It's a storyline straight out of BBC TV's Olympics spoof "Twenty Twelve", Dutch brewing giant Heineken demands that go with their beer sponsorship of the Games caused a furore amongst English Beer fans. It raises some silly and some serious points.

BBC Comedy "Twenty Twelve" with Hugh Bonneville as "Head of Deliverance"

Brief recap, as could have been spoken by 2012 narrator, David Tennant:

"Dutch brewing giant and Head Of Beer for London 2012, Heineken, caused frothing at the mouth of many British real ale fans by banning Head of England Cricket Beer Sponsorship, Marstons, from Lords, the home of English cricket. This is thought of as a pity by Marstons, even though Lords will be home of archery during the Games."
The ex-Doctor Who would have intoned, in his role as Head of Narration for Twenty Twelve.

Heineken are said to have paid 10 million quid to Seb Coe's lot, which gets them the right to be sole purveyors of beer identifiable by a name. And not just at Lords, everywhere. OK, not everywhere, just everywhere to do with the Olympics. Except London Olympia, at which venue, in a delicious irony, CAMRA will be hosting the Great British Beer Festival during the games.

What does this sponsorship buy? As well as getting rid of Marstons, "sole pourers" rights means there will be no other beer except the Heineken-owned John Smith's Smoothflow, which suffers the indignity of not even being available under its own name. It will be identified as "Bitter". As I suspect will CAMRA, and two of my inspirations in beer writing, Pete Brown (Head of Beer Wit & Boycotting) and Roger Protz (Head of Good Beer Guide & Apoplexy), who both write about it. Read Roger's piece here.

On top of all this, portraits of former Head of England Fast Bowling, Matthew Hoggard, will be covered up, because he's Marstons' "beer ambassador".

But for all the outrage, isn't this all rather silly and self-defeating of Head of Beer, Dutch brewing giant Heineken? It's like saying "Our beer is not good enough to stand on its own against other names (even from our own "portfolio"), so we're going to make it looks like nothing else exists." Heineken's "attitude" amounts to beer brand carpet-bombing. This idea has more holes in it than a target at the end of an Olympic archery competition. Drinking beer should be about much more than brands.

Whinge drinking?
Or is this just a bunch of CAMRA bods whinge-drinking? Real-ale fans going "I don't like lager". For the record, I do like lager, and will go on about the subject shortly.

More seriously, Brewing in Britain, for all the progress and excitement is vulnerable; undermined by threats from the beer duty escalator and pub closures. Of course, Pete Brown, Roger Protz and Mike Benner (Head of CAMRA) are correct; 2012 is an opportunity to showcase Britain's brewers and cask ale - one beer event in which Britain would be guaranteed a gold.

But who in British brewing could have afforded that whack to offer competition? Evidently not Marstons, and not Fullers, whose London Pride would have been an appropriate choice. Greene King's sponsorship budget runs to Crusaders - a Welsh rugby league team (no disrespect intended).

So what can we do to draw attention to great British beer during the Olympics? There are calls for a Boycott of Heinken, but I'd rather see some more positive action. Perhaps we could offer archery watchers Matthew Hoggard masks. I hope somebody gives Matthew Hoggard tickets to Lords to watch the archery. Heineken can hardly cover him up, can they?

Maltjerry, Head of Over-stretched Parodies of British Sitcoms

What you can do to support British beer:

• Support the anti-Beer Duty Escalator campaign Save Your Pint
• Help save pubs with the Community Pubs Month campaign.
• Visit the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia in August.
• Join the Campaign for Real Ale, CAMRA, 

I have this friend Bill. He has very good taste. Remarkably similar to mine, in fact. Except that he has trouble with American beer. American craft beer, to be more precise. And to further narrow the confines of precision, he has trouble with American hopping.

It's one of the few things Bill and I disagree on.

If I were to speak for Bill for a moment, I'd tell you there are fewer things he likes more than watching the England bowlers laying into the Australian batting while quietly sipping a perfectly presented pint of cask-conditioned ale. That is, Bill sips the ale, Broad, Anderson, and Swann do the laying into of the Aussies.

Not for Bill the citrus and pine attack of an IPA from the North West Coast of America. And especially not the grapefruit hop bombs of, say, San Diego. No, he is more in favour of what he might call the subtler charms of Felinfoel Double Dragon. A preference for the spinner's guile over the fast bowler's bombast. Good job the US doesn't produce fast bowlers, or I'd make this cricket metaphor go even further.

I love Mikkeller's wide range of boundary-distorting beers, and especially the IPAs, but a recent draft sample of the Citra IPA got a little "medieval on my ass", to misappropriate Samuel L Jackson's line from Pulp Fiction. I should send him round to talk to the cellarman.

Bill would not have approved, either.

A single bottle of Mikkeller's Jackie Brown came as a welcome restorer of my faith. Newcastle Brown it certainly isn't. Mikkeller's take on brown ale is distinct: malt and hops: nutty, toffee-roasted malt backbone, on top of which the citrus hops sing as though in the corner of the kitchen, someone has emptied a bag of Sunburst sweets into a blender. (Or Opal Fruits - if you are old enough to remember The Beatles.)

Of course, being a Mikkeller, Jackie Brown is well-hopped with American hops. But as is the case with the best new European beers, the hops are integrated into a balanced whole. Jackie Brown wouldn't kill Bill.

The obvious food pairing would be a chocolate dessert, but I'd like to try it with BBQ ribs, roast pork with a honey and mustard glaze (and chili?). Even though it's not nominally an Easter ale, it would fit well into that Scandinavian tradition.

I wouldn't mind another bottle as my Easter Egg, and maybe another for Bill while we watch England throw away a commanding lead on the final day against Sri Lanka. Would it convince him about American hops? Now, that would be the final test.

Links
About Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, brewer of Mikkeller. Not a brewery, you know: a cuckoo brewer, I call him.
Buy Jackie Brown from Beers of Europe UK.
More detailed tasting notes on my flckr page.

"Sorry I've come so formal", said Simon, removing his tie. Frankly, I couldn't have cared less. I had no idea what to wear, myself. I also had no idea who else was going to be there. Everybody else was in the dark-grey suit. Nice that somebody should care to dress for dinner, but all I cared about was it was a beer dinner given by Brains Brewery and I wanted to know what the menu was and how a range of thoroughly British beers would cope. Especially with dessert.

Simon wasn't a solicitor, but Mark was. I told them I wrote about beer, they looked quizzical as I confessed my curiosity about what the choice of dessert beer would be. "Dessert beer?" I could see flit momentarily across their consciousnesses before they moved on to the more pressing subject of by how many points Wales would beat England by at Twickenham on Saturday. This was, after all, a dinner for The Wales in London club.

(download)

Click here to download:

men-with-odd-shaped-balls-drink-brains-with-food-shock-ucohsqFEtmAwjpInIFdy.zip (57 KB)

Tom Shanklin's seat was taken by Melissa Cole, beer writer and tonight's beer co-MC with Bill Dobson. Melissa was also responsible for choosing the beers to go with each course. Something of a relief I'll admit. You see, as much as I love and champion beer with food, I'm more used to a wider variety of styles than is usually available from a large-ish British regional brewer. Bill and Melissa guide us through each course pairing throughout the evening.

However, a quick straw poll of the assembled diners revealed that beer dinners were not the norm for the Wales in London members, unless several pints of Kingfisher were the chosen accompaniment to a chicken Madras. Best not to freak people out with a Rosé de Gambrinus lambic, then.

Here is the non-vegetarian menu and its chosen beer.

STARTER
Ham hock, Pommery mustard, and parsley terrine with homemade piccalilli.
Paired with:
Brains Milkwood

MAIN COURSE
Confit leg of Gressingham duck, fondant potato, aromatic red cabbage & sherry vinegar jus
Paired with:
Brains Bread of Heaven

DESSERT
Chocolate and raspberry mousse with berry coulis
Paired with:
Brains Original Stout

Brains Beers with Posh Dinner: The Verdict
The Milkwood was new to me, and the nutty and slightly spicy maltiness (from rye crystal malt), was a good match for the ham terrine. The beer has another slightly unusual ingredient in malted oats, which I imagine, contributed to making it feel a bigger beer than its 4.3% ABV might suggest. A touch of sweetness too, as a go-between for the piccalilli, which was refined and tart, but not like the famous jarred version that resembles toxic waste. Would a touch more complexity from a heavier hand with the hops been even better?

Duck confit just seems like perfect pub food. It's slightly salty, richness needs a beer to lighten the palate and quench the thirst. Melissa pointed out the cherry(stone?) note in the Bread of Heaven was a much better idea than overwhelming the meat with actual cherries. She was right. The red cabbage was a bit too much for it, but the oddly, the sweetness in sherry vinegar jus found the fruit in the beer, picked up the ball and ran.
"Bread of Heaven, feed me 'til I want no more! (Respons-i-blyyyy)"...

And so to dessert. I had almost guessed it would be a dark beer with chocolate, but I hadn't guessed that Brains Original Stout was a mere 4.1%. Half the strength of the Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter I go on about in these pages (and as I did to Simon and Mark). Sensibly, the chocolate mousse with which it was paired was not so intense as to smother the beer, and I was so glad to see it served in a goblet rather than a boring beer glass. All the better to show off the coffee and chocolate aromas in the beer.

It worked then, I'm pleased to report. Not that I managed any kind of scientific survey, but from comments made during after-dinner speeches from honoured rugby guests Tom (Not Stainer) and Robert Jones for Wales, and ex-England full-back, now orthopaedic surgeon Jonathan Webb, I'd have thought this evening resulted in 100 or so more converts to the cause that drinking good beer with good food is a great idea. You don't have to have outrageous beers, and you don't have to wear a tie.

Links
Brains Brewery's beer range
More pics and comments on Maltjerry's flickr site
Melissa Cole's Blogspot

"Drivel, utter drivel," commented "Chuffy" on 27th January, in response to a piece in the Guardian entitled "Calling time on the pint glass". What was it that raised Chuffy's ire? Another daily newspaper's pathetic attempt at writing about beer? Hardly! The byline was Ben McFarland, current British Guild of Beer Writers' Beer Writer of the Year, so at least some beer-informed people think he knows what he's talking about.

But 990 people agreed with Chuffy. The comment earned him (surely is a "him") nearly one thousand "Recommendations" (Guardian-speak for "Like"). He was not alone in his opinion either: 997 people agreed with George999x, "You lot live on a different planet. Long live the pint glass!!" said George999x. Perhaps his likers included George001x - George996x, who knows.

Ben's article dared to suggest that the standard pub pint beer glass, known as the nonik, is not the best vessel from which to appreciate the beverage for which it was made. Ben accuses the nonik glass is made for the landlord's (and the brewery/pubco's) convenience. He goes on to suggest it is ugly, not best suited to a lot of beers on grounds of flavour and aroma, and, it holds too much beer, he throws in, just to make sure there are no short measures.

MaltCim shoots a selection of our glasses*

No prizes for guessing I'm on Ben's side. Regular Nightjar readers might remember one of my non-resolutions/predictions for 2012 is to champion beer served in less than a pint. "Think big, drink small" I wrote. The late great comedian Linda Smith is quoted in another comment, "A third of a pint? That's not a drink, that's homeopathy." Funny, but a gross misrepresentation of homeopathy. However, if ever there were a subject worth grossly misrepresenting...

Smaller measures for bigger beers, is what I'm saying. And so does Ben, but he goes further, asserting that different shaped glasses bring out the best in different beers; especially those with plenty of aroma. But let's allow that some people can't or won't care about such matters. Let's talk about aesthetics, because smart-looking glasses sell beer.

Why did people suddenly develop a taste for Peroni? It's standard lager flies out of the taps at my local Ember Inn. Can it be anything to do with the glass? It's seductive, sculpted curves, etched along its length with the Peroni logo.

I'd wager a mixed case of Kernel to a half-empty can of Fosters that there are crowds of people who would rather drink a Stella Vier from its continental pilsner glass than anything in a nonik. I bet your average young beer drinker - man or woman looks at the holder of a nonik glass and thinks, "Sad, old fart". 

Of course, there are cool, branded pint glasses: Adnams and Ringwood have attractive pints that are a bit more than just noniks with a logo stuck on. Perhaps, of the national ale brewers, Fullers tries the hardest, with a different design for all of it's major ales. But they are all pints. The wonderful ESB goblet: a glass for savouring an ale of 5.5% would be even better in a two-thirds measure.

So let me grant that Chuffy and George999x were partly right: the nonik is a British icon, but one that needs clasting. Pints will still be served, we will still drink them, but the nonik needs an extreme makeover. A new model army of brothers is needed in order to make beer of all styles more attractive in the pub, and acceptable on the dinner table.

Links
Ben McFarland's original article in the Guardian: Calling time on the pint glass
Fullers range of pint glasses
Do yourself a favour and buy Kernel beers from Beer Merchants
The Nightjar's Wishes for 2012

Glasses
Thanks to MaltCim for the photo.
Back, left to right: Fullers ESB goblet, Stockholm Festival 2009, Brew Wharf sampler, Stockholm Festival 2010.
Front: Lagunitas fruit jar, private stock Gentle Giant etched US pint mug.

Who was it that said, "I never make predictions, and I never will!"?  Well, it wasn't Charlie Brooker, Guardian columnist and TV's Screen Wipe writer, scourge of the mediocre. And despiser of new year resolutions, it seems. In his column on 8 Jan he says of resolutions "You think of something you enjoy doing, and then resolve to stop doing it", thus giving them the longevity of a Christmas tree withered by a month of central heating.

January does though, give at least the idea of a clean slate. As I toasted in the new year with a bottle of Mikkeller Fra... Til.. dark winter ale, I thought about what I would like to see and what I would like to change in 2012. So, no resolutions and no predictions...

 1. A bigger range of bottled beers in pubs
Especially pubs serving food. OK, most of the point of a British pub is to drink the fine draft beers. Increasing the range of bottled beers will allow a pub to serve a much greater diversity of styles to suit the dishes they serve. Take a leaf out of Leeds Brewery/The Midnight Bell collaboration, as seen in my post on Jamie Oliver's Great Britain programme on Channel 4. And pubs: offer beers you can't get in the supermarket. You'll be able to charge more. And while I'm on that subject...

2. Hike the price of good (craft) beer in pubs
What do you mean the Chancellor already did? Leave the ordinary stuff alone. but make good cask and craft keg reassuringly expensive, to recall an old campaign. Well, a bit dearer, anyway. What do you mean people will just stay at home and pay supermarket prices? What do people pay for a bottle of Becks in a pub, £3.50?  That's like seven quid a pint. For Becks. Don't even get me started on wine. Stand up for being the premium products they are. I'd much rather more money went to the great small breweries we have in the UK. Excellence should be rewarded.

3. Think big, drink small
When it comes to the bigger beers, pints are for wimps. Yes, that's right; it's halves that are for the daring. And thirds are for superheroes. Don't chicken out and have a pint for your man/womanhood. Your brain, liver, and palate will thank you for that half of ESB. You can then "afford" a snifter of Magic Rock Human Cannonball. If only pubs and bars had more third pint glasses... Wait a minute; Ember Inns already do, for their tasting racks. (Three thirds for less than the price of the pint.) You could even do a round of two halves for standard strength beers. That is, until two-thirds glasses catch on. Daily mirror article from November 2011.

4. Breweries: tell us what's in the bottle
"Brewed with the finest malt and choicest hops." It says on far too many labels. Stop it now! Whisky is hardly better: "The purest water flowing down through the glens." Rubbish. What if my headlines said: "Written with the most descriptive words and crafted punctuation"? Oh, and while I'm dealing with imprecision, stop this "Brewery Conditioned" nonsense. Beer: is it pasteurised? Filtered? Whisky: is it coloured? Chill-filtered?

5. Buy stuff from specialist retailers
When it comes to malt-based beverages, supermarkets are, on the whole, beige with the odd touch of inspiration. And because their ranges are a bit slow moving, you are way better off buying the beer and whisky you really want to drink by going to specialist online beer and whisky shops. At the same time, you get to support the real artisans of malt. Unless you live in Sweden, in which case, you're more-or-less already catered for. Jammy gits.

My Brewery Tap's Pick-and-mix range
The Whisky Tasting Club

6. More food and beer together
Writing and talking about Beer with food and cooking is the best way of introducing people to the diverse world of beer styles. I received an honourable mention in the Beer and Food category from the British Beer Writers Guild in December, and this made clear for me a direction for The Nightjar in 2012. I recommend you go to or give a beer dinner; I certainly will.

Damn!, I nearly made it through the whole post without a prediction. Sorry Charlie.

Beer and whisky gifts for Christmas proved a popular post last year, so here we go for 2011, beginning with some special beers and soon to be followed by some of the best beer books this year.

On the case
A good many breweries have online shops and special selections for the season, but I wanted to bring a couple to your attention that you might not be aware of.

Summer Wine Brewery, from Yorkshire, who in choosing their name are clearly hedging their beverage bets with an eye to global warming. Nevertheless, SWB are brewing beer for the foreseeable - and jolly fine it is too. They have a Festive Case of 24 330 ml bottles of a range of styles from a modern IPA to "Double Black Belgian RyePA", all for £54.

I might have to include a chocolate fireguard with my next recommendation, as it's a very limited offer, and might already be sold out. Bristol Beer Factory's 12 Stouts of Christmas is the culmination of a year-long project to produce 12 different stouts (would you believe). At £48 including delivery, they are bound to go faster than huskies in the snow.

If you miss the boat (sledge?), you could go for the Mixed Dark Case instead. It has some of the 12 Stouts, or you could choose your own case and include the likes of the Glenlivet cask-aged stout.

Online shop My Brewery Tap is an outlet for craft breweries. They have some mixed cases too, and also a few special bottles that would make a great gift. The 52-week UK beer club is a brilliant idea. Every quarter your chosen recipient receives 13 different, well-chosen British "real" ales. A gift that gives all year for a very reasonalbe £110 plus a Tiny Tim of a one-off, 6-quid shipping charge.  

A more affordable idea is to choose from the pick-and-mix selection, which would allow you to give one or two special beers to several friends and maybe keep a couple for yourself. Or perhaps go for a 1.5 litre Chimay Magnum Grande Reserve. Complete with champagne stopper, it would light up any New Year's Eve celebration.

London's The Kernel Brewery is probably the hippest in the UK at the moment, having just walked away with Brewer of the Year from the British Guild of Beer Writers. I couldn't find a ready-made mixed case for you at that other online bastion of great beer, Beer Merchants, so I've made one up: a Mixed Kernel IPA Kernel, IPA ANR, 7%, Kernel, IPA Black 33cl, Kernel, IPA Citra 6.6% 33cl, Kernel, IPA Double Black, Kernel, IPA Nelson Sauvin Citra, 7.1%, 33cl, Kernel, IPA S.C.G.A.NS 7%, 33cl, Kernel, IPA SA.NS.NZC, 7.2%, 33cl, and Kernel, IPA Simcoe Centennial, 7%, 33cl.

Back soon with some ideas for books about beer.

Friday November 4th was Black Friday - at least according to the craft beer bar The Euston Tap. They were playing black songs: Black Hole Sun, Back to Black, Back in Black, Paint it Black... The blackboard was full of black beers: Hardknott Code Black, Kernel Double Black, Matuska Black Rocket... That's a blacklist to celebrate.

What could be the cause for celebration? Goth Night? Impending meltdown of the Euro? No! it was in fact, the eve Euston Tap's first birthday. Crikey, a year already! Or perhaps: How can it be only a year? It seems like so much has happened.

In the twelve months since then, as well as putting on beer fan events such as the BrewDog IPA is Dead launch, it has shown itself to be a pub with its aim on a wider audience. Its situation right next to Euston station means it is ideal for a drop-in; a great waiting room, whether you're Neil Morrissey, or a group of Arsenal fans bored on a Saturday afternoon when snow postpones the match.

Of course, its offering is led by the great range of exciting beers of all styles from all over the craft beer world, on cask, in keg, and in bottle. But there's no disdain in pouring a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, or serving three office lads Jack and Coke (although Johnnie Walker Black Label would have been apt tonight). And if anyone is looking for their usual national brand, knowledgeable staff point them towards suitable alternatives. And I don't mean another bar.

For me, the success is measured in how well it draws in a wider drinking audience. As Adrian Tierney-Jones puts it in his excellent new book Great British Pubs, "[At the Euston Tap] beer continues to find new and exciting ways to engage with the drinking public." Tonight, that part of the public is exposed to almost an entire bar of beer drinkers with glasses of deeply black beer that isn't Guinness - and some of which is lager. Maybe some will be curious.

Many Happy Returns!

Euston Tap website

Euston Taps beer list" for 5/5/11

Buy Great British Pubs by Adrian Tierney-Jones

The new batch of #BrewDog's much sought after Hello my name is Ingrid. 8.2% IPA flavoured with cloudberries.

"Haven't you got any ordinary beer?" said the man standing next to me at the bar at the White Horse.

His request for a beer had started out in quite a normal fashion, not to say mundane: "A pint of Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted," had been the opening gambit. Innocent enough.

To which, the response from behind the bar was, "Cask or Keg?"
"Sorry?" he said with genuine surprise.
"Do you want the cask version of the Bitter and Twisted, or keg?," while this contained more words, it clearly did not produce a deeper understanding in the customer.
"Whatever is quickest and cheapest."

Our man was standing right next to the keg fonts, but I'd seen the prices on the chalk board.
I was no longer paying attention to my place in the queue to be served. She served a pint of the keg, and said, "Five pounds and sixty-five pence, please."

"Sorry?" For the second time.
"Well, I did a quick cost/benefit analysis based on your "quick-and-cheap" request, and since I was standing next to the keg, I thought the downside of the extra 50p would be outweighed by the extra time it would take waiting for the cask tap to be free."
"Oh, thanks. I appreciate your effort."

Although everything else in the reported dialog happened, in reality, there was no "cost/benefit" exchange, and our thirsty, and increasingly indignant punter merely came out with, "£5.65 for a pint?!" and the line that opens this post. He was in the wrong place for "ordinary" beer, even if I did have sympathy for his reaction.

There is a lot of talk about contentious subjects in the beer world. You might have read my report on the Twitter flash-mobbing of Saturday Kitchen in relation to getting food and beer on TV. More contentious by far, in the UK at least, is whether good beer can be served from a keg.

Here, at the White Horse, was a chance to try cask versions of a beer next to their keg counterparts, Instead of just declaring "two legs good" in the modern way, or sticking to the dogmatism of the old, we had the opportunity to find out who was right; the craft beer "revolutionaries" or the faction of CAMRA that says only cask deserves support, by which they mean so-called real ale. Unmissable, surely.

So where was everybody? I mean, it was a pretty full pub, and the green outside was chock-full (even if there was a lot of Pimms being drunk). By "everybody" I mean people who really need to test their own beliefs in this Cask vs. Keg thing. Maybe they went on other days in the weekend, or came in after I left, but in my experience, the sort of people who get invited to these sort of events usually arrive early. Ah, they could have come early. However, I haven't seen anything written. Maybe I should look harder.

So what's the festival all about? Maybe I should explain briefly why a festival called "Cask vs. Keg" should arise in the first place. (Beer "Bloggerati", look away now!). Let's start by saying (again) that without the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), this blog would probably be about whisky, wine, and food, as beer as an interesting drink would probably have shuffled off this mortal coil in 1974. Back then, kegged beer was the "enemy"; it was pasteurised, filtered, and pumped full of and dispensed with CO2. A dead parrot.

These days, the techniques in kegging beer have moved on, thanks largely to the craft beer movement in the US. Beers of all styles (not just ales) can be put into kegs without pasteurisation and with minimal or no filtration, so they contain living yeast. They can also be served using compressed air. As I understand it, this equates to what CAMRA calls "real". Anyone who has tasted beers from Flying Dog or Stone presented like this knows that Polly most definitely has voom.

Well, that's OK then, surely everyone is happy, no? Not everybody, but a lot of people are happy. Cask beers have a cachet in the US and certain parts of Northern Europe and people in the UK are catching on to a whole New World of beer styles. Sure, they can be a bit cooler and are generally more carbonated (as they don't lose CO2 when the cask is breached), but some some believe certain beer styles are more suited to the new keg methods.

Unfortunately, there is intransigence on both sides. I find the standpoint, "CAMRA and real ale. Epic. Fail" just as tedious as "What's the matter lagerboy? Frightened of tasting something?" Which is why the White Horse was such a draw for me; a chance to do an A/B comparison of a range of different styles of beers, each available in cask and keg.

In Part 2, find out what we tasted and what the verdict was.

Backstory
One of the first Nightjar posts: Cask jousts with keg at Hampton Court Jazz and Beer Festival.

Beer "Bloggerati" refers to a remark made at a CAMRA AGM by an official in reference to supposedly troublesome beer bloggers who didn't toe the CAMRA party line. These influential beer writers of a certain disposition would have no reason to read my explanation of the cask vs. keg debate origins, even if they did read this blog.

The "lagerboy" reference is a quote from an advertising campaign by Wychwood Brewery for their Hobgoblin ale.

What is "real ale"?

The White Horse, Parsons Green, London.