– End of year review / Best Beers of 2013 – a collective poll
2013, what a wonderful year that was for us. Full of beer, new exhibitions and a successful summer of street food and sunshine, with Port Street Pop Ups welcoming Chaat Cart, Las Paelleras, Barnhouse Bistro and more, which led to the Guerrilla Eats residency at our bar in the ‘burbs The Beagle.
We hosted our second exhibition, Beeraphilistic and commissioned photographer Rebecca Lupton to take a tour of the beer festivals of Great Britain capturing the characters there. These characters ranged from volunteers who make these events come to life to the punters who have collectively propped up the bars, highlighting the passion and the spirit of the beer lover.
Speaking of beer festivals and beer lovers it was also our second IMBC which was not only bigger but better, if we do say so ourselves. We had a lot to prove and maintain after our inaugural year. We think, and hope, that we stepped up to the plate so to speak. IMBC 2014 will happen from Thursday 9th to Sunday 12th October, tickets go on sale on Sunday 1st April (no foolin’) so circle the dates on your calendars!
We hosted an international line-up of Meet The Brewers kicking off with the wünderbar Hans-Peter Drexler (Schneider Weiss) coming over from Germany and the delightful Bruno Carilli (Toccalmatto) visited from Italy. Eric Wallace (Left Hand Brewery) popped over from the U.S of A as part of our American Beer Festival. Last but definitely not least of our visiting dignitories, Yvan De Baets (De La Senne) joined us from Belgium for our Euro-tober fest.
From a bit closer to home we had Paul Seiffert and Terry Langton (Liverpool Craft), Rob Hamilton (Black Jack), Gareth Matthews (Mad Hatter), Rhys Powell and Eddie Lofthouse (Harbour), Evin O’Riordain (The Kernel), Eddie Gadd (Gadds) and Americans cum Britons included Jeff Rosenmeier (Lovibonds), the inimitable Byron Knight and Logan Plant (Beavertown). Thanks to all the brewers and all the MTB attendees!
So that’s enough reminiscing for now, what you really want to know is what’s coming up in 2014. Our third birthday starts proceedings on Thursday 23rd January where we’ll be launching our birthday beer brewed with Black Jack which in turn begins the plethora of Meet The Brewer’s that will happen this year with a few special events that won’t happen on a Monday (SHOCK, HORROR). Festival of Britain’s Beers launches on 31st March and runs to 13th April, there’s our American Beer Festival in Summer and later in the year Euro-tober and Old and Dark Festival. We’ve still plenty more to announce, but you know us, we like to keep our cards close to our chest, but we will have some lovely surprises to share with you!
To finish of 2013 we asked some of good friends to compile their favourite beers of the past year, if you would like to add your favourites in the comments section, that would be grand. Hope you enjoy lists?
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Name: Brian Dickson (Grove/Northern Monk)
1) Buxton – NZ Axe Edge
2) Oakham – Citra
3) Magic Rock – Dancing Bear
4) To Øl – Black Malts & Body Salts
5) Wild Beer / Burning Sky / Good George – Schnoodlepip
6) Tilquin – Oude Quetsche Tilquin à l’Ancienne
7) Amager Bryghus/Cigar City – Xiquic and the Hero Twins
8) Fyne/Wild – Cool as a Cucumber
9) Laugar – Aupa Tovarisch (Oporto Edition)
10) Lovibonds – Barrel-aged Sour Grapes
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
– Borefts Beer Festival
– Black & Tan-ing Unhuman Cannonball & Tsar Bomba at IMBC
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Name: James Buchanan (Thornbridge)
1) Struisse – Pannepot Reserva
2) Brewfist – Terminal Pale Ale
3) Narke – Gruit Braggot
4) Brooklyn Brewery – Fire and Ice
5) Steamwhistle – Unfiltered Steamwhistle
6) Thornbridge (I know, I know) – Imperial Raspberry Stout
7) Arbor – Why Kick a Moo Cow
8) De Molen – Single Hop Citra
9) Siren – QIPA
10) Rooie Dop – 24/7 Session Ale
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
One of the Brewers from Brooklyn took us on a tour and then fed us full of amazingly fresh beers or De Molen Festival!
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Name: Jay Krause (Quantum)
1) Rooie Dop – Double Oatmeal Stout Bourbon Barrel Aged
2) Roosters – 20th Anniversary IPA
3) Tegernseer – Spezial
4) Hawkshead – NZPA
5) Marble/@kempicus – Emancipation
6) Ossett – Citra
7) Thornbridge – Kipling
8) Summer Wine – Devil Loves Simcoe
9) Harveys – Imperial Extra Double Stout
10) Ayinger – Kellerbier
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year: Two for me this year:
– ‘Getting’ German beer on a stag do to Munich. Drinking Spezial in the Tegernseer bar, general jolliness in the Hofbrauhaus, St. Jacobus bock at the Forschungsbrauerei – bottom-fermented perfection.
– IMBC and the Leeds International Beer Festival, both were outstanding events and improved immensely from the previous years.
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Name: John Clarke (Editor of Opening Times)
1) Sadler’s – Mud City Imperial Russian Stout
2) Weird Beard – Marianna Trench
3) Toccalmatto – Uber-Pils
4) Blaugies/Hill Farmstead – La Vermontoise
5) Het Uiltje – Black IPA
6) Rooie Dop – Double Oatmeal Stout
7) Oakham – Citra
8) Fyne Ales – Sanda Black IPA
9) Cantillon – Gueuze
10) Cantillon – Lou Pepe Framboise
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
Tie between IMBC / Marble Arch 125th Anniversary Beer Festival/ Ghent Beer Festival
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Name: Rosie Setterfield-Price (Port Street Beer House)
1) Cantillon – Fou Foune
2) The Bruery – Tart of Darkness
3) Westbrook – Grumpy Old Time
4) Jolly Pumpkin – Madrugada Obscura (always and forever)
5) Mikkeller – Spontanrosehip
6) Toccalmatto – Zona Cesarini (on cask!!!)
7) Kernel – Raspberry Sour
8) SWB – The Devil Loves…(pretty much all)
9) To Øl – Black Ball Porter
10) Against the Grain – Pepper Yo Bretts
(Bonus beer = Pressure Drop – Wu Gang Chops the Tree)
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
Copenhagen…but without the sleep deprivation etc probably IMBC…it’s so close!
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Name: Arlo Attenborrow-Greenway (Port Street Beer House)
1) Jolly Pumpkin – Madrugda Obscura
2) Mad Hatter – Sour Saison
3) Mikkeller – It’s Alive
4) Brooklyn – Sorachi Ace
5) De-Struise – Ypers
6) Wild Beer / Burning Sky / Good George – Schnoodle Pip
7) Founders – All Day IPA
8) Hopcraft – Graveyard Eyes
9) Arbour – Yakima Valley
10) Magic Rock – Punchline Chipotle Porter
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
Breaking IMBC viginity. Brewing at Mad Hatter. Splitting a Jolly Pumpkin Bottle with Oliver.
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Name: Becky Rothwell (Common)
1) Pressure Drop – Wu Gang Chops The Tree
2) Ommegang – Hennepin
3) Oersop – Sergeant Pepper
4) Redchurch – Great Eastern IPA
5) Hitachino Nest – Real Ginger Ale
6) Weird Beird / Sad Robot – Saison 42
7) Founders – All Day IPA
8) Brewfist / Beerhere – Caterpillar Pale Ale
9) Summerwine – Mokko
10) Beavertown – 8-Ball
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
Boozy Friday Night & Sunday Afternoon at IMBC
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Name: Claudia Asch (Port Street Beer House)
1) Crooked Stave – Surette (Copenhagen Beer Celebration)
2) Kernel – Double Citra
3) Firestone Walker – 16th Anniversary (CBC)
4) Wildbeer / Good George / Burning Sky – Shnoodlepop
5) Brooklyn – Black Ops (late bottle vintage)
6) Lovibonds – Barrel Aged Sour Grape
7) Mikkeller – Spontandouble Blueberry
8) Summerwine Brewery – The Devil Loves Simcoe
9) Toccalmatto – ReHop
10) Marble Brewery – USA Reserve Ale
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
Copenhagen Beer Celebration
IMBC (slight bias of course)
_______________
Name: Euan Summers (Port Street Beer House)
1) Westbrook – Cap ‘n’ Skoons
2) The Bruery – Sour In The Rye
3) Founders – All Day IPA
4) Jolly Pumpkin / Maui – Sobrehumano – Bottle only
5) Hopcraft – Graveyard Eyes
6) Weird Beard – Little Things That Kill
7) Against The Grain / Demolen – Bo + Luke
8) Howling Hops – RIPA
9) Pressure Drop – Wu Gang Chops The Tree
10) Blackjack – Springheel Jack
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
Going down to Blackjack, making a pumpkin beer, then selling it as part of a Halloween film screening with Optic Films. Good beer makes everything better.
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Name: Iwan Roberts (Common)
1) Summerwine / Common – Nathan Grindall
2) Quantum / Common – Quiff Ale
3) Mikkeller – Koffespontan
4) Mikkeller – Drinking In The Sun
5) Hopcraft – All of them
6) Oscar Blues – Dales Pale Ale
7) Kernel – Rasberry Sour
8) Mikkeller – Spontin Double Blueberry
9) Toccolmatto – Sister Venus
10) Any Cantillon
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
Copenhagen Beer Celebration, IMBC, Drinking San Miguelo with Garratt Oliver, James Murphy, 2 Many DJs and Ben from James Clay – he’s a dude.
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Name: Jonny Sture (Common)
1) Mikkeller – Spontan Peach
2) Magic Rock – Salty Kiss
3) To Øl – Dangerously Close To Stupid
4) Kernel – Double Citra
5) Blackjack – Pilsner
6) Weird Beard – Mariana Trench
7) Hopcraft – Mosaic Plus
8) Brewdog – Blitz Bermed
9) De-Molen – Mout & Mocca Bourbon
10) Siren – Liquid Mistress
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
London Craft Beer Fest (Don’t sack me)
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Name: Nick Johnson (Hopology)
1) Beavertown – Black Betty
2) Oud Beersel – Oude Geuze
3) Saison Dupont – Dry Hopping 2013
4) Verhaeghe – Duchesse De Borgoune
5) Het Anker – Gouden Carolus Classic
6) Beavertown – Blood Orange IPA
7) Red Willow – Shameless
8) Senne – Zinnebir
9) Moor – Amoor
10) Siren – Q IPA
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
When my first customer walked in said “wow” and bought some beer!
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Name: Peter Milne (Customer)
1) Pressure Drop – Wu Gang Chops The Tree
2) Brewfist – Green Petrol BIPA
3) Thornbridge – Imperial Raspberry Stout
4) Brodies – Apricot Sour
5) Quantum – NZ light
6) Brewfist – Czech Norris
7) Summerwine Brewery – Devil Loves Simcoe
8) Tiny Rebel – Urban IPA
9) Kernel – Raspberry Sour
10) Kernel – Citra IPA
Best Beer Based Experience of the Year:
Pressure Drops ‘Wu Gang Chops The Tree’ – extremely balanced, a masterpiece. Too many brewers making ridiculous beers.
– Port Street Beer House ‘Anniversary 3’ – Thursday 23rd until 30th January 2014
It’s our happy birthday again and now we’re three! As we like to celebrate with a degree of awesomeness that corresponds with our increasing age we’ve got three lovely events to enjoy.
Once again we have planned and executed a delicious beer with the aid of one of our friends. This year Rob a la Black Jack has colluded with us in the creation of our birthday beverage ‘Anniversary 3: Sup A ‘SIPA’ Summat Special’ a liberally hopped Satsuma IPA, which we confidently belief will be the cat’s pyjamas. We will be launching this and generally having some birthday fun on Thursday 23rd January.
Our second event I’ll only mention briefly as it’s already sold out so it is a little bit like rubbing non ticket holders faces in it… Burning Sky Meet the Brewer, Monday 27th January. Hells yeah.
Finally we’ll be rounding off the celebrations with another bit of a launch. The lovely peeps from Celt Experience are going to be getting their beers across to Manchester in 2014 so they’ll be launching two of their beers on draught with a bit of a talk at 7.00pm on Thursday 30th January. They will then be available for a chat and giving out tasters upstairs after.
Basically it shall be a delightful week that we invite all and sundry to join us in…apart from the MTB, sorry guys you need to be quicker off the mark!
Come and join us for our 3rd Birthday Celebration – A week long officiation of launches, merriment and beer.
Thursday 23rd – Anniversary 3 launch / 7pm
Monday 27th – Meet The Brewer with Burning Sky – SOLD OUT
Thursday 30th – Celt Experience launch / 7pm – more info HERE
Great North Pies available on the Anniversary 3 launch night.
Artwork by Steve Hockett
– Celt Experience Launch / Thursday 30th 2014 – 7pm
Head brewer and beer sommelier Tom Newmanto introduce a beer from The Celt Imperial Ogham range and a brand new Celt core beer. A range of other Celt products will be available for sampling during the evening plus chatter about beer science, extreme recipes and food ties.
/ Info about The Celt Experience
Tom came from a home-brewing background from an age that was a bit naughty and gave up his day job 10 years ago to take brewing seriously… well, as serious as Tom gets anyway. Starting with the Newman’s brand from his dad’s garage, Tom learnt quickly by trial and error and had some good fortune along the way, like buying up the majority of the sadly defunct Smile’s kit in Bristol and soon after returned to his roots by registering the Celt Experience name and opening the existing brewery in Caerphilly.
Deciding to focus on the Celt brand, and letting Newman’s go quietly into the night, he launch Celt Golden Age, Bronze and Bleddyn – originally all organic. But, in the ever expanding craft beer landscape, Newman found himself hampered by this stricture and decided to start experimenting with all kinds of malts and hops in 2011, dropping the organic mantra, and the brewery has gone from strength-to-strength ever since, leading to to their incredible achievement at this years SIBA Wales & West event!
In 2012 Tom developed the on-going Shapeshifter series of collaboration brews, with such names as Boxing Cat Brewery from Shanghai, Brasserie St Germain from France Tap East from London and beer writer & sommALEier Melissa Cole to create exciting and innovative American, Belgian and German beers with a twist. Not content with that area of innovation, in 2013, it was time for the Celt Ogham series to be added to the successful core range; the high ABV beers, varying between 8.5% and 10.5% were an instant success.
For 2014, Celt are in the process of building a ‘surreal’ bowling centre called ‘Craft Bowl’ in the middle of their brewery and a Sour brewery called ‘CellRebirth’ next door! CellRebirth is a leftfield project developed between tom, Melissa Cole and Chris Giles. It basically is an outdoor Welsh lab for developing different indigenous Welsh microorganisms to create exciting flavours and styles. The brewers and guests use age-old international beer styles with a new twist.
Put simply, The Celt Experience is an open adventure into the world of beer drinking and pagan free living… Join us why don’t you? It’ll be a tasty ride.
“For me breweries like The Celt Experience sum up the way the craft brewing movement is, and should be, heading. Innovation through dedication to quality and growing attention for what it brews, not what it shouts” – Melissa Cole
Follow them on twitter @celtbeers
http://celtexperience.com/
– Meet The Brewer with Burning Sky / Monday 27th January 2014
5.30pm doors – event starts at 6.15pm
SOLD OUT
Our first Meet the Brewer of 2014 is a pretty good way to start the year. Burning Sky was formed in the autumn of 2013 by a well-known face on the UK brewing scene, Mark Tranter, who earlier in the year left the mighty Dark Star brewery that he co-founded, under the Evening Star pub in Brighton, in 1996.
His reason for leaving? He essentially wanted to ‘do something smaller’. From this humble thought, an old stable on the country estate of Firle upon which Mark also lives were secured and in late September, the first brews were being produced.
And what brews they are. We’re all aware that Mark knows a thing or two when it comes to brewing, but even the seasoned pros here at Port Street were blown away by the quality of beers that Mark and Tom (Dobson, home brewer extraordinaire) are already putting out. The Saison à la Provision, as I’ve told anyone who’ll listen, is simply one of the best saisons I’ve ever drank. They brew two pale ales, the 3.5% Plateau, whose huge hop flavour belies its low strength and Aurora, a stronger brew at 5.6% which is stunningly bitter and absolutely delicious. The ‘biggest’ beer is Devils Rest, a beautifully balanced full strength IPA at 7%. Seasonal 4.5% saisons will also be released. We’ve already had the Automne, with rosehips, and hope to get the L’Hiver, infused with Hawthorn leaves and berries. Add to all of these some cunning use of barrel aging, and you have one of the most exciting breweries in the country.
It’s going to be ace. We can’t wait.
www.burningskybeer.com
@burningskybeer
Words by Jamie Hancock (@Not_that_Jamie)