A Break

I'm taking a break. The end of the year is always a rush to get things done - on both the work and home front. This leaves me short of time to spend writing the old blog. Not that I take it seriously anyway, but its time I would rather spend elsewhere none the less. I wouldn't want to be considered a beer writer either, or feature in wikio (schmikio) rankings. For me personally it's been an interesting year. I moved across the globe and started a new job, set up a new home and it feels like I am embarking on new adventures.
I have changed as well, since leaving the UK I see cask ale in a new perspective. It's a marginal and outdated way of packaging beer and represents such a small percentage of beer consumed (even in the UK). A bunch of ostriches with their heads in the sand keep this outdated traditional way of doing things alive. A consumer group without a cause, a social club for the socially inept? Those who refuse to accept the brilliance that is lightly filtered, unpasteurised keg beer (or proper real keg), are the ones missing out and ironically its the same people who complain about lack of innovation in brewing.
I think being back in Australia takes a lot of relevance out of the beer blogosphere. Not may people in Australia read blogs, actually on an international scale not many people read beer blogs full stop except other beer bloggers. I keep finding things like BrewDog stunts, Protz's opinions, Pete Brown's books, whisky barrel ageing, beer writing guilds, tickers, trolls and CAMRA becoming continually less relevant and utterly more boring. I think the best way to describe the situation (and in the words of P Brown) It's jumped the shark. That's why I am going to take a break, a few weeks off to recharge the batteries. When I return things will be different. This blog will still appeal to beer geeks, but its going to have a wider remit. It's going to be cynical, sharp and critical. It's going to feature, slander and criticize beer, boobs and stupidity. Basically taking the seriousness of the beer blogging, beer reviewing and video blogging world and pissing it up the wall. No one is safe, everyone will be a victim but the truth will be told!
I'll see you all early next year.
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Take Total Blessed Care

Wine vs Beer

I have been writing some silly posts of late, the word CAMEL springs to mind as one such post. Putting all silliness aside, I thought I might actually blog about something semi-serious.

The debate regarding the social standing of beer vs wine is starting to reach fever pitch in both the press and the blogosphere. Melissa Cole has challenged serial w@nker Malcolm Gluck to a beer food pairing challenge. The idea is to 'educate' Mr Gluck and hopefully challenge his point of view on beer. I have a couple of issues with this whole affair, the first being that this is starting to sound like a staged public relations exercise, one that I seem to be now drawn into. The second being that Malcolm Gluck takes an iconoclastic view to his journalism. The fact that he openly slanders beer in an attempt to provoke reaction is unlikely to be his true viewpoint, but is a useful tool in drawing an interest to his work.

For anyone who cares, I can simplify the whole situation.

Flavours in wine; Red and White. Rose is just a shade of Grey. Any talk of mild citrus and soft vanilla undertones is absolute rubbish. Anything produced from a simple fruit such as a grape does not have the capacity to be complex and these flavours do not exist in grapes, nor are they a character of yeast. The general rules of thumb concerning food wine pairings clearly demonstrates the simplicity of wine. Red wine with beef and white wine with fish. You don't need a wine critic to tell you that!

Beer on the other hand is made from more ingredients (malt, hops, water and yeast), and these ingredients have the scope to be modified (roasted, caramelized, acidified, hardened and softened). These produce a myriad of flavours that are infinitely more suited to food than the two dimensional flavours of wine. The following flavour wheel, supports this. A similar wheel for wine would have two sides, red and white with possibly some extra sub-nodes for production taints such as 'oaking' or 'botrytis infection'. Thats right, these flavours are actually defects.