Tuesday, and we’re off travelling again, 20 miles south to Roeselare, and the Rodenbach brewery. To me, as a historian of beer and brewing, Rodenbach is a fascinating operation, since it brews well-aged ales in what is almost certainly the same way that English brewers did 150 years ago, vatted for months, or years, and… Read More If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch – Part Four
Some of the best beer tourism happens in places that are already centres for “ordinary” tourism, with plenty of stuff to see that is nothing to do with beer. That’s what makes Brussels a great place to be a beer tourist. There are many attractions apart from breweries and bars .You can wander about checking… Read More If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch – Part Two
It’s a clickbait beer, of course, a meme ale, designed at least in part to get as many mentions on social media as possible. And yet … perhaps because I’m a big fan of Marmite, I rather liked Camden Town Brewery’s Marmite Ale, made with actual Marmite as one of the ingredients. You wouldn’t want… Read More Ma might like it but pa might not …
If there is a more international, more fascinating, more illuminating, more must-not-be-missed beer celebration on the planet right now than Carnivale Brettanomyces in Amsterdam, let me know immediately, because it must be marvellous. Carnivale Brettanomyces, now on its sixth year, calls itself a beer festival, but it’s more a three-day massively parallel series of dozens… Read More Going wild (yeast) in Amsterdam
Let’s get one potentially controversial point out of the way first: this is a £20 bottle of beer. If that shocks you, you’ve not been paying attention to what’s happening in the market: there are more expensive beers than that. Some of Thornbridge’s sour creations sell at £15 for a bottle half the size. And… Read More Stock (ale) answers from Goose Island and Ron Pattinson
So, what was it like, the ancient lager Carlsberg spent two years and hundreds of thousands of kroner recreating, resurrecting yeast out of a bottle dating back to 1883, pulling out 130-year-old brewing records, growing an ancient barley variety, hiring a floor maltings, working out the most likely hop varieties to use, reproducing the original… Read More Carlsberg celebrates the ordinary
Beer’s not my usual breakfast tipple, though I’d agree with Tim Martin, founder of the Wetherspoon pub chain in the UK, that Abbot Ale is an excellent accompaniment to the traditional Full English. But I couldn’t keep away from an invitation to “brunch” with Bryan Baird, the American founder of the eponymous brewery in Numazu,… Read More Baird beer and breakfast
For a young Japanese entrepreneur, Shiro Yamada has a perhaps unlikely-sounding hero: Baron Bilimoria of Chelsea, lawyer, accountant, son of an Indian army general, and the first Parsi to sit in the British House of Lords. Bilimoria’s establishment credentials were enough to get him in the Royal Box at the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations last… Read More Designed in Japan, brewed in Belgium, drunk in Hong Kong
Eric Toft – middle-aged, handsome, seldom seen out of lederhosen despite being born in the United States, passionate about beer in all its varieties – is an American with a mission: to drag German brewing kicking and screaming out of the 16th century. After a career that would be the envy of – well, me,… Read More An evening with Eric Toft, Reinheitsgebot iconoclast
Where I come from, if you suggested cooking with Stella Artois, you’d be comprehensively jeered, by both the many fans of what is probably the fourth or fifth best-selling beer in Britain, for being a pretentious twat, and by Stella’s many haters, for promoting a mega-lager seen as, at best, bland and pointless. But where… Read More Cooking with Stella – no, no, come back …
