Stout or Porter?

With it being St Patrick's day last weekend, many people decided that it was the perfect occasion to sink a Guinness or two. Even people who don't normally drink dark beers get caught up in the atmosphere, and find themselves ordering a pint of the black stuff.

While many people think of Guinness as wholly Irish, it's actually brewed and consumed around the world. The UK drink the most of it, followed by Ireland, Nigeria and the States. 40% of worldwide sales are in Africa. Guinness has breweries in Nigeria, Canada, the Bahamas and Indonesia. It must be said though, that the base liquid (wort) is brewed in Dublin and is then shipped over to the other breweries to be fermented. So it's half Irish (just like most Americans claim to be).

A regular question that people ask me is "what's the difference between a stout and a porter". In actual fact they are one and the same. Maybe it's a testament to how Guinness tastes now, that I've heard many people say that they don't like porter, but like Guinness. And what I mean by that, is that Guinness of today doesn't really taste of anything. If you can, try the "Guinness Foreign Extra Stout". This used to be available in Estonia and is the nearest to the true Guinness that was brewed back in the 1800's. It's 7.5%, has very little carbonisation and is has much more taste than the more popular beer that we have here. I say popular, but of the 40% market share in Africa, almost 80% of that is made up of "export stout".

So what is porter and what is stout? Without getting into too much of a history lesson, "stout" was the strongest varient of the "porter" family. So in otherwords (like I said right at the beginning), they are both the same.

Time travel back to 18th century London. If you want to imagine a city in it's prime, then it's London. Loads of trade to and from abroad, as well as trade within the UK. London stations and docks were jam packed. These places needed people to transport luggage and goods from one place to another. These transporters came in the form of men who worked up to 20 hours a day. At the end of their working shift, these guys were hungry and thirsty. Not getting paid an awful lot, they had to make the best of what they had in their pocket, and they sided towards something strong and cheap.

** How can a beer be made strong and cheap**?  Making beer takes time. Not just because of the process that is involved (fermentation alone can take up to 2 weeks), but because of the storage of beer. It's this storage that "rounds off" the beer. It matures it. It conditions it. The word "lager" means in German "to store". Think about a strong and cheap beer that you've tasted. This is the stuff in plastic bottles. It's strong and it's cheap because it's never had the time to mature, which is why it can be sold cheap (time is money) and tastes mostly of strong alcohol. However, the people who generally drink this stuff don't really worry about time (they normally don't have watches) and they are only interested in drinking and getting drunk as fast as possible.

Anyway, back to these workers who carried luggage for a living. They transported things so much, that they got the name "porters". They drank so much of the beer mentioned earlier that this style of beer became known as "Porters beer". At the time, it was common to drink a  beer that was  a mix of three different beers - ale (which contained hops), beer (which was a relatively mild drink of malted barley) and "twopenny" which was a strong beer.  This new drink was called "Entire Porter", and was made to a recipe that didn't need to be mixed. We sell a stout (ok, this is confusing isn't it!) in Drink Bar made by Hopback called "Entire Stout" and this is where it gets it's name. It's an excellent beer which is bottle conditioned too.  In some parts of the UK, it's still common to mix your beers. If you ask for a "black and tan", you'll get a mix of dark beer and ale. If you ask for a "Mickey Mouse", you'll get a mix of lager and ale.

But all Porter/Stout is from Ireland right? Wrong. As mentioned above, London was the place to be, and along with Burton on Trent, lots of the brewers set up camp there. Beer was brown back then (they hadn't discovered the technology of roasting malt until it was black until the early 1800's (more on this later). This brown malt beer required quite a lot of conditioning and this was usually left to the landlord. Nodding at the "time is money" quote again, many landlords sold the beer as soon as they got it, which meant that the beer was a watery brown with quite a sour taste. Ironically, it's called "green beer" today.

The London brewers decided that they would condition the beer themselves. This meant it was ready for drinking (in a condition that it was meant to be) straight away. Due to this maturing process, it had a slightly darker colour than the previous version, tasted stronger and more importantly sold with great success. This dark Porter beer suddenly became the talk of the town, and anybody who was anybody started to drink it.

Up until 1770, the alcohol levels of beer was largely guesswork. In 1770, the hydrometer started being used to measure the density of liquid to the density of water. In laymans terms, you put the hydrometer into the unfermented beer and it gives you a reading in the form of numbers. You then put it in again after fermentation and take the reading again. The numbers will be lower, because the yeast has eaten all the sugars in the liquid and turned them into alcohol. You do a small equation, and this then gives the the alcohol content of the liquid. Brewing is easy right?  When the brewers making porter started to use the hydrometer, they found out that the brown malt they used didn't give as much sugar into the liquid. This meant they had to use more of it, which put the costs up. They decided to use pale malt as the main malt, with a little bit of brown and a lot of dark colouring. This had to stop in 1816, when a law was passed that only malt and hops were allowed to be used in making beer. Fortunately, a year later, the art of roasting malt until it was black and burnt was perfected, and the brewers could add a percentage of this malt instead of colouring. It wasn't until 1776 that Ireland in the form of Guinness started brewing porter. They mainly produced ales, but saw the success of the dark beers over the water. They produced a porter, but were still using brown malt with colouring. It was the ruling in 1816 that changed their recipe when they switched over to the black malt that gives the style of beer that we know from them today.

Although it's not quite the same today. Back then, it was much stronger: around 9% in alcohol. Guinness still produce this style today called "Foreign Extra Stout". If you can find it, try it. It's very good.

What about the other Irish stout that you can get here - Murphy's? Murphy's is from Cork in Southern Ireland and has been brewing since 1856. It's got a much lighter taste than Guinness, owing to the fact that it doesn't use as much roasted black malt, and uses caramel as a colouring agent. It's not as popular in Ireland as Guinness, but in 1997 when it's owners Heineken decided to put money behind a marketing campaign, it was the fasted growing stout in the world.

Stout is not just from Ireland and the UK. And remember, when I say stout, I also mean porter. In the Caribbean dark beers especially Guinness Extra and Dragon stout are very popular.Go over to Sri Lanka and lots of people drink Lion Stout. Baltic porters have their own category, with Estonia being very famous for producing some wonderful beers during the the realm of Catherine the II in Russia. It's Catherine that puts the Imperial in Russian Imperial Stouts.

So now you know a little bit about stouts and porters, and where they come from, and maybe a little bit about what they taste like. I'm reviewing Guinness and Murphy's, both available at Drink Bar, but don't overlook the following we have available too: Entire Stout (Hopback brewery), McCallums Stout (Belhaven), X-Porter (Huvila), Black Hole Imperial Porter (Mikkeller), Tokyo imperial stout (Brewdog).

The first one I'm having is Murphy's (ratebeer rating 81). It's relatively new in Estonia and is available in a 500ml can. The can contains a "widget", which is a device that contains nitrogen. It's like a small ping pong ball filled with gas - when the can is opened, the pressure forces the gas out of the widget and into the beer. This in turn creates the creamy composition that is the same as you get in a bar.

The problem with having a can that contains a widget, is that you must chill it. When beer is room temperature, it's much more lively than when it's chilled. If you opened a can of Murphy's straight from the shelf, it's more than likely to foam up everywhere. The downside of having it in the fridge, is that you lose quite a lot of taste and aroma.

So, the pour - well due to being nitrogen enhanced, of course it is super smooth. Very nice and creamy, and it's nice that it's 500ml, so you can try and replicate the pint from the bar (minus the shamrock or waiting 119.53 seconds that is). It's a nice deep ruby red (it's not black) colour with a great head.

Aroma is not so good. Maybe because it's been in the fridge, but probably because the nitrogen masks all the aromas. Or maybe because this is a mainstream beer and they aren't that big on aroma hops/dry hopping.

The taste - is nice! It's very smooth, not so roasty, but quite sweet. You can taste the caramel in the brew, not much hops, but a slight bitterness from what little hops is there. The overall taste sensation of this is "smoothness".

Overall a pretty good beer. I suspect the high ratebeer rating comes from all the Americans who like to think they are Irish.

Moving on. Now we have Guinness (rate beer score of 90). Also with a widget, but this time in a 330ml bottle.  Pours nice and dark with a more tan head than the Murphy's. It's always a pleasure to watch the swirl of the beer before it settles in the glass. Here's a fact - if you are a good barman/woman, you can pour a draught Guinness in one pour. I can do it. It's all marketing bullshit this "two part pour" nonsense. I remember a brand manager for Guinness telling me how it all came about. The advertising agency were thinking about how to make Guinness more appealing to the younger generation. Almost giving up, they went out for lunch to have a bit of a rest from their work. One of the execs ordered a steak. They were eating in an open kitchen. The chef, being a good chef, took the execs steak from the grill, and instead of putting it straight onto the plate, he let it rest for 5 mins. Right in front of the execs open eyes and watering mouth. The way to sell Guinness had been found!!

Aroma - it smells quite sweet. That's the over-riding smell. No hops, no roasted malt - just sweetness. And I thought Murphy's is meant to be sweeter than Guinness?

Taste - wow, now this is a huge suprise! Ok, I drink Guinness very rarely, normally when I'm in a bar that doesn't have a good selection of draught beer or ale, but I don't remember it tasting this sweeeeet! And I mean sweet as in sugar, not an American adjective of pleasure. Maybe it's because the Murphy's was so mild, but this has such a creamy taste (as well as texture) that I've never noticed before. I don't think it tastes this sweet on tap, and I am certain it doesn't taste this sweet when it's the Foreign Extra version. As I said - very suprising.  So much so, that I am going to have to get another bottle to try, and also head over to a certain Irish bar on the square to check out the taste of their draught version.

So what to say? I can say that I was suprised by the tastes of both of these beers (read stout, read porter). I knew that they would be creamy, but I didn't know that the overall taste of them would be of sweetness. Maybe it's because I am so used to American/NZ hoppy beers, that I felt lost when the hops was virtually non existent. But I don't only drink hoppy beers. I like dark beers too. But I like them because they are roasted, burnt toast offerings of alcohol, that make me slow down my drinking tempo and have me sitting in a chair with a lovely warm glow, and more often than not, a mouth that tastes like I have been licking an ashtray. With a smile.

Of course, these two beers volumes are probably more than the total craft beer volume in the UK put together. And it shows. As I keep saying "the moment you make something taste of something, is the moment people can decide they don't like it". Much the same as A Le Coq and Saku are battling it out over the "premium"beer market  in Estonia, it seems that Guinness and Murphy's are doing much the same thing with stout (read porter, read beer).

Not bad beers - and at a push, I'd choose Murphy's over Guinness (only because it's the smaller of the two organisations), but if I had the option, I'd go for one of the stouts/porters I mentioned earlier. AND, (and it's not often you hear me say this enough), don't forget the Estonian porters. I actually look forward to A Le Saku's offerings at Christmas, because they may produce mainstream middle of the road beers for 10 months of the year, but when November comes and the Christmas porters come out, all of a sudden I am an Estonian beer fan.

Now that DOES sound Irish.

The cost of going organic.

Right, let me set the record straight! I am NOT against Estonian beers! Point taken that I generally focus on imported beers, and point taken that Saku/A Le Coq focus on beers that make them more money because more people drink them than anything else. However, my point is that if I just reviewed beers that are all the same, then my reviews would be.........all the same!

I've pointed out before that Estonian beer is pretty much driven by two brewers. I don't need to say who they are. And like all brewers, they are focussed on market share. They need it, they want it. they want to keep it. And in order to do this, they must produce beer exactly like their nearest competitior. Now, in Estonia, seeing as the market is almost 50/50, that means almost 100% of the beer tastes exactly the same. They produce a fruit beer, then They produce a fruit beer. They produce a wheat beer, then They produce a wheat beer. And so it continues. The good thing about this is: They produce a shit beer, then They produce a shit beer. What happens then is that both sets of  "loyal"  customers complain and threaten to start drinking something alternative like Stella Artois instead, and Saku/A Le Coq then decide that they need to produce something which will get their bedmates back onto their pillow.

What pleases me about Estonian beer drinkers is that they are always willing to try something new out. I guess thats the same reason why Estonian guys always have a different good looking girl on their arm each month.

I used to be in charge of deciding what beer was sold in all of the Rimi stores. When I had put some new beers (not neccessarily import beers - I was playing the game back then), on the shelves, it always pleased me that a large amount of shoppers baskets contained these new beers. Estonians like to try something new. Maybe it's because of years of communist regime, but really I think it's because Estonians buy new things because they want to say they don't like them.

It's the same in Drink Bar/Shop. If we've got something new, then I am almost certain that it will sell very well, simply because it's new. Ok -  maybe a bit is down to the marketing on Facebook etc, but I don't promote beers that I am not proud of, and I don't import beer that I don't think the Estonian market will
drink.


Of course this promotes change and drives customer expectation. If there is a lack of new products on the market, then the customer gets restless and demands something more. And the new product is going to be judged on previous products. If the product before it was good, then the bar is raised and the new product has to be of similar or preferably higher quality. If the product was bad, then the new product better be good, because the guns will be out before it's even hit the shelves.


Which brings me to a new product that Estonian brewer A Le Coq have released. Not only is it a new product, but it's a first to market for the producer - an organic beer. This is a brave move in my opinion, because organic products are very fashionable at the moment, and in most people eyes - because you can't actually see anything different, many people think its just a way of being current and in touch with the environment, while at the same time being able to charge a lot more for your product.  It's even more difficult with beer, because in essence, the producer is saying that their beer is healthy beer. So what makes a beer organic?

Beer is made from four main ingredients: Malted barley, hops, water and yeast. The first two of these ingredients are grown across the world, and it's actually these two that dictate the price of beer (if you don't include the Government taxes). If hops and barley are plentiful, then everyone can have access to the ingredients they need to make beer. If hops and barley are in short supply, then it becomes a case of supply and demand, with prices rising because of this. Last year, the UK had it's worst barley harvest in forty years due to the lack of rain. The barley failed to grow in the drought, leaving many of them unsuitable for harvest. Fertilisers were used in some cases, but the knock on effect is that fertilisers produce too much nitrogen in the barley, which means that there is too much protein in the sugar resulting in longer brewing times and erractic germination/fermentation. 


It's not just the UK either. Global production of barley was 43% down on last year. Hops too has it's problems. If the weather is too dry, the hops reacts the same way as the barley and simply can't grow. If the weather is too wet, the hops is very succeptible to rotting, and if the weather is too cold, then the hop vine will refuse to flower. And it's the flower that the brewers use. 2007 was a very dark year for hop and barley growers. Many couldn't produce the quantity of hops they wanted, which meant that not all the brewers got their quota. In worse case scenarios, the hop producer went out of business. Not only does this have an effect on price, but also taste. Brewers that had been using a specific type of hops in their beer, had to change their recipes because the hop wasn't available. This in turn affected sales, because the consumer noticed the difference. Another scary thing is that the big brewers - AB for example, cut out their risk by buying up all of the next years crop in advance. They can afford to do it, but that leaves little behind for the smaller producers, who have to fight over what is left and pay through the nose for it.

Simply put, if there isn't some intervention or help in growing these crops, then they are not going to make it. Fertilisers, and other steroids are needed to give the crops a boost in times of bad weather to ensure the farmers meet their quotas. And of course, many of these chemicals are not natural, which means they can't be certified organic.


To be certified organic, you have to use farmers who are signed up to producing hops and barley without the use of chemicals. Water too can be softened using a variety of chemicals, so if you want to produce organic beer, then the water you use in the production must also be chemical free. The yeast used in the beer is not allowed to have been used in the production of any non organic beer previously. This yeast has to be seperated from the other yeast. It's not a fun guy to be with (see what I did there?).


All of this increases expense due to a lot of factors. Yield and time being the two main causes. If you're not using fertilisers to boost growth, then it's going to take a lot longer to grow. You won't produce as much as your neighbour who is using chemicals either. And don't forget the constant fight against disease and pests. I grew some hops a couple of years ago and maintained the fact that I wanted them to be organic. I didn't use fertlisers, but used organic materials instead (fish bones), but when I had an attack of green aphids, I automatically reached for the bug spray. Fortunately I checked the ingredients before I pulled the trigger, and found out I couldn't use it if I wanted to be organic. Instead I had to resort to picking them off by hand, or use a sugar and water solution which only seemed to make the aphids more hyperactive than dead. Imagining doing this on an industrial scale?

So now you know why it's only a small quantity of beers that call themselves organic. It's hard enough producing quality beer, but very hard producing something that pushes the cost up and production scale down.


The UK has been on the organic trail for about ten years. If first started off with health foods, then premium foods - mostly meat, then just about everything including beer became organic. When I first started working for Rimi, I suggested that we should devote a small section of each category to organic produce. I was met with looks of bewilderment and questions asking what benefit if would bring to the store. Six years later and there are still very few organic products in the main retailers, and the market is still very much in it's infancy. Dedicated organic stores are growing the category, and provide wines that have been produced organically. I'm guessing that A Le Coq saw a potential gap in the market and decided to fill it.


You can get organic beers in Estonia - Shepherd Neame (Whitstable Bay organic ale), Fullers (Organic Honeydew Ale) and a few German beers are available. As is organic cider, with Westons offering both organic apple and perry. This is the first time an Estonian beer has been produced that has been fully certified as organic.

The CEO of A. Le Coq, Tarmo Noop, says that the popularity of organic products is increasing all over the world. "There are increasingly more consumers and companies that want to do something for the environment and preferring organic products is an option," said Noop when explaining the reasons why the brewery decided to launch this new beer. "As a leading Estonian brewery, we feel responsible for the development of the beer market and believe we also have to introduce the concept of organic products in the beer segment," he added. The brewery also wants its new product to be a beer that offers something new and unique that no other local brewery has done yet and to show that an organic product does not have to be expensive and something that cannot be bought in ordinary shops.
Noop explained that the malt and hops used to make Organic Beer are grown according to organic farming standards, and that the production of organic beer is highly regulated. "We have made the necessary changes in our production process and passed a thorough inspection carried out by the Veterinary and Food Board," said Noop. "As a result of this, we were issued with a special certificate for the production of organic beer"

They buy their malt from Finland and their hops from Germany. It's described as a light tasting lager, with some "oomph" from well balanced hops and a toasty flavour from the beer yeast. I suspect that the last comment might be a typo. Toasted is not one of the flavour profiles I've ever come across when describing yeast. 

So, let's see what it's like.

The bottle is actually quite nice. Organic products seem to have to carry an air about them - nothing too flashy, quite basic and reserved, but looking reassuringly expensive and, well, organic. On the label is a picture of some barley - although it's not the type of barley that is used in brewing (brewing barley is generally two row barley or 6 row barley - which have a lot more husks than the one on the A Le Coq label), but what do designers know? I actually think it looks more like wheat than barley. Maybe this barley gives a yeasty taste...

On opening, there is not the "oomph" of hops I was expecting. In fact, I couldn't really detect any hops at all. There is a faint yeasty, bread smell and quite a strong smell of sweetcorn. This sweetcorn smell is due to dimethylsulfide. I could go into this in more detail, but I suggest you have a read of this if you are interested   http://www.picobrewery.com/askarchive/dms.htm 

It looks nice. A pale straw colour with a decent sized head. It's pretty fizzy too.

So what does it taste like? Does it taste organic I hear you ask? To be honest, organic beer doesn't really taste or look any different from other beers. Because yeast gives off it's own flavours, as does hops - you aren't really going to notice anything different. Certain other organic items are different and you can tell. Eggs are a good example. Look at the yolk of an organic egg compared to a regular egg. Happy chickens lay much more yellow yolks. But at least you can be happy drinking this beer safe in the knowledge that all the aphids on the hops were removed by hand. Probably.

The taste is quite different from other A Le Coq lagers. It's certainly dry, but this dryness comes across as quite metallic. It's not a dry, bitterness you asscociate with hops, but more like heavy metals. It's quite sweet too, but the finish is of an overall, quite unpleasant metallic dryness. Strangely, it also tastes quite greasy, and my mouth was left feeling like I had just eaten a bag of cold French fries. Again, it sounds like I am saying it's bad - it's not great, but I'm very happy there is at least some flavour from the hop.

It's quite a smooth beer, and the carbonisation that we there on opening quickly settles down. The head stayed for most of the drink, making it quite easy to drink combined with the  4.5% abv.

Overall I'd say there is more hop profile than usual, but unfortunately it's all hop bitterness and no hop aroma. In my opinion, it tastes as though it's been overboiled, resulting in the DMS profile giving a skunky dogfood aroma and metallic taste. The finish leaves a stale beer taste in your mouth, and while you expect that the morning after, you don't expect it during the actual drinking. Not a bad beer, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I think it's great that A Le Coq have taken the bold decision to step out of the mainstream and into a niche market. Unfortunately, it's almost as if they are trying to do mainstream niche. It only cost me .98€ a bottle from the store.  This beer is only going to appeal to those who actually care about the organic concept. Other regular drinkers don't care if the aphids were struck off the hop with a nuclear bomb, as long as their beer tastes the same and costs the same. In this respect, A Le Coq should have gone fully organic and charged a premium price. Make the beer unfiltered, keep it unpasteurised and sell it as a "live" beer. Number it, make it collectible. This way, you are really bigging up the process of making beer, and promoting the fact that beer is special, and if produced with the minimum amount of process as possible, it can be treated, stored and matured the same as wine. You've also got to ask yourself, if other organic products are more expensive than their non organic versions, how did A Le Coq do this so cheaply?

As much as I applaud their efforts, I still can't help but think that this is just another way of trying to outdo Saku. It's not a suprise that this week, Saku have announced that they too will be producing a new beer. Not an organic one, but a beer that is named after their founder. It's a historical beer.

Same old story I am afraid.

More than words can say..

Ok, this is a blog. But every so often, there is a beer that can only be described in physical words. Here's one of them. Promise I won't switch to video from now on. As mum used to say, I've got the perfect face for radio.

What temperature should you serve your beer?

Looking out of my window, I can see a chill in the air that is much colder than any fridge or freezer. It's -28c and too cold to go out, so I'll probably put the fire on, settle down in front of the TV with a couple of cold beers and watch the rugby. Cold beer - when it's already cold outside?!


You don't drink beer like you do a soup - to warm you up if it's cold outside. You generally drink beer for two reasons: refreshment and taste. The key to getting both of these correct is temperature.


The key flavour in beer is bitterness which is brought about by the hops contained in the liquid. Hops are used for many things when making beer - they add flavour, they add aroma and they also help to keep the beer fresh by having an antibiotic effect on micro organisms within the beer.


It's a female hop "cone" that is used in brewing, because just like female human beings, they contain nice smelling perfumes and essential oils.

The effect of hops on the finished beer varies by type and use, though there are two main hop types: bittering and aroma. Bittering hops have higher concentrations of alpha acids, and are responsible for the large majority of the bitter flavor of a beer. Bittering hops are boiled for a longer period of time, typically 60–90 minutes, and as they often have inferior aromatic properties, the aromas evaporate off during the boil.

Aroma hops are typically added to the brew later to prevent the evaporation of the essential oils, to impart "hop taste" and hop aroma". Aroma hops are often added after the finished brew has cooled and while the beer ferments, a technique known as "dry hopping", which contributes to the hop aroma. In cask beer, whole hop cones are sometimes added to the barrel (or cask) and slowly make their way to the bottom while the beer is fermenting. In other words, the less chance the aromas have of going up the chimney in the form of steam, the more chance they have to fragrance the beer.

Flavors and aromas are described appreciatively using terms which include "grassy", "floral", "citrus", "spicy", "piney," "lemony," and "earthy". Many pale lagers have fairly low hop influence, while lagers marketed as Pilsner or brewed in the Czech Republic may have noticeable noble hop aroma. Certain ales (particularly the highly-hopped style known as India Pale Ale, or IPA) can have high levels of hop bitterness. Dark beers have reasonably high amounts of hops too, but sometimes these aromatics are masked by the smoke and roasted flavours of the malt.

So what's all this got to do with temperature? Essential oils are nullified the colder they get. I always use a good example when talking to people about temperature and taste. Get a bottle of aftershave or perfume, and put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, take it out and smell it. It won't smell of much. The coldness makes the oils solidify and therefore stops them giving off their aromas (they are too busy shivering to do anything else). Now imagine if this was a bottle of beer. The essential oils in the beer act much the same way as the oils in the perfume. You take the beer from the fridge, open it and nothing much leaps out.

Of course, some beers are meant to be this way. Imagine you are on a beach during  a hot summers day. All that lounging about watching the local womens volleyball team perform has given you a raging...thirst. You retire to the beach bar where Alfonso hands you a bottle of Corona that has been sitting in the sun all day long. One swig of this and you have to weigh up the advantages of volleyball team/bad beer over good beach bar/no bikini clad maidens. Corona (and I'll explain the reason why I chose this beer in a minute) and other beers of this genre are drunk primarily for refreshment. You are on a beach, you're thirsty and you want to slake that thirst. You don't want a beer that is packed full of chewy flavours, because to appreciate those flavours you want to slow down and enjoy each one.

It's all about how the hops perform under what temperature they are at. If you want less flavours, you know now what a fridge does to it. It'll take away all but the strongest aromas of hops, leaving you with a cooling, slightly carbonated liquid that is easy to drink. Put that same beer in the sun for a couple of hours, and you're left with a drink having flavours that you're not supposed to taste. In fact, it's very doubtful that any aroma hops have been put into that particular beer, so the beer is in big danger of getting oxidized, which means the sun will bake these beta acids giving them a taste and aroma which is called "sun struck", or more fun "skunky". It's the reason many highly hopped beers are in dark brown or green bottles - it protects them from the sun.

The guys at Corona have taken their dedication to brewing for refreshment to such a scale that they don't add any aroma hops at all and only a very minimal amount of bittering hops into the brew. They don't want to produce a beer full of flavour, because they know in the whole, that the customer also feels this way. Sol do it too. Think about the colour of their bottle. See what I mean?

Mantra #1: If your thirsty and want refreshment, put it in the fridge.

Now the other side of the coin. It's cold outside (the weather has changed and so have the volleyball team) and you feel like having a beer that you can take your time over, taste the different levels of flavours and generally enjoy the beer and the occasion for drinking it. You ask Alfonso for a bottle of IPA and he takes it out of the fridge, pours it into a frozen glass and slides it across the bar. You put it to your lips (the glass sticks to them) and the liquid pours into your mouth filling it with flavours of....coldness. That's all. The whole reason you ordered an IPA is that you want the aromas to sing to you, the bitterness to fill your mouth and suck your cheeks in. You want to be able to taste the malt, the caramel the slightly roasted flavours, but because in this game of rock scissors paper, cold wins over everything.

In an ideal world, that bottle would have been happily sitting in a cellar with temperatures of about 10-14 degrees. This sort of temperature is cool enough to make the beer refreshing, but not cold enough to mask all those lovely alpha and beta acids of the hop oils. Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world. One of the main reasons that bottles are in the fridge is so that they can be marketed to the customer. Pubs just don't have any space to have two sets of beers - one cold, one at room temperature. And of course, if the marketing works correctly and a customer looks at the bottle of IPA and thinks that they'll try that for the first time, they are often left disappointed because the beer is being served incorrectly. More often than not, the consumer is unaware of the huge difference temperature makes, and walks away thinking IPA's are just like any normal beer.

Mantra #2: If you're drinking for taste, take it out of the fridge.

Be a geek like me. Order two beers at the same time, and tell the barstaff to keep it unopened and out of the fridge. By the time you've finished your first, the second will be  at almost the correct temperature. You can also ask if they have any not in the fridge. Be careful here though, as in most bars, the beers on the shelf are only for communication not consumption. I once went to a well known Irish bar in town, and when I asked for the bottle of Spitfire on the shelf, the barmaid looked at me as if I had two heads. She may have had a point though - halfway through drinking the beer, I asked to look at the bottle as the beer had quite a skunky taste. Sure enough, it was 3 years out of date.

The general rule of thumb is that the darker it is, the more room temperature it should be. The new wave of aggressively dry hopped beers such as Brewdog and the American micro's can actually be served a bit cooler because they have so much aroma hops inside. Put them in the fridge for an hour or two, or if you store them in the fridge, take them out for an hour or two before serving. Of course you can drink them straight from the fridge, but that's not going to do them the full justice. It's like taking a Ferrari for a spin in a 40km zone.

                                                   Don't do this at home.

I'm watching the rugby later and I'll be drinking for refreshment. My mind wants to be on the game, not my glass. I'll have a few Czech lagers. These benefit from fridge treatment, with perhaps a little half an hour airing before drinking. Czech beers use Saaz aroma hops which is quite soft and the focus is on bite rather than aroma. I still like to taste and smell the floral zest that comes from the hops, so that's why I don't chill it to death. 

Tonight is another matter. The fire will be roaring, and I'll nudge my armchair that little closer as I open either my Abstrakt or Paradox Jura. These won't have been anywhere near a fridge, as I want to taste as much as possible. Depending on how roaring my fire is, I might store them in a slightly cooler room (because I don't have a cellar) before opening.

I think it'll get to the stage where as much information is going to be put on the craft beers of the future as possible. Wines talk about food, serving temperature etc, and I think it's only a matter of time before quality beers start doing the same. Some of them do it now, recommending what type of glass to use - this is only a good thing. Back in the UK, I remember we had an scheme in the bars where the customer was given a thermometer to stick in their beer. If it was too warm (because this was commercial lager), then he had a right to hand it back to the barstaff. Some glasses have a logo that turns blue if the correct temperature of beer is in the glass.


Here's a guideline on temperatures and styles: 

Very cold (0-4C/32-39F): Any beer you don’t need to taste. Pale Lager, Malt Liquor, Canadian-style Golden Ale and Cream Ale, Low Alcohol, Canadian, American or Scandinavian-style Cider.
Cold (4-7C/39-45F): Hefeweizen, Kristalweizen, Kölsch, Premium Lager, Pilsner, Classic German Pilsner, Fruit Beer, brewpub-style Golden Ale, European Strong Lager, Berliner Weisse, Belgian White, American Dark Lager, sweetened Fruit Lambics and Gueuzes, Duvel-types
Cool (8-12C/45-54F): American Pale Ale, Amber Ale, California Common, Dunkelweizen, Sweet Stout, Stout, Dry Stout, Porter, English-style Golden Ale, unsweetened Fruit Lambics and Gueuzes, Faro, Belgian Ale, Bohemian Pilsner, Dunkel, Dortmunder/Helles, Vienna, Schwarzbier, Smoked, Altbier, Tripel, Irish Ale, French or Spanish-style Cider
Cellar (12-14C/54-57F): Bitter, Premium Bitter, Brown Ale, India Pale Ale, English Pale Ale, English Strong Ale, Old Ale, Saison, Unblended Lambic, Flemish Sour Ale, Bière de Garde, Baltic Porter, Abbey Dubbel, Belgian Strong Ale, Weizen Bock, Bock, Foreign Stout, Zwickel/Keller/Landbier, Scottish Ale, Scotch Ale, American Strong Ale, Mild, English-style Cider 
Warm (14-16C/57-61F): Barley Wine, Abt/Quadrupel, Imperial Stout, Imperial/Double IPA, Doppelbock, Eisbock, Mead


So, final mantra: If your thirsty and want refreshment, put it in the fridge, if you're drinking for taste, take it out of the fridge. Or another one: "Nightclub = cold, Fireplace = warm".

Right, I'm off to prepare for the sport on tv. My Czech Pilsners are in the fridge, ales and Brewdogs are in my  kitchen, and I've thrown all my Estonian lagers out into the garden. I don't think that will affect their taste much.

When to drink your "special beer"?

On Friday I had a delivery of some very special Brewdog beers. These are beers that are only brewed in small batches, and a released in a strictly limited capacity. I managed to get a case of three of these limited beers: Paradox Jura, a 15% whisky aged imperial stout, Lost Dog which is an imperial porter which has been aged in rum barrels and brewed together with the Lost Abbey brewery in California, and Abstrakt AB:08 which is a deconstructed blonde imperial stout. Yes - blonde stout.

Being limited edition means that there is a demand for them that is higher than normal for Brewdog beers. Which of course in simple economic terms means that you have to pay a bit more for them. It's not just the reason that they are high in demand that makes them expensive - but the fact that these beers are lovingly made and have been aged for up to a year. Time equals money.

These beers, for a 33cl bottle cost 15€ (Paradox and Abstrakt) and 20€ (Lost Dog), but despite that I managed to pre sell them many eager beer fans in Estonia who simply hadn't had the chance to get their paws on beers of such quality before. There is a growing band of beer drinkers in Estonia that understand you get what you pay for, and that beer can be treated in the same way which wine has been treated since it became "posh". These are the same drinkers who realise that they are being served up mass produced liquid and are expected to drink it with pride because it's made in the same country they live in.

When I first had the opportunity to bring these beers to Estonia my first thought that a) they would be too expensive and b) that there wouldn't be any takers for them. My second thought was that I should forget about my first thought because that kind of attitude is so last year. As I've outlined above, there is a market for these type of beers precisely because others are thinking like my last year first thoughts. One of the main reasons my hand was bitten off by many when I offered these beers, is because Estonians have been denied great beer for so long.

The beers arrived, I got them registered; don't get me started on this ridiculous ruling. It's only necessary in Estonia and is just another ridiculous blockade in the way of getting good beer here. I have to give one bottle as a sample (I bet they drank it and declared it vastly inferior to Saku Rock) and then I have to pay to get the beer registered. Not the brand - but the beer. Three new Brewdogs, means three samples and three amounts of cash passing from me to them. They also require a lab analysis which gives the breakdown of ingredients,ABV, OG and various other bits of information that I don't know what they do with, or indeed understand. When I ask the brewers for a lab analysis in order for me to register the beers (and release them from the excise warehouse), nearly all of them ask me why I need and what information is required. After I've told them, I then go onto their website and see how many other countries in the world they export to, and ask myself the the question why they don't know what information is required on the lab analysis. Afterall, surely all of these other countries have the same rules and regulations about bringing export beer into their country?

Of course they don't.  It used to be the same for wine  - but last year the Estonian authorities dropped the registration process. Something to do with Estonia not making it's own wine (meaning shiraz, chardonnay etc - not fruit) perhaps? I strongly suspect that someone on the board is also on the board of Saku or A Le Coq. We don't want any of this export beer. Locally produced beer is much more suitable for the good people of Estonia. Access denied. Next!

Anyway - all this hard work only makes the beer taste better, and it's a sense of excitement when the papers are all in order and the the beers are authorised for release. So excited I was by the time I got home with my three new Brewdogs, that without thinking I started reaching for the bottle opener. And then I stopped. Not because it was two o'clock in the afternoon. Not because I had to pick George up from playschool at 5pm, I stopped because these were "special beers".

A bottle of Worthingtons White Shield was given to me by a brewer about 8 years ago. Nothing special about Worthington White Shield (and I mean that in terms of availability - it certainly is a special beer), but the special thing about this beer was it's best before date. White Shield is bottle conditioned which means that is has a small layer of live yeast at the bottom of the bottle. The yeast carries on doing it's job while the bottle sits on the shelf, keeping the beer fresh, the alcohol levels topped up and generally conditioning the beer. In the same way that you can lay wine down in the hope that it improves with age, you can do this with certain types of beer. If they have yeast in them, or they haven't been filtered, or they have a high alcohol content, then they should last a long time. Indeed, some beers have been found at the bottom of the ocean, or hidden away in cellars and have been drinkable. The worlds oldest "drinkable" beer, was found in our very own Baltic Sea http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12393875  and some were found underneath the brewery in which I used to work in the UK http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3352667/A-fresh-future-for-flat-old-beer.html

The beer I was given wasn't so old - it had a best before date of  May 1994 which made it 10 years old, and I promised that I'd leave it for a special occasion.

I've still got it. I can't bring myself to open it. It's a mixture of lots of things that is keeping me from opening it. Its one of my all time favourite beers - the last I have, it's the old style bottle that isn't made anymore, and it's 18 years old. That's the same age as some of the people who drink in my bar. It's going to have such complex flavours, additional alcohol levels and a whole different taste to when it was first brewed. Considering that WWS has a 3 year shelf life when it's first bottled - that makes it 21 years old. May 1991? Estonia was still the Soviet Union when this left the factory. This beer has history. If I drink it, then it's gone never to come back. I guess it's a bit of a security blanket for my days back at the brewery in Burton on Trent. Ah well, maybe it'll taste nice in another 10 years. I might try it then.

The Brewdog beers will also keep. They have a best before date of 2016, but I suspect that they will keep and mature for much longer than that. And whereas the Worthington is just an aged ale, the Brewdog beers are special within themselves. The Paradox is aged in casks from one of the worlds greatest whisky producing islands Jura, the Lost Dog is aged in Rum casks and has been brewed with legendary Californian craft brewers Lost Abbey, and the Abstrakt is a blonde beer that thinks it's a porter. You don't just crack open one of these beers when you are about to sit and watch the football on a Tuesday evening. You need a sense of occasion. Something to match the celebration of such a good beer. Or..you can buy two! I've learnt this from my Worthington White Shield experience. You dare not drink the beer because once you have, although it lives long in your memory, it's gone. If you buy two, then you can drink one of them safe in the knowledge that you still have one to look at, display, polish, swoon over and all the other sort of strange things you do when you have a "special beer". You'll confuse people who aren't into beer by bringing the bottle for them to look at and expecting them to show the same sort of admiration as you have for it. I've got a bottle of Ola Dubh Special Reserve 30, and once a year at Christmas I get it out and declare to whoever I'm having dinner with that I'll drink it. They look at me like I'm some sort of odd ball getting all dreamy about a small bottle of beer with an unpronouncable name. I never drink it though - because it's the last one I've got.

Of course the great thing now is, that there are some very special beers now readily available in Estonia without having to crack open the special stuff. My bottle of Hardcore IPA went very well with this years Christmas turkey, and its so readily available that I actually had two bottles of it over dinner.

It'd be interesting to hear from the other guys about when they intend to drink their beers. Maybe we should all get together this time next year and ceremonially open our beers together to mark the occasion when three great beers first arrived on the shores of Estonia.

I wonder if the people who work at the alcohol registery office are thinking of doing the same?

Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

"Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth" is often an expression that is used for something bad. If you look it up, this idiom focuses on the lingering effect of unpleasantness. When this idiom is applied to things other than food, it is about the lingering bad taste. Here's an example I found on the internet:

We had been dating for two months and I liked him very much. Monday night we went out and he became drunk and abusive. He has called me ten times since but I haven't returned his phone calls. His behavior on Monday left a bitter taste in my mouth.


Seems like he was drinking too much of the wrong beer. She did right. (although after 10 unanswered calls you think he would have clocked onto the fact that she didn't like him. Must be a Stella drinker).

But is bitterness all about bad taste and abusive phone calls? In beer, bitterness is extremely important. So important in fact, that it's the key taste that people decide if they like the beer or not. Like smell, taste has an evolutionary role in protecting the body from ingesting anything harmful and identifying tastes that give us pleasure

As you can see above, the tongue is split into four different zones. Each of these play a part in tasting beer, because the liquid washes over your tongue before ending up down your throat (or t-shirt depending on how many you've had). Right at the back of the tongue is where bitterness is detected

Most natural toxins and medicines are bitter and acids are sour. These tastes are often perceived as unpleasant and potentially harmful to the body, whereas sweetness is seen as acceptable. This is why you normally stick your tip of your tongue onto an untasted food to check if it's ok  If it's bitter or sour, then by the time you've got it in your mouth, your tongue will be detecting that it's potentially harmful and give you massive signals to spit it out.

After smell, taste is the next most important factor in flavour perception. Once again, genetics, cultural background and experience play a role in taste ability and preference. It's also sad to note that as you get older, the ability to taste and smell declines with age (which explains why it's only young people who complain about smelly old people on buses and trams - not the other way around.).

Culture is an interesting one.  I'm from a culture in the UK where we are used to drinking quite bitter beers. The main cause of bitterness in beer comes from the addition of hops. Hops are added at the start of the boiling process, which means the brewer gets the flavour but not the aroma of the hops (that is lost in steam up the brewery chimney. If the brewer wants the aroma, then he'll add some more hops for the last 5 minutes of the boil, in a process called "late hopping".). Hops also act as a preservative of flavour, as the resins in hops have anti bacterial effects on organisms which can make beer taste "off". It's these preservative effects that were noticed by brewers who were sending their beer on the long trip to India in the 1800's. They used loads of hops to make sure the beer tasted fresh at the journey end. This type of beer was called India Pale Ale (IPA) and it, aswell as the hops inside it, became very popular in the UK and fashioned our style of beers still drunk today.

But Estonian beer never had to travel to India. Which means that Estonian beer on the whole, doesn't exactly rate high up on the bitterness scale. And a scale there is. All beer when it's brewed is measured in International Bitterness Units (IBUs). The more bitter it is, the higher the amount of units. These days it's becoming more and more popular to display the amount of IBUs on the label, because as I mentioned before, it's the bitterness that most people use to determine if they like a beer or not. Think of it like the numbers on a coffee packet to indicate how strong (roasted = bitterness) it is, or the amount of chilli peppers next to the food description at your Chinese takeaway (unless of course you are in Estonia, whereas you might as well disregard these entirely). Some examples:

Sol = 0 IBU (doesn't contain hops)
Bud = 10 IBU
Saku Originaal = 12 IBU
Saku Hele = 18 IBU
A Le Coq  = 12 IBU (suprise suprise)
Abbot Ale = 35 IBU
Pilsner Urquell = 45 IBU
Punk IPA = 68

Anything above that, and it starts to get very interesting! Currently, the beer with the most IBUs is from Danish brewer Mikkeller. Their "Hop Juice" has. Wait for it. 2007 IBUs. These brewers are similar to Brewdog in that they do a lot of experimental brews just for the hell of it. I have however spoken to them about bringing their beers to Estonia (mouth drooling) and the suggested brands they gave me included the beer called "1000IBU light". No prizes for guessing what the amount of bitterness units are in this one. I might be a bit scared to try it though!

The nearest we've got to something in the way of a beer with high IBUs is Brewdog Hardcore IPA, and it's that beer I'm reviewing now.

Brewdog Hardcore IPA (ratebeer rating: 99) 33cl 9.2% abv

You can't help but be a little bit scared when you are about to open this. It's the combination of the fact that it's 9.2% alcohol, its 150 IBUs and it's from Brewdog. When I first had a bottle, it sat in the fridge for quite a while, because I was waiting for "the right moment" to drink it. This is not a beer you grab when you've just finished playing football, just about to watch a football match, or the beer you give your father in law for the first time. I actually had mine on Christmas day, which I thought was the right moment - I was nice and relaxed, plus had a nice full stomach after stuffing my face all day. This beer took the role of a cognac or glass of port in front of the fire at the end of a long day.

It pours an amber golden orange colour, and suprisingly considering the amount of IBUs has quite a small head. What little head it does have packs a lot of aromas - toffee, caramel, banana and maybe a bit of honey and pine.

The taste is as you would expect - powerful, dry and full bodied. After the initial bitterness, it's got a sweet taste, and then finishes again with a long dryness. Almost like the juniper taste of a dry gin. The sweetness give it great drinkability - caramel and toffee flavours combined with the resin like sweetness of pine and orange peel.

So nothing to be scared of. Apart from the fact that I finished it and immediately wanted another one. It's definitely a drink to take at the end of the night, because in the morning (ok, I had another one) the first thing I tasted in my mouth was hops Unless of course, Hardcore is the ONLY drink you choose to drink all night.

"Leaves a bitter taste in your mouth"? Maybe in time this will be a phrase to describe something good and agreeable instead of the otherway around. I can't guarantee about getting drunk and making 10 abusive phone calls though...

Enjoy the dark.

It's getting colder (well, at least it's supposed to be) and darker. Now's the time to start thinking about matching your choice of beer to the weather.

Dark beer should be served at cellar temperature (12-14 degrees), but most places these days simply don't have the space to cater for lovers of cold and "warm" beer, so more often than not it sits in the fridge with the rest of the other beers. Just let it sit for 5 minutes to let it get up to room temperature - or simply tell the barstaff to take it out of the fridge while you get on with drinking another beer. It really does make a huge difference. The aromas become multi dimensional, the flavour profile develops many layers, and the finished product is much improved. In my beer tasting that I do at Kook (http://www.kook.fi/) , we taste two types of dark beer. One is served on ice, the other isn't. It's amazing how different the two beers taste. The clever part is, that they are both the same beer. Many don't believe it.

We've got a dark beer award winner at Drink. Huvila X-Porter won gold medals at the Helsinki beer festival and San Diego beer festival (this is why it's called "X Porter - it's exported to the states also) in 2010 and won best overall dark beer in Finland at this years Finnish beer festival.

Huvila X-Porter (http://www.ratebeer.com/ rating 94) is in a 500ml bottle and comes in at 7%. It's made by the Malmgard brewery which is located about an hours drive from Helsinki. It's available in both Drink Bar and Shop, aswell as Kodu, Porgu, Stockmann and Kaubamaja.

It's a traditional style Baltic porter - pretty high abv, lots of dark roasted malt giving an almost black colour with a tan head, and coffee/burnt aroma.

It pours Cola black, with quite a high amount of carbonisation. This gives the finished glass that classic porter look - rich dark topped with a creamy off white head. The aromas given off are the usual coffee, burnt toast, roasted malt notes, but there is also some toffee and licorice (it's Finnish afterall!) and a hint of nuts.

The taste is similar to the aromas - pleasingly there isn't so much sweetness, and the palate is dominated by dark caramel sugars, roasted coffee malts and a dry bitterness in the finish. It comes in at 50 IBUs. Mouthfeel as you can see by the picture is excellent - the creamy head lasts down the glass.

All in all a worthy winner of it's awards.

We don't sell Guinness in our bar - simply because we sell beer like this. If a customer comes in and asks for Guinness, then the girls won't say "ei ole" as many other barstaff in different locations in Estonia are programmed to do, they'll inform the customer that we have other dark beers and porters available. It's always pleasing to see a seasoned Guinness drinker try a real version of "their beer". The look on their face is as if they have just seen the light.

Or should that be the dark?