Is the rise of craft beer spreading beyond pubs?

The demise of traditional pubs is a topic which has filled many column inches over the past decade, an antidote to the sadness of this decline has been the counter rise of craft beer. In London alone there are some 45 commercial breweries with several others in development and by the end of 2013 this number could hit fifty which represents a 500% increase in just five years (for more info on London’s breweries see Des de Moor’s website).

This rise in supply can only mean there has been an increase in demand to support all these new breweries. Evidence of this can be seen by an explosion of Ale dominated bars including some that have become ale pub chains such as Craft Beer Co, The Draft House and Brewdog. In addition to that there seems to be a new ale festival on the scene every other week. Personally I can think back to my University days a mere 4 years ago when festivals were a CAMRA monopoly and I don’t think any ale chains existed!

  

 Ale chains have become popular recently

So it’s clear that craft beer is on the rise but is this confined to specialist pubs and festivals or is ale becoming ubiquitous in non-ale focused environments?

I began thinking about this question recently after I attended a lovely event at Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Angel, North London held by Harviestoun to celebrate the launching of Harviestoun’s Bitter and Twisted brew into GBK’s restaurants (thanks for the free beer/burgers men and women of Harviestoun!). In my experience the availability of decent ale in restaurants, theatres, hotels is extremely poor but is this something that is beginning to change as it now has in GBK?

Harviestoun beers now in GBK restaurants.

To analyse this I set out studying menus/drink lists available online for London Hotels, Restaurants, Theatres, Museums and other similar places. My method was to work systematically through the list of the best attractions and restaurants in London on Tripadvisor. This method will obviously have some biases towards high end restaurants and the more popular central London attractions but I did go through several hundred attractions and restaurants so I think these biases are minimised as much as they can be. The obvious limitation is the availability of menus online but to be honest if a place only serves Heineken then their probably not going to bother putting it on their menu.

I’ll start with the restaurants, generally the majority of restaurants websites examined did not list any ale options at all but there were some very notable exceptions. The prime example of this was the superb selection available at Alyn Williams at the Westbury, a fine dining restaurant in the heart of Mayfair. The beer menu here really does read like a Christmas list, including beers from Meantime, Vintage Sharp brews, Nøgne Ø, Odell (including Pond Hopper their collaboration with Thornbridge which will be reviewed on here shortly) and Stone brewing (see full beer list here - go to menu-wine list-).

Alyn Williams at the Westbury has a great ale selection

I sent a few questions into the restaurant about ale and fine dining and happily the Head Sommellier, John Berastegui came back to me;

How are the ales selected and do you offer advice on matching with certain meals?

Firstly, all our Ales are selected from small, unique producers.  Ales are then selected for flavour, texture, intensity, country of origin and method of production.  We find out what our guests are eating and what flavours they enjoy before we carefully consider which Ale would best compliment the food.

How long have you had high quality ales on the menu and how have they been performing in terms of popularity with the diner?

We've offered high quality Ales since the restaurant opened in 2011 and they have proved popular with guests. 

Do you think the exploding UK market for ales will cause fine ales to become more of a feature on restaurant drink menus in the future?

There is a market for fine ales in restaurants however I believe there is still some stigma around it in fine dining establishments.  When Ales are matched by a Sommelier, the experience can be just as good as wine.

By going through lots of restaurant menus it is clear that as John says there definitely is a stigma around ales and fine dining, hundreds and hundreds of wines available but if you want a beer its Peroni or nothing, so when I next go for a nice meal out the tasting menu matched with beer at Alyn Williams at the Westbury will be my choice. Other restaurants which had some decent ale were One Leicester Street, and Chophouse at Butler’s Wharf but that really was it.

Odell/Thornbridge Collaboration brew Pond Hopper

However in contrast to London's top restaurants where ale availability is low aside from those mentioned above London’s top attractions faired reasonably well. The in-house cafes, bars and restaurants generally had some ale available, most frequent were a choice of either Fullers London Pride or Meantime brews. Interestingly the cafe at the Tate Britain states only London Pride available whereas the Tate Modern on the other side of the river has beer from Harviestoun, Camden Brewery, Brewdog, Meantime, Suthwyk Ales alongside London Pride, maybe the clientèle of the Tate Modern have more desire for ale than those of the Tate Britain? The menus certainly suggest so.

Tate Britain

Tate Modern

A good example of ale gaining a foothold in London’s attractions is the existence of the Spitfire bar in the Royal Albert Hall which despite there not being a menu available appears to be dedicated to Spitfire and other Shepherd Neame brews. I know Spitfire isn't exactly produced in small amounts but the interesting thing here is that the Royal Albert Hall has a “preferred ale partner”.

The Spitfire Bar at the Royal Albert Hall

I just want to mention one other area before I wrap up, I've been to gigs down the years and the selection is usually about as dire as it gets so I was surprised to see the ale range of the Camden Roundhouse and they therefore deserve a special mention. They have a large range on Camden Brewery ales as well as other brews from further afield such as Little Creatures Pale Ale and Tripel Karmeliet (one of my personal favourites).

The Camden Roundhouse

So is craft beer gaining a foothold in London outside of specialist pubs? Yes and no, in this blog I have highlighted some of the stand out restaurants and attractions to go to if you want a good selection of ales to choose from. There is however a definite stigma against ales in fine dining and Alyn Williams at the Westbury is the exception rather than the rule, and despite an ale generally being available at London’s attractions it would be nice if there were a little creativity and choice beyond London Pride. But on the whole I think the trend is definitely upwards and there are signs that the situation is improving for those of us who want to have a decent beer with our meal or after visiting a museum.

Craft Beer? Rising

Last weekend was the first ever Craft Beer Rising (CBR), held in the trendy Brick Lane area of London in the Old Truman Brewery building CBR is labelled as “here to throw off the shackles of a traditional beer gathering by crafting events, experiences and environments that take craft beer to the masses”. Lofty aims indeed.

The event was held over four sessions; Thursday day for trade buyers and other important people, with Friday evening, Saturday day and Saturday evening for the punters. After getting themselves into Timeout and other listings CBR sold out (each session had a capacity of 1100) at £10 a head (plus booking fees). This really is an achievement for the organisers as there were plenty more who wanted tickets with people coming to the doors on the day to see if tickets were available. In hindsight maybe they could have done a Sunday session too. Either this shows the effectiveness of the marketing for the event or the popularity of good beer in London; personally I think it was a combination of the two.

Craft Beer Rising essentially gives each brewery attending a trestle table and lets them get on with it, it’s marketed to the breweries as a chance to promote themselves to the “younger, more discerning consumer” and for this promotional opportunity the breweries have to pay a fee to be there.

In terms of the breweries represented there was about 40 contrasting breweries and I must say there was some excellent beers to be had, I particularly enjoyed a Brewdog Libertine Black Ale, Point’s Belgian White, and Offbeat’s Baby Belgian Dubbel. But I want to focus on the actual event as combined with not taking tasting notes as I went round (the horror!) I think the event’s concept and execution is more interesting.

Alongside the breweries’ stands there was also a Music room with DJ’s, live performances and a bar collaboration between the good people of Utobeer, Lost Group and Powder Keg Diplomacy which is such a good idea I wish it existed all year round.

The Breweries

I’ve had a think about the breweries that were at CBR and I’m struggling to tie them together . The term Craft is bandied around quite liberally in the information about CBR but was this really Craft Beer? As I’m a little fuzzy about definitions and I don’t want to get hung up on what is and what is not a Craft Beer but I wouldn’t expect some of the breweries at CBR to ever be considered Craft, I’m referring here to breweries like Marstons, Greene King, and Young’s. I also found it to be a slight shame that there wasn’t a real focus on London Breweries and there didn’t seem to be any geographical theme at all as breweries as diverse at Duvel, Brewdog, Steven Points Brewery (US) and Ten Saints Brewery (Barbados) were all represented. I’d be interested to know how the breweries were decided upon, but I imagine it was the ones willing to pay to be there, which is a limitation of the concept I suppose. 

I think the event would be stronger if it could be more geographically centralised as how much exposure are some of these breweries actually getting? The event would have been largely attended by Londoners and I suspect a lot of the attendees are not going to be actively hunting down for example Steven Points Brewery beers on BeersofEurope, compared to if they could get the beer they tried at CBR from a brewery nearby. It sounds like CBR want to take their event on tour and if they can get more local breweries to attend I think all parties gain and it makes the concept better.

The Pricing and Beer Tokens

To purchase beer inside CBR first you had to acquire non refundable Beer Tokens... tokens can work in a small event but there were a couple of problems here; 1) They were not refundable and I slightly over estimated how many I would need and had to go round purchasing full bottles to take home to avoid losing my money, 2) Queuing to purchase beer tokens takes time away from the breweries exposure, 3) To buy food you had to use cash. Lose the beer tokens and just use cash is the summary here.

The entry fee for CBR was £10 plus a booking fee of £1.75ish which I think was basically unavoidable. This is a lot considering you do not get any freebies and the session I attended was 4 hours in total.

Interesting Ideas

CBR had a couple of interesting ideas which I haven’t seen at a festival before which are worth mentioning. There was an app where you download it and get free things or offers etc, this was clever as the app people get people to download it and the punters get flash promotions and challenges. Sadly this was an iPhone only app and I’m an Android person myself but it did seem a good idea. The semi gourmet street food was also good as usually at festivals the food can leave a lot to be desired, I had a rather nice frankfurter which set me up for the evening.

Location and Set Up

Craft Beer Rising essentially gives each brewery attending a trestle table and lets them get on with it. I liked the fact that this gave the opportunity to chat to staff from the breweries rather than pointing at a barrel which made the event a little more interactive. The downside was that early on in the evening before everybody had navigated the queues to get in and get tokens I felt that there was a bit of an odd vibe as it was a bit brewer v brewer as they were aware that they losing time to expose their brand, this took some aspects of the celebration of good beer away and replaced it with a more Darwinian trade show feel, but once the queues subsided and everybody got in the atmosphere was much better.

For me £10 is too much when you can get into other festivals in cool locations such as the upcoming Wandsworth Beer Festival at Le Gothique for much less including a glass. Reduce the entry fee, make it more about the great beer you can get locally from craft breweries, get rid of the token system and I think the event would be improved. Overall I had a good time at CBR and I think CBR is a good twist on the standard beer festival which just needs some tweaks here and there which will come with experience.

Please don't Kill These Darlings

This is my first blog in about a month, I’ve been moving house and a few other things going on which have distracted me from spewing my thoughts on ale into the blogosphere, but do not fear I’ve still been drinking, heavily. Sixteen new beverages have made it onto my spreadsheet but I’m only going to pick out five of them that have really stood out for me in terms of quality.

Thornbridge Kill Your Darlings, 5.0%

Kill Your Darlings is Thornbridge’s take on the Vienna style lager and I must say there marketing spiel on the label is very polished and explains away the name ‘the term Kill Your Darlings is used by writers to describe the painful process of cutting cherished characters or scenes which don’t serve their overall story. This captures out brewing spirit and asks us not to be too precious about beer’. It pours a darkish copper with a nice white creamy head, a sweet fragrance with some subtle spice and maybe a little honey, to taste there are crisp malt breadiness with some sweetness very refreshing and full bodied with a snappy  dry finish. Well let’s hope this doesn’t get cut from Thornbridge’s repertoire as I love this lager and its one of the few I regularly order, 8.75/10.

Alechemy Cockleroy Black IPA, 4.8%

Alechemy technically have two breweries in West Lothian, Scotland one is their 1650 litre (10BBL) main plant and there is a smaller test and special batch plant of 100 litres (0.5BBL). First of all I must say I like the label design on this bottle, no walls of text here just strong design and quite a lot of information about the beer itself and where the name ‘Cockleroy’ comes from which is a local landmark bearing a Bronze Age hill fort (this fits with Alechemy’s naming convention of local landmarks). The beer pours a very dark brown, with a nice lacy white head, aroma of citrus and burnt malts, the taste has flavours of grapefruit and pine but with a backbone of chocolaty malts and is well hopped with a clean slightly bitter finish. A real contender for my favourite Black IPA, 8.25/10.

Victory Golden Monkey, 9.5%

Victory Brewing Company operate out of Pennsylvania, USA where they have a 300 seat restaurant and a full on brewery, this is a Belgian style tripel and pours a deep yellow with a hefty head which receded a little to begin with but then held at one finger. The Belgian yeast imparts spice and a little fruitiness to go with cloves and banana notes, the taste was sweet with more banana and cloves with an intrinsic slight level spice on a backbone of malts, a really pleasant mouthfeel and I found it very smooth and drinkable, 8.5/10.

Redchurch Old Ford Export Stout, 7.5%

This is the first of a series of special edition brews from Redchurch according to their website, brewed in Bethnal Green in East London, Redchurch make some cracking beer and I particularly enjoyed their Hoxton Stout a few months ago (read about that brew here). The Old Ford pours an impenetrable dark, dark brown with a nice tan head, I got aromas of dark chocolate, roasted caramel, and a little coffee. To taste it begins with big flavours of coffee followed up by sweet dark chocolate and then a complex bitter sweet ending with a really smooth mouthfeel. Such a well balanced stout which never lets any of its big flavours overpower each other, 8.75/10.

Einstok Icelandic White Ale, 5.2%

Einstok’s labelling make me want to go Iceland even more than I want to already (which is a lot), hailing from the North of the Iceland in Akureyri they have a motto which I spied on their website of “Drink, Conquer, Repeat”. The Icelandic White Ale pours a hazy yellow with a tight white head, a yeasty and sweet aroma with essences of coriander, lemon and orange. To taste the White Ale you get a little bit of sweetness and spice combined with yeast and fruit which is taken over by the orange peel flavours, a citrus aftertaste and a wholesome mouthfeel complete this refreshing, excellent ale, 8/10.

The Old Man of Hoy

First blog of the new year, and I've had three more brews;

Swannay Orkney Best, 3.6%

The Orkney Best is from the Swannay Brewery in Orkney, the picture on the label is of The Old Man of Hoy which is the tallest rock stack in the UK at 450ft tall, I wouldn't normally comment on a random picture on the label but as a former Geography student this sort of thing I find interesting. This light ale has a yellow straw colour, a minimal hoppy nose, the taste was floral hops and very light malts, and for me it’s a little too thin even though it is a light ale, it could have a bit more flavour, 5/10.

Springhead Brewery The Leveller, 4.8%

The Springhead Brewery from Nottinghamshire, began life in 1990 when for a period it was the smallest brewery in England but since then they have grown into a sizeable microbrewery with 21 separate ales available. The Leveller pours a dark ruby with a nice beige foam head, aromas of roasted malts, toffee and a little dark chocolate, and I’d use exactly the same words for the taste with a mild bitter finish, very nice, 7.25/10.

Cairngorm Sheepshaggers Gold, 4.5%

The Cairngorm Brewery Co sited in Aviemore in Scotland have recently upgraded to a 20 barrel brewery due to demand. The Sheepshagger pours a light golden colour with a good head, this continental style beer has aromas of malts and caramel, tastes quite sweet with some citrus and biscuit nuttiness from the malts, a light bitter finish, 7.5/10.