Heaven: 2021 You know what we're missing? Beer, Ale and Cider!

KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
edited August 2022 in Limbo
We've got threads for wine and spirits, but not beer and cider. So here is is.

Beer for me is mostly home-brewed; drinking through a stout with a bitter maturing in the barrel. Should be starting fermenting another one perhaps tonight.

However, some friends down in Somerset sent us two litres of cider (the real stuff, still and cloudy, that smells like windfall) so we're on that at the moment.

Any perry fans? One of our locals does Gwynt y Ddraig (variously translatable as Dragon's Wind, Dragon's Breath, or Dragon's Unfortunate Lower Colon Problem).
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Comments

  • EigonEigon Shipmate
    My Young Man tries to find bottles of Gwynt y Ddraig cider when he comes up to visit, as a treat for his friends back in London.

    A Welsh beer with a slightly unfortunate name is Felinfoel (usually called Feelin Foul) though I've never had a hangover from it.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Eigon wrote: »
    My Young Man tries to find bottles of Gwynt y Ddraig cider when he comes up to visit, as a treat for his friends back in London.

    A Welsh beer with a slightly unfortunate name is Felinfoel (usually called Feelin Foul) though I've never had a hangover from it.

    It's quite a painful mispronunciation that one. (Vellin Voil is a rough rendering in English spelling, lit. Bare Mill, but Foel is likely to refer to a bare summitted mountain, so Mountain Mill is better)
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    My son’s lodger is an expert ale brewer, he has all the gear and is teaching my son the art. We have sampled his ale - bloomin’ excellent!

    :mrgreen:
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited April 2021
    I just use the kits. Costs a fortune to set up boiling, mashing and sparging equipment.

    Comes out around 60-75p a pint.

    I put mine in pressure barrels as bottling is definitely Too Much Like Hard Work.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    KarlLB wrote: »
    I just use the kits. Costs a fortune to set up boiling, mashing and sparging equipment.

    Comes out around 60-75p a pint.

    My son is lucky - his lodger brought the equipment with him and they’ve set it up in the utility room.
  • I haven't brewed my own for a couple of years as life is too busy but I have a box of Woodford's Wherry which I really need to get round to brewing. Excellent results in the past.
    We've done a black sheep one a few year's ago too.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    I just use the kits. Costs a fortune to set up boiling, mashing and sparging equipment.

    Comes out around 60-75p a pint.

    I put mine in pressure barrels as bottling is definitely Too Much Like Hard Work.

    The problem with barrelling the stuff is that you need to either (a) drink in extreme moderation to let the CO2 come back to propel the next pint out of the barrel or (b) drink with extreme lack of moderation so that it doesn't matter if you have let air into the barrel.

    Or does using CO2 bulbs actually work?

    I dug the (kit based) equipment out when the pubs were closed down and have been brewing up about once a month since then.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    CO2 bulbs do work although they spoil my preference for beer that would pass the CAMRA test. Depends on your definition of moderation, but I can get four pints out in a night reliably.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    Four pints is just right. I also like my beer flattish.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Boogie wrote: »
    Four pints is just right. I also like my beer flattish.

    That four pints tends to be between the pair of us in an evening. Lightweights these days.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Not forgetting Perry. Had a bottle of Flaky Bark - of which there are only six extant mature trees in existence. These are being cultivated by a cider maker in Ross-on-Wye fortunately.

    A proper delicious dry tipple, very good with gammon
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Firenze wrote: »
    Not forgetting Perry. Had a bottle of Flaky Bark - of which there are only six extant mature trees in existence. These are being cultivated by a cider maker in Ross-on-Wye fortunately.

    A proper delicious dry tipple, very good with gammon

    Mention of the Gwynt y Ddraig version was mentioned up thread. I actually prefer perry to cider (pear cider does not exist outside marketing-land) but when it comes to cider, it's hard to beat Orchard Pig.
  • Although there are a wonderful variety of local micro-breweries all over the place, here in Canada, I have found that on the whole they lack imagination. There is a strange preference for IPAs that are overwhelmingly hoppy and often with other flavours added. A few do a form of Extra Special Bitter that is mostly inoffensive. I still wish, though, that I could get a decent cask ale, of the kind that proliferate across the UK.

    Pretty much the same thing applies to locally produced "cider", most of which is horribly sweet. Give me a good old West Country scrumpy any day!
    KarlLB wrote: »
    I actually prefer perry to cider (pear cider does not exist outside marketing-land) but when it comes to cider, it's hard to beat Orchard Pig.

    Mrs Claypool has had this argument with all the local cider producers. "Pear cider doesn't exist - it is called perry." They just look blankly at her.

  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    KarlLB wrote: »
    when it comes to cider, it's hard to beat Orchard Pig.

    I wouldn't say it was that difficult. In the days when one could drive about the country, Mr F and I would research artisanal cider makers, track them to their often obscure premises, and load the car with a few dozen bottles. This chap for example, in Huntingdonshire, should you ever be that way.

  • SpikeSpike Ecclesiantics & MW Host, Admin Emeritus
    KarlLB wrote: »
    I just use the kits. Costs a fortune to set up boiling, mashing and sparging equipment.

    Comes out around 60-75p a pint.

    I put mine in pressure barrels as bottling is definitely Too Much Like Hard Work.

    It’s a while since I’ve done any brewing, but I tended to use malt extract. I’ve done full mash brewing a couple of times, but as you say, a lot of faff and needs a lot of equipment. It’s also very time consuming.

    Using extract (either canned or packets of spraymalt or a combination of both) is a good compromise as it means I can choose what hops I use and I have more control over flavour and strength.
  • Firenze wrote: »

    I wouldn't say it was that difficult. In the days when one could drive about the country, Mr F and I would research artisanal cider makers, track them to their often obscure premises, and load the car with a few dozen bottles. This chap for example, in Huntingdonshire, should you ever be that way.
    That’s not far and stocks local pubs and restaurants. We may have to seek it out soon.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Not a lot of artisanal cider in my neck of the woods. When I'm down in Somerset with friends they have one on their road where I pick some up but the shelf life is poor so I can only have it when I've just been down there.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    Lots of cider places where my son lives in Bristol. I can’t drink it - half a pint causes me to throw up! I must be ‘lergic. 🤔
  • Fawkes CatFawkes Cat Shipmate
    edited April 2021
    Something like 30 years ago, I was off on a cycle ride in North Somerset (as in bits reachable from Bristol, but properly rural. So neither Bath nor Weston) with friends. And we went past a number of farm gates with scrawled notices advertising their scrumpy. I strongly suspect that this was trade unknown to the authorities.

    I'm now older and fatter and two hundred miles away, so cycling in Somerset isn't something I have done recently. But is cider still made and sold on this basis - or has artisan marketing (or food hygiene laws or the Excise) caught up with this to either legitimise or destroy this trade?
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    edited April 2021
    The US in general is barely aware of cider. A company has sprung up (or expanded its market) called Angry Orchard. I've tried its Crisp Apple but likely it's sweeter than people with more wide experience would enjoy. I like sweet so I like it. I may end up trying their Rose (made from pink fleshed apples) or Green Apple.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Lyda wrote: »
    The US in general is barely aware of cider. A company has sprung up (or expanded its market) called Angry Orchard. I've tried its Crisp Apple but likely it's sweeter than people with more wide experience would enjoy. I like sweet so I like it. I may end up trying their Rose (made from pink fleshed apples) or Green Apple.

    I thought the word over there was used for unfermented apple-juice?
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    True. What we are talking about on this thread is called "hard cider" here. I might try going to our local more interesting wine and spirit shop and check out other brands.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    It’s by no means only Somerset or the West Country. Besides the maker in Huntingdon, we found one in Nottinghamshire. Even in the commercial brands there are distinct east/west styles as between Westons and Aspalls.

    But at the moment our favourite supplier is in Hereford.
  • Cider is starting to become popular in Ontario. We have no shortage of apples, and they will grow in lots of places where grapes won’t. It’s a good beer substitute for friends who don’t tolerate gluten. We enjoyed some Somerset cider when we were in the UK a few years ago though I can’t speak to its stylistic authenticity.

    Left to my own devices I’m more of a wine person, but back in the days when we had choirs and pubs we used to regularly go to a pub after choir, which had an excellent rotating selection of beers and ales and a rather so-so wine list. I admit to being fond of some somewhat hoppy IPAs of the kind that make more traditional beer drinkers complain that the industry has gone to hell in a hand basket. But I’ve also liked pretty much all the English (or English-style) ales I’ve run into here or in the UK. As @Rufus T Firefly says good cask ale is much easier to find in the UK than it is here.
  • I also like hoppy IPAs
  • Hoppy IPAs are good for a glass when you're eating a curry (which is what they were designed for). But I could only ever have one glass before being overwhelmed - it's not something I could have a couple of pints of in an evening in the pub.

    My other complaint about North American IPAs is that far too often the ultra hoppiness just masks poor beer making. A good beer (of almost any variety) is a thing of joy. One of my local breweries makes a dark stout that is delicious - and I'm someone who never drinks stout.
  • Re cider: next to our church is a plot of land that was originally a smallholding. When the old house was demolished two years ago, we realised that behind the house were two very old apple trees. I picked a few of the apples and we tentatively identified the trees as different varieties of cider apples. Which makes sense - the original settlers would have made their own booze.

    Before pandemic, we were hoping to take some cuttings from the trees and try to graft them onto new root stock, in the hope that we could save them before the developers come and cut the trees down. Our hope was that we might establish a new orchard on spare land behind the church, from which we might start a small cider-making project.

    Sadly events (not just the pandemic) have prevented us from making any progress. Sometime soon these old variety trees will be destroyed and a little bit of local history will go with it.
  • The beer that introduced me to IPAs was a local IPA inauspiciously called Hop Addict, made by a small one-man operation in an industrial park in Pickering that called itself County Durham Brewing. I liked it partly because (despite its name) it wasn’t overwhelmingly hoppy and you could tell there was a good underlying beer there.

    Pickering is a Toronto outer suburb that is in fact in Durham County, so the name is accurate even if its connotations of some bucolic paradise are a little far-fetched... He sold entirely to Toronto pubs (and also made some decent cask ales) so I don’t know what has happened to him with Covid.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited April 2021
    I can't be doing with these very hoppy beers. They taste like an infusion of grapefruit pith to me and that's not something I'd choose to drink. They don't have the robust malt character that's needed to counteract the hops. I have found as a quick rule of thumb that if the bar clip mentions the hop at all that's an amber flag, and if the hop begins with a "C" that's a red flag.

    First pint of over-hopped IPA I had I took back to the bar complaining it must be off because I couldn't believe it was meant to taste like that and still less that anyone would want it to. I'm not averse to bitterness, but stuff like Jaipur puts me in mind of this bit of Monty Python:

    Inspector: (continuing) And what is this one: Spring Surprise?

    Mr. Hilton: Ah, that's one of our specialities. Covered in dark, velvety chocolate, when you pop it into your mouth, stainless steel bolts spring out and plunge straight through both cheeks.


    It's a matter of great sadness to me that in recent years one can go into the sort of real ale pub with a dozen hand pumps and find that everything is the colour of lager and tastes like lemon floor cleaner.

    My brother in law brought over a Brewdog mixed box at Christmas and it was drinkable just about but I was really left wondering what the hype about them was.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    Since being diabetic, I tend to avoid anything alcholic and it knocks me about a bit. My drink of choice used to be bitter.
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    I'm looking forward to going and getting some of these guys beer. Tylt Meadow. I've been before for tea with homeless guys. It's a beautiful, profound place, Mount St Bernard Abbey, as they always are. Spoke with a Trappist! I'm so envious, in tears as I write! How absurd. I know the film maker, Nick Hamer - who will go very far indeed - and his composer Dave Hendra who was a neighbour. I envy the certainty. I was only thinking of my own earlier today, I mourn for it but there's no going back. I'll cry in to me beer.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    I can't be doing with these very hoppy beers. They taste like an infusion of grapefruit pith to me and that's not something I'd choose to drink...
    It's a matter of great sadness to me that in recent years one can go into the sort of real ale pub with a dozen hand pumps and find that everything is the colour of lager and tastes like lemon floor cleaner.

    My brother in law brought over a Brewdog mixed box at Christmas and it was drinkable just about but I was really left wondering what the hype about them was.

    I feel the same. We still (just about) have 4 local brewers here - Robinsons, Lees, Holts and Hydes (although their proper brewery is now yuppie flats - in Moss Side!!) (and RIP proper Boddingtons). None of them make anything nasty like that, although Lees can be a bit of an acquired taste and Holts is best found in a really cheap pub with vinyl seats, formica tables, and strip lights :smile:
  • Nick TamenNick Tamen Shipmate
    edited April 2021
    Hoppy IPAs are good for a glass when you're eating a curry (which is what they were designed for).
    Interesting. I’d never realized that, but it makes sense. It also perhaps makes sense in terms of my own taste buds, as I dislike both hoppy IPAs and curry.

    Although there are a wonderful variety of local micro-breweries all over the place, here in Canada, I have found that on the whole they lack imagination. There is a strange preference for IPAs that are overwhelmingly hoppy and often with other flavours added.
    KarlLB wrote: »
    I can't be doing with these very hoppy beers. . . .

    First pint of over-hopped IPA I had I took back to the bar complaining it must be off because I couldn't believe it was meant to taste like that and still less that anyone would want it to.
    These posts make me feel much better. I’m the polar opposite of a beer connoisseur, but I am open to trying things, and I’ve found that much of what is available from microbreweries here—of which there are many—are too hoppy for my taste and are flavored unnecessarily. And since that’s what lots of people seem to like, it leaves me feeling like I just don’t get it and never will.

  • SpikeSpike Ecclesiantics & MW Host, Admin Emeritus
    Telford wrote: »
    Since being diabetic, I tend to avoid anything alcholic and it knocks me about a bit. My drink of choice used to be bitter.

    I’m diabetic (type 2) and don’t have a problem drinking beer
  • SpikeSpike Ecclesiantics & MW Host, Admin Emeritus
    On the subject of IPAs, what the hell is a “dark IPA?” that I see so often? How is it possible to have a dark pale ale?
  • Martin54Martin54 Suspended
    Spike wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    Since being diabetic, I tend to avoid anything alcholic and it knocks me about a bit. My drink of choice used to be bitter.

    I’m diabetic (type 2) and don’t have a problem drinking beer

    Likewise! Had an original Guinness on Paddy's Day. Better than ever.
  • Leorning CnihtLeorning Cniht Shipmate
    edited April 2021
    I quite like hoppy US IPAs - not in any sense as a replacement for a proper real ale, but they're generally quite pleasant to drink. I can't be doing with "beer with weird stuff added" though - I had one pint in a local "craft brew" place a couple of years ago, which was adulterated with juniper and I can't remember what else, and tasted like nothing more than a 50-50 mix of lager and dentist's mouthwash.

    That's one of the rare occasions I've had a pint that was sufficiently bad that I've abandoned it part-way through.

    (ETA: I'll gladly eat @Nick Tamen's share of the curry, and drink his IPA while doing so :wink: )
  • My shares of curry and IPAs are yours, @Leorning Cniht! (Normally, I’d give my share to my wife, but she doesn’t like them either.)

  • Spike wrote: »
    On the subject of IPAs, what the hell is a “dark IPA?” that I see so often? How is it possible to have a dark pale ale?

    The ones I’ve had are basically darker ales hopped in a moderately IPA style. I don’t run into them that often though I’ve liked the ones I’ve tasted.

  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    They're not pale any more though are they? So the name's a bit silly. Shouldn't they be IDA - India Dark Ale?
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    edited April 2021
    Spike wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    Since being diabetic, I tend to avoid anything alcholic and it knocks me about a bit. My drink of choice used to be bitter.

    I’m diabetic (type 2) and don’t have a problem drinking beer

    I can drink a couple of pints without a problem but any more will knock me about. My problem is that once I get the taste for it I want to carry on so for the last 20 years I rarely start.
  • SpikeSpike Ecclesiantics & MW Host, Admin Emeritus
    I can't be doing with "beer with weird stuff added" though - I had one pint in a local "craft brew" place a couple of years ago, which was adulterated with juniper and I can't remember what else, and tasted like nothing more than a 50-50 mix of lager and dentist's

    A few months go I had a box of craft ales that included a bottle of chocolate orange stout. It was the most disgusting stuff I had drunk in a long time.
  • Spike wrote: »
    A few months go I had a box of craft ales that included a bottle of chocolate orange stout. It was the most disgusting stuff I had drunk in a long time.

    Stout? Fine. Chocolate stout? Fine, although not my top preference. Chocolate Orange? Mine, not Terry's. But all three words together? It sounds vile, and I'm not surprised to hear that's how you found it.
  • Beer designed by people who don't like drinking beer?
  • I have no problem with trying experimental beers, and I don't mind a fairly hoppy IPA in the slightest (anything tastes better than Greene King's version... well, most things!", but I do like things that I could cheerfully order another pint of.
  • I enjoy some IPAs, but I find that the overly hopped examples are more an exercise in macho my IPA is hoppier than your IPA, resulting in aggressively undrinkable ale. I'll go out on a limb and make a prediction: the overly hopped IPAs will eventually go the way of the overly oaked Chardonnays of the 1990s, i.e., mostly gone.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    It's probably a stretch to say IPAs were designed for curry. The high strength and hopping were for presevation the voyage rather than to compliment the cuisine, although it's certainly true a robust flavour can compete with spices that would kill most wines stone dead.

    I generally find beer is better than wine with cheese, especially if the cheese is a stronger one.
  • To be fair, some of the 'early' US IPAs were interesting and some experimentation is no bad thing, but then it all went far too far and they started trying to out-hop one another.

    And yes, as with everything else he says about beer, KarlLB is right when he says that the original English IPA style was brewed so that the ale was in good condition when it finally completed its sea voyage to India to refresh the troops.

    I do worry that a lot of US craft beer drinkers have had their taste buds excoriated to the extent that - when writing on beer tasting sites - they complain that good old-fashioned British IPAs are 'tasteless'.

    I've only been to New York and quite liked the craft beer I had there - it was more 'red' and reminiscent of Dutch and German styles I thought. I can't remember the name of the ale I sampled. It wasn't as good as traditional cask-conditioned ale but was drinkable.

    I don't mind some of the newer US-influenced hoppy yellow ales when it's a warm day but I wouldn't go out of my way to drink them. Like KarlLB it depresses me when I see a set of hand-pumps and realise from the clips that they are all dispensing the same hoppy yellow pee.

    There is an argument that the 'Gold' ales and lager-look-a-like styles are weaning lager drinkers off gassy piss and onto proper cask-conditioned ale. I think that can and does happen. At the same time, though, there are plenty of bland 'me-too' hoppier pale ales that aren't up to much and certainly not a patch on a properly cellared cask-conditioned bitter.
  • so glad I've found this thread - we've spent the past few months living with relatives waiting for a house purchase to go through. BiL has got a full set up in a shed in his garden and I've got very into full grain brewing with him. It probably helped that for a lot of that time we were not supposed to be leaving the house, so driving fell off the agenda too....

    Now trying to replicate the plant at the new house...
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Probably just as well he didn't have a still in there.

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