Motley'd..again

Yup, it's gonna be painful. I have just placed an order with Otley Brewing for 6 Otley casks and 1 Purple Moose cask, including the 5.5% abv Motley Brew which I thought had been sold out!
As it turns out it wasn't so it should be on the bar by the weekend, maybe in time for 5pm Friday when my weekend starts and I can have a few jars after work!

Right time to order a new liver and hope the queue ain't too long!

Other news on the Motley/Otley front is that Nick and I have arranged for me to go back to Ponty and brew the second batch of the 7.5% Motley Brew for later on in the year AND a new exciting strawberry beer too, roll on July!

SIBA - Wales & The West

So as you'll see from my previous post I just spent Friday judging beers in Ludlow for SIBA's regional Wales and The West competition.
Having never been to a beer competition as a judge before I was a bit overwhelmed at the start of the day.
The first category I was judging was Speciality and at my table, amongst others were my mate Melissa Cole and Pete Brown, Influential Beer Writer! ;-)
The beers themselves were nothing 'special' let alone speciality! There were a couple that stood out more than the others but putting them in a speciality category seemed to be a bit of a cop-out as they should probably have been in another category.

The second round I judged was Premium Bitters, it was the second round for this category and therefore all the shite had been weeded out by the time we got to this table. What a transformation! Oh my God! The best beers on the table were the last two we had, Salopian Prohibiiton, which eventually came overall third in the competition, and The Mutts Nutts by Spinning Dog Brewery, lovely chocolatey, roasted nuts.

For the record, Overall winner was Darwins Origin by Salopian so well done to Wilf and Jake you're making some fantastic beers, keep it up!

Another highlight of the trip was one of the local pubs, The Church, so named because it has a church behind it. It was serving the local beers on cask and boy were they good, I woke up with a terrible hangover on friday morning having spent all thursday night watching the election until 2.30am drinking Ludlow Gold a marvellous beer that you have to drink if you ever make it to Ludlow!

All in all a good couple of days out of town, it helps to break up the week a bit and I hope to be asked back next year!

Paying Fr-homage to Pete Brown - Influential Beer Writer!

Pete Brown, Influential Beer Writer. And some git with a dodgy jacket.

Just got back to London from Ludlow where I was one of about 60-odd judges for the SIBA Wales and West regional beer competition.
It's only fair that in an election week we should take the time to celebrate a candidate that, whilst he didn't stand in this years election, probably should have. After all if you read his blog you'll know just how outspoken on licensing policy and the stupidity of the neo-prohibitionists.
He was another of those 60-odd judges at Ludlow this week and whilst I had to make do with Glyn Roberts, The Rake, Borough Market, Utobeer & Lovebeer on my name badge, He didn't, Pete Brown, Influential Beer Writer. Well that's what was printed on his name badge.
Is he really that influential? I personally happen to think so, Pete is one of those writers that helps give people inspiration, he has the sort of passion for beer that is infectious.
I've only read one of his 3 books on beer at this moment in time, that was Hops and Glory, a fantastic piece of writing about brewing an IPA and making the trip to India just like the old days.
To have the idea in the first place and then have the bollocks to follow it through was sheer genius, either that or insanity but the resulting book was clever, funny and informative.
Another thing to point out is that whilst Pete is at the top of the Wilkio rankings, it hasn't gone to his head, he may well be Pete Brown, Influential Beer Writer to them but he's also a jolly nice chap and it's always a pleasure to see Pete and Liz whenever they grace us with their presences.
One example of his 'jolly niceness' was me getting an email from himself and Liz inviting me to their Christmas party last year, I was honoured to be asked and also intrigued, I REALLY wanted to see his beer cellar! People send him beer for his opinion, how he's ever going to get through that amount of beer is beyond me, lets re-state, he gets SENT that beer, people want his opinion, people want his approval, a good word about a beer and a brewery could start selling loads, he has that much influence.
As I have said to various people in the past, I joined Wilkios rankings out of morbid curiosity and since then it has spurred me on to write more, I have aspirations, I want to be Pete Brown Influential Beer Writer(well Glyn Roberts, Influential Beer Writer) one day and I don't see anything wrong with that.

So here's to you Pete Brown, Influential Beer Writer! may you continue to, well, be you.

Oh and, for the record I know that my blog will never go to number one in Wilkios rankings but it's nice to dream.

I want beer!

I want beer! Unfortunately I've been sensible today and not bought any. Part of the reason is that it was my Stag do on Sunday and I completely pickled my liver, there isn't enough milk thistle in the world that will help!
I have a bottle of 2009 Gouden Carolus Cuvee van de Keizer lying in the fridge taunting me. I'd have to 'unchill' it a wee bit before drinking it but as I type it's 00.19am and I need to go to bed soon.
The reason I need to go to bed soon is that I'm judging for SIBA on Friday and need to sort my shit out before I go(it was also another reason not to buy beer today).
So I'll tell you what I am drinking instead, it's a pint of London tap Water that has been flavoured with a cheap, unnamed orange squash.
Beer it ain't.

A call to action?

Reading Pete Browns Beer Blog this afternoon, feverishly looking to see if I had broken into Wilkio's top 20, alas I had not, no one had, the top 20 were all the same!
Makes me think about why I write the blog, well kinda, I enjoy writing, to me it's a form of expression that is sometimes easier than talking.
It's not that good(my writing I mean) but people take the time out of their busy lives to read it and that in itself is appreciated.

So Pete's blog(if you didn't click on the link) was about the general lack of inspiration in beer blogging at the moment and he has a point, apart from a couple of people there does seem to be a malaise on the beer blogging scene at the moment.
So what IS interesting? what does make people prick their ears up and listen?
Certainly not the crap I was spewing out with beer of the day just to keep my mind ticking over. Safe to say his slap in the chops worked, why be lazy when you can at least try and be interesting.

Pete was very correct in saying that some blogs have become an extended form of ticking and I could certainly point out a few, not going to though, glass houses and all that!
So what if I drank this beer or that beer and enjoyed it or didn't? who the fuck cares??
I would think that the brewer would care, if I was a brewer I would personally enjoy people writing good stuff about my beer, even bad stuff that was praising their beer would/should give a brewer a sense of achievement.
As manager of The Rake I have worked my arse off in the last 20 months to turn around a reputation of knowledge without care and every time I read something good about The Rake I feel a sense of achievement.

So is it really so bad that people are 'ticking' beers on their blogs? I've recently become aware that whenever I used Ratebeer by rating a beer I was critiquing someone's work, isn't that what beer blogging is? Our opinions of other peoples work? Anyway I went from using Ratebeer as a form of ticking to using it as a tool for finding out about beers for work. Why would I do this? mainly I suppose because I didn't think that I was qualified to make such criticism about something I knew very little about, I still don't and I won't 'score' beer in that way until I am arrogant enough to believe my own hype.

So, in summation then, I will continue to write about beer that I enjoy and beer that I don't but I will never again 'rate' a beer as better than another, I mean what's the point, it's all subjective anyway.

What's your favourite summer beer?

I asked the question on twitter a week or so ago. It's not exactly a hard question to answer, is it? Well actually yes, I think it is. It all depends on several things such as the occasion, the weather, who you're drinking with and where you're drinking. So many things to think about.
For instance my favourite beers recently have been Goose Island IPA and Motley Brew, Goose Island IPA is a great all-rounder, that means I could drink it any time, any where, it's that tasty, that consistent. Whereas Motley Brew is better enjoyed in company and happens to taste better in the winter and there's also the added bonus that I helped create it!
Moving on though, I've had a great idea and I want to know your favourite summer beer.
It could be any beer for any reason, no reason is too silly(well it might be and I really want to hear it if it is!).
Lucille's favourite beer is Little Creatures Pale Ale because the beer is nice and she likes the name and the packaging.
So the missus(to be) has started us off.
So, over to you. I have a really good reason for asking the question so don't be afraid. Let me know.

100th Post

My one hundreth post, so I thought I'd do a piece on IPA's.
I bottled some Motley Brew and brought it home yesterday, possibly the last time (this year) that i'll drink it. I say this year because I am delighted to say that Nick and his team at Otley Brewing decided to make it a permanent on their seasonal range, albeit with the slightly lower abv of 5.5%.
I bought a couple of bottles of Punk IPA from Sainsbury's on Sunday because Lucille and I had a couple of friends round for lunch and it was possibly the most inspiring choice in their beer range.
So why not compare the two? They are two of my favourite breweries after all and they are very similar beers too.
First of all Motley : it's now 5.5% abv but you wouldn't guess it, it does taste more like 6-6.5%. It was bottled by hand from the tap yesterday into a flip-top bottle to try and keep it as fresh as possible but it was still lacking in condition. The tasting notes are pretty much the same as they were in December when we launched it at The Rake, I wrote about the beer here, the only difference being the abv which I now believe makes it an IPA not a double IPA. There's less of the instant floral hit of the pacific gem hops but it's still there, there's slightly less of the Chinook hops that bittered it up but they're still there, it's the same beer made from the same recipe and it's still a fantastic beer in my lowly opinion.
The Punk IPA : It's 6% abv, it's a bottle and the carbonation really helps bring out the flavour, there's a bitterness that's unmistakeably Brewdog. Now I don't want to talk about this beer without first telling you about the Keg we had at The Rake recently, it's actually convinced me that Brewdog have changed the hops that they used in the brew, is this true? well only Brewdog can say I guess, but my taste buds were given a tropical treat that took me far away to an island where I could have laid in the sun sipping it all day long. There was pineapple and lychees coming through and it was immensely drinkable.
Back to the bottle, it's slightly harder work to drink because there's that Brewdog bitterness back again that ruthlessly attacks the taste buds, it's an agressive beer, it says so on the label, it must be true then!
Which is better? well, you know that's completely subjective and you good folks can make up your own minds.