When Mr. Malting and I moved across the pond, one of the first things we noticed was the difference in advertising.  In the UK there was a clear absence of images of SUVs driving over small cars on the motorway or dudes chugging yellow soda while snowboarding down a mountain.  In the UK, it’s all fey turtles carrying cans of cola on their backs and Vashti Bunyan singing about her Hebridean cow while hawking a phone plan.

After this weekend’s American Beer Festival at the White Horse in Parson’s Green, one could say that there is a similarly cartoonish contrast in beer.  Many British beers may ask you to be attuned to subtleties all the while courting you with a mild buzz.  American beers are flashy, with big hop-bling and alcohol percentages that will have you arm wrestling strangers before the night is up.

Forget your 2.5% milds, your quaffable bitters…this weekend’s festival was beer tasting as an extreme sport. Boak had the brilliant idea to meet up at the festival in the afternoon, beating the inevitable evening crowd. I made it there first and chose to start with Victory Hop Devil, a beer I’d never tried before, but I’ve always thought the little hope creature was cute.  Palate pandaemonium!  Was I wise to start with this?  Was my palate f*cked now?  After a few sips of the warming stuff, served in a very nice brandy-shaped half pint, I stopped worrying and just embraced the intensity.

I’d almost finished when both Boak and Pete joined me. If you are going to be tackling these extremes, these are the drinking buddies you want–engaging and passionate about beer, the kind of folks who will sympathize when your half of Hop Wallop goes barn-yardy on you.  We decided we couldn’t detect the oak in the “blind taste test” between the two Arrogant Bastards on offer.  Both were tastier than AB’s I’ve had in the US.  I read that some of the beers had been extra-dry-hopped for the journey. Many were also served American-cold which, while not fridge-cold, is a few degrees colder than what in the UK is cellar temperature (which can vary wildly but sometimes is room temperature).  It might be heresy in some beer circles, but in the summer I like beer to be cold.  Really cold.

Why can't British breweries learn a bit of marketing from the US micros?

Next, Pete suggested we try the fabled Dogfish Head 75 Minute IPA, a mixture of IPAs that have been re-fermented in their special “Johnny Cask” with maple syrup, yeast and even more hops.  It was by far my favourite of the evening with loads of tropical fruits and big hops balancing it out. In typical US fashion, the alcohol % is not advertised on the gorgeous pump clip (or anywhere else where the beer is profiled on the web…)

Sometimes alcohol percentages seem like an absurd obsession in the UK (see the controversy over Brew Dog’s 12% Tokyo).  Whereas in the US many brew pubs will serve pints of 6%+ offerings without blinking.  Indeed, the first time I had an Arrogant Bastard (that sentence sounds bad…) the place didn’t serve halves and yet most of the beers on their menu were upwards of 6%.  What would the Daily Mail say?

Luckily, the White Horse does halves, but as the sun came out and the the post-work crowd showed up, I wished they did thirds.  There were so many beers I wouldn’t be able to try because I was already getting goofy.  At one point Pete asked me if I could still taste anything!  Like a boxer you just retire to your corner, drink some water, strategize and get back into things…

Boak went to get us halves of Meantime’s London Porter. Brewer Alistair Hook playfully “[threw] down the gauntlet to the American brewers by giving drinkers a comparative taste of an extremely traditional beer, a six-month old porter vatted in the original London brewing style…”  Indeed, much of what seems new in the US is actually a reinvention of something quite old, and good American brewers know this.  Likewise, exciting UK brewers like Meantime and Brew Dog are having a beery dialogue with the US and this friendly sparring just means better beer for both sides of the pond.

I believe the London porter was Boak’s favourite; she declared it “liquid tiramisu.”  It was indeed deliciously deep– a contrast in sweet, seductive darkness next to the Dogfish Head IPA which had a sun-in-splendor brightness.  At 9.? % it was the thing that made my liver cry uncle.

But, Alastair…you haven’t won yet!  I am considering returning for another round today.

I didn’t want to buy the bottle of Victory’s Hop Wollop, despite the endearing sprung rhyme in the name.  I was put off by the label which features a Poopdeck Pappy look-alike with foam in his beard and a corny story about him panning for gold which turns out to be this beer.

But it was my bi-annual trip to Real Ale in Twickenham and, well, Mr. Malting talked me into it.

Let me tell you, I’m glad he did. You’d never know this beer is 8.5%.  It’s sneaky:  light, well-balanced and easy-drinking.  Dangerous! The hops are dominant as one would expect, but they are juicy rather than resinous.  Lemon and green apple are clipped by a profound bitterness at the finish.  The sweetness from the malt is reminiscent of agave nectar.

After half a glass of this I’m getting happy and even warming up to the notion of Pappy.  Tipsy enough to admit to being mesmerized by Popeye as a little girl. It was a favourite of mine.

The Spinach Moment here clocks in at around 5 minutes.  I would like to see a spinach moment beer– the label can explain that this cartoon character suddenly discovers the tin isn’t full of spinach but HOPS.  It makes more sense than the “Legend of Hop Wallop” on the beer I’m holding.  But that’s the great thing about beer.  It doesn’t have to make sense to taste good.

My novel, The Desperate Ones, is now available from Lulu.com in paperback and as a free download.  So, this book has very little to do with beer.  In fact, in the book’s universe there is no such thing as beer anymore.

But if you are curious what has driven me to drink over the last six years I was writing this, or if you are keen on speculative apocalyptic fiction set in a meta-London, you just might like this thing.

The book’s website can be found here: desperateones.net

The cover was designed and illustrated by the illustrious Patrick Farley.

This months session is hosted by Red, White and Brew, who’ve asked us to consider beer and distance, or which beer was “the longest haul away.”  I first considered writing about the earthy, comforting Dragonhead Stout from the Orkney Brewery– I took a plane and then a car and then a ferry and another car across the the Orkney Mainland to Quoyloo because I thought they would have a visitor centre or at least sell me some beer, but it was just two guys working hard at making more beer.  In the end, I basically went all that way to gush at them about how much I loved it and ended up buying some from the local market.  Along with some bere bread and a mild, crumbly cheese made locally– it was the perfect meal.

But then I reconsidered the subject.  Surely the more interesting take on this is not the farthest beer, but just how far would you go for beer?

Last night I toasted Pete Brown’s IPA voyage carrying a keg of traditional Burton IPA by ship to India. This journey has culminated in a book called Hops and Glory. The book is mixture of high-seas adventure, travelogue and an ode to IPAs.  I read it on the tube and couldn’t help laughing out loud even if that made me look like a nutter.

Last night I got to meet this man who has quite possibly gone the farthest for beer: his warmth, self deprecation and enthusiasm, so apparent in his writing, is amplified in the man.

I spent the night chatting with the Moore Group fellows.  The guys behind the Bronze Age Brewery experiments flew in from Ireland to drink IPAs (The Meantime IPA was my favourite of the evening) and chat about using moss to cork up an old wooden trough to use as a mash tun and boiling water with hot stones, and how none of it is reinactment because let’s face it that word is problematic. Good times!  I hope someday to travel to Ireland to sample their ancient beer and laugh with them again.

Beer obsessives, they are my people.

At the excavated burnt mound at the Tomb of the Eagles, Orkney. It very well could be the remains of an ancient brewery.

(Let’s face it, this year’s Norway was no Lordi)

So, yesterday our flat was full of friends and really crap pop music on the telly.  It was the Eurovision song contest and my Black Heart Stout went over well, I think. (I didn’t have the forethought to line up an international range of beers, as suggested by Mark at Pencil and Spoon.)  I figured a really camp evening involving drinking games and bizarre pop acts in the name of European harmony (oh, and Israel) would be a good environment to debut my stout.

Initially J said, “I’ve had worse.”  I took it on the chin and stuck several brew dog beers in the fridge to chill as back up.  But then when E tried it, she kept sipping saying it reminded her of Christmas.  As the night wore on I noticed that for those drinking beer, well, it was the beer they were drinking. (Save one person who couldn’t be disuaded from Fosters in cans).  J later said, “the bubbles are very tiny.” I don’t know if this is good or bad in a drinking-game beer, and I didn’t press it.

Every time a contortionist showed up, or pyrotechics were used,  cleavage heaved or gazes lingered on the camera too long, we drank my stout.   And it was good enough.

Have you noticed the 80’s are back?  This isn’t really news–neon tube dresses and big bangs are never really news.  Some even report the 90’s are back also, in a kind of apocalyptic pile-up of decades.   The contemporary teen version of the 80’s is something much shinier than what the teens of the 80’s actually lived with, as if they are willfully embodying nostalgia for a time they never knew.  If the 90’s come back, what will the zeitgeist polish up for us?

If I was going to bring back the 90’s beer wise, it would be dishonest not to include Oranjeboom, a beer I drank a lot of–in cans–in Southern California.  I don’t know if it was because it was, to us, exotic, Euro-trashy, and had this name we liked to say.  Before I knew anything about beer, it was cheap and easy.

Yesterday I met up with a lovely Scouser friend, G, for beer and shoe shopping.  He was gracious enough to ask me to suggest a beer to him.  We were in a Shepherd’s Neame pub Mabel’s Tavern, and I haven’t had many of their beers because I’ve been put off by the ad campaigns.  I ordered a Bishop’s Finger for G and a Kent’s Best for me– this beer was a winner, with a dominant, piny hop character and an enveloping malt, and he preferred his beer to mine.  So then, on our second round, why do I decide to throw out all my beer know-how and order us two halves of crap lager?

I’d never seen Oranjeboom outside of Trader Joe’s in SoCal.  The little red tree–the happy name–I gave in to nostalgia.  So much for being a beer expert! The beer was a forgettable, too-sweet lager.  Apparently it is now brewed by Shepherd Neame, and is one of those rare beers that was probably better in the can!

According to my friend, Oranjeboom’s big British moment was in the 80’s– maybe it’s right at home with the gladiator sandals and splatter prints on the high street.  G regaled me with stories about the British marketing campaign in the 80’s  which included Oranjeboom’s own version of the Bud Girl and he even sang me the jingle.  And he drank it without complaint.  What are friends for, after all?

What are your ‘retro beers’? What beer, when confronted with a tap of it, would have an irresistably surreal nostalgia for you?

Conch fritters and Red Stripe at Vie's Shack on St. John.

A lot of beer connoisseurs resort to local lager in the holiday heat.  It’s true things we value in good beer can’t really be tasted if the beer is served cold, so if you are overheating why not drink something like a super-chilled, crap lager? Is this what’s known as a “lawnmower beer”? Having never had a lawn to mow, these beers seemed exotic, but after sweating off sunscreen while hiking and swimming for a week, I think I get it.  What would be my “Snorkel Beer”?  For most of my holiday in the Virgin Islands last week, I drank Red Stripe.  I confess I have a weakness for the stuff.  I love how the little squat bottle feels in the hand, the simple screen-painted label is perfect branding.  Plus, I like the sweet malty character and it went perfectly with things I was eating like conch fritters, fried plantains and red beans and rice.

But, luckily enough, my drink of choice wasn’t reduced to rum cocktails and Red Stripe, as there is a microbrewery on the island, St. John Brewery.  It was located in a charming villa of shops called Mongoose Junction (the island seemed totally overrun with rikki-tikki-tavis).  The Tap Room of the brewery had some beers from other east-coast micros on, and two of its own seasonal beers, the Tropical Mango Pale Ale and the Island Summer Ale.  As far as names go these are pretty unimaginative, and I had my sights set rather low.

Mr. Malting had the Island Summer Ale, which was too malty-sweet for me but he loved it.  I then tried the Mango Ale, worrying it might be even sweeter, but I was pleasantly surprised.  There was mango, but it was mainly a sweetness from the malt, totally cut with a dominant, grapefruity hop.  This wasn’t really a fruit beer at all, any estery-earthiness  reminiscent of mango came from something other than fruit, though according to their website this beer contains “essence of mango.”  (Hey, the sun’s out, I’ve been swimming with garish, gregarious fish and I have the Caribbean sea soaked into me; does it really matter what “mango essence” is?) In the dense heat this beer became addictive and brought on a buzz happy enough to buffer any and all Jimmy-Buffet-Bob-Marley saturation (the Muzak of the Islands).

The brewery’s story began in 2001 with two castaway college grads and a $50 brewing kit. They decided the island didn’t have the kind of beer they wanted to drink so they made their own.  Their response seems perfect to the place, the “demands” of the islands, the sabor. The mango ale would have been great with saltfish, johnny cake or West Indian curry.  In short it tasted of the genus loci of the island, something only a good microbrewery could capture.

In The Tap Room of St. John's Brewery

Gypsy Rose Lee serving the "Little Brekkie" on the far right.

It’s the Session, hosted by Beer at Joe’s who’ve asked us to wax lyrical about beer cocktails.  I blogged about stuff in beer quite recently.  It’s a delightful topic which undermines a good deal of beer snobbery present in the blogoshire (coining credit:Woolpack Dave)

Without getting all pedantic, what exactly counts as a “cocktail”– must it be another liquid added?  Another alcohol? If you add fruit (or, say, garlic) does it count?  And, is it still real ale if you’ve doctored it with Tango?

I must confess that though my mild has vastly improved with more time in the bottle, it’s just not very alcoholic.  I’ve taken to dropping a shot of whisky into each pint and it’s a winner.  I did not drink it from a martini glass a la Janet on Two Pints of Lager.  That would have been ace.  I would like to call this cocktail FREAKOUT IN A MOONSHINE DAYDREAM (oh yeah).  And now it will have to be one of those mythic drinks that people whisper about in hushed tones like Westvleteren 13, because it’s all drunk up.

With the success of FOAMeD, I feel I should branch out into other beer mixology.

Thus:

The Power Skunk: Pacifico, Emergen-C (any flavor will do but acai berry is the best) and a shot of vodka.  If you find yourself in the Netherlands or other permissive environs, feel free to garnish with a fresh cannabis leaf.

Little Brekkie: Bud, clamato and minced Vicodin.

Three Wise Men and the Landlord: Goldschlager, Jagermeister, peppermint schnapps and some poorly-kept Timothy Taylor Landlord.

Green Flem ahem. Or, the Flaming White Fairy: Hoegaarden and absinthe.  Don’t forget to set the sugar cube on fire before pouring.

*Sung to the tune of Hey Jude.

**let it be known that I would consider drinking any and all of these, though for the record I would only drink the “Little Brekkie” when recovering from major surgery or other situations which would find me in legal possesion of controlled substances.

Sometimes I’m hard pressed to find things to celebrate, but not today.  I finished writing a piece that’s been hanging over me; writers block has been defeated, and within a few days of the deadline.  Also, tomorrow, a show called Novel Constructions opens at the Long Beach Museum of Art featuring a piece I wrote in collaboration with artist Edith Abeyta.

So, I cracked open my little bottle of BrewDog Zephyr which I was lucky enough to get in the pre-release 330ml bottle. It features a gorgeous pink label by Joanna Basford: a 12.5% Imperial Ale matured in a 1965 Invergordon whisky cask with fresh strawberries from Martin’s grandma.

The tang of berries is evident with the first pour.  The nose is completely fragrant and tart, reminescent of Cantillon fruit beers. On first sip this sings of spring. As it warms it becomes darker, beyond pastoral bliss to something of the woodland, like the Willow Song from the Wicker Man…Britt Ekland knocking on the wall…

The fine-planed wood of a new house.  Spilled sacks of grain.  Fresh hop vines over the porch and someone inside is already baking–vanilla and toffee.  Over it all is a strawberry haze, like some girlie-kawaii dream. The sweetness in this beer is in the malt alone. It’s not twee–the berries are there as fragrant essences, a kind of “attar” flavor you find grounding good krieks.

This is a beer full of love and light and play.  Toes in the grass.  Ivy crowns.  Daisy petals counted out even, always ending in loves me. A handfasting sort of beer, to be served instead of champagne at anything  joyful.

Like today.

Halloween decorations in the Elsinore, Whitby

If you’ve never had cider and black, can you claim to be a goth?  Though the opportunity presented itself this weekend at while drinking at the Elsinore in Whitby, I stuck to Cameron’s Strongarm, which was a very drinkable red ale, though nothing spectacular.  It was the Gothic festival and while most everyone I knew was carrying around their pink pints, I decided I would stick to ale as best I could.  I failed miserably at this on Sunday at the 80’s night in Laughtons where I devolved and drank blue WKD.  It seemed like the right thing at the time.  (I blame the corrupting influence of Mister Jack.)

The Shambles, another pub in Whitby, seems to serve the Goths begrudgingly, though the beer selection is better there. I often have had trouble getting served at the bar but I thought I’d give it a go.  I tried all of Theakston’s range they had on at the moment, the Black Bull Bitter being the most forgettable of them all and Old Peculiar remaining the favorite.  They had a Theakston’s beer on keg there, served “super chilled”:  The Smooth Dark.  Mr. Malting is a huge fan of the mild and we wondering if, at 3%,  this were some kind of re-packaging of the mild as a guinness style keg beer.  I am a bit embarrassed to admit that once I had a glass of this I stuck to pints of it for the rest of the evening.  It was good.

I now regret passing up the Cooper Dragon IPA, as Rednev has said it’s amazing.  Something to look forward to next time– that is, if I can get served.