Around the Beerblogosphere #5
Time for another quick wander down the highways, byways, lanes and back-alleys of the beerier reaches of the blogosphere, the Big News of the Week of course being the results of the British Guild of Beer Writers Awards...
So it's huge and thoroughly deserved congratulations to all the winners and runners-up of this years British Guild of Beer Writers Awards, particularly Mark Dredge and Woolpack Dave in the New Media category and Pete Brown, whose incredibly entertaining (yet still mildly educational) Hops and Glory netted him the Beer Writer of the Year prize, which he celebrated with another deleted scene from the book. The Thornbridge brewer's blog has a report from the Awards Dinner with food and beer tasting notes that are guaranteed to make you drool all over your keyboard (or is it just me who needs a keyboard-mop?) and the BGBW's own Adrian Tierney-Jones has posted details of the menu as well.
Meanwhile, back at the beer-blogging coal-face: Mark Dredge muses on Extreme Beer: what is it, what does a beer have to be / do / go through to qualify as 'extreme'? Tandleman has been talking evolution and innovation again, with another very interesting post that's provoked a lot of discussion in the comments section. And Adrian Tierney-Jones weighs in with thoughts on both those issues, with a focus on the great work being done down at Fuller's. All well worth a read.
Brewery news: Roger Protz informs us that Greenwich-based brewery Meantime are expanding, having signed the lease on a new brewery premises that will allow them to double and eventually quadruple their current output. BrewDog have secured planning permission for their proposed state-of-the-art brewery. And the folks at the Otter Brewery have been awarded the Sustainable Devon accolade for their environmentally friendly approach to brewing.
Pete Brown reports from the opening of The Tap, a brand new pub on Sheffield station. That serves a range of Thornbridge brews on tap. Sounds like a trip to South Yorkshire is on the cards.
Beer = Poetry. So says Carol Ann Duffy, as quoted by Zythophile.
Jeff Evans lets us into the secrets of brewing a strong Christmas Ale, whilst Tandleman bemoans the lack of imagination that most brewers seem to apply to the concept (for some reason my eye was drawn to this comment, and I believe I may have uttered the phrase "OMFG, I am so there!")
Tyson reports on the fate of 41,472 bottles of Becks lager seized by HM Customs for failure to pay excise duty, which will not be re-cycled and used to produce electricity.
The Pub Curmudgeon has posted an interesting and thoughtful piece on beer advertising and the inherent snobbery of a small sub-set of the real ale enthusiast crowd. And he's crunched the numbers on the latest stealth rise in beer duty revealed by Alistair Darling's latest pre-budget announcements.
The Reluctant Scooper has also been crunching the numbers, this time on alcohol units and looking at the whole concept of recommended unit limits. He's also been helping to expand our linguistic horizons with Jaipur: new definitions.
And finally: has been experimenting with beer floats (that's an ice-cream + beer combo, in case you were wondering) and concludes that a good dollop of hops works wonders. I have to confess, I'm still not entirely convinced; I'm just not much of one for messing around with cocktails. Then again, I saw a port and stout mull-it being made on last Sunday's 'Something For the Weekend' and I might actually be tempted...
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