Chucking my two cents on the 'cask in crisis' bandwagon

For a relatively small and not long established brewer, Cloudwater have certainly got peoples attention. Since announcing at the start of the year that they are to cease all cask ale production, everyone and their maiden aunt has had something to say on the matter.

Cloudwater are somewhat highly regarded, particularly around their Manchester base and among 'craftier' drinkers and while I haven't had the opportunity to try all that many of their offerings, those that I have tried have always been consistently drinkable - one of them sneaked into my top five beers of 2016.

Rightly or wrongly, the debate has expanded to encompass the broader questions around the future of cask beer:

BV's best beers of 2016

Well, it's Twelfth Night and so 2016 is now well and truly gone; Banished to the hinterland of the past, and some might say rightly so.

Let me guess: Your favourite celebrities all died and some votes didn't go the way you wanted, right?


I won't shy meekly away from the fact that 2016 was a bit of an epic fail for me. You may recall I was planning to visit every brewery in London and then put it all into a hugely entertaining and informative book that would top the bestseller list across the globe for years to come.

I did spend a lot of the year visiting breweries

And I did visit a lot of breweries, drank a lot of awesome beer and talked to loads of interesting people. However, real life, real work and moving house kinda got in the way and by the end of the year I'd only done maybe two thirds of the capital's breweries. But I'll try to resurrect the project in 2017 as I still think it's worth doing, even if my proposed timescales were too much for me.

Anyway, as is traditional at this time of year, I'll be looking back upon my favourite beers of 2016 or, more specifically, my five favourite new cask beers of 2016. And here they are:
 

What can I give him? Christmas biscuits!

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a healthy contingent of miserly old scrotes banging on about how it's all too commercialised these days and the true meaning of Christmas has long been lost in a big pile of presents, wrapping and sellotape.

I've had some sympathy with this view since I ceased to be a wide-eyed, innocent infant eagerly opening his Rebel Transporter on Christmas morn. But of all the phenomena that are an affront to what the season should be, presents really aren't top of the list.

I mean, tinsel. What the festive fuck is that all about? At least the star on top of the tree (a custom that itself only goes back to the Victorian era) has some sort of significance. Nobody has ever explained to me what bloody tinsel is supposed to represent. And then there's the Coca-Colary bastardisation of Saint Nikolaos of Myra. And that fucking Darkness song about the bell ends. And The Snowman.

So gift-giving, which was always very much a part of the nativity story, is one of the more authentic traditions, even if the legend has expanded over the years from the original trio of gold, frankincense and myrrh to include drum solos and crutches.

Drinking Dodgy Bastards

Three years ago I came up with the Wintersmith cocktail, inspired by the Steeleye Span album of the same name (which, furthering the circularity, was itself inspired by the Terry Pratchett books).

Well, Sir Terry is sadly no longer with us, inventing cocktails is still a lot of fun, and Steeleye have a new album out called Dodgy Bastards, so I thought it was high time I came up with a new drink to go with it, and maybe even do a little reviewette of the album.

Album of the Year?

In recent years the band have developed a fairly heavy, proggy sound, though Maddy Prior's arrestingly clear voice remains very much at the heart of it all. It's a striking combination and right from the opening track, the multi-sectioned Cruel Brother, you know what you're in for: Elaborate tales, exquisite vocal harmonies and top-notch playing throughout.

That's just one of four songs on the album that exceed seven minutes in length, but before you start rolling your eyes, none of them get boring or repetitive for even a second. Case in point, Cromwell's Skull, an epic masterpiece from long-serving bassist Rick Kemp proves that the old boy can still turn out thoughtful lyrics and complex changes of key and time at the ripe old age of 75!

Lost Breweries: D is for Devilfish

If I was a few years older, D would almost certainly stand for Devenish or Davenports, but as I'm still pushing back against the encroaching trouser-press of Fortydom, I'll take a tangential turn and talk about Antic pubs. For a bit.

Long-time readers will know my views on Antic - beloved and frustrating as they are in more or less equal measure. I like the quirky decor, the beer choice and quality is often superb and they usually ensure excellent food by employing creative, talented chefs.

Antic pubs are good enough to regularly feature in the Pub of Year, which is why it's all the more irritating that their business- and estate-management skills appear almost non-existent. Thriving, successful Antic pubs close at extremely short notice, quality staff are shunted around apparently at random and sometimes even the shortest of short-term leases aren't seen through to completion.

The Catford Bridge Tavern even won PotY in 2013, shortly before closing, and just down the road, we recently lost the Ravensbourne Arms, another PotY finalist. Yes, Antic run some truly great pubs, but one simply cannot rely on them to even still be there tomorrow!

Lost Breweries: C is for Cains

It's unusual for a Victorian-era regional brewery to simply close. Normally they either keep plodding along, producing nondescript beers for an aging local populace, or they get taken over by someone bigger and run into the ground.

The relatively recent demise of Cains was a truly bizarre case of fiddling while Liverpool burned. Even as brewing ceased, the owners were in denial and 'highly confident' about the direction of Cains, citing a forthcoming modern new microbrewery on the site and a bright future for the brand, neither of which have materialised in the three years since.

This was the latest (and, it would appear last) chapter in a convoluted history of ownership, and exactly what happened to cause its sudden closure remains something of a mystery. When the final ownership team - the Dusanj brothers - took control back in 2002 they were the first Asian owners of a British brewery and certainly talked a fine game. Previously the brewery and brand was owned by Boddington's of Manchester, giving them a presence in Merseyside, before they themselves were taken over by the Whitbread group (and thereafter InBev) and gave Cains back its independence.

But was the beer ever any good?

Drink up and move on

Six years ago, when I first started this blog - yes, it really has been that long - I worked in Canary Wharf and lived a few stops down the DLR. Ben Viveur was largely a food blog aimed at the lunchtime crowd 'On the Wharf'.

Things change. I moved offices a few times and the BV remit expanded to include the whole of London, and, occasionally places further afield. Which is probably a good thing. Christ knows how bored I'd be if I was still searching for the best sandwich in Canada Square now.

Well now, I'm leaving London. Moving house. Becoming a responsible homeowner for the first time. Woo. Scary. Things changing bigly.

So is this the end of BV as we know it? The end of the London Pub of the Year contest? The end of London restaurant reviews? (Not that I've done as many of them as I could lately)

No, of course it fucking isn't. I'll only be technically just outside London - Caterham, to be specific - and in all likelihood I won't spend any less time eating and drinking around the capital than I do now.

But with the move coming up, I've had to knuckle down and start drinking up the various samples that I get sent. And a couple of them were rather interesting and a little different to the standard pale ales that usually arrive on the doorstep.

(I know, I'm really very bad at reviewing the stuff I get sent to review. Hopefully this will make up for it a bit.)