Can you dig it?

Logan Plant of Beavertown proud
with his newly canned Gamma Ray

Canned beers have long been associated with mass-market, "stack-em high, sell 'em cheap" beers and often have connotations of low quality, metallic tasting beverages for cheap home drinking only. Yet 2014 saw the installation of canning lines at some of the UK's foremost craft brewers (Camden Town, Fourpure and Beavertown) with Roosters online in 2015 and Magic Rock Following hot on their heels with a line ordered for the new brewery. Brewdog are also moving their canning in house. So what's changed people's perceptions?

Craft beer in America has seen the can treatment for more than decade, with Oskar Blues leading the charge in 2002 and many other breweries following suit in the years since. The confusingly named Cask Brewing Systems (the supplier of most of the new UK systems) started off supplying brew kits to customers in Canada. They saw an opportunity to help brewers in the US differentiate themselves from competitors in the oversupply crisis of the late 90s and came up with the canning solution:
"These brewers were looking for creative and economical ways to increase sales“and we’ve always prided ourselves in finding solutions for our customers.  We knew that consumers were ready for cans if someone would just provide that option. So our solution for struggling brewers was to help them utilize the aluminum[sic ;)] can.” Peter Love, Founder

Cask have been there since the beginning and have done a lot of the ground work (along with the brave breweries who took the canning plunge!) debunking the canning myths and much hostility from established brewers who offered only bottled product. In the first year, Oskar Blues' (later at cask) employee in charge of can promotion (Marty Jones) even received a letter stating “I look forward to the day your company fails for attempting such a ridiculous idea.” charming!

Once these myths were put to bed however; any rational person could see that canned beer had numerous advantages over bottled beer and often preferable to draught dispense methods.The obvious one is that obviously cans are lighter than bottles; so not only easier to lug around once you've bought them, but cheaper to transport from brewery to stores. This also makes them more environmentally friendly and the life-cycle of aluminium from ground through smelting to finished product and numerous recyclings is less carbon intensive than glass manufacture.

Once you've got the can's home its easier to get them in the fridge and they cool more quickly. Its easier to drink them surreptitiously and you can take them to places where glass is banned (sports events and festivals).

In addition to this the beer actually tastes better, well all know about light strike, the process by which UV light reacts with hop compounds in bottled beers to produce a "skunky" aroma and taste. Yes, brown bottles slow down the process but canned beers eliminate this completely. Another less well appreciated issue is oxygen pick-up in the packaging process, often lead to a stale or papery tasting beer. Oxygen can also get in through bottle-caps but again cans are impervious. Modern canning lines can limit oxygen pickup to as little as 15-20ppb (that's parts per billion!). (For comparison purposes Brewdog's dissolved oxygen with all of their fancy kit is usually in the range 25-40ppb)*

Aesthetically cans look better too; giving the brewers more space to play with for eye catching visuals and they stack well creating a pleasing display in shops.

But I didn't start the post to expound the benefits of canning, I'm sure most of you know them already. No, today's post is to bring you news that the first Irish canning line has now been installed and will soon be producing beer with all of the above benefits for us to buy in the shops! From their inauspicious start Cask have gone on to work with hundreds of breweries and canned beer sales have grown in the US by >80% in the past year (whilst bottle sales grew by a mere 16%); no wonder the Irish breweries want a piece of the action!

"So who is it?!" I hear you cry; well those who have been paying attention to the Twitter sphere will already know but those of you who haven't the brewery is Metalman. As first adopters they'll have their work cut out but there are plenty of decent off-licences in the country that will stock them. Indeed the last few months of 2014 saw the arrival of some of the aforementioned UK brewers' products for sale over here. Look out for Camden Town IHL, Beavertown Gamma Ray and Fourpure Pils for three must-stock Fridge Beers

Cans being printed

 The fact that they produce decent beer (and unavailable until now in takeaway packaging) will of course see them through without any teething problems. As I type this Gráinne, Tim and the team are seeing their can designs produced in Wakefield ready to fill in to at the end of the month.

For those of the more geeky inclination, the ACS model Metalman have chosen can can 30 cans per minute. That's 1800 an hour, or the best part of 5000litres in an 8 hour day; so there should be plenty to go around if they already stretched brewery capacity can keep up! Until recently Metalman brewed on the rescued kit of one of the early microbrewing pioneers in Ireland, Biddy Early, who unfortunately were ahead of their time. This investment should help Metalman to remain a fixture in the Irish beer scene for a long time yet. Their machine also has a small footprint meaning its not eating into space required for an expanding battalion of fermenters!

(L2R:Dave Fitzgerald, Grainne Walsh, Wayne Jacques,
Tim Barber, Adam Doyle, Jacqui Kelleher.)

The first beers will be shipped on February 1st,  I for one am looking forward to buying a case!

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*In itself a massive improvement on their 100ppb plus dissolved oxygen content at their previous brew house.

Beneath the tracks

From the excellent article by Will Hawkes

I happened to be in Camden Town on Wednesday evening for an event but at a loss for what to do in the mean time. I needn't have worried however as the ever friendly Mark Dredge invited me along for a look around Camden Town Brewery. Squeezed into the space beneath Kentish Town West station is the shiny new brewplant, in operation for about 18 months now.

"We have no heat in the brewery offices; so I'll take you through to the brew room"; says Mark, ever the Southern softie.

Appearance:

The brewery is organised logically under the five arches, flowing from storage, to the brewing room, filled with shiny mash kettle and lauter tun and three massive grain silos where the malt is piped in once a month from German tankers. Under arch number three are the fermentation and conditioning tanks and I'm informed that the brewery has ordered some larger external conditioning tanks to maximise capacity. The tanks that arrived a month ago were so large the entire glass front had to be removed. Through the door to arch number four and we see the packaging room, both a bottling line and kegging machine, plus a few palates of beer waiting to be shipped. "A few weeks ago we were down to about 6 kegs left in total, its great that we're selling so much, but it means we don't have much flexibility if one of our accounts wants to order extra at short notice". The final arch holds the offices and serving area, though this is to become a fully functioning bar in the new year. The plans sound ambitious, but given what the brewery has already achieved they won't even break a sweat.

Aroma:

Spent malt in lauter tun raked
to extract the maximum wort

There's a brew on, the second of the day and steping through into arch number two we're greeted by the comforting smell of stewing malt, its breakfast all day at the brewery and with three brews needed to fill each fermenter beer is often being made 24 hours. We stand in the warm and the hops are released into the mash kettle. I know this because the air is filled with the at once soporific and invigorating aroma of noble hops, the hop pellets crumbling as they hit the roiling wort.

Back into the tasting area and I espy some pellet hops on the bar which I'm challenged to identify. I fail miserably but at least getting the country correct. They're simcoe, stalwart of the Camden Pale.

The Black Heart, Camden

Palate (ok the analogy breaks down here a bit!):

The brewery is full of young workers and use of space is ingenious. There's something crammed into every corner. The lines are being cleaned so I'm recommended to try the brews at the nearby Black Heart pub. Ninety minutes have flown by and I'm running late for my next stop; so I thank Mark and head on.

Taste:

In search of food later I seek out the pub recommended and am pleased to see four camden beers on font plus a good selection of other brewery's offerings should that be my wont. I order a half of each but the pale has run out. Its a lovely beer and I've tried it before and I'll have it again.

L-R: Wheat, Lager and Ink

Camden Hells Lager: a clear golden helles with hay aroma. Sweet and silky there's just enough of a hop bite in the finish to let you know they're there. Perhaps a tad too carbonated for my liking but I can see this being very popular with macrolager suppers.

Camden Wheat: I'd tried this on bottle, but served at the correct temperature its a different beer. Very clove heavy before the wheat beeer flavours are now in balance, with the banana in the nose following into the body and the wheat spiciness beckoning you in for a further gulp.

Fabiola Santini loves the Ink

Camden Ink: The new arrival to the family. Silky black with foamy head. Coffee, roast barley and milk chocolate nose with smooth body and plenty of roastiness. Long bitter chocolate finish. A great stout that will hook drinkers away from that ubiquitous G-stuff. As if to prove my point a punter turns up and orders one of the usual. On being informed that they don't have it he looks dejected but perks up at being offered a taste of the Ink:

"Its a bit too bitter on its own but actually it has a really lovely aftertaste. I normally drink Guinness with blackcurrant but this is better"

He still goes for the blackcurrant though, ah well, small steps!

Second pizza of the evening!

I share all of my beers with an Italian rock music journalist as my food appears. They all go well with my choice of sustenance: goats cheese, rocket, artichoke and pine nut pizza, made fresh to order. With decent food, music and beer its a pub I'm sure to return to.

Overall:

Camden Town has a solid range of beers, a great location and workforce and plenty of ideas for the future. They'll certainly be ones to watch in 2012 and I'm definitely intending to return when the new bar is operational. Thanks Mark for the tour and samples and see you soon!

Follow the brewery on Twitter here.

New Dog in Town

A London bus and a shiny new bar.

It's not every day that I get invited along to an event for bloggers and its even less often that I can actually get to them! But fate was smiling on me this week as I happened to be in England for the first time in 6 weeks on the very day the event was to take place...the event in question? The opening of Brewdog bar number 4, right in the heart of Camden in London.

Being in Mark Dredge's stomping ground I naturally asked him if he was going along, but he couldn't make it. I was however offered  a visit to the brewery he works at, one I naturally couldn't refuse and I'll write about that later this week.

So back to the Brewdog bar then. Much has already been said about the success of this Scottish company; so I'll not bore everyone by regurgitating same and instead talk about the new bar.

Rees and Milly try the Scotch Ale

The tasting was to begin at 6:30 but due to late-running was closer to 7pm. This suited me perfectly as I'd managed to head in completely the wrong direction until I checked my Google maps and realised (I'm not sure how I survived before I bought my smart phone!). I grabbed myself a half of the Christmas Porter, a gently spiced version of Alice, a favourite of mine and headed downstairs, intriguingly being given a blindfold en route.

Waiting for us downstairs was James Watt, MD who led us on a tasting of three core beers Punk IPA, 5AM Saint and Hardcore IPA, interspersed with humorous anecdotes of the trials and tribulations of setting up the brewery.
   

Tim hands out free pizza!

James introduces the beer

What came next was an interesting concept; beer, music and food pairing. 2010 Masterchef winner Tim Anderson designed the Brewdog food menu to complement the beers and served them to us himself! I really enjoyed the breaded aubergine, mushroom and basil vegetarian creation, a sweet and savoury blend of textures that went well with the new prototype Scotch Ale. I had tried this bottled and found it a bit lacking in body, but served properly on draft new flavours were coaxed out, tangerine and brandy in the nose with tobacco and rasins in the body, alongside the big toffee and robust malt the style is known for. The music? Hardcore Punk, naturally.

Hands outstretched for the surprise!

The climax of the evening approaching, we were all asked to don  our blindfolds and hold out our hands to receive a glass. No blindfold, no beer! The beer had a spicy nose of coffee, cacao and liquorice with a thick and creamy body with a rich and fruity coffee finish. There was alcohol in there too. Rich, coffee, chocolate and boozy, must be a dark and brooding imperial stout...imagine the surprise then when the blindfolds came off and we find ourselves holding a mid-blonde beer!

AB:08!

This was AB:08, a deconstructed blonde imperial stout with a whole host of added ingredients to fool our mouths into thinking it was the regular thing. Its released next week and I shall certainly be picking some up, in fact I enjoyed it so much I immediately had to order a third (and on an empty stomache too!)

Mr Drinkneat was there too

Back upstairs and the bar is heaving and head out in need of food. On my return its even busier if that was even physically possible! I ensconced myself on a corner of the bar, in full view of the guest draught list. and settled on a half of another Brewdog creation, Mr Miyagi's Wasabi Stout.  The unmistakable smell of horseraddish escaped from this but was not as strong in the body as I had feared. In fact it reminded me of of the horseraddish Bertie Botts Every Flavour Bean!

John & Charlie, new converts!

Harry Potter recollections over and I noticed a couple of fellow drinkers were looking for a beer to drink. The excellent bar staff (Johnny on this occasion) know their stuff and talked the guys through the Brewdog range and they settled on two halves of Punk after a number of tasters. I found out they were called John and Charlie and they were Brewdog virgins! feeling generous I bought them a 5AM saint and they also tried my next beer Port Brewing Wipeout IPA which they ended their night on. One of them even asked to apply for a job; they'd obviously enjoyed themselves! 

Johnny advises on beers.

I managed to catch up with James and thank him for the evening and we talked about the AB:08. Not quite done yet I finished on a third of the Brewdog/ Lost Abbey collaboration Lost Dog. According to my ratebeer notes at 11pm last night "Dark ruby with strong port nose. Really fruity with plenty of alcohol. Long sweet finish with caramel and Toffee. Sticky and boozy". Enjoyable enough then!

Gone 11pm and with a 6am start it was time to head to my hotel, plans to visit the Euston cider Tap and CASK pub and kitchen thrown out of the window! A great evening, superb bar and lovely company.

Thank you to Camilla for the invite and organisation of the night, James for a rousing beer tasting (despite clearly suffering from quickly departing voice!) and all of the staff at Brewdog Bar Camden for helping to make the night a memorable one. I'm already planning my next visit!