Beer & Cheese Together

I've always said at beer tastings that beer and cheese is one of the best beer and food matches you can enjoy and often use cheese as part of my beer talks to demonstrate how flavours work together. I was therefore thrilled to be invited to meet Ian Wellens and his team at the Cheeseshed in Bovey Tracey, Devon to take this a stage further with some refined matches.

The Cheeseshed is an online business specialising in artisan cheeses sourced from the West Country. You won't find the well known brands available here that you can get from any retailer, no its a lot better than that! It is the equivalent of the craft beer shop, bringing to life some fabulous specialist and deliciously characterful cheeses you have never heard of.

Being a Beer Sommelier the one thing I can do reasonably well is to describe the flavour and make up of a beer, but I've never really tried to describe the flavours of cheese and actually, its really quite hard. To me cheese tastes like cheese, I can describe the texture but attributing flavour characteristics in terms of flavours I can recognise, well that's hard. This made the whole task of beer and cheese matching a whole lot more tougher.

So on with the matching. First of all let me say the beers were all St Austell Brewery beers and excellent beers they are too, but they were the easy bit. Here are the suggested matches we came up with.

Tribute & Smarts Single Gloucester. St Austell's flagship Pale ale, Tribute a hop driven beer leading to delicate citrus flavours and very easy to drink. It does not want to be over-powered by the food flavour so this lightly textured cheese with an equally mild mannered flavour was a good partner. Its like for like and they seemed to respect each others strengths.

Mena Dhu Stout & Devon Smoake. A big flavoursome toasted chocolate stout with hints of liquorice and smokiness complemented the Devon Smoake cheese superbly. This match was quite a hit, they went together like carrots and peas. Both have an element of smoke and both have a sweetness, but the rich chocolate of the beer was balanced by the earthy creaminess of the cheese. I've always matched smoked cheeses to Weiss beers in the past for which they work equally well, but certainly a traditional stout is another option.

Proper Job IPA & Cornish Blue. I've always found the citrusy IPA's difficult to match with cheese but the blue cheeses seem to work best. Proper Job is a big resinous pineapple IPA with a solid bitter backbone. Cornish Blue is not the strongest of blue cheeses but that's the trick, it had enough firm creamy texture to balance the natural hop bitterness of the beer and the flavour did not overtake the fruity hops of the beer, both stood out without reaching a tipping point against each other. Cornish Blue is a favourite cheese of mine so I was delighted to include it within the tasting.

HSD & Cornish Yarg. A legendary beer with a likewise cheese. HSD is St Austell's oldest recipe beer and something of a hidden gem. Its a strong malty beer but well balanced with plenty of fruity pear drop esters. Cornish Yarg has a crumbly and creamy texture, quite rich and a hint of lemon. The flavour is more delicate so although a contrast to the beer, they did match really well.

Bad Habit & Francis wash rind cheese from James Cheese makers in Dorset. Bad Habit is a Belgium style tripel, rather like Leffe, its spicy, lemony, blonde and heartily strong. The cheese is pungent with a firm interior and a touch a citrus on the palate. A contrast of flavours, the beer is delicious and will always be the hero but this unusual cheese with a depth of flavour holds up well against it.

Cardinal Syn & Quickes Vintage Cheddar. The biggest beer of all requires one of the biggest cheeses of all. Cardinal Syn is dark, Christmas cake type dark fruits with treacle and esters flavours, full and rich on the palate -  a powerful beast of a beer.  The Vintage Cheddar is matured for two years and has a crumbly texture with a intense rich flavour with hints of caramel - its a very fine and complex cheese indeed. Both are wonderful taste experiences and together they would make the perfect end to the most regal of dinners.

I really enjoyed meeting Ian and his team and hopefully we'll be able to pull together a evening of beer and cheese tasting at some stage. The Cheese Shed offers some wonderful cheeses, its just the same as discovering some wonderful new beers so if you like the sound of them, do visit his website www.thecheeseshed.com Thank you Ian for one of my best mornings work of 2016!

Reflections on Oktoberfest

Enjoying a Stein

I was lucky enough to attend the Oktoberfest in Munich this year, not my first visit to the city, but my first visit to the festival and what a wonderful festival it is.

 If you have experienced UK Beer Festivals then this is nothing like that at all. The main purpose seems to be to drink lots and have a great time, its not about trying lots of different beers, its about drinking a lot of one beer and socialising. That's not to say its just about getting drunk, as the festival offers so much more than just drinking.

If you are part of one of the major brewers tents there is the chance to drink steins of beer and enjoy the merriment on show. Live music, a mix of traditional German oompah and covers of classic rock and pop music, it makes for an entertaining eclectic mix. Our tent was the Hofbrau-Festzelt, one of the largest tents taking almost 6,900 festival goers, it takes three months alone to erect!  However outside of the tents there is a huge funfair and playground aimed at adults and just about every type of fast food offering available.

 

Being in Munich then traditional dress is almost obligatory, men in lederhosen and ladies in Bavarian costume are everywhere, I'd say at least 60% of the people attending were dressed this way. Plus around the city you will see people dressed likewise. Its not something you would feel comfortable wearing in Plymouth city centre, but when in Rome as they say, I rather wish we'd known in advance so we too could have become part of the fabric of the festival by wearing the traditional dress.

It was also true that the Germans are far more accepting of fun, people were stood on benches, stools and tables dancing, singing and swaying to the music, can you imagine that happening at a UK festival!

The beer in Munich was great, strong yes, but easy to drink. An evening around the bars show cased a number of beers including Weiss beers. Lovely drinks, lots of yeast which has an adverse effect on the British constitution.

So would I recommend a visit to Munich and Oktoberfest? Yes if you are into beer its one of the bucket list things to do and its a great experience. Its different from a UK beer festival, but go with an open mind and be prepared to be part of the fun. As for Munich then great city, well worth a visit, Oktoberfest or not. PROST

Sparklers - Friend or Foe?

I recently visited a wonderful Badger Ales pub in Salisbury called the New Inn, a traditional atmosphere and serving Badger Ales at their best. Its a long time since I had a pint of Tanglefoot on draught, but I've always enjoyed this beer so a chance not to miss. When it arrived my wife promptly said it looked flat, insipid and unappetising. She had a point, it had virtually no head, just a little froth. However on tasting then wow! The flavours literally torpedoed my taste buds as it was full of CO2 and condition.

Tanglefoot is a fine beer indeed and often overlooked. However it was served in the traditional manner, no swan neck and above all else, NO sparkler. The latter is what I have a growing dislike for. Designed to add a head to the beer and mainly originating from northern England, the sparkler became all the rage as the fashion for smooth-flow beers grew in the 1990's and people drank with their eyes. The most famous head of which was probably the "Cream of Manchester", Boddingtons Bitter.

Now its certainly true that people do drink with their eyes, we use all our senses when we enjoy beer and a pint with a creamy head can look great to some. However, the sparkler has a huge impact on flavour as well as its impact on looks and can dramatically alter the taste.

The sparkler works by forcing the beer through tiny holes in the sparkler as the beer is poured. The effect is the carbonation in the beer is forced into the head of the beer and not within the body of the beer. The result on flavour is that CO2 enhances bitterness so the if the beer has less, it can taste soapy, soft and a little flat. Less CO2 also means all those lovely fruity hop flavours the brewers have worked so hard to install in the beer are not as evident as they should be, so the sparkler has changed the character of the beer.

Depending on your viewpoint the sparkler has a negative or positive financial effect. The large head it generates can lead to a pint that has less than the 95% of beer in a brim full 20oz glass. Very bad news for the customer, but great news for the licensee and the pub owner as yields and profits go up. No wonder some pub groups have a policy that sparklers must be used!

The Sparkler

The large head can also have an impact on glass design and choice. Long slim glassware with narrow heads can make the effect of the sparkler worse, meaning more head and less beer. Some licensees find these styles of glasses generate more wastage as they try to compensate for the large head by over-pouring. The net effect is the long slender elegant glass is not liked for this reason so beer drinkers are stuck with a choice of conical style glasses.

Finally, with the fashion to load beers with masses of hops, they are naturally heavily conditioned so they generate a head in their own right when being poured through a swan neck dispense. Hence there is no need for a sparkler.

I'm sure by now you have guessed I am very much against the sparkler, I believe it ruins the true taste of the beer and can make if flat. It compromises glass choice and often means I don't get the full pint I've paid for so its unfair. I don't always agree with CAMRA and their policies but on this one they've got it spot on.

Reflections on the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) 2016

St Austell Brewery bar at GBBF 2016 

So now its over for another the year, the mammoth effort and event that comprises the Great British Beer Festival 2016. A success - probably yes. As good as last year, probably no.....

This year numbers attending were significantly down, not quite 44,000 people enjoyed the raft of wonderful beers and ciders available. CAMRA would normally hope for circa 50,000. Beer sales were also not as high as hoped, perhaps as a result of the lower numbers through the door, or perhaps for other reasons. It as also true that there were fewer brewery bars with some big hitters such as Greene King and Shepherd Neame no longer involved. The brewers bars help to fund the event so losing the likes of these brewers is not a good sign.

Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty to enjoy at the UK's showcase beer event and the effort that the CAMRA volunteers in particular put in is not to be underestimated or devalued in any way, its remarkable that the organisation of GBBF from top to bottom is really quite a well oiled machine with everyone knowing what's expected of them. However something is not quite right any longer, indeed something is wrong I think with GBBF.

So what's wrong, why are numbers falling, why is less beer being drunk? Without doubt there are a number of reasons and there were countless superficial suggestions ranging from the train strike on Southern Railways to too much seating in the hall which drove less visits to the bar. However I think something more fundamental is going on.

GBBF was once the show case for the very best in cask ales in the UK. It still is, but the market has moved on. Cask ales are still enjoyed by many but the rise of craft and in particular keg craft and lager has not been embraced by CAMRA. Sadly that's exactly the opposite to what many younger drinkers have done, who are enthralled by the new beer styles and tastes now available and are being attracted to the new market. Many pubs and some other beer festivals have recognised this and have a craft keg and lager offering.

I believe the role of GBBF should be to showcase all styles of beer. It seems very odd that CAMRA will have European lagers on sale at this event but refuse to allow a lager from a UK brewer. They should be showcasing not just the wonderful cask beers available, but also the craft keg and craft lagers now available from UK brewers. These beers are stealing some of the cask market but by refusing to allow them at the festival they are also deterring some younger people who if they came to the event, could also try some of the great cask beers on sale.

The craft beer argument for CAMRA is much bigger than just GBBF, it targets its very roots and reason for being. CAMRA really need to address this sooner rather than later. Cask and craft can exist side by side and the CAMRA have an opportunity to be the champion for all. Its something they need to do soon. Sadly it was quite noticeable that the average age of CAMRA members at GBBF seems quite high, there is some new blood but they need more. It's not too late to change and attract new younger members and people to the event, but in five years time it might well be and the horse will have bolted to pastures and festivals new.

 

Time for change on supermarket shelves

Not a supermarket shelf but demonstrates the problem

A visit to your local supermarket and browsing the bottled beer shelves can actually be quiet fun and interesting if you are minded as such. However its not that easy for the general public to understand why a beer is on a particular shelf and position, so perhaps a change is called for in how this is done.

Supermarkets tend to order beers by brewer and traditionally that's how we have looked at the beer market. You may have a favourite brewer and buy their beers or perhaps you have a favourite brand and that encourages you to buy other beers from the same brewer. Its also true that retailers will ensure the beers that earn the most profit will be in the consumers eye-line as will the faster moving beers for the convenience of the customer. However, with the massive presence of social media and keen interest in craft beers, the term beer style as become more relevant.

Annoyingly brewers don't always make the beer style easy to understand. One brewer will call a beer a pale ale, another will call a similar beer a golden beer whilst another might use the IPA term. Brewers also don't make the style of the beer that obvious on the labelling, indeed in some cases its missing altogether or hidden on the back label which confuses both consumers and retailers alike.

Perhaps its time for the retailers to follow the way they display their wines and order the beers by style/variety. All the IPA's would sit together; all the pale ales would be one and the growing band of porters would sit alongside each other etc. What a difference this could make to how consumers buy their beer. The lucky dip element of choosing a beer to try would be gone as consumers buy from within a favourite style, or perhaps choose a new style to try. Brands will of course always be important and consumers may choose those above beers they don't know so their is still room for the brand builders amongst brewers.

A change in the way beers are displayed with retailers would also put pressure on brewers to sharpen up their game with labelling and descriptions on bottles. The latter has become a very confusing area and there is certainly room for improvement.

Some specialist beer shops do already sell by style and if you check out the online beer shops its very common for beers to be listed by beer style, so come on supermarkets and brewers, time for change on the shelves please.

Views of a Beer Sommelier

 



Marc Bishop is the Trade Marketing Manager for St Austell Brewery and a fully qualified Beer Sommelier. I caught up with him, sober, at the Plymouth CAMRA Beer Festival and posed a few questions. Interview by Neil Franklin, Plymouth CAMRA 

 

Q1. Marc, what got you started in the Brewery/Pub business?

Originally born in Oxfordshire, I fell into a job with Morland of Abingdon and discovered I had a flair for marketing. It was at the time of the 1988 Monopolies & Mergers commission report and whether that was good or bad I will leave for others to debate, but for Morland and myself it was certainly good. Luckily I grabbed the shirt tails of the then Marketing Manager, a very creative and clever thinking chap called Gerald but who was hopeless at the organisation bits necessary for any successful marketing campaign.  We were somewhat opposite in strengths and weaknesses but that worked and together we developed and brought to fruition his plan to launch the famous Old Speckled Hen.

A wonderful beer, Old Speckled Hen was one of the first successful guest ales and it quickly established itself in the market. We had some great times in the early days marketing this beer and every lunchtime involved a couple of pints at least of our favourite, well you just would not do that nowadays! I’m very proud of my time with Old Speckled Hen and the beer’s tremendous success, which rightly or wrongly, I have a small claim to fame for. Indeed at Morland I worked with some talented and fun people and it was such a shame when Greene King took them over, but…..to their credit, the Suffolk invaders have certainly taken the brand onto another greater and more successful level.

Q2.  You are a Beer Sommelier, what does it mean?

Basically it makes me an Ambassador and expert for beer (but not in how to brew beer).  I am an expert taster and sit on the St Austell Brewery taste panel, but I also enjoy bringing the beers and their stories to life with the general public. It’s not just about how the beer tastes, it’s about adding the perfume around it with a story that enhances its interest. I’m at my happiest talking about beer to a large group of people and helping them get enjoyment out of tasting beer. Training to become a beer sommelier is something you have to make happen yourself, but I do have to thank Waitrose in Saltash. I worked my way through their entire beer selection in a year, making tasting notes and holding my own private beer festival every weekend. I’m sure I became one of their best customers for that short period!

Q3. Of St Austell’s many beer awards, of which are you most proud?

A difficult question because St Austell have so many awards and I don’t brew the beer, so am not directly responsible for their excellent and consistent flavours. However I think I would pick Admiral’s Ale award as the World’s Best Bottled Beer in the International Beer challenge of 2008. I choose this because it’s still one of the biggest awards St Austell have ever received and also because I came up with the name for the beer and worked closely on the branding and launch.

Q4. Proper Job & Big Job are both great successes Why?

Well the beer is great of course, but I would say that! However, Proper Job was a cutting edge beer in terms of its flavour when launched and was one of the first truly modern IPA’s. The flavour is full of juicy citrus hops for a pineapple, lemongrass and resinous flavour with a solid bitter finish. Proper Jobs reputation continues to grow steadily as do sales. At St Austell we know Proper Job is something of a specialist beer and best sold by word of mouth, I would not see a time in the near future when it would receive large scale consumer advertising as Tribute does.

Big Job is Proper Job’s bigger brother, a double IPA, which actually uses a different blend of hops rather than just more of the hops Proper Job uses. A great beer and at 7.2% not to be messed with. The name also helps, quite quirky and with a laddish, humorous connotation.

At St Austell we are proud of both beers but realise where they fit in our portfolio of brands and each has a different role to play.

Q5. Tell us about Proper Cool

St Austell’s attempt to address the small but growing craft beer market meant that Proper Cool was quickly rebranded as St Austell IPA, a more credible option. It’s a very small brand for St Austell but has established itself and is steadily growing naturally.  We’ll see how we go on that one as they say.

Q6. Will St Austell be investing in pubs beyond their Cornwall stronghold?

I think for sure we will. Buying new pubs is a difficult and competitive area but St Austell although still steeped in our Cornish roots, are very much a South West based business from Bristol and Bath down. It would be great to acquire some more pubs in Plymouth but I don’t know of anything on the horizon at the moment. Watch this space though as you never know?

Q7. How does the relationship between Rattler Cyder and St Austell work?

Basically we have an agreement to wholesale Rattler and are their main route to market on draught in Cornwall. It’s as simple as that really; just like we wholesale many other beers, ciders, wines, spirits and minerals etc. Rattler is an amazing cider and hats off to Healeys who have made a great success of the marketing through hard work and above all innovation. They are younger people who saw an opportunity, went out and just did it. Good luck to them.

Q8. How do you feel about European beers?

Most German beers are brewed to the Reinheitsgebot (German Purity Law) which means they have to be brewed traditionally and do not contain any adjuncts or additions i.e. barley, liquor (water) and hops and not much else. I recall in my Beer Sommelier exam the specialist subject turned out to be German beers – very difficult especially as I’d swotted up specifically on Belgium beers! None-the-less I passed and having visited Munich and Berlin in recent years I do have a real fondness for them.

Q9. Do you believe sparklers should be mandatory?

At St Austell we prefer them to be used, but mandatory is too strong a word. The beer presents itself really well if a sparkler is used and at circa £3.50 per pint or more, people want their beer to not only taste good, but look good as well. Personally I think it’s down to personal choice. If I were a licensee I would certainly have a sparkler on all my cask ale taps but if a customer asked for a pint without the sparkler, I would have no hesitation in removing it. The customer is always right and this is a common sense approach that I know many licensees follow.

Q10. Tribute pasties are legendary in the Brewery Visitor Centre, any plans for Big Job pasties?

Ha, good question. None at the moment I think and I’m not sure Big Job would transport itself to make a good pasty. The really heavily hopped beers are not always great to cook with and let’s face it, Big Job is over-hopped (in a good way). It would be fun to try but the flavour could be too strong and overpower the other flavours in a pasty. I think an HSD pasty would be ideal, a much better beer to cook with. Or, perhaps a Smugglers pasty, now that really would be a wonderful pasty! Rest assured, you will be on the judging panel when we make them.

Marc, thanks for your time, effort and insight.

 

Interviewed by Neil Franklin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ladies Choice!

Having attended a number of Christmas Fayre's in the run up to the festive period, it's apparent how often beer is bought as a gift, especially by ladies for their fathers, husbands, brothers and uncles, or as that annoyingly difficult "Secret Santa" offering!

Beer does make a great gift. Speaking from experience I am thrilled when I receive beer as a gift because its very likely the beer chosen would not be something I would normally buy myself, hence I'm forced to try something new, or indeed something old - I recently received a bottle of Newcastle Brown, not a beer I'd remotely think of buying so to receive this iconic beer as a gift was very welcome. As a beer drinker receiving beer gifts is often the inroad to a new regular beer purchase of the future, so brewers and retailers should not overlook this once a year opportunity to get people to sample brands.

Choosing a beer gift can be hard as brewers and retailers tend to offer limited clues as to what the contents of a bottle might contain. Also, where a beer style is stated, if you don't understand its meaning it does little to help. For many ladies this is where the problems begin, so as a Beer Sommelier working at the point of purchase can really help. I normally ask where the gift recipient lives, their rough age, perhaps their interests and then if they do have any idea on what beer brands/styles the person currently drinks. I then try to match a beer to suit.

There are many ladies now who are very knowledgeable about beer, but for many who buy beer as gifts at these events that's not the case. So a little guidance is often much appreciated and can lead to them buying the chosen beer as part of their regular shop in the future. Remember, most shopping is done by the lady of the house and if a beer name sticks in her mind that her husband liked at Christmas, then its likely that beer will become part of the regular shop.

But back to Christmas. Another issue is that brewers tend to come at gifts from a very corporate viewpoint. The gift is a brewers box and rarely do you see gift boxes related to an occasion or season. That's not the case with other luxury items as Christmas gift boxes in the world of Chocolate are common place so there is some learning there from other product categories.

Hopefully all the gift boxes sold by myself and colleagues over the festive period will be well received by the recipients and Santa has them safely loaded onto his sleigh for delivery on the big day!