Beer In The Year Of Covid

How can you can get close to the taste of fresh cask beer without going to the pub? Well beer in bottles, especially that bottled with active yeast may well be your best answer. To accompany my series of reviews of beer and breweries, I offer the following observations in praise of bottled beer!

Christopher Hutt’s landmark publication, in 1973, The Death of the English Pub, should really have prepared us for this. He detailed the creeping demise of this great timeless institution but even he could not have foreseen how many pubs would close this century, particularly after the financial crash of 2008. No one, indeed, could ever have envisaged a time when there would not be a single pub open.

In the early ’Seventies many civilised people, despairing at what was happening to their local, seriously turned their attention to drinking bottled beer at home. Others didn’t and chose to form CAMRA, of which Hutt became chairman, to oppose the ills of the time perpetrated on the drinker by the big breweries with their insensitive rush to rationalise, modernise and profitise.

Thankfully CAMRA succeeded at least in creating the real-ale movement but had less success over the next fifty or more years in preserving the traditional nature of pubs and, sadly, their very existence. While so many have closed, one relatively recent response has been the micropub movement. I have visited a few of them and as much as I admire their principles of selling a wide choice of craft beers, I am not entirely taken with them. I like the absence of banging music, flashing fruit machines and ubiquitous television but not the absence of cosy corners, snugs, bars to lean against. Basically, they are converted shops, too small for comfort and space. Yes, I understand sitting on a bench facing others encourages general affability, no bad thing, but it also precludes private conversation and quiet reflection. To my mind they are no substitute for the old-fashioned pub of my drinking days.

I think, however, their existence may well have widened the popularity of bottled beer, the spectacularly colourful rows of which often line the wall behind the bar. When perforce you switch to bottles, unable as you currently are to even leave the house never mind find a pub open and serving draught, let me offer you certain consolations. If you look on line at the websites of reputable wholesalers you see immediately that there’s virtually a boundless choice of the full range of classic favourites, as well as the opportunity to make serendipitous finds just by being adventurous and maybe going for a romantic name.

The choice at first may seem bewildering, overwhelming. So many names to choose from. So much variety. Take a quick peek, for example, at Beer Hawk, based in Leeds. They are currently offering an eclectic case of 15 high-quality, exotic-sounding British beers, including: Vocation Pure Pilsner, Beavertown Neck Oil, Fyne Ales Easy Trail, Brew Dog Indie Pale, Thornbridge Tzara, Tempest Brewing Co. Hells, Camden Pale, Wiper and True Kaleidoscope, Harbour Antipodean IPA, Fourpure Oatmeal Stout, Magic Rock Common Ground, Wild Beer Pogo, Siren Yu Lu, Hawkshead Red. There appears to be everything here from the very light and bright vibrant summery fruity beers, to sweet or sour pale ales bordering on pilsners; full-bodied stouts; clear beers, hazy beers, you name it. And the good news is that they can generally be delivered to your doorstep within a couple of days.

One advantage, clearly obvious in Beer Hawk’s large collection of Belgian classics, for example, a country where most beers are served from the bottle, is that the beer will always taste the same wherever you drink it and will be is a state of pristine perfection. Their case of a dozen diverse Belgian beers includes: Kwak, Tripel Karmeliet, Delirium Tremens, Leffe Brune, Blanche Bruxelles, Hoegaarden, Vedett Blonde, The Wiper Times, Rodenbach, St Feuillien Grisette Blanch, St Feuillien Saison, Poppering's Hommelbier. It must be a rare delight particularly for those with a taste for wheat beers.

Looking at the dazzling array of beers available from wholesalers, miraculously only a phonecall away, my mind momentarily drifts back to the bad old pre-CAMRA days when Whitbread Trophy was being marketed as the national brand even though being brewed to different recipes and standards in different parts of the country and usually tasting different every time you had to drink the wretched stuff for lack of an alternative. Don’t get me started on Watney’s Red Barrel. We have come a long way from those days. Thankfully in my part of Yorkshire, we had two very respectable beers, Tetley’s and Webster’s, to go at – but it was generally not a pleasant gustatory experience to travel far from their catchment areas.

But let me come to the point that there is another thing hugely in favour of being on the bottle: the quite remarkable take-off in the production of bottle-conditioned beers, heartily endorsed by CAMRA as ‘real ale in a bottle’. RAIBS to the cognoscenti.

This really is as close as you can get to fresh cask beer without going to the pub, as all the beers are bottled with active yeast which performs a secondary fermentation. This ensures the beer has delicate carbonation much less aggressive than in ordinary bottled or keg beer and, it is not an exaggeration to say, it can have more body and flavour. If most cask beers have to be drunk within, say, six weeks, most bottle-conditioned beers have not even left the brewery by then. The extra length of time allows for a maturation of flavour and body.

Marston’s, Fuller’s, Adnam’s, Young's, Morland and Brakspear offer bottles proudly proclaiming the fact they contain secondary fermentation and are some I’ve tried and can recommend. Just because a beer doesn't specifically state ‘bottle-conditioned’ doesn't automatically rule it out, however. If you hold it up to the light and see a layer of white at the bottom, that is not a bad sign because it’s the veritable vital ingredient: yeast. CAMRA produce their Good Bottled Beer Guide indicating which are bottle-conditioned. If it doubt consult http://www.camra.org.uk/good-bottled-beer-guide .

Jeff Evans, who writes the guide, estimates there are more than 2,000 bottle-conditioned ales currently on the market with new ones being added all the time. You might perhaps care to try Amazon’s case of 12, Best of British Beer Bottle Conditioned British Real Ales, very reasonably priced, delivered to the door and a good way to get started.

But beware bottle-conditioned beers can be very strong, especially the Belgian ones. To get an idea how strong take a look at: https://www.ratebeer.com/tag/bottle-conditioned/

Finally, may I note that I have regretfully been thinking of converting to bottled beer for some time. With draught beer, cask especially, much can depend on the venue and how far the beer has had to travel. In recent years, I have cheekily taken to asking for a small sample when in a pub new to me before committing myself. This has come about by being served so many Sarson’s-tasting pints at extortionate prices. If I don’t think it had been kept well, I politely leave – or ask for a bottle!

Years ago, the sight of the pumps constantly in action was usually a cast-iron guarantee of a decent pint, pulled through clean pipes. Modern bar staff who seem to get younger as I grow older, don’t always, to my mind, actually know the proper way to pull a pint. If, at home, you don’t make the perfect pour with the bottle of your choice there is no one else to blame but yourself.

Anyway for the moment this is all behind me and I am pleased to be sampling bottled beers that probably would never have come my way before the pubs shut.

It’s not all gloom and doom if you’ve got the bottle.