Real Ale Reviews
Independent reviewers of real ales, beers and lagers from around the world, including beer reviews, breweries, watering holes and real ale events
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Lager, lager, lager
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November 26th, 2009CommentLager, lager, lagerThis week has seen a host of articles on lager, CAMRA and the divisions in the beer industry (see articles by Barm, Mark Dredge, Woolpack Dave, Pete Brown and more).Seems that some of it is negative (which I say meaning not positive about the whole thing rather than derogatory), much of it is complicated and much of it has sparkedvery good debate amongst the beer community.It’s fitting that the lager debate surfaced on the week we unearthed a parody of our sites, real-lager-reviews.com, and actually the Guardian article was one of the ways we cottoned onto our spoofers.Then Sam couldn’t quite work out if William’s Brothers Grozet which was depectively lager like for a beer.It seems the question of lager brings up awkward arguments. CAMRA clearly don’t associate themselves with CO2, which rules out a lot of lagers, but it doesn’t fundamentally rule out lager.Various other methods of serving lager can be found (what the hell is lager when it’s a home!) The debate reminds me of the ‘What’s an IPA anymore’ discussion that many ofus bloggers commented on a few months back.So, my two cents.CAMRA support real ale. Check. They (to the best of my knowledge) have no vendetta against lager or any other drink. However, some die hard CAMRA supporters probably do(and they are entitled to their opinions). So for CAMRA to rule out serving a lager because it uses CO”, sounds on the face of it fair enough.Look, people like different things, that’s live. There is nothing wrong with ‘real ale’ festivals. But personally, I’d prefer to see ‘Beer, ale, whatever festivals’, the empahsis beingon quality, responsible drinkaing and socialising. Forget arguments, linear divisions, style. I want to see festivals that provide an outlet for beer berwers, a get together for beer loversand a genuine effort to make sure beer has a good name.Lager, beer, ale, stout, porter, IPA, pale ale: all allowed.Cask, keg, bottled, straight out of a fermenting tank: allowed.Tankard, pint glass, 1/3 pint, 1/2 pint, wine glass: allowed.Me, I like beer, and as I repeat from my comment ealrier this week, as Adrian Tierney Jones puts it, “Beer, ale , whatever” (apologies if I take your usage out of context Adrian).I will add to this discussion later this week, in a post close to my heart.
Serving beer (Wikipedia)
Last week saw a host of articles on lager, CAMRA and why the two don’t always have a harmonious relationship (see articles by Barm, Mark Dredge, Woolpack Dave, Tandleman & The Guardian).
The same week r’ Sam couldn’t quite work out if William’s Brothers Grozet was a lager or a beer, with conflicting online reviews and it being deceptively lager like for an ale.
It’s fitting that the lager debate and lots of lager chat surfaced on the week we unearthed a parody of our sites, real-lager-reviews.com, and actually the Guardian article that kicked much of this off was one of the ways we cottoned onto our spoofers (thanks to an innocuous comment on there by the Real Lager Reviews lads).
It seems the question of lager brings up some awkward discussions. CAMRA clearly don’t associate themselves with CO2, which rules out a lot of lagers, but it doesn’t fundamentally rule out lager per se.
Which leads us to what is a lager: what it is and why is it different? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: beer festival, beer writing, CAMRA, lager, saltaire, serving
We are beer twits…maybe
3November 16th, 2009Comment
Vote for Real Ale Reviews in the Golden Twits
As some of you will have seen last week, this blog (well, our beer related twitter account) has been nominated for a little award. The Golden Twits are an “award scheme that aims to celebrate the best in Twittering” and are organised by The Drum magazine (a news mag all about marketing, design and media). The standards are high in the awards and in our categories we are up against the likes of fellow twits from 4Homes, White & Mackay, Ogilvy, Cisco and the Guardian.
This makes us very proud, as we only started writing about beer five months ago.
For those of you that don’t know lots about us, I started this blog in May with Alan. It was a rainy summer night and Alan and I were watching series 4 (I think) of the West Wing… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: awards, beer writing, golden twits, twitter, wikio
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