Beer Bars in Bristol

So following on from what I wrote about beer in Bristol, here's my opinions on a few of the dedicated craft beer places that's opened this year:

The Beer Emporium is a cellar bar on King Street that boasts a huge selection of bottled and canned beeralongside a wide range of beers on tap. Food is clearly going to be a feature here too. I took advantage of their pre-theatre deal and got two courses and a pint for £12. I would definitely recommend it as the food was great and at that price it’s a bargain! I’ve always managed to find an enjoyable pint here but they do tend to offer quite a few standard British bitters. Nothing wrong with that, but they do tend to taste very similar and I can’t help thinking there could be more exciting beers taking their place. The bar also suffers from a lack of atmosphere at times. The acoustics aren’t great and it doesn’t have the ‘comfortable’ feel that marks a great pub, but it is new and these things can take a little time to bed in. The staff are always friendly though, and being open till 2am every night, it’s one of the only late options for a decent pint.

Next door to the Beer Emporium is the Famous Royal Navy Volunteer. This is one of the oldest pubs in Bristol but had been shut for a few months. It re-opened at the end of the summer with a mission to present British only craft beers. I really like this place. The staff are great and know the beer they’re selling. It may sound obvious, but unlike other pubs in Bristol, the staff have clearly tasted the beers they sell and they’re happy to offer an opinion on them too. They’re also more than happy to let you try a few samples before you buy, which I think is vital for a place like this. The management have taken the decision to avoid pump clips

and instead have a board on the wall with all their beers listed. The idea being that blank taps mean you aren’t swayed by logos, just by the beer itself. Nice idea I think and it also means groups of people don’t cluster around the bar looking at the pump clips and blocking access for everyone else while one person orders. The prices aren’t cheap, but the beers are reliably good, with some craft lagers and a range of ciders too. I’ve heard a number of complaints that some beers aren’t served in pints, only 2/3 or less, the implication being that you can’t afford a full pint or it’s too strong and you can’t handle it! Personally, I think this is just people being over sensitive and picking holes in what they see as a poncey craft beer scene. I think it’s more likely that the price point for these beers is high and so the pub doesn’t want such high prices on their board, which seems understandable. The seating is good, but at the front of the pub (near the windows) seems a little formal and not all that inviting, however there are sofas and armchairs at the back of the pub so some potential for winter drinking there. The restaurant side of the pub has opened now, but I’ve not eaten there yet so I won’t offer an opinion on that.

Now over to Stokes Croft and the Crofter Rights - new tenants of the building previously known as The Croft. I was sad to see the old Croft disappear as it had been a staple venue for the Bristol music scene for many years. This has all now changed following some fairly major renovations by the new tenants. The place is now one large room with the bar at the back and the toilets down a spiral staircase in the cellar. The ceiling has been removed at the back to give a double height about the bar and the stone walls have been exposed. There is also a very weird staged seating area facing the bar, which appears to conceal an office underneath!

I went to the opening night of this place and it was far from ready. It has been tidied up since then, but it still doesn't look entirely finished. No doubt this wasn't helped by the council suspending their license for a fortnight after they discovered the extent of the renovations. It seems they'd neglected to apply for planning permission and the building was Grade II listed! Oops!
Still, the place does look pretty good now, if a little idiosyncratic. All the taps come out of a blackboard backing up the bar, so the beers are written in chalk around the taps. This looks good, but isn't always that easy to read! As you may have guessed, this place is at the 'hipster' end of the market and you can't help thinking they've sacrificed function for form in some aspects. But they do get some good beers in and it's not overly expensive either. There's a youngish crowd, some good music being played and it's not a bad place to spend an evening.

So, there's my thoughts on a few of the places in Bristol. Although I'm hugely positive about the beer scene in Bristol, and I think that all these places serve great beer, I've tried to be honest about my experiences there. I've highlighted the negative aspects that I found, as well as the positive, but I still think that all these places represent some of the best pubs/bars in Bristol and are all worth a visit if you're after a good pint.

Craft Beer in Bristol

On the walk to work this morning my mind wandered to Bristol and its relationship with craft beer. So I thought I might write something on here about it too. For a long time Bristol had just a smattering of pubs serving decent beer. Most of these were limited to serving ‘real ale’ and didn’t really stray much further than that. There have been a couple of attempts at bars selling Belgian beers, but they’ve not lasted all that long. In the last couple of years, though, the beer scene in Bristol has exploded. In the last year alone at least four new craft beer bars have been opened (plus Brew Dog), with at least one more opening by Christmas. But the relationship with craft beer extends beyond these dedicated establishments, and I think that's what sets Bristol apart from other cities. Craft beer has crept into the mainstream here and in quite a subtle way. 

Previous food and drink trends have made their way into the mainstream, but have been used in such a clunky way as to strip them of all 'cool' and integrity. Street food is a prime example, with so many places jumping on the band wagon and inviting people in to try their new street food menus! It became totally detached from it's roots that the term 'street food' seems almost like a parody now. So far the term 'craft beer' has avoided this in Bristol. Sure, some pubs will advertise their craft beer, but mostly distributors have just done a good job of convincing pubs to stock some more interesting beers alongside their normal offering. So it's not unusual to see bottles of Goose Island or Sierra Nevada in the fridge behind a bar as well as beers from the numerous local breweries too. Having said this, it's not uncommon to have to point out to staff where the bottles are that you're trying to order. But I like to think that this little routine is just something they do to make people feel special!

I have no doubt at all though, that this interest in beer in Bristol is helped enormously by the number of breweries around here. Back in the day, brewing in Bristol was dominated by the massive Courage brewery across the river from Castle Park, which itself grew out of the Georges Brewery. This led to something of a domination in terms of what beer was available, with a few notable exceptions such as Smiles. Both these big breweries have now gone the way of all things and have been turned into flats and offices.

But in the present day, however, brewing in the Bristol area is continued by the many local breweries. There are established breweries such as Bath Ales, Butcombe and (a bit more recently) Bristol Beer Factory - which has recently upsized its brewhouse to 30 barrels. Alongside these bigger breweries are the smaller craft breweries like GWB, Dawkins, Arbor Ales, Towles Fine Ales, Wild Beer and newcomers Rocket Science, and The New Bristol Brewery.

All of this commercial brewing is of course backed up by the strong homebrewing scene in Bristol. Currently home to two homebrew clubs, Bristol is building a real community of enthusiastic and very knowledgeable brewers. This all means that there are more customers for good beer in the pubs, and more people who value a pint on its flavour rather than its price.

If anyone doesn't know Bristol all that well, or who fancies a day out, you could do much worse than a day in Bristol. I'm biased of course, but this is a great city which now has great beer to go with it!

First Foray with Rye - First FoRye?

There is a definite trend in my brewing decisions that goes along the lines of: I decide what to brew, buy all the ingredients, listen to a podcast/read an article about a different beer, get all enthusiastic about that, change all my plans! So staying true to this my plans to brew a big, possible double, IPA changed at the last minute to a pale ale with a high percentage of Rye.

I've never brewed with rye before, but from what I understand it brings quite an interesting peppery flavour to a beer. It seems like a grain that I should really know a bit more about and could be quite useful in future recipes. This new found interest came about after listening to another episode of Basic Brewing Radio. If you haven't listened to this podcast before I can highly recommend it. James Spencer has a really positive and approachable attitude to brewing, which makes the show entertaining whilst also being packed full of explorations in to the more technical aspects of brewing. I also really enjoy his interviews with local brewers which give some real insight into their approaches to brewing and their experiences home brewing too. James also has a website that runs as a companion to the podcast called Beer and Wine Journal. It updates every week (would that we could all be so reliable) and is required reading for me.

The episode that inspired me here, was about James' attempt to brew a 100% Rye Beer. Rye is apparently very gelatinous and gloopy when mashed, and mashing a high percentage of it in a beer ofter leads to a stuck mash. To get round this, James used the brew-in-a-bag method to avoid lauter issues. Instead of running the wort out through the rye, he lifted the rye out of the wort - cunning! The resultant session beer (another first for me) seems to have been pretty successful, so I decided to give something similar a go.

Now, I'm not really set up for brewing in a bag, and I'm not sure how successful a smaller batch would be in my electric boiler. So I decided to scale the recipe up to five gallons. But I did take on board the inherent problems with Rye, so I made a 50% Rye recipe with 50% Low Colour Maris Otter and threw in a bunch of Oat Husks too, just to make sure I got a good lauter. I had some Citra pellets in the freezer from our last brew-club bulk buy, so I kept faith with James' recipe with them.

Ingredients

Amt Name Type # %/IBU 1.50 kg Maris Otter Low Colour Pale Malt (2.5 EBC) Grain 1 50.0 % 1.50 kg Rye Malt (5.0 EBC) Grain 2 50.0 % 300.00 g Oat Husks (Mash 60.0 mins) Other 3 - 26.00 g Citra [12.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 46.5 IBUs 30.00 g Citra [12.50 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 5 8.9 IBUs 1.0 pkg California Ale (White Labs #WLP001) [35.49 ml] Yeast 6 -

The first problem I encountered was that Rye malt wasn't in Beersmith's list of ingredients, so a quick search was required to find the values for yield etc. Everything else was nice and simple - using only one hop and two grains is great! I really like the simplicity of the recipe, it really suits my aim of getting to know what the Rye contributes.

The night before brew day I set out my brewing water and treated it with some gypsum to help with hop character and some lactic acid to bring down the mash pH. I then added a campden tablet to drive off any chloramines in the water and went out to meet a friend for her birthday.
 

Such a small mash!

 Brew day itself began at 1:30pm with a stonking hangover! Birthday celebrations had gone on till the early hours and all intentions of an early start had fallen by the wayside. So the brewer's friend came into play, the split brew day! Quite early on I decided that I'd leave the mash for the following day, this was not going to be a quick efficient brew as it was, without it going on late.

So, with a little trepidation I mashed in the malt and set the day in motion. I decided to mash with 10 litres of liquor so it wasn't too dilute, but had enough liquid to avoid it gumming up too much. I also decided to fly sparge this one. The thinking here was again to avoid a stuck mash. I thought that if I batch sparged there was a danger that it would all stick together as it drained. So I hooked up the only spare tubing I had for the fly sparge, unfortunately this was a bit too long for my original idea of sprinkling the sparge water. So instead I looped the hose on top of the grain bed and ran the water in slowly. This actually seemed to work quite well and didn't stir up the mash bed.

New sparging technique is not easy to photograph but seemed quite effective.

 

Look, no hands! Fly-sparge in progress.

The pre-boil gravity on this was predicted as 1.022, so you can imagine my surprise when it came out at 1.030! The mash efficiency was 93%, which on my system is unheard of! I can only assume that the yield figures for Rye malt are a bit low, so the prediction was out to begin with. Anyway, wort smelled amazing and it was still on for a sub-3% beer, which was what I was going for, so I wasn't too worried. This was now 7pm, so I decided it was time to pack up, seal the wort up, and crack on with the boil the next day.

The hot break was pretty dense from all the rye and it just kept coming!

The following day I had to work, but as soon as I got home I got the boiler on and got cracking with finishing off the brew 'day'. The boil went well and the citra hops just smelled incredible! I was totally knocked out with how good they smelled, I had to stop myself from eating them! Because of this I upped the 5min addition from 26g to 30g. I was going to go further but I didn't want to over-power the rye. I can do the hop bomb another time.

Citra - well fruity!

The temperature here is still unseasonably warm, so chilling the wort was a bit of an issue. Getting the last of the heat out of it just takes ages and it was already getting late, so I decided on a further split in the brew day. I got the temp down to 26C, ran it off into the fermenter, sealed it up and went to bed! Overnight it dropped the last few degrees down to 20C, so I got up early and switched on the aquarium pump for an hour's aeration and pitched the yeast before leaving for work.

Chiller in the wort, conical flask sterilising on the hob.

 Despite a somewhat haphazard brew schedule I'm pretty pleased with the way the beer's progressing and I can't wait to try the finished pint!

What is Craft Beer?

There’s been a lot of discussion on the internet around a definition for what is Craft Beer and what is a Craft Brewer. So I thought I’d give my penneth worth too!

This is a discussion that’s been rumbling on for a while. In essence the small craft breweries want to hold on to the notion of “Craft”, while the big multi-national breweries want to cash in on it. As an immediate thought you would link ‘Craft’ to size, with only small breweries qualifying. This immediately hits a snag that some small breweries are producing rubbish beer and “craft” is supposed to be linked with quality. It also hits the problem that when good breweries grow, their beer suddenly cannot be called craft beer, despite no difference in the product or process involved.

A good discussion of the issues can be found on the Brew Dog blog HERE. Their post addresses some of the issues and problems, so I don’t think it is worth repeating them all here.The comments are worth reading though as it's a good discussion of what matters to people about this.

Personally, I think the “Craft” moniker should be indicative of an approach to brewing. A Craft brewery should seek to brew the best beer they can and approach their recipes with that in mind. Unfortunately, this is difficult to quantify, evidence and regulate. There is talk of outlawing the use of some adjuncts, such as rice, which are used to reduce the cost of the brew by industrial brewers. But these can be legitimately used in craft brewing too, and I think the last thing we need to do is stifle creativity with a modern day Rheinheitsgehbot. Again, the impact of these ingredients on a brew, and whether or not it is a craft brew, comes down to the intentions of the brewer.

Ownership of breweries is another area that has been explored as a way of classifying which breweries are “Craft”.  Brew Dog suggests no greater than 20% of a company can be owned by a large industrial brewery before it stops being Craft, but this leads back to the argument about brewery size. Just because one of the big-bad-breweries comes in and buys 40% of Kernel, does that mean that their beer becomes a different product? I’m not so sure, though I recognise the danger.

I think the key to the debate lies in what we want “Craft” to stand for, and for me that is quality. Craft beer is a quality product that is made using the brewer’s skill, experience and judgement. When I read “craft beer” on a bottle or can, I want that to indicate a high quality product that is made with a high degree of human input. I don’t think craft beer can be made in an automated process because the craft elements of skill, experience and judgement, are not present. I do agree with the Brew Dog proposal that all ingredients should be listed on the packaging, so any unnecessary adjuncts and fillers are clearly shown, however there are plenty of mass-market beers which can quote their ingredients as barley, hops, water and yeast just like a craft brewer would.

Ultimately, I’m not too worried about which beers “craft beer” is applied to because I suspect that it has more to do with marketing than anything else. What I believe matters is producing a great product and educating consumers. If the idea of craft beer as a product created by craftspeople with skill, experience and judgement, and on a smaller scale, is something that appeals to your consumer then you need to get out there and tell them that’s what your product is! Engagement with consumers is key in this; let them visit your brewery and see how you work; let them know what you are doing through social media and let them feel part of the process; and allow them to compare that to the big industrial brewers. That is how you hold onto the term craft: you educate people, make them care, give them the information to make decisions, and let your intelligent consumers judge for themselves.

Bristol Beer Week

Bristol Beer Week kicked off last night with a cracking night at one of my favourite pubs, the Hare on the Hill. Jack, the landlord, had organised five special brews for the night, each from local brewers.

 Art Brew had brewed a pretty robust 7% Bock, which had an intriguing nutty flavour, I'm guessing from the munich malt involved. There was a brown porter from the boys at the New Bristol Brewery that was full of roasty, biscuity flavours. The contribution from Arbor Ales was a 6% Bier de Garde, with Nelson Sauvin hops and fermented with Dupont yeast. I'm not sure how well it fitted with the bier de garde style, but it was still an interesting beer.

One of the best beers was from Rocket Science, a really light, clean English pale ale hopped liberally with home-grown Progress hops. I know how good a brewer Rich Poole is from drinking his homebrew, so Rocket Science beers are always worth trying I just wish he would brew more! My other favourite beer of the beer week specials was the Bristol Cream Stout brewed as a collaboration between Beerd and Wiper & True. This was a really satisfying milk stout with Bristol Cream sherry added to the cask. Surprisingly it only came in at just over 4%, so was also the most forgiving beer of the night!

The pub was nicely busy all night, with plenty of people in beer week t-shirts. All the brewers were in attendance, so it was great having a chat to them and generally geeking out on beer! Really looking forward to the rest of the week now and all the beer it will, responsibly, bring!