The Craft Beer Revolution from both sides of the pond

Bring on the crowds!

Like a lot of people, I have managed to overcome my fear of infection enough to pay fairly regular visits to pubs. I've even ventured more frequently into the lawless hell-hole that is Brighton where mask-wearing has never really caught on. Large crowds though? A different kettle of sour. All the same, I was struck by the coincidence that the London Craft Beer Festival should be happening in the week that I "happened" to have taken some time off work. I had a look at their booking information and was reassured to see that only those who could show evidence of a recent negative test were allowed in. So I bought myself a ticket.

It was held in Tobacco Dock, in Wapping, and my first thought on arrival was "how the hell are they going to fit that lot into even a large exhibition hall?" There must have been four or five hundred hardy souls squashed onto the tow path between the canal and the wire fence around the venue. The answer to my question was slowly but that did at least give the stewards plenty of time to go along the queue and check everyone's COVID status.

I was glad of the precautions when I did get inside. The venue was vast but with low ceilings, and individual bars had been created in what I presumed would be, at a different kind of event, seminar rooms. Nobody was wearing a mask but then how else would you expect people at a beer festival to behave? When they weren't drinking, they were talking and eating - exactly the sort of behaviour you'd associate with the pub. I just shrugged and kept on walking.

One of the main points of interest for me was: this is a craft beer event. How much is it going to differ from the CAMRA-organised Great British Beer Festival? The first, most obvious and least surprising difference was the age and sex profile.I saw a lot more couples than at the GBBF, a lot more women and a much younger age group. So far so predictable. Tobacco Dock was a much more appealing venue than Olympia and the low-ceilinged corridors were nicely atmospheric. Also, the acoustics were better and, with a first floor that was balconied rather than solid, you could hear music wafting up wherever you were. At GBBF it would have been folk, blues and rock; here it was predominantly EDM.

A lot of things were broadly similar - there were large bars devoted to just one brewery and smaller ones with just two or three brewers. Disappointingly, there were no banners behind the bars, advertising the beers available, and even when you got up close and personal the details were often just on a printed sheet on the counter. The staff were, without exception, friendly and helpful but with so many bars to get round, the lack of information became rather wearing.

Is my beard weird enough?

I sampled pales and IPAs from Pomona Island, Howling Hops and Northern Monk, without being blown away by any of them. It wasn't until I moved onto the darker beers that I hit paydirt, first with a cracking porter from Port City Brewing, from the American bar. Then I tried a delicious and well-named Salty Licorice Tattoo imperial stout from the always edgy Weird Beard. Here though I, and the Weird Beard staffers, had a most frustrating experience. I wanted to buy one of their T-shirts and although all beer costs were covered by the cost of entry, merchandise was not. London Craft Beer Festival had been proudly advertised as cash-free. I spent fifteen minutes waiting while the Weird Beard crew tried their best to put my payment through but to no avail. 

Wi no fi, eh?   

What was disappointing to me about this festival, and it may seem an odd thing to feel the lack of, was the absence of a centre, of an organising presence, particularly at the point of entry. CAMRA is the organisation behind the GBBF, which exists to promote breweries but also promotes CAMRA itself and, as you walk in, there's no way you can miss that fact. They have a membership stand, books for sale, T-shirts, beer-related items for sale and crucially - a programme. All LCBF had to offer was a two-sided card showing where the bars were, what breweries were occupying them and where the food outlets were. But there was no list of beers and no eulogy written by Roger Protz or Pete Brown. I'm sorry but I did miss that.

American beer importers

A delivery from Beer Bruvs

I have been a fan of American beer since my first trip Stateside. I had always been led to believe that American beer was all insipid piss, like Budweiser, but even in 1997 that was starting to change. Several further trips, with my American wife, followed but it wasn't until 2018 in Cincinnati, that I had the chance to properly explore what was on offer. On that trip, I sampled brews from Bells (Comstock, MI), MadTree and Rhinegeist (Cincinnati, OH), Braxton (Covington, KY) and Cigar City (Tampa, FL) among many others.

By the time we made that trip, I was already a fully paid-up member of the Craft Beer Fan Club and was aware that American microbreweries had driven the rebirth of the IPA style. This was originally an English style that had been rediscovered by American homebrewers. The difference in their IPAs was (a) they used fruity American hops and (b) they were far stronger than ours. At the time of the Cincinnati trip a typical British IPA would be between 5.5% and 6.5%. The American equivalent started at 7.0% and went up from there. 

For me, the game changer was Cigar City's Jai Alai IPA, which is 7.5%. We were in Nashville; we had just arrived and had not done much pre-planning as to where to start our first evening. We asked our Uber driver who said

"Well, this here's Acme Seed and Feed. They do food and they have live bands."

My first pint of Jai Alai

 

We went in and grabbed a table. I looked at the menu but naturally I started with the beers, of which there were dozens. I seem to remember that Jai Alai was described as fruity and hop forward. It might as well have been because that's what it was. I loved it and have loved it ever since. Something else that I noticed on that trip was that every pizza place, rib shack, upmarket restaurant, had a craft beer list. They may not have been long but there appeared to have been a paradigm shift in the US hospitality sector. Representing the craft beer market gave you cred! 

Back in the UK, the problem was: how to get hold of these terrific brews? Most of Brighton's bottle shops had the usual suspects - Brooklyn, Sierra Nevada, Anchor, maybe even Belching Beaver - but apart from a few tap takeovers, from the likes of Rogue, Brooklyn, even Cigar City themselves - it was slim pickings.

Until Beer Hop, that is. Looking back, I'm sure there were beer importers before them that stocked American beers. But it was lockdown that sent me, and many others, I don't doubt, into the arms of the wholesalers. I began to scour social media and beyond for places that would deliver ale to my door. Beer Hop stood out because they advertised themselves as the US specialists. They didn't sell beer from anywhere else.

They started out with some heavyweight names - Sierra Nevada, Cigar City, Stone, Firestone Walker - and although these were breweries who weren't strangers to these shores, they carried a wide range; as many as twenty different brews. However, they haven't expanded much since their launch two years and the only significant name that they have added is that of Founders, best known these days not for their fine beers but their hamfisted handling of the suit brought against them by a former black employee. Just Google Founders - it won't take you long to find details of the whole sorry saga.

A more recent but clearly ambitious addition to the field of US importers is Beer Bruvs. Their approach has been to be build a portfolio of lesser-known but innovative microbrewers. They began by concentrating on specific areas - New York, New Jersey, Maine and the East Coast but have recently began to cast their net wider, and they now include several breweries from Texas. Their major point of departure from the Beer Hop approach is that the majority of their beers come in the larger 473ml size. Most of Beer Hop's offerings are 355ml.

Both companies offer regular deals so even if the standard price is high, you can often get great prices. My particular favourite is Bronx Brewery's marmaladey wonder Now Youse Can't Leave. Despite being a 10.1 DIPA, you will often find it available for less than a pint in an English pub! Beer Bruvs have now begun an English line. It's to be hoped that they won't, as a result, stop their US expansion. Oh, and did I mention that they do have one genuine heavyweight company on board - Oregon legends, Rogue Ales?

Now that I have begun to comb the list of other UK beer wholesalers, I find that most have a selection of American beers available. The best that I have discovered so far is Beer Merchants, a long-established company who cover much of Europe in addition to the Americas. 

I don't doubt that there are many others - I will be scrutinising the websites of the other beer specialists, looking for the US names. In the meantime, does anyone know a company that imports Pliny the Elder?

Goatee Phil's favourite (available) US brews

Rogue - 6 Hop (IPA - 6.6%) - Beer Bruvs

Bronx Brewery - Now youse can't leave (DIPA - 10.1%) - Beer Bruvs

Workhorse - Russian Imperial Stout (9.5%) - Beer Bruvs

Sierre Nevada - Hoptimum (TIPA - 10.6%) - Beer Hop

Cigar City - The Benwood (DIPA - 8%) - Beer Hop

Jackie O - Carrots and Sticks (Strong Ale - 13.9%) - Beer Merchants