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?

Our friends at Real Lager Reviews

Are we simply talking about the ubiquitous brands than come in cans? Or are we including Pilsners, darker Czech beers and traditional 19th century ‘lagered’ ales?

There are differences in ingredients, fermentation and delivery of beer to glass clearly, and some of these result in different reactions from those in beer circles.

Various other methods of serving lager can be found, as opposed to blasting CO2 into your pint (although many would argue what the hell is lager if it doesn’t have bubbles?!)   The debate reminds me of the ‘What’s an IPA anymore’ discussion that many of us 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 far, for CAMRA to rule out serving a lager because it uses CO2, sounds on the face of it, fair enough.

But perhaps CAMRA are being restrictive to the beer industry because they are the nearest to a ‘beer’ body? Not necessarily, as their focus is on real ale, but when no ones else focusses on anything else, they are bound to become tied up in a wider beer debate? Are they in a position to complement their traditional views with a forward thinking approach to beer that doesn’t only promote beers of secondary fermentation and those that do utilise CO2? As many other people have pointed out, who is there to simply protect the interests of quality beer?

Beer pump clips at the Worth Valley beer festival

And where does this leave the humble beer festival. Should CAMRA organised events be dedicated to ‘real ale’, or should they be more inclusive of beer that is brewed differently? Many will say no, but there isn’t really anyone else organising something more eclectic I say this with the caveat that I know plenty of CAMRA festivals include lager, craft brew and much more, and that there are many smaller independent beer events such as the recent Flying dog beer tasting in Leeds.

People like different things, that’s life. There is nothing wrong with ‘real ale’ festivals and I thoroughly enjoy them, having this year been to Slataire, Norwich and Keighley Worth Valley festival at Oxenhope.

But personally, I’d like to see a ‘Beer, Ale, whatever festival’, the emphasis being on quality, responsible drinking and socialising. Forget arguments over production, linear divisions, digs at beer styles and all that jazz. I want to see festivals that provide an outlet for beer brewers,; a get together for beer lovers; and 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”

(And apologies if I’ve taken your phrase out of context Adrian!)

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… I was itching to write something, thinking about some sort of digital marketing blog (which also happened) and Alan had been penning for quite some time the first chapter of a book about the similarities between some modern musician and an equally hedonistic renaissance artist (best to ask him about that!). The West Wing was a catalyst for much debate and true to form, we started discussing how we could put our pen hands to good use. I think it was the bottle of Old Hooky in front us that sparked the idea of turning our attentions to beer, after all we’d single handedly kept Old Hooky and St Peter’s Organic Ale in stock at our local ASDA for about 18 months by this point.

A few hours later and our first incarnation on WordPress was up and running and there it sat for a few weeks whilst we fine tuned some articles and formulated a plan of action. Over the coming weeks a Twitter account popped up and we got talking to beer bloggers and beer lovers, many of who inspired us to take the blog to the next level, buying ‘proper’ hosting and getting Sam involved, who with his home brew experience, Yorkshire charm (and Yorkshire no-nonsense frugality) has added to our writing team.

Only a handful of months later we are now listed in the Top 20 Wikio Blogs for Wine & Beer, have a dedicated following of over 1,000 tweeps and have joined the British Guild of Beer Writers, all of which makes us puff our chests out in pride and smile very widely indeed.

Which brings us up to date, and finding out last week about our nomination. And of course, asking all our friends and followers to vote for us too! Voting is open at the Golden Twits until Tuesday 17^th November (tomorrow!), so if you like our blog, our tweets, Alan, Sam and I will be eternally grateful if you could vote for our little blog’s twitter account. Do it for us, and do it for the beer!

A massive thank you to everyone who reads the blog, follows us on twitter and has helped to make the first 6 months of our existence so rewarding. The beer community rocks!

Thanks, The Real Ale Reviews team.

http://www.goldentwits.com/corp-individual/15-10-0994023/

Vote for Real Ale Reviews in the Golden Twits