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.