Heaven: 2021 You know what we're missing? Beer, Ale and Cider!
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).
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).
Comments
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)
Comes out around 60-75p a pint.
I put mine in pressure barrels as bottling is definitely Too Much Like Hard Work.
My son is lucky - his lodger brought the equipment with him and they’ve set it up in the utility room.
We've done a black sheep one a few year's ago too.
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.
That four pints tends to be between the pair of us in an evening. Lightweights these days.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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?
I thought the word over there was used for unfermented apple-juice?
But at the moment our favourite supplier is in Hereford.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I generally find beer is better than wine with cheese, especially if the cheese is a stronger one.
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.
Now trying to replicate the plant at the new house...