wheat beer first – partly because I quite like wheat beers and mainly because it’s not even 1:30pm yet and the Witte is the weaker of the two beers, coming in at 5.0% ABV.

The beer pours very lively and gives a beautiful hazy appearance – deceiving for a Belgian beer newcomer, but characteristic of any good wheat beer. The nose is fantastic. You can smell the yeast underneath the immense fresh, fruity aroma. The mouthfeel is incredible as the liveliness of the beer accentuates the spicy, citrus flavours. The hop character is superb – just right for a spicy wheat beer. There is a noticeable nod to grapefruit and sharp orange flavours which are given a fantastic twang by the hops employed – a bitterness which lasts long after the last sip.

The hop kick leans nicely towards the English Blonde Ale profile, making it an ideal beer for the English drinker who wants to experience the best that Belgium has to offer. Whilst being incredibly accessible from a drinking point of view, Daas Witte remains loyal to its wheat beer profile and is a fantastic example of the style. This beer is strong and feisty in every way. In fact, I’d go one further and say that this beer is downright sexy.

As I sit and write this in mid December, it’s probably not the best time to be drinking an iconic summer refresher but my radiator is extremely warm tonight so I see no reason to pay reverence to my calendar.

This is a beer which will be recognisable to any real ale drinker across Britain and I’m sure there is nothing I can say about this beer which hasn’t already been said. I’m going to have a go, though.

The brewery describe Summer Lightning as ‘an extremely pleasant bitter, straw coloured beer with a terrific fresh, hoppy aroma. This, coupled with an intense bitterness, leads to an excellent long, dry finish.’

The beer pours cleanly and leaves a respectable, though short-lived, head. For such a light-coloured beer, though, it’s quite impressive. Said colour is a light straw hue and would be considered very light even for a commercial lager – let alone a real ale. The nose is light and zingy with citrus notes and a detectable hop component. It’s very fragrant in a flowery sense and has a certain lager quality to it. As the head settles, it smells noticeably like a German Kölsch.

The mouthfeel is sharp and zingy with the citrus notes coming through before you’ve even swallowed. There’s a definite hint of light liqourice coming through from the hop character; a strange thing to say about such a light beer, but it’s there. The hops continue through to the aftertaste which is sharp and somewhat tart in its bitterness. The peaty notes of the hops stay with you long past the aftertaste and leave you with a delightful reminder of what you’ve got to go back to.

This is a beer which has won many awards across the United Kingdom but, like so many, is not quite the same in bottled form as it is on draught or gravity dispense at a beer festival. A lot of light, hoppy beers struggle to find the same form in a bottle as they do au naturele but Hopback Summer Lightning does a comparatively good job of it. It’s quite amazing at how long the flavours linger in your mouth – long after the last sip has been taken.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m off to enjoy the rest of the bottle.

This is the second of my BeerSwap beers as sent to me by Mark Fletcher and if last night’s beer is anything to go by I’m looking forward to this one! The beer comes in at 3.8% and is described on the brewery’s website as “an easy drinking pale ale. Light and hoppy with delicate floral notes and a well balanced finish.”

The nose is similar to the Leeds Best, but certainly more floral and yeasty. The yeasty smell was hard to pick out at first as the floral hop aroma fills the air but the more you smell, the more you notice the strong undercurrent of yeast. Onto the taste and the mouthfeel is lively and fresh with flowers dancing all over my tongue. There’s a massive fresh hop zing and a beautiful mellow citrus taste which leaves you wanting more. It’s even slightly appley – hops and fruit all the way which makes for a wonderfully refreshing beer. I don’t know which hops are used in this particular beer but I’m willing to wager the presence of some Challengers in there. The yeast is back on the aftertaste with the beer tasting fresh and ‘new’ – just how I like it.

It’s very rare that you get a bottle conditioned ale which tastes as though it’s fresh from the barrel but the Leeds beers I’ve tasted have been delightfully consistent. Fresh, light, hoppy, and very, very drinkable. Mark – you can send me more of these any time you like!!

As an amateur home brewer and lover of all things beer, I recently joined the Craft Brewing Association. I had been recommended to join by a couple of existing CBA members and at £15 per year, membership seemed more than worthwhile.

Shortly after joining, I received an email to let me know that my application was being processed and that I would receive a welcome pack in the post. The welcome pack arrived on my doormat this morning and I must say I’m impressed. Aside from the personalised letter, they had sent a list of all the members in my local area and encouraged me to make contact with them. As well as this, they included details of all the Craft Brewing Groups nationwide as well as details of upcoming events. They had also sent me the three latest copies of the association’s flagship newsletter, the highly informative and interesting Brewer’s Contact (cover price £2.50 per issue).

All in all, I must say I’m very impressed. Brewer’s Contact alone makes the subscription worthwhile and I’m sure I’ll get to see many of the other benefits once I start speaking to other members and attending events. If you’re a brewer, homebrewer, or even remotely interested in beer, I highly recommend you join the Craft Brewing Association.

Leeds Best, from the Leeds Brewery, was one of the fantastic beers I was glad to receive as part of this year’s BeerSwap scheme. Coming in at 4.3%, it’s described on the brewery’s website as “A classic Yorkshire Bitter. Finest English hops blend perfectly with our unique Yorkshire yeast to create a full flavoured beer with a superb hoppy finish.”

On the pour, the beer retains a decent head and shows a clean light amber glow. The nose is sharp and fruity with noticeable hints of strawberry and grape. The alcohol is also very apparent on the back of the nose which took me a little by surprise.

Onto the first taste, and the beer tastes dry and fresh with the hop character doing most of the work. No sign of the strawberries and grapes from the nose, though. In fact, there’s a distinct lack of fruity flavour but that’s by no means a bad thing. The ‘unique strain of Yorkshire yeast’ as advertised on the bottles gives a pleasing freshness and a nice yeasty flavour.

A few tastes later and the fruity flavours start to come through. The fresh grapey notes are apparant and the dry, grassy bitterness from the hops gives a superb finish. As you get further down the glass, the hop kick does, as with most similar beers, blend away into the background a little as your palate adjusts and gives way to something of a lager quality. Perhaps it should be referred to as a quality lager quality, as this isn’t a bad  thing at all. All in all, this is a very pleasant beer in superb condition and with just my kind of hop balance.

This Tuesday sees the start of a brand new TV series highlighting the decline of the British pub industry whilst attempting to revive five failing pubs. I was fortunate to be able to interview the programme’s presenter, Jay Smith, himself a successful pub landlord.

What made you want to get involved with this new TV series?
Community pubs have always been the backbone of life in our towns and villages, a place for neighbours to meet properly, friendships to be made and community spirit to be nurtured and grown, with the sad demise of this British institution we risk losing this cornerstone of our heritage forever, once it’s gone we will never get it back. It’s time for action and I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to make a difference.

What were your general observations regarding the landlords and landladies involved in your programme?
In many of the programmes the pubs were already closed and the landlord long gone, in the instances they were still around there almost always seemed to have been a huge breakdown in the relationship between the pub and it’s local punters, once this bond is broken in a small community closure soon follows.

To what do you personally attribute the decline of the British pub industry?
There are clearly many factors and it is all too easy to start pointing the finger at one thing or another: Competition from cheaper city centre venues, the smoking ban, supermarket deals, have all had a huge impact but it is also fair to say that many of the Pubs visited in the making of the show simply offered far too little in return for customers hard earned cash; communication was often poor, food below par, service standards behind the bar were often dated and fell a long way short of peoples expectations.

Do you think the UK pub industry will ever get back to what it was?
No. We will clearly never return to times where we had villages with multiple pubs, there simply isn’t the demand. What is absolutely vital is that we stop the trend of the last local closing, this is simply unacceptable and communities need to act. Lodging objections to planning applications has become more and more visible in these communities and hopefully after seeing Save Our Boozer the next step will be for locals to take on their pub and give it new life for the long term.

With general pub sales and lager revenues down and real ale sales increasing, what role do you see traditional British ales playing in the future of the pub industry?
Without the explosion of micro brewers and general consumer awareness of the fantastic real ales being produced around the country the Pub industry would undoubtedly be in even more trouble than it is already. Whilst it would be unwise for the industry to pin all of it’s hopes on real ale it is a very clear sign that consumers expect choice, quality and professionally cared for products when going to the pub.

Your trials and tribulations in the pub industry are fairly well documented. What aspects did you find were key to turning your career around and becoming a successful and profitable landlord?
Customer focus and cost control. If you are losing customers you are missing the point of what they want, if you carve a niche and excel at serving both regulars and new customers you will start to see the shoots of recovery. Couple this with exceptional cost control and complete dedication to making your pub or bar better than your nearest competitor and you are on the right track. In my case I had to get rid of almost all staff, change many suppliers for better deals and scrap any plans I had for time off for a few years!

After your involvement with the series and the five sets of pub landlords, what do you think is the secret to saving the great British pub?
Community. Without their support the local boozer is doomed, if they don’t have the time to help out they can do their bit by buying a pint or two instead of that six pack from the shop! The areas I visited where the pub was already shut realised this without hesitation but sadly there were areas where locals were still convinced someone would just turn up and open a great pub just for them and all would be well in the world again…

Many thanks to Jay for providing us with an extra insight into the programme. Save Our Boozer is on Blighty from Tuesday 8th December at 8pm.

First things first: Please forgive the poor quality of images in this post. I seem to have mislaid the memory card for my camera so I’ve had to take all the pictures on my iPhone.

I like to throw myself in at the deep end, so my first beer review on the blog is of a beer that I suspect most of you won’t have heard of. Concrete Cow Brewery are based in nearby Milton Keynes and their beer range, although fairly small, is of a consistently high quality.

I was fortunate enough to take a tour of the brewery earlier this year, where I met Concrete Cow’s owner and head brewer, Dan Bonner. Dan left his high-paying accountancy job to start the brewery in August 2007 with his only experience being, in his own words, ‘one or two disastrous homebrews twenty-odd years ago’. It really doesn’t show, though. I was amazed at the quality of the beers Dan brews at the brewery and have been a big fan of his beers ever since. I haven’t, however, ever had one of his bottle conditioned ales. This is a first for you and me both.

The bottle is simple, yet catchy, and sits nicely in theme with the rest of Concrete Cow’s BCA labels. The label describes the tale behind the Fenny Popper, stating: ‘Since about 1770 the six small ceremonial cast iron cannons known as the Fenny Poppers have been fired each St. Martin’s Day and on other national occasions at Fenny Stratford, Milton Keynes. A new set were cast in 1859 after one of the originals exploded causing a fire… almost destroying a nearby pub.

Right, on to the beer.

The brew comes in at 4.0% ABV and the aroma direct from the bottle is a distinctively bitter hop one. The condition of the beer is slightly cloudy, despite having settled for a day and a half, but I suspect I may have chilled it slightly below the recommended temperature, so I’ll call that one my fault. Aroma from the glass is even hoppier and fuller than that from the bottle with the hops also very evident in mouthfeel. Even without physically tasting the beer, the hops are definitely very prominent.

Immediate taste, surprisingly, has the hops subsiding and letting the rest of the flavours through. There’s a distinctive citrus note that comes through, which then merges into more of a grapefruit touch. Grapefruit? I know where this is going… Yep – the hops are back and in full force as the finish gives us a long, lingering bitterness. The experience reminds me very much of one of my favourite light ales – Dark Star American Pale – and that’s a good thing to say the least. As the aftertaste subsides my mouth is left dry but certainly not in any negative way. It leaves me wanting more, more, more.

The really exciting thing, for me, is that one of you lucky Beer Swap participants is going to be the lucky recipient of a bottle of Fenny Popper as I’ve selected it as one of my beers. I’m not allowed to say who the fortunate recipient is, but he or she is a very lucky man or woman indeed!

As I tend to participate quite heavily in the beer/real ale community on Twitter, I was recently made aware of an excellent new idea: Beer Swap.

Essentially, each participant in the Beer Swap scheme sends their name and address to the organisers (Andy Mogg – @chilliupnorth and Mark Dredge – @markdredge) who then assign each beer swapper a partner. The idea is that the participants then select four local and interesting beers to send to their swap partner. The result is that we all get to try a range of new bottled beers which we otherwise may not have been able to have done.

I think I’m going to use Chiltern Brewery (Aylesbury), Tring (Tring), and Concrete Cow (Milton Keynes) as my local beers. With a bit of luck I may even be able to get some bottles from Banks & Taylor (Shefford) or White Park (Cranfield).

Overall, it promises to be an excellent scheme and I look forward to receiving my first Beer Swap package! If you’re interested in participating, you need to read the instructions and apply before 6pm today, Monday 26th October. Good luck!

I noticed an article on the BBC News website earlier today detailing the release of a new 1.1% ale created by the BrewDog brewery in response to their controversial 18.2% Tokyo* brew. My initial reaction was much along the lines of ‘good on them’, but all is not as it seems when one reads between the lines.

The new beer has been named, rather unimaginatively and immaturely, ‘Nanny State’. Now, BrewDog are well known for their balshy, unsubtle, in-your-face, beer names. The brewery has previously been in hot water over their naming of their Speedball brew (’speedballing’ is the name given to the practice of combining heroin and cocaine) . This continued outlook is irresponsible and paints BrewDog in a very bad light. In my opinion, they’d be far better off engaging in a professional PR campaign rather than trying to gain headlines by being ‘edgy’ and ‘unique’. Quite simply, boys, you look ridiculous. Not only are you giving yourselves a bad name, but you’re giving beer a bad name.

BrewDog have already attempted to wind up the rest of the beer industry by referring to real ale as ’stuffy’, declaring that their childishly-named Hardcore IPA is aimed at ‘freaks, gypsies…’, and stating that their aims are ‘breaking rules, taking risks, upsetting trends, unsettling institutions’. These are all taken straight from their website.

It’s no secret that this sort of publicity seems to be working for BrewDog, who claim to be Scotland’s largest independent brewery. Does that, however, make it right? There’s an old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity but I must say I disagree. It seems that BrewDog don’t have the brewing ability, knowledge or experience to make half decent beers so they instead opt for the boring, tired strategy of being ‘different’. Whatever happened to being ‘good’? Brewing the UK’s strongest ever beer, giving your brews childish, controversial names and courting media attention in this way is not professional and does not give a good image at all.

Of course, BrewDog are unlikely to care, seeing as they’re ‘punk’ and ‘cool’. It’s a shame beer isn’t. Promoting class A drugs, misogyny, and super-strength alcohol at young people is not responsible, is not clever, and just isn’t cricket. Wrong industry, lads.

Just a quick heads up: I’m going to be speaking live on KCC Live 99.8FM in Liverpool tomorrow evening sometime between 5:30-6:15pm. I’ll be speaking about real ale and young people and the growing trend in ale consumption amongst young people. You can listen online, apparently, so do so!