I love beer. Over the years I've had a steady relationship with ale, and in the last few years I've begun to learn about the complexities of our national drink. It's a fascinating subject with a 6000 year old history.
Fermented malted grains and water. It's that simple, or was for a long time. Then in the 1500s hops came into play, and things got more complex. Fermented malt drinks are quite sweet, but hops add a bitterness, as well as being a preservative. The unhopped drink was ale, the hopped drink was known as beer.
Leap forward to the 1970s, and beer/ale in the UK was decidedly crap. Watery ales and weak fizzy mass produced piss from Australia and Europe everywhere. CAMRA was established in 1971. Jumping forward through the days of Banks Bitter in 3l bottles from the supermarket, past the innovation of the widget and the irish cream flow beers, and we reach the last decade... CAMRA was a large factor in keeping real ale alive during the 70s, but it has also created an image of real ale as the drink of the patched cardigan wearing beardy man with attitudes to match. Whilst that image might still be a little close to home for some of CAMRA, it certainly isn't true of the ale industry which is now led by the bright young things, the craftys, the rebel brewers creating living products that are gaining in mainstream appeal.
There's still a place for a brewer that focuses on brewing for the tweed wearing old boy whose every sentence is a critique of how the best ales have been ruined by change of some kind, but that market may well be in decline.
The youngsters have it. The methods are traditional. The ingredients are (mostly) traditional. But the flavours and drinkers are more varied than ever before. You only need to walk your supermarket's beer aisle to see what has happened in the last few years. The ale section used to be a sad affair. John Smiths bitter, John Smiths bitter with widget, Irish foamy stuff, Bishops Finger or other novelty named thing, Guinness... possibly another well known beer - Tetley, or Boddingtons... The rest of the aisle was Bud, Stella, XXXX, Fosters, Carling, Heineken, Carlsberg etc etc... In a few short years those roles have reversed. The lagers are still there, but now there is a much finer range and those mass produced options are very much the bottom of the heap. On top of those is the range of german and belgian beers, more flavourful drinks brewed with lager yeast. But the bulk of the aisle - real ale. Stouts and Porters to choose from, more golden ales than I can name, and best of all, a huge range of mid strength mid colour ales from across the nation.
Microbreweries are taking on the big boys and the big boys are copying the micro trend and producing interesting smaller run beers pushing the flavour envelope. Glorious high hopped beers, sour beers, and historical beers... The choice is fantastic.
Pubs are in decline though. I'm not going to get into that here, although these stats shine a very bright light on what is happening. There are nearly twice as many breweries in the UK today (2015) as there were in 2000, whilst the pub stock has declined by getting on for twenty percent.
More choice in beer, less choice in venue to drink it.
Again I am supporting the Rochford Beer Festival this year. Great people, best free entry festival in the country, and my favourite week of the year bar none. But last year was my last as a CAMRA member. You see I just can't bring myself to care whether a beer is naturally carbonated through secondary fermentation in the storage container or pointed with co2. The ongoing nit picking about what craft beer is, griping about Wetherspoons. I can't sort an openly sexist organisation who've put some press releases out that could be followed by a Sid James laugh.
Beer is our national drink. I like drinking it, I like making it, and I admire others that do. But it's just a drink. A beverage. If you like it, it's good. If you don't like it, it's probably still good, just not to your taste. And it doesn't matter.
Still, "talking about drinking is like dancing about football." See you in the pub.
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