Originally posted by Christian
Example: How much you guys love Kernel, while to me, it’s just another brewery using excessive amounts of American hops - which is always a great thing to do, but not all that special :)
Yep. My fondness for Kernel Pales/IPAs is based on a number of factors
1. Sometimes I like a big US hop hit
2. Many of the overseas beers in that category that I like a lot are not available on the UK
3. If they are available in the UK they are more difficult for me to get hold of than Kernel
4. And much more expensive |
Originally posted by chriso
Originally posted by Christian
Example: How much you guys love Kernel, while to me, it’s just another brewery using excessive amounts of American hops - which is always a great thing to do, but not all that special :)
Yep. My fondness for Kernel Pales/IPAs is based on a number of factors
1. Sometimes I like a big US hop hit
2. Many of the overseas beers in that category that I like a lot are not available on the UK
3. If they are available in the UK they are more difficult for me to get hold of than Kernel
4. And much more expensive
Yep, and additionally one of the major happiness factors for Kernel is we get them fresh too instead of buying stale expensive American ones from bottle shops. |
Kernel beers are not all that special - good luck with that opinion on the UK forum Christian.
An image of Christians being fed to British Lions seems to waft into my imagination from somewhere. |
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Originally posted by harrisoni
Kernel beers are not all that special - good luck with that opinion on the UK forum Christian.
I think the point is that, in international terms, they are not especially distinctive (at least the IPAs & APAs). |
Well i havnt read all the posts and its 2am on saturday after me doing a 16hr shift, but perhaps I can look at this from a different angel since I spend my life serving the stuff.
The "Craft Beer Market" in the UK is essentially just a new wave of breweries utilising the internet in a way that was previously unavailable to them or simply to much of an expense to to little an audience. British breweries have always toyed with beers, the big boys made seasonals, but the micros have always added madness to thier beers. Fair do’s they didnt have massive alpha hops to americanise the beers, but had they been there and had the level of communication and distrobuition been about back then, it would have happened.
Cask ale is still the main form of "craft beer" we see in the UK and for good reason. The regionals, who practise massivly outdated cellaring courses, in how to ruin beers awesomeness for yeilds, have come up against free thinking cellermen and more importnantly brewries who for the sake of consistancey, condition the beer in the brewery. This has ment the best beer brewed in the UK can be available to anyone who understands the most basic of cellaring and made it available in the most widely used dispence system and at a price point that the UK drinker will take. Cask ale is fuckin awesome, i cannot explain how awesome cask ale is, cask ale is beer at its truest.
Kegged beer is simply a way of providing consistancy and providing a vessel for beer that doesnt suit being served by cask. I sell some utterly outstanding kegged beer(if i may say so) and that is the way its should be served. Why? Because of the style of beer. Some cross the gray boundry, but most are suitable for one or the other. For example, a IIPA is not suitable for cask as it has too much risidual sugars and needs to be colder and have the carbonation to balance the beer, at the same time a 3% bitter should not be kegged as its too cold and you wont taste anything.
My overall view is that the only people who are interested in the arguement are those who have an "invested interest" in it, so therefore will always have an opinion.
My overall opinion going by our company sales and my personal interaction with customers over years of service is: Its just an education thing and beer geeks will always be beer geeks and lager louts will always be lager louts, but the area in between is huge and we’ll get them thinking about beer as people have that perseption about wine given the time.
Chin chin |
Ian is not a real person - that’s a notorious "bot" attempting to convince the gullible beer world that "all beers are pale ales" - hah! clearly a figment newton of our imaginaria. All beers quite clearly go to heaven.
I still have Kernel Love and I don’t care who knows it. Good cask will always top keg - but decent keg will often top indifferent/shitty cask.
The UK micro scene it thriving and don’t angst about it - enjoy it and don’t kvetch. You are doing great stuff! |
I only very rarely have us IPA’s imported now. Why? There’s no point. We get fresher and hoppier beers in the UK. What I like now in the scnene is the sheer depth of choice for the consumer.
True we don’t have a Flemmish Oud Bruin (please can someone brew this in the uk) in the UK yet but a large amount of styles and differet IBU’s (high ibu’s we used to do in the 1800’s) for all tastes.
One thing that appears to be annoying is the over-saturation of the market of some particular styles. I would like more English-style pale ales and more barely wines and stouts. Now it’s October I’m hoping there will be more bw and stouts.
All that is happening with these high alpha hops is the Americans couldn’t get our hops in the US so they grew their own and used their own high alpha range instead. Technically they are copying our styles. |
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Originally posted by chriso
I’ve put forward the view before that the stumbling block may well be more the perception of landlords, major pubcos and dist
ributors that stronger beers won’t sell than the reality.
I think its really was the case about 2 years ago, any pub putting on a 7% beer would really have struggled to shift it out side a festival with bigger footfall.
Now it will sell but slower.
And the 30 mins i spend in pubs over lunchtimes has been an education. You’d be amazed at the number of folks who wont go about a fictional figure in there head. even by 0.1 of a percent.
They’ve set themselves a top limit and its a hard limit |
I tend to agree with SaintMatty on the abv front, Oxford and around is fairly similar with very, very few beers over 5% available on cask. When you question anyone about this you always get the same old arguments trotted out that it won’t sell, it isn’t what the customer wants, they want a 3.8 - 4.5% session ale. I think that we all realise that this is a gross generalisation so why don’t more publicans request a stronger beer in smaller volumes, a pin is 36 pints and far less risky? Do many of you have much knowledge of publicans using pins at all? |
While it might be common to load beers up with American hops these days, it’s not common to do it exceptionally well. The Kernel makes exceptional IPAs, IPAs that I would rank among the best from my home country, the USA. |
