#CaskAleWeek - missing an obvious trick?

We're slap bang in the middle of 'Cask Ale Week' which this year runs from 17 to 27 September (I know, ten days, what were they thinking etc.) and as usual I find myself struggling to really see the point of it.

I could trot out the usual trite-but-true sound bite, and explain that, for me, every week is cask ale week, but why even bother? It seems almost glaringly obvious that most people would either fall into this category anyway or not give a fuck about cask beer. And, that being the case, I don't think three extra days is going to change many habits!

But is it beer?

One of the many things that irritates me these days - as an increasingly irritable middle-aged man who finds lots of stuff irritating as he gets older - is going into a pub and being confronted with lots of beers that are very similar to one another.

Sometimes I'll go for a long session consisting entirely of beers I've technically never had before, but which seem suspiciously familiar.

Drinking mostly cask, as I do, this will typically take the form of a 4.2% pale golden ale, moderately hopped with New World varieties. Accessible, easy to drink, and, to borrow a phrase from my late Grandmother, common as muck.

I don't dislike them - they're generally good beers from good brewers. But they really are hard to tell apart at times. Given a choice between sticking to a formula or taking bold risks, the brewers chose the option that involved minor tweaks to an existing recipe and possibly having to come up with a quirky name!

 

Golden Pints: BV's best beers of 2025

Well, that's another year done and dusted. How was it for you? Did you drink some good beer? Excellent.

Personally, I was sat there all contendedly like, thinking that 2025 was probably fairly decent, ale-wise, but delving a tad more deeply into me records (for the purpose of this post) the past year actually appears far more underwhelming. Certainly less whelming. Quite disappointing, even, which is just what I needed at this time of year. Fuck you, you stupid year!

Unless the spreadsheets are telling lies, I managed 597 new cask beers during the year (about 100 down on 2024) and only five of them scored the 'effective maximum' of 8/9, which, I suppose, means they can all be detailed here without any need to shortlist them, so at least I won't have to remember which were slightly better than the others and perform tie-breakers in my head!

This takes my overall total up to 12,890 since I first starting keeping track, exactly 30 years ago. (Happy beer-ticking anniversary to me! Do I get a Pearl tankard or something?) 

I'll try and work out my absolute 'beer of the year' in a moment, but firstly, a few mentions of the - ahem - 'other' stuff...

Pull the other one!

In recent weeks there has been considerable debate about Carlsberg-Marston's launch of 'Fresh Beer', a controversial product that has garnered mostly negative coverage before it has even found its way onto the bar.

And I have to admit, I find myself feeling not unduly concerned about this. Yes, it's misleading and arguably the latest in a very long line of wrongs committed by wrong-un brewing conglomerates. But I don't think it's going to be a fundamental threat to the (cask) beers I like to drink.

It's controversial because it's essentially a keg beer, dispensed via a handpump - presumably a full-size one that looks more authentic than the miniature faux handpumps already used for keg dispense, and maybe even one that actually gets pulled rather than simply 'flicked' into the 'on' position. I get all that. But it's just not causing my hackles to rise in a visceral surge of physical disgust.

Nothing to see here?

It's perhaps appropriate that during the visit of Sir Donald Trump to our fine native Covfefe, the Morning Advertiser has served up its latest misleading slice of fake news.

CAMRA yields to allow craft keg beer at GBBF reads the headline, announcing that, for the first time, the flagship beer festival of the Campaign will be serving beer that isn't cask.

Except that it's not news. It's clickbait. As I reported at the time, domestic keg was served two years ago. And again last year. And foreign keg beers have been a part of the action for about the last 30 years.

The main difference this time might be, if I'm reading it correctly, a dedicated keg bar, which social media is predictably hailing as long overdue and 'not before time'.

CAMRA Revitalisation - much ado about nothing?

Last week, CAMRA finally revealed a set of recommendations resulting from their 'Revitalisation' consultation.

I say 'finally', not because there is even a remote sense of finality about this, but because this process has dragged on for absolutely fucking ages, as if swimming against a tide of treacle. I attended one of the very first consultation meetings (in April 2016, which really does seem a hell of a long time ago now) and once the series had concluded, I was invited as a beer writer to a sort of beer media briefing which went into more detail about what they'd learned.

That was about a year ago. They've had a long time to get their shit together following the consultation process, but finally the cat is out of the bag.

Has the GBBF lost its G?

Right, that's another Great British Beer Festival over for another year.

And, to be honest, at the end of the week, I've come away feeling a tad, well, underwhelmed. Meh.

Normally, I'd put that down to mid-life-crisisism, post binge-drinking comedown and my generally bleak outlook on life. But a few conversations with other attendees seem to confirm a pretty widespread view that this really was the most lacklustre GBBF for some time.

I don't yet know how it worked out from CAMRA's perspective, but here are few collated thoughts - not just mine but those of my friends, drinking buddies, random strangers and - of course - teh interwebz: 

Brewdog brings back real ale - sort of

The big announcement last week in the beer world came from Brewdog. So far, so normal. They like to do 'big announcements' on a regular, predictable basis.

I'm surprised they haven't brewed a triple IPA called 'Big Announcement' then done a big announcement about it, frankly.

But unlike most of the news coming out of Fraserburgh (or Ellon, or wherever it is they've had to relocate to now because they've increased another 300% in size in the last six months) this was actually important stuff.

Introspective and self promoting, obviously, because we wouldn't expect anything else from them, but important, paradigm-shifting news nonetheless. (And, yes, I am going to try to work a dig at Brewdog into every sentence, thank you very much!)

Best beers of 2014

OK, it's New Year's Day Boxing Day (if New Year's Day Boxing Day is a thing now, and if it isn't, I'm making it a thing), and the first post of 2015, so Happy New Year, prosperous tidings'n'shit, and indeed any other seasonal platitude you'd care to hear.

Now let's get down to the important stuff. You know, the stuff with hops in it that we all love to drink in vast quantities.

Brutal fucking honesty: Last year was a great one for beer, possibly the best beer-year ever indeed, and I was lucky enough to drink a lot of it.

To put this into perspective, in 2013 only half a dozen beers scored 8/9 on the BV scale. In 2014 I gave that score to a massive 13, despite drinking fewer new beers overall. (888 if anyone gives a toss!)

And now I'm going to tell you which beers they were.

Birra alla pompa a Roma

So, Italy turned out to be no better than England at the World Cup. Worse, in fact, if your criteria for judging which team is better is 'results against Costa Rica'.

As I said the other day, nobody hates Italy, though I'm starting to refine that theory slightly on the basis of new information. Specifically:

1. Rome is fucking brilliant for beer. 
2. Rome is fucking shit in a lot of other ways.
3. There is probably nowhere in Italy where the food is bad. 
4. Not even Rome.

Regular readers will have picked up on the fact that I've never much liked lazy beach holidays - not for me the indignity of sprawling, sunburned, for a fortnight on a beach like some sort of floppity-haired manatee - and as such I've always thought of myself as more of a short city break-type person.

But, having just returned from the Italian capital, I've realised that I don't much like them either.

Allow me to explain.

Tap Takeovers - crafty fad or natural successor to the tied house?

Whether you believe that 'craft beer' is a product that can be clearly and reasonably defined, an abstract and flexible concept, or a steaming pile of pretentious poo (and, no, we're not going to resurrect that protracted and painful debate here) it's hard to deny that that the craft movement has given us some great, life-enhancing new things.

Innovation. High prices. Black IPAs. Pop-up bars. Breakfast Stouts. Canned beer that isn't bland and metallic. New and exciting hop varieties with big fuck-off citrus flavours.

All good stuff, apart from the high prices,  and one of the latest, and possibly most significant additions to the 'what have the crafterati ever done for us?' list is the Tap Takeover - another concept imported from the USA that could change the way we drink.

I have very little time for the craftwank debating society, but I know I'd rather be going out for beers in 2014 than in 1999 when the only people who had ever heard of a tap takeover were three bearded Oregonians called Josh. (And, being American, they probably called it a 'Faucet Appropriation' or 'Diaper Sidewalk' or something.)

A rough guide to British beer festivals

The English language is an interesting beast.

Whereas some foreign tongues have rigidly prescriptive rules, grammatical genders and other shittingly complex stuff that I don't have a kitten's chance in Hades of ever getting my head around, colloquial English is rather more subtle and nuanced.

Which is good. I like subtle and nuanced.

So, some words and phrases take on subtly (or indeed completely) different meanings, depending on context, but, crucially, we don't need to explain them because we just 'get' the meaning because we get the context.

For example, if your seven year old son comes home from school and tells you he's been invited to Sanjay's party, you'll instinctively have vastly different expectations than those times when you pick up a guy in a bar in Soho and he asks you knowingly if you like to party.

Same word, but differently nuanced (unless Sanjay's birthday parties feature fisting and crystal meth instead of pass-the-parcel and ASDA Cola these days, obviously!)

Likewise, if your beloved suggests a trip to New York over Christmas to do some shopping, it's not the same as picking up some shopping on the way home from work. Not by a very long chalk. 

Not all beer festivals are this big

The same is true of a 'Beer Festival'. Yes, they always involve beer but the level of festivity one can expect varies wildly. As far as the format goes, a beerfest can mean almost all things to all beer drinking men.

But unlike a lot of the other nuanced phrases we use, the subtle detail isn't always widely understood yet outside the inner sanctum of beer geeks, so it's about time somebody wrote a guide to the subject.

Any volunteers?

Anybody want to identify and define the eight different kinds of Beer Festival we have in this country?

Alright then, I'll do it...

'Dam you, 'Dam you all to Hell!

This isn't the place for me to bang on about the (mis)fortunes of my football team. There's enough reporting elsewhere of the shambolic clusterfuck that is Coventry City and the clueless Hedge Fund managers destroying our poor club.

Suffice it to say that when new owners come in to save you from Administration, you don't expect to be in a situation five years later where your squad has been asset-stripped to the barest of bones, you've been relegated to the lowest division you've played in for 50 years, you're in self-imposed exile from your own fucking stadium for not paying the rent for a year, you've alienated the vast majority of your supporters and you've still fucking well ended up in Administration anyway!

Amsterdam, home of window shopping...

What's more, the day-to-day running of the club is now so shockingly bad that no new depths of incompetence can surprise me any more.

We were supposed to be playing Dutch side Go Ahead Eagles on Tuesday, but ironically the game didn't go ahead, and was replaced at the last minute with a fixture in the middle of nowhere, the other side of the German border - completely inaccessible for us fans who had already booked flights and accomodation in Holland.

And so, that's how Mrs B-V and I happened to have a couple of completely unplanned days hanging around Amsterdam this week instead of watching a 6-0 win against non-league German minnows Wachtendonk.

Still, I'd never actually been to the Dam (or indeed anywhere in Holland) before, and was vaguely hopeful of some good beer and interesting food...

Tanked up? Fuck off!

So, having got through all the ales I needed at the White Horse's American beer festival last night, I decided to try the new 'Tankovna' version of Pilsner Urquell.

Tank

Now, my view on Pilsner Urquell is very simple:

Firstly, the normal keg version is just typical fizzy Eurorubbish.

But from a wooden cask - as sampled at this same pub last year- it is very nice indeed. Completely different stuff, and I considered it worth blogging about, which I'd rarely do for a single beer.


By all accounts, the 'fresh tank beer' version should be somewhere in between the two. Might it even be better than the cask version? I've heard people raving about it of late.

Rising, falling or standing still?

So, this weekend I've been to a beer festival that's a little bit different.

Possibly not as different as the organisers would like to believe, mind, but different enough. They didn't use the word 'festival' for a start.

When, some months ago, I first heard about Craft Beer Rising at the old Truman Brewery in Shoreditch I rolled my eyes in exasperation.

The blurb informed me that the event was 'here to throw off the shackles of a traditional beer gathering by crafting events, experiences and environments that take craft beer to the masses.'

Hmm. Smells a lot like marketing wank to me. Besides, I like 'traditional beer gatherings'!

All rise for craft beer?

Further reading inscribed more horror stories in my jaded mind... Nothing much to do with CAMRA... 'craft' keg beers... trendy location... Probably horribly overpriced, overhyped and overrated. Ugh. Basically everything that's wrong about the current Brewdog ethos writ large.

The beer equivalent of Lapland New Forest, perhaps?

Then, a couple of days beforehand, I saw the beer list and decided that I would go, albeit determined to follow up with a damning write-up about how desperately misguided and disappointing it all was.

It's a good thing I did though, because it was ticket-only and sold out every session over the two days, so they must've been doing something right, even if it's just marketing!

The German Invasion

Well, baste my roasting fowl, Christmas - yes, Christmas! - is just two weeks - yes, two weeks! - away.

What the festive fuck?!?

I suppose that means I'd better start thinking about presents and merrymaking and food and drink'n'shit.

Now, for reasons outlined earlier in the year, I'm not particularly looking forward to the Yuletide season. It's going to be a bit strange and different and not especially welcome. 'Twould be nice to put Christmas off until June or something, like they do in Australia.

But, nevertheless, it doth cometh apace, and so I'd better put on my best brave face.

Dead Dog

I’m not ‘cool’. I get that.

I support Coventry City. I’m a Tory. I go to church. I don’t own any devices prefixed by a lowercase ‘i’. My favourite vehicles are executive cars and grand tourers from the 1970s and 80s and my favourite music is Anglican chant, hymn tunes and folk-rock.

And not so much the kind of 'folk-rock' that is sometimes 'credible' amongst the cool like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, either. My favourite band ever is Steeleye Span and I'm proud of that.

In fact, I reject the very concept of fashion and take not a little pride in so doing, and even by the convoluted logic which dictates that the rejection of ‘cool’ makes one cool, I’m not cool.

I don’t generally like ‘cool’ things, so I appreciate that I’m perhaps not really Brewdog’s target market any more. Despite sporting seven body piercings, I've also never much liked Camden, it being full of all the 'cool' stuff I so despise, obviously.

As fate would have it, I've worked in Camden in the past, and dated a girl from Camden (who I then married) but the thought of drinking in the area always filled me with dread. Noisy. Trendy. Beer desert.

Ugh.

You can tell where this going - Brewdog Camden having opened recently and all that...