Autumn

Autumn is my favourite season. It hasn't always been, but a while back I just decided it was. A similar thing happened when I was about eight years old when after long periods of thought I decided my favourite colour was green (the trendy kids always liked red or blue). But overall summer is nice, winter has it's strong points and spring is just boring. But autumn is a great season, and the seasonal beers it brings range from brown ales to nutty auburn-hued bitters to the elusive pumpkin ales.

This autumn has been a nice enough. Plenty of brewing and planning new projects. I also managed to get the old Panda & Frog home brew kit back in action. After not brewing on my kit for such a long time I was very eager to get mashing. This time the brew in question was a collaboration between myself and Mordue brewery's brewery wing man Dave Kerr. Bear Hug is a 4% golden ale brewed with naked oats and honey. A nice easy batch to get things going again.

But there's more to life than brewing, at some point you have to dedicate some time to drinking the stuff. So while the Bear Hug ferments it was time to get into the first of my colder weather beers. Port Brewing's Old Viscosity is a 10% imperial stout with a big mocha chocolate aroma and a rich, assertive palate of dark chocolate, raisins and some vinous fruit. The hop bitterness is firm and backs everything up before plenty of heavy alcohols and berry fruit warm the finish.

So a pretty intense beer. I would advise drinking this with medium to full bodied cigars. A solid winter warmer. Its a shame I can't get hold of another bottle.  

Finally

After ringing up the various Wetherspoons pubs of Newcastle, re-ringing them up and trailing round them all on a Saturday night we finally found some Mordue Red Rye Riwaka on cask. The honour goes to the Job Bulman of Gosforth after a tip off from the boss man Gary Fawson. Mind going straight from work I got a few odd looks walking in to the pub half wet covered in malt dust and yeast stains but it had to be done if I was to get it before the festival ended.
It seems as though the approach of rotating all the listed beers randomly has been taken instead of the traditional 'put everything on at once' approach. This is probably more practical for the pubs involved but not ideal for your average beer geek excited about trying certain beers. But during my time hunting the elusive Riwaka some interesting beers were found. For a start Bell's Kalamazoon Black Silk was pretty unique, like a cross between a dark mild, an Oatmeal stout and a chocolate milkshake. Moorhouse's Pendle Porter showed the weird effect of using Green Bullet hops in porter and St Peter's Golden ale was straight forward and delicious.

As for the Red Rye Riwaka I found the thai spice, leafy hops and red fruit notes a little more dominant and the body a little less smooth than the sample I had tried previously from the Free Trade Inn, Newcastle (a non wetherspoons pub that took on one of the left over Riwaka casks). Overall I was quite pleased. Sadly I didn't get to try many more and soon enough it will be time to say goodbye to Red Rye Riwaka and hello to the few more projects at Mordue I have up my sleeve. But I won't mention that just yet. 

Random beer and food pairing: Asahi Black with Smokey sausage Haggis and chips

Ahh smokey, haggis and chips, straight from the fish and chip shop. A meal fit for a king. But before some of you think I'm going all Cooking Lager on your ass your wrong, Asahi  Black is a beer I consider respectible. A smooth chocolaty malt driven dark lager.  First discovered by myself at a Chinese restaurant (and not many have it) it's smooth...

With the smokey and haggis it's peculiar. The malt picks up on the sausage and texture of the haggis ok but the acidity of the vinegar on the chips spoils it a bit. Then throw in a load of different sauces and you can't tell where this is all going. To be honest, this beer was better served with Chinese food.

Conclusion: Don't try this at home.

Norfolk Red Ale

Flanders Red is a beer style you don't come across too often. So when I spotted this example brewed in Norfolk I was instantly intrigued. Ole Slewfoot Red Wing Flemish style red ale is a 5.1% ruby red interpretation of a classic spontainiously fermented Belgian beer style that comes in a paper wrapped champagne corked bottle. Spontaneous fermentation means that no yeast is used to pitch the wort, all the fermentation work comes from wild yeast that drift in from the air and micro-organisms hidden within the oak barrels used for fermentation. Flanders Red is usually made from a blend of old and new products, with this one I'm not sure.

On the nose it smells like being back in Brussels. Tart cherry and raw earthy, funky yeast, it sure smells Belgian. The palate sure opens well, loads of barnyard yeasty spice, caramel and sweet cherry with a subtle acidic sourness throughout and a medium slightly oily texture. I'm giving it the thumbs up, good complexity yet quite subtle. What I found it lacked, compared to the Belgian original versions of the style was that hardcore sourness in the finish that really adds a kick. Perhaps my bottle could have developed it better with age but to me it seemed a bit like listening to Dragonforce without the guitar solos, it was just that one element away from being truly awesome (but still sour enough to make the wife pull a funny face). Despite this, still worth a try.  

Community spirit

As the folk of Alnwick are aware, last weekend was the annual Alnwick Food Festival and Alnwick Beer Festival all taking place in the centre of our market town. Many of my favourite stands were out in force, cheeses, meats, ice cream, spiced chutneys and relishes, it was all there, and being a volunteer this year it was all about the community spirit, mucking in for the event and celebrating local produce.

  

Local cheesemaker Margeret-Ann Maxwell ran the Doddingtons cheese stall

Allendale Brewery completed the food festival with a range of bottled beers

So with a good turnout and the sun shining all was set for a splendid and entertaining weekend. The same faces, the same costumes, the same good cheer and the same end of festival freebies, in this town the food festival surely signifies the end of September and rounds off the summer. It was great being a volunteer, and this year we not only got illuminous green tops to show how important we were but our own walkie talkies. So with organisation and staff co-ordination stepped up it really made me feel safer knowing that if any trouble did occur I could easily radio in an air strike at any time.

"Alpha one this is Gray Wolf, we have a situation here at stall five involving a dog and some upturned bins, requesting an Apache strike, over"

You can probably guess why mine was confiscated.

Cookery demonstrations were frequent in the Northumberland Hall and this year celebrity French chef Jean-Christophe Novelli was the star of the show with his cookery presentations. Additionally this year there were a few cook-offs between (mostly) different chefs from around the region. The most controversial of these was obviously the local derby match between the lovely Miss Northumberland (Laura Hickey) and Miss Sunderland. I'm not sure what was cooked but the good word was out that Laura pure destroyed her ass so good for her. I suppose we can't just keep leaving it to Newcastle United to maintain the natural order of these things.   

Lewis's rendition of Slipknot's 'Duality' was excellent, but it did seem to intimidate passers by and upset a few children

Anyway's on to the important bit.

From out of town visitors to festival workers and John Bull locals, like most people, I ended up at the beer festival... More than once. Even Miss Northumberland stopped by for a few beers. The fifth Alnwick beer festival, for some reason this year was dominated by Scottish beer.

Stewart Brewing, Fyne Ales, Williams Brothers, Cairngorm, Belhaven and more, beers I had not seen on a regular basis since my time at Heriot-Watt University. So in short a lot of big guns from across the border dominated this year's beer festival. Not that I'm against that, the Scottish brewing scene of today is varied and innovative yet some brewers still hold a torch for tradition. Raj IPA for example from Tryst brewery was a brilliant take on an old school British IPA. Inveralmond Trappledouser was straight-forward enough and the Fyne Ales beers were as big and as hoppy as ever. But you wanna guess which beer sold out first, claiming the prize of beer of the festival???

Beer of the festival

Back of the net!

Since Alnwick beer festival has existed, Hadrian and Border brewery's Tyneside Blonde has won beer of the festival. All respect to them, but this year Mordue's newest core brand has breaten them to it. Head brewer Andy Burrows was probably grinding his teeth for a long while when he found out. He maybe even did an 'Eastenders' and shamshed the place up a bit in a distressed rage. Sorry Andy. 

But anyways yes, Alnwick food and beer festival, a splendid day out for all.