CAMRA strikes back. Colin Valentine vs the Bloggerati

"Down bloggerati scum!"

I have just been reading the new major debate of the blogging world on Martyn Cornell's Blog. It seems that after the seemingly endless posts slagging off CAMRA by various bloggers over the years, CAMRA boss man Colin Valentine has finally had a poke back during a CAMRA AGM. Check the video here.

His talks about "the bloggerati" or beer blogging community being a bunch of trend chasing Internet elitists who only care about the next new beer and constantly slag off CAMRA for dismissing craft/keg beers. In reply various bloggers have pointed out how narrow minded and poorly thought out his speech was. At one point during discussions anti-CAMRA hard man Jeff Picktall threatened to get involved, and you know he won't be taking no prisoners. But to me the argument all seems a bit dumb.

First of all, as others have mentioned many bloggers are CAMRA members and vice versa. I am a CAMRA member, and at the end of the day both groups, broadly speaking, promote the same thing. Consumer choice for great beer. Not all of CAMRA solidly objects to the concept of great beer coming from a keg and not all bloggers think of CAMRA's current existence as pointless and an offense to the British brewing scene. I'm with Tandleman on this one, can't we all just get along?

Plus I'm sure Colin isn't a bad bloke in real life and probably doesn't wear a black and silver mask.

Rehill’s Specialist Food and Wine Merchants, Jesmond

It's kind of cool uncovering hidden treasure. Especially when it's right on your doorstep and you hadn't known about it for years. But this little shop first caught my attention in Cheers magazine, a publication I've been reading a lot from recently since I was covered in it.

From the outside it looks like a regular corner shop, with the exception of the bottles of beers and spirits adorning the window display. Again inside it looks like a large corner shop until you find the small descending stairs to the cave like oasis of beer, cider, wine and spirits. A very impressive range for somewhere this local (before this I thought my best options were Rothbury Wines or Sainsburys) with a decent coverage of Italian, American, Belgian, German and British beers. They even have a nice range of cigars too.

It was one of those moments where you wished you had a huge wad of cash. But I didn't over spend and the missus didn't get mad. I even got to chat to Tony, who runs the place and found out that I wasn't the first one to discover the place throught the recent Cheers magazine coverage.  

But the best thing is the store is right on the direct route between work and my parents house, so whenever I want to hunt out some great bottled beers, I know where to go. My days of tolerance to the mediocre beer ranges of Sainsburys, Lidl and Morrisons are over. A great little shop, and thanks again to ma man Gilmour for bringing it to my attention.

English hops

In today's world of new wave radical brewing, English hops seem to have fallen out of fashion. Go back a decade or two and virtually every small, regional and microbrewery of the British Isles had the minty, grassy, earthy Fuggles and the mild spicy, peppery fruitiness of Goldings as the hops of choice for their portfolio of brands. I imagine some still do.

So what changed? Was it a combination of the development of the ever expanding array of new exciting hop varieties and the changes in attitudes and inspiration from the US craft brewing scene? Probably so, but the fact of the matter is that most trendy American and New Zealand varieties have more power, flavour impact and flare than their UK counterparts. Bred to hold heaps of aromatic oils and bittering (in some brews throat attacking) high alpha acid contents. But I'm not being no fanatical traditionalist in defending good old English hops, I'm just pointing out that they have their place and are not to be dismissed as bland and old fashioned.


Thinking back to those first cask ales I ever tried. The pints that drew me into beer geekism in the first place. Timothy Taylor's Landlord and Mordue Workie Ticket weren't loaded with IBUs (international bitterness units) from a charge of American hops. English hops are not just about balanced, drinkable and flavourful beer, they are fairly diverse. From the tangy orange and spice of First Gold to the sweet rounded progress to the woody-blackcurrant notes of Bramling X to the clean fruity-spiciness and versatility of challenger. English hops have their place, they rock!

So remember folks advocating English hops isn't all about growing a beard and banging the drum of tradition. To check out more check them out here.

Al' Wheat Pet

Out of all my favourite beers of the North East region, this one has to be in the top five somewhere. Mordue's Al' Wheat Pet is a 4.1% British wheat beer, which in other words means a cask conditioned golden session ale with wheat influences. My fondest memory of this beer was when I first tried it at the Tankerville Arms, Eglingham. It was a few years back now and me and Helen had just moved to Northumberland and enjoyed a great lunch on a laid back summer afternoon in the beer garden. It was crisp, light and well composed with delicate herbal hop notes throughout.

A couple of years down the line and it's selling out early at the Newcastle beer festival. As a seasonal/special it's difficult to get hold of but this year, since I'm brewing the stuff I shouldn't find it too hard to track down. It's sure been a while since I tried this one.

So anyway, friday morning comes along and were ready to rock!

Mash goes in.

Now for the sparge.

The run off was nice and easy, this can be watched from the underback, a peculiar piece of kit I had never used previous to my time at Mordue. This is an intermediate vessel situated between the mash tun and copper that lets you watch the wort majesticly flow between the two vessels (below). It is however very easy to let it overflow if your not careful.

Next stage; the copper boil and in go the hops.

After this the boiled wort was transferred to the fermenter where it was introduced to our friends the yeast. By now it should be happily fermenting away. Next week we shall be tasting the stuff and drinking through my mini cask of Marynka pale ale. But all in all not a bad day's work.

Homebrew project: Marynka Pale Ale

It's been a while since I brewed a proper session beer. Every last drop of my 1750's Porter was needed to fill Elizabeth and supplies of my P45 Brown ale (my last brew at Daleside brewery) are dwindling. So after getting the approval my kit was deployed for my first out of hours brew at Mordue brewery.

This one wasn't over planned though, just a quick brew to see how the Panda & Frog kit would handle in it's new surroundings. The grist was composed of mostly left overs (pale malt with a touch of crystal). For the hops the experimental option of Marynka came about simply because I'd picked them almost randomly months ago and never got round to using them. I have never brewed with Polish hops before and they do smell rather nice with a sort of  spicy, herbal, slightly grassy like character about them. I decided to use them for both bittering and then late in the boil in combination with Fuggles and Cascade hops. With an original gravity of 1044 it should be a fairly standard brew that is so far fermenting steadily. I'm looking forward to the results, and the steady flow of pints coming from the kitchen in the coming weeks.