Session 146 - What Value in Beer?

 

Yikes, where did the last couple of months go? The cynic side of me says "right down the shitter" whereas the more considered side says "life's just busy". Anyway, it's time for the Session again, and this month is being hosted by Ding and he has asked us to consider the "value" of beer, in the sense of:

"when I part with the cash, no matter how large or small the amount, does what I receive in return meet or exceed the value of said cash? Subjective? Sure, but we all have our own sense of value."

 Yeah, very subjective topic here, but one that I feel gets to the very heart of why we drink beer at all, or at least why we don't submit ourselves to the tyranny of the lowest common denominator brew that is ubiquitous with wherever we live. That's not to say that industrial brews like Budweiser, Carling Black Label, Stella Artois, or Gambrinus are inherently bad, just that they lack value for me.

So, yes, let's think about value, at least the word itself. Value is by its very nature relative, where I might balk at spending $5 on a pint of a given pale lager, I am more than happy to spend $7 on a pint of some alternative lager. For the sake of discussion, let's assume both beers are of the same style, similar ABV, and fairly equivalent IBUs derived from the same family of hops. What factors then make me willing to spend more money on the beer with the higher price point?

My first consideration is likely to be process. If said beers are of a Czech lager style, regardless of strength and colour, then I would be asking questions like "was the mash a decoction?", "how long did it lager for?", as well as expecting a voluminous foam head when poured. I will put this out there from the start, I don't give a flying monkeys if it is poured from a Lukr tap. For nearly the entire time I lived in Czechia, Lukr taps were not a thing, they really only started showing up in around 2008, oh and I don't recall ever seeing the choice for different pours. You asked for a beer, you got a beer, a well poured beer more often than not, with a voluminous foam head, from a flow control beer tap like the ones in this picture^*.

All of that is not to say I won't drink beers if poured from a Lukr tap, just that I don't buy the marketing that has built up around it - after all it's not as if Czechia was a beer desert in the half century or so between the original side pour taps being replaced by modern flow control taps and their making a re-tooled with filter screen re-introduction.

Anyway, got a bit off topic there. Yeah, process, why do I care if a Czech style lager has been made with a decoction mash and extensive lagering more so that how they are poured? Well for starters even when ripping our the original side pour taps, the breweries weren't ditching their process for actually making the beer. From my reading of history, there was no en-masse move to step mashing, there was no trimming of lagering times to get product out the door as soon as possible, there was a well established way of doing things that didn't need changing, so why bother? 

Part of the value then of a beer for me comes from the brewer's own sense of wanting to make an authentic product. Sure you can make a tasty pale lager with an infusion mash, a touch of melanoidin malt, and Saaz hops, but it will never be a truly Czech style lager, and I value that authenticity. Coming back to Lukr taps for a moment, I actually love them when the beer being served from them has been produced in a manner that a Czech brewer would recognise as the correct way to make it. Like this 12° pale lager from Selvedge here in Charlottesville.

Even then this brings up the question of "what is authenticity?". If a pastry stout, hazy IPA, or syruped up fruity gose is an genuine expression of the brewer's view of beer then fine, I am not going to drink it, but everyone has their own thing and will likely find a market for it. And that is another question in my mind that creates that additional value, does the brewer actually drink what they are putting out? If I am in a taproom and see the brewer drinking the only pilsner on the menu, for example, then I am more likely to try that than all the variants of IPA on offer - let's not deny it, we all know many a taproom with 25 taps of IPA, a lager, and Guinness as the guest stout. The beer that the brewer drinks most, is likely to be the only they pour the most of themselves into, and thus it becomes the one that is their "house beer", and that adds value.

Value is intangible, personal, difficult to really describe. What I value in a beer, or even entire breweries, others don't give a rat's arse for, and maybe that comes to the crux of why I am such a crap beer tourist, when I find a place that makes the kind of beers I like, in a way that feels authentic, whether to the brewer themselves or my own little collection of prejudices, then I am a happy, loyal, and potentially slightly tipsy customer.

* - the picture is by my good friend Mark Stewart, was taken at my old local in Prague, Pivovarský klub, on the occasion of my wedding reception.

The Session - Best at Home

This month's iteration of The Session is being hosted by Ray and Jess over at Boak and Bailey, and the theme they have presented us with is:

"What's the best beer you can drink at home right now?"

Until Mrs V and I decided to encumber the universe with children, the vast majority of our drinking was not done at home. We had several regular haunts to sit and have a pint or two; whether the original Three Notch'd Brewery tasting room, Beer Run, or even the bar at Whole Foods - seriously, at one point it was social central as we invariably ran into folks we knew and so another pint was had. We still do a fair amount of our drinking outside the home, often at Selvedge, Patch, or still Beer Run. Even though we used to drink mostly at taprooms or pubs, I always had a very well stocked cellar, often including lots of my own homebrew, but going out was the norm. Times however have been a'changing, and drinking at home has become almost the default for various reasons that I am not going to bother going into here.

I still have a pretty well stocked cellar, including a couple of dedicated booze fridges, one for beer, and one for wine and cider. There are still beers in the regular fridge, and I have shelves lined with Fuller's Vintage Ales of various, ummmm vintages, as well as other strong ales that I haven't got round to drinking yet. And then there is the kegerator...

It might be a single tap setup, but given that I am usually the only person drinking beer at home these days, Mrs V being more of a wine drinker, a single tap suffices for my needs. I do have all the necessary gear to run commercial beer through it, but to date I have only used it for my homebrew. As a result of having the kegerator, I have been brewing a lot more in the last couple of years, which brings us back to the question from Ray and Jess, what is the best beer you can drink at home right now?

The word "best" is no doubt going to get an awful lot of interpretation in posts for The Session. While I wouldn't make any claims for my homebrew being on a par with the professionally brewed stuff that is available in Central Virginia, it is decent. When I have something in the kegerator, pouring an imperial pint or a half litre - pretty much all my glasses are one or the other - of something I brewed is an absolute pleasure.

So, I am going to re-phrase the prompt a little and make it "what is the best beer to drink in my home, from my kegerator"? Sadly I have to leave off the "right now", as I kicked my most recent keg last weekend and have nothing to take its place for a couple of weeks. In terms though of the best VelkyAl beer to drink from my kegerator, it is probably the beer I brew most often, my house best bitter.

If you have ever travelled much in the US, you will know that best bitter is rarer than the proverbial hen's teeth, as are various other styles that I love and therefore brew my own versions of those too. My house best bitter began life as a collaboration with Three Notch'd Brewing, was originally called Session 42 but became Bitter 42. That first iteration was heavily influenced by the paler bitters of the North of England, think Timothy Taylor Landlord, as well as the divine Bitter & Twisted by Harviestoun in Scotland. The aim was to brew a best bitter using US ingredients rather the classic Maris Otter and East Kent Goldings. At one point Session/Bitter 42 was brewed almost annually, but inbetween those brewings I made my own batches and kept on tinkering.

For a long time now, I have had most of the recipe nailed down and largely repeatable:

• 88% Murphy & Rude English Pale Ale malt
• 12% Murphy & Rude Biscuit malt
• 19 IBUs of something for 60 minutes
• 10 IBUs of something for 15 minutes
• 8 IBUs of something for 5 minutes
• Safale S-04 yeast

The original gravity is always 1.042, yes I have my process so dialed in on my homely brewing "system" that I know what I am going to get before I even begin, and I invariably end up with a 4.2% abv best bitter. Until recently though, the "something" hops constantly changed. My initial batches used US Goldings, but I have played with Cascade, Galaxy, Citra, El Dorado, and Motueka, and most recently I have found the hop that really makes the beer everything I want it to be - Endeavour.

Endeavour is a modern British hop that is a cross between a hedgerow hop and Cascade, so you get the blackcurrant and red berry character of something like Bramling Cross with the citrus notes of Cascade, not quite grapefruit, but not entirely lime either. Chuck in some fantastic spiciness, think cinnamon and maybe even a hint of all spice, and you have an absolute dream of a hop, one that I have used to several recipes lately and in each of them it has shone.

If I had a batch of my house best bitter on tap right now, that's exactly what I would be drinking at home today, either from the keg or perhaps from one of my 5 litre mini-kegs I use to approximate gravity poured real ale. That pint would look something like this...

Yeah it would have a touch of chill haze from the kegerator, but I am not fussed about that when it tastes so damned good. 

Thankfully I can say that about several of my homebrew recipes, whether my blonde ale, stout, or Vienna lager, and I hope to add a house lager to my regular lineup on the keg this year - first batch starts carbing this weekend for a middle of March tapping. So to come back to Ray and Jess's question, the best beer to drink at home right now for me is my own, especially as the price of a pint creeps ever higher...but that is a conversation for another day.

The Session - The Best Thing since 2018?

Oo-er missus, look at that..."The Session" logo makes a return to the top of a post on Fuggled, and to be honest it makes my heart glad to see the project being revived. The host for this relaunch is Alan McLeod over at A Good Beer Blog, and as with any relaunch the scope is naturally neat and tidy, with a pretty little bow on it...oh wait, no it's not, it's:

"What is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018?"

There are so many avenues this question could be taken, he says channeling his inner James Burke from the Connections series of many moons ago. 

I could look at the big picture, though to be honest that picture is something of a grim one at the moment, with regular closings and well established breweries going to the wall in the face of economic headwinds. With such a curate's egg at the macro scale, perhaps the continued existence of Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Allagash, and the other national scale craft breweries is the best thing.

However, I don't want to think about the macro, I want to ground my response in my day to day, so I am going to augment the question a little and make it:

"What is the best thing to happen to good beer for me since 2018?"

With that framing, the question becomes infinitely easier to consider and to answer, especially when I take a look at my annual review of beer in 2018 and compare it to 2019.

A very quick glance and the runners and riders for the the various categories I review each year show that of the 25 beers I name-checked only 9 were lagers, making up 36%. One year later though and that number jumps to 34 from 57 beers across the review posts, which is 59.6%. Now, admittedly in 2019 I went to Czechia and Germany, which could skew the numbers, so let's look at 2020 when nobody really went anywhere...Well, that was 37 lagers from a possible 51, or 72.5%. I would like to think you are getting the point by now.

When Mrs V and I first moved to Virginia back in 2009, finding good Central European lagers was difficult. There was no Port City Downright Pilsner, there was nobody making authentic Czech style dark lagers, as far as I am aware there was a single brewery that even considered decoction mashing...shout out to the still awesome Jason at Devils Backbone! Even a few years later, when we bought our house in 2012, readily available excellent lager was difficult, at a meetup in our house with Czech and Slovak friends, someone bought a six pack of Lagunitas' allegedly Czech pilsner to which an older gentleman who had fled Czechoslovakia (back when it still existed!) in 1969 commented, "this is simply not Czech". Well made beer it might well be, taste like a Czech pilsner it did not - haven't had it in many years so no idea what it is like these days.

Spring forward though to today, and just in the Charlottesville area I have several reliable breweries making excellent lagers, in particular I will highlight Selvedge, whose range of decocted and extensively lagered bottom fermented beers formed the vast majority of my drinking last year. While I make no secret of my preference for lagers made with traditional techniques, I am not daft enough to cut my nose off to spite my face. As such, breweries like Patch Brewing (very much my local), Decipher, SuperFly, and Rockfish all make cracking pale lagers that I am happy to drink regularly.

This then is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018, good lager has become a staple of the brewing scene, and long may it continue. And on that note, I am excited for my first beer of 2025 tomorrow...it will be a lager, that is for sure, something from Bierkeller in Columbia SC as we are headed down that way for a family get together. Even getting good beer at all in Columbia was a challenge when we moved over here, that they have a brewery smashing great lagers borders on the miraculous.

Dej Bůh Štěstí!

The Session: Quarantine Edition - The Round Up

As promised, one week after The Session - Quarantine Edition here is the round up.

Straight off the bat, I want to thank everyone that took part and wrote something on the theme of "where are you at?". I was kind of overwhelmed by the response from the beer blogging community and the number of posts created, from what I have seen we had a grand total of 19 contributions to the theme, so let's delve in and see what's what eh?

First up is Jordan, also known as tripleclutcher on Instagram, and it was there that he posted a picture and a lengthy description of his new drinking habits, including "more local beer".

Alan McLeod in Canada taxed my shoddy Latin with a post titled "Mea Taverna Quarantina", or "My Quarantine Tavern", and told us about his home, where he does most of his drinking, that he doesn't "miss the pub. Much".

Over at The Brew Site, Jon tells us about how he had stocked up on homebrewing ingredients before the lock down because his local supplier was shutting down. As well as brewing he is asking the question of breweries and brewpubs, "who...is going to survive?". Sobering thoughts indeed.

I am not quite sure of Mark at Kaedrin's description of the Quarantine Edition of The Session as a "triumphant return" but hey we'll take it. He then goes on to tell us about the things he misses as a result of nearly 7 weeks in lockdown, mostly bottle shares and how he and his friends are getting around that.

DaveS at Brewing in a Bedsitter is having a "very cosy catastrophe".

A new blog for me, which is one of the great things about The Session, and Carey, to quote her tweet managed "to vomit out some words on life", and very fine words they are too, about the new normal in her drinking life.

Sucking Stones is another new blog on my radar, and I am pleased that the theme "stuck a chord". Simon had ambitious plans to homebrew several times a week as a result of lockdown, but then had a realisation.

Coming to a blog that I, and many others know well, The Beer Nut in Dublin brings us tasting notes of a couple of new beers from The Porterhouse, as well as his ecstacy at finding canned Rheinbacher at his local Aldi.

Resident beer satirist Matthew Lawrenson of Seeing the Lizards is in the enviable position of being able to get Oakham's lovely Green Devil, while also being designated a "key worker".

When Lisa Grimm upped sticks and moved to Ireland, her plans included "weekend trips in Ireland and the odd hop over to London for theatre". As a result of the lockdown, she seems to be getting a crash course in Irish craft beer and its attendant community.

In "Pressing Pause on the Cassette Tape of Life", Michael of Bring on the Beer owns to writing his post while being 5 beers to the good, top man! He owns that his drinking "skyrocketed" at first but has settled down in recent weeks.

Skipping over to Germany, Andreas Krennmaier, aka "the daft ejit" had many of us drooling with pictures of Schönramer Pils and Mahr's Brau Helles, while telling us about life as an IT guy working from home. Side note, I just noticed his post about making a Mahr's Brau aU clone, and if Beer Run don't have it back in soon I'll be giving that a bash!

Co-founder of The Session, and craft beer guru in general, Stan Hieronymus tells us about how he likes to go to the pub and observe the goings on, and that he looks forward to the return of a normal that looks rather like the old one.

Ray and Jess at Boak and Bailey are finding that once the fight or flight response passes the brain adjusts to the new normal, and they are "drinking less, but savouring what we drink all the more".

Another new blog for me, Brews and Views makes me deeply jealous by writing about the lagers of Utopian Brewing in the UK and their British Pilsner and Dark Lager, both of which I am very keen to try, so hopefully one day when I get back to the UK...

Fellow Mitteleuropaphile Joe Stange, aka The Thirsty Pilgrim, likewise has me deeply jealous, mainly because of his 4 tap kegerator at home, including a Czech style side tap for the much hyped slow pour, and a very fine dark lager in the pictures.

Skipping over to the West coast, Jeff Alworth of Beervana writes about the delights of drinking alone at home, and how "comfortable" beers take precedence in days like this.

Once again to the new to me blog realm...Steve at "Wait Until Next Year" tells us about one of the best phenomena of this whole situation, beer delivery services.

Lastly, the host, me. I wrote about how I feel very fortunate to be able to be "At Home" through all this, and while it is not ideal for Mrs V and the twins, I am actually enjoying having them around all the time.

The Session: At Home

Once upon a time, The Session was a monthly event where beer bloggers got together and wrote about a common theme. Like all good sessions it lasted quite a while, the best part of 11 years before last orders was called and punters filed out into the dark. The dark though doesn't last forever, not even in the depth of a Hebridean winter, eventually the sun returns and again the possibility of a session presents itself. In the spirit then of the hair of the dog, I present the Quarantine Edition of The Session, with a theme of "where are you at?", looking at how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our drinking lives...

In many ways I am deeply priviledged at this time, and I am very much aware of it. I have worked from home for a couple of years already, so that is nothing new for me. My wife, a Montessori teacher, is working from home too, she has not been furloughed, and we are very grateful that her school continues to pay her, and watching her adapt to teaching online and by distance has been nothing short of remarkable. If you have ever had the pleasure of meeting Mrs V you will know why I am immensely proud of her. Perhaps my 30 month old twins have it hardest at the moment as school has been cancelled until at least the end of May and they haven't seen their friends in 6 weeks. They are just toddlers and so don't understand what is going on, and Zoom sessions with their classmates are studies in how to fail at holding a kid's attention.

The biggest change for us has been at weekends. We had a nice routine going prior to the outbreak. Saturday morning to the store for the weekly shop followed by a trip to one of our favourite beer places for lunch and beer, often Beer Run or South Street Brewery, but with a rag tag collection of other places worth going to. Mrs V and I are not fans of "scenes" so we like to get done and back to our Piedmont fastness before the masses descend. All that is gone now, and I am longing for the day when I have my first pint of South Street's My Personal Helles.

As my good friend Eric once said, I am much more of a pub fan than a craft beer fanatic. I love going to the pub. There are genuinely few things I would rather do with myself than pull up a seat at a bar, get a pint, and just while away some time with a book, or people watching. I am very much an introvert and the pub is a place where I can shut the world out of my head while not becoming a total recluse. All that is gone now as well.

At the beginning of the lockdown, when all this was very new, I was drinking a six pack of something almost every night. Given that most of the beers I enjoy are lagers of varying styles in the 4.5% to 5.5% ABV bracket, a six pack a night didn't feel all that drastic. The lagers of Von Trapp Brewing have been my staple go to beer for the duration of our isolation, mainly because our local breweries that are still operating are not known for the beers I enjoy drinking, and I am not at the point of wanting to load up on local IPA just to get my beery fix.

After a week or so I decided that I should raid my cellar a bit, thinking that the beers I had stashed away "for a special occasion" might never get drunk. It was a nervous time for me as I am asthmatic, as is the eldest of my twins, and it is still fresh in my memory having a child in the intensive care unit. Being locked in when you have 1.75 acres is no doubt much easier than being locked in to some of my friend's flats back in Europe, but still there was the nagging doubts in my mind about the business trip to Texas I had just returned from. So I raided the cellar for the big ones, barleywine, old ale, imperial stout, the kind of stuff you rarely see mentioned on Fuggled.

Now it is almost as though the lockdown is normal life. I still work from home, I just have odd hours, and as things have settled into routine I have found myself going back to my more normal drinking pattern of weekends only. This is really only possible because Beer Run continues to operate on a curbside pick up only basis, and thus every Friday has become "take out" day in the VelkyAl household. It is the day we jump in the car, go and pick up food from a restaurant, and get the beer for the weekend. More than ever right now I am glad they carry Von Trapp's superb lagers. Their Pilsner, Helles, Vienna, and Dunkel are staples, and in their Kölsch they have a beer that Mrs V really loved, hopefully it will be back in stock soon.

There have been a couple of welcome additions to my drinking world that perhaps I would previously have skipped on by, Bitburger's superb collaboration with Sierra Nevada being one of them, as well as Ommegang's new Idyll Days Pilsner, a Belgian style pale lager that is absolutely lovely. It being Friday we have placed our orders and in a few hours will go pick up the goodies for the weekend, including a new Czech style lager lager to try out from a Virginian brewery...

It all sounds so humdrum and banal, quite possibly because it is in so many ways. There are times when I joke with my wife that growing up on a small island in the Outer Hebrides was perfect preparation for this, especially given my loner tendencies. Still, life goes on, and beer is there, and for both of those right now I am grateful.

The Session: Quarantine Edition Announcement

Yes you read that right, for a limited time only (quite possibly just this once, or maybe a few times depending on response) The Session is making a comeback.

It all started with this tweet:

A thought occurs...we should revive The Session. Thoughts? @StanHieronymus @Brookston

— Alistair Reece (@Fuggled) April 21, 2020

Jay and I then ran polls to gauge interest and only a few people categorically said "no", so here we go for the Quarantine Edition of The Session...but first, a reminder:

The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic.

Given that I suggested its return, it would seem churlish of me to not step up and suggest the theme for our compositions, but what to write about? I suppose I could be mildly snarky and ask everyone to go out and buy some Corona beer and write about that, but that seems a tad flippant.

Having been bombarded for the last 4 or 5 weeks by various media sources and corporate email blasts telling everything that companies are doing to combat COVID-19 and how they are "on your side", the phrases that have been so heavily used as to border on cliche include "abundance of caution" (title of the next Coldplay album apparently), "unprecedented times", and "the new normal". In there is the genesis of the theme for the Quarantine Edition of the The Session, in these unprecedented times, what has become your new drinking normal? Are you drinking more? Less? Have you raided the cellar regularly? Is there a particular brewery whose beer is keeping you company while you are confined to barracks? Has there been a beer revelation in these times?

Basically, tell us where you are at.

Given that folks' schedules are all over the place, I am going to recommend putting you post up next Friday, May 1st, as would be the usual schedule, but if it works better for you to post a day or two early, or late, that's fine. I will do a roundup the following Friday, May 8th, to give as many people as need it the time to participate.

Don't forget to add a link to your post, Twitter thread, Instagram pictures, however you plan to post, to this post so I can include you in the round up.

Sober Reflections - #TheSession

Before launching into my beery navel gazing that is the "theme", for want of a better word, that Alan has set before us for this month, let me say that I am so glad that he decided to pick up the baton and keep running with The Session.

Coming back to Alan's request, he wants us to reflect on the month now drawing to its close:

How was your dry or wet January? Did the campaign actually change your behaviours in any way? Or is it just good to reflect on the idea of alcohol and health and this is a great way to do it?

This is the 12th year that I have taken January off the booze. I am not sure there was even such a thing as "Dry January" back in 2007, back when my standard beers were Gambrinus, Kozel, and Budvar. That first month off the booze came about as a result of a particularly drunken Christmas and Hogmanay season, and just sick of feeling shitty with a hangover.

In common with many smokers' anecdotes, the hardest part was going to the pub, to watch football, and not having a half litre beer glass in my hand. After about 10 days though that wore off and I found that I quite enjoyed waking up with a clear head on a Sunday morning and walking along the Vltava in the crisp winter cold. When February 1st came around though, I was ready for a beer, but my palette had changed, and of the old faithfuls only Budvar satisfied.

My dry month has become as much a feature of my drinking life as my love of Czech lager and best bitter, it's just something I like to do for no other reason than I feel that it is good sometimes to take a step back, even switch off a little bit, and tune out the noise that surrounds much of the craft beer industry.

This year has been the hardest I can remember, and I am glad that I am a stubborn, bloody minded Highlander, as that determination to get to the finish line will get me through. It would be too easy to say that the fact that I have 15 month old twins has made the month harder, I had the same twins, though younger obviously, this time last year. Life with 3 month old twins though is a completely different kettle of fish, and not drinking when you have to deal with 2 or 3 feedings each night was likely beneficial.

In talking about this with Mrs V, as inestimably wonderful as ever, she noted that compared to even 3 or 4 years ago I probably don't drink quite as much, and so for the first Holidays period I can recall, there were no epic, or even semi-epic, sessions on the booze. There was a fairly steady stream of a couple of imperial pints each night, and a few extra at the weekend, but nothing where Mrs V felt as though I had had enough, before my going on to have a few more. Without sludgy hangovers to deal with, the feeling of clean came much quicker than the usual ten days.

This year has also likely been harder because the boys, as is the want of kids that age in winter, have been an endless source of snot, fever, and the attendant discomforted upset that goes along with such things. When bedtime is over and done with so many nights I have looked longingly at the Sierra Nevada mix pack, cans of König Pilsner, and growler of South Street doppelbock in the fridge, only to have that dour Highland determination remind me that a few more days without will make that first February beer all the sweeter.

And then comes through the news about Fullers. As with previous sales of breweries I very much like, I am incapable of the caterwauling and gnashing of teeth that is de rigeur at times like this. However, I think the news is the first time such a thing has happened in the middle of my drink free time, and perhaps I am clearer headed than usual, but this time the lamentations of St Jude's acolytes grated more keenly, like the banshee's wail. As someone pointed out, there is a likely overlap of caterwaulers and folks that derided Fullers as "boring brown beer". Some people will find any reason for a moan.

Anyway, Friday is on its way, and I am looking forward to having a beer or two with lunch to get back in the swing of things.

The Session 142: Last Orders

This month's Session, the last of its ilk, is being hosted by the venerable Stan Hireonymous of Appellation Beer, and plenty of excellent books. Stan's theme for this month is formally titled "Funeral Beers", though he did also suggest that "one more for the road" would be a suitable theme, either way, the session is over, last orders has been called, and there will be no after hours lock in. Stan asked us all to:

Pick a beer for the end of a life, an end of a meal, an end of a day, an end of a relationship. So happy or sad, or something between. Write about the beer. Write about the aroma, the flavor, and write about what you feel when it is gone.

When I lived in Prague, there was a pub that was a very regular haunt, the magnificent proper boozer that was U Slovanské lípy. I spent many a merry time there, draining half litre after half litre of the Koutská Desítka that I wrote about yesterday, but I always ended the session with the same beer, a half pint of Koutský tmavý speciál, an 18° beer that was the perfect nightcap, or as Evan would describe it "simply miraculous".

Pouring an inky deep black, topped off with that firm ivory head, you know just from looking at it that this is a serious beer. No silly fripperies, no flashy gimmicks, just a Baltic Porter as Baltic Porter should be.

As I close my eyes and try to remember the beer's aroma, it has been almost a decade since I had it, the overwhelming recollection is that of a rich bitter chocolate, backed with the punch of an Italian espresso.

As you almost come to expect from a Baltic Porter the flavours are the usual suspects, again the chocolate is there, the coffee, perhaps a merest hint of soy sauce, for a salted caramel umami thing. The hops are in there mainly for bittering, but you know they are there, as a light spice comes through in the finish, but this is very much a glorious rich dark chocolate cake with espresso ganache filling. It's just as well the hops are there though as without them the beer would be an unctuous overly sweet goo, with the beer adding layer upon layer in your mouth as you drink.

This is a beer to linger over. Sure it is only a malé serving of 300ml, or about half a pint, but chugging is most assuredly not the order of the day, it is 8.5% abv after all. Even though the session is ending, there is no need to rush over the last beer, and there is always the knowledge that there will be another session, maybe by another name, in the not too distant future. Not sure where, not sure when, not even sure who will be there, but in the words of the old Scots song:

So fill us a tankard o nappy broon ale
It'll comfort our herts and enliven the tale
For we'll aye be the merrier the langer that we sit
For we drank thegither mony's the time, and sae will we yet

To bring The Session to its end, the song from which the verse above is taken.

The Session 140 - The Round Up

As the host of 140th monthly Session, I asked people to write something about Czech beer, beer culture, or the impact of Czech beer on the wider beer world. I chucked out a few suggestions as well:

• reminiscences of a trip to the Czech Republic
• a Czech beer that is your go to drink
• lesser known styles of Czech beer, tmavé or polotmavé for example
• the booming craft beer scene in the Czech Republic
• small Czech breweries that deserve a wider audience
• a beer you love inspired by Czech styles

So what did the folks come up with?

A new site for me, Franz Hofer is the mastermind behind A Tempest in a Tankard, and his post regaled us with memories of a few days drinking in the Czech capital. His trip included several of my favourite watering holes from my time there, as well as a few new places that when Mrs V, the Malé Aličky, and I eventually get back to Prague.

Over at The Brewsite, Jon admittedly to being "woefully inexperienced" in the delights of Czech beer, other than a keg of Pilsner Urquell at the Beer Bloggers Conference in Tampa. He also lamented that the Full Sail website no longer seems to list any Czech style lagers.

Stan Hieronymus wondered on Twitter if he had gone off topic by writing about Czech hops rather than Czech beer, but given the importance of hops to Bohemian history I have no problem whatsoever with that slight sideways step, especially as it is a very interesting article.

For my own post, I wrote about a pub that I loved when I lived in Prague but seem not to have written lots about on Fuggled, it also helped that said pub sold the wonderful Zlatá labuť Světlé Kvasnicové pivo 11°

The Session 140 - Of Swans and Bulldogs

The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic.

As the host of this month's Session, I have a confession to make, I have no idea where to go with our common theme of Czech beer. There are so many potential avenues for my post today. I could talk about how that very first half litre of Budvar 10° in a Černý Most pizzeria has lead to a life long appreciate of the youngest of the claimants to the Budweiser name. I could talk about Kout na Šumavě's magnificent 14° tmavé that was the inspiration for Morana, my first brewing collaboration in the US with Devils Backbone. I could regale you dear reader with tales of kicking kegs of rare, at the time, beer styles with noted beer writers like Evan and Max. I could even ramble on about my ongoing mission to find an American made Bohemian Pilsner worthy of the name, thankfully there are a couple available in Virginia - looking at you Port City and Champion Brewing.

As I pondered what to write, I took to looking through pictures that I took in the Czech Republic during the ten years that I lived there, pictures in general and not just beer. In many ways life in the Czech Republic revolved around my favourite institution, the pub. I love the fact that the Czech language has at least 5 words for pub:

• hospoda
• hostinec
• pivnice
• hospůdka
• výčep

Naturally plenty of other words for drinking dens have crept into the language, "bar" and "lokál" being two of the more obvious examples. I am sure there are some out there that would want a taxonomical definition of the difference between a hospoda and a pivnice, but it would largely be an exercise in splitting hairs, and thus pretty pointless. The fact remains that the Czech hostelry is to the Czech Republic as the church is to the Southern states of the US, ubiquitous and largely indistinguishable one from the other.

From my experience the pub is the epicentre of Czech life, not just a place to go for a drink. It's the place where after some time you get to know the staff, if not by name then very much on a nodding acquaintance level. If you go often enough to particular places your regular tipple is on the table just as you take off your coat and they will keep on coming until you tell the servers to stop, a tricky proposition when the next beer usually arrived with a finger or so of the current one still in the glass.

Czech pubs are just as much a sociable place as they are a social centre, let me give you an example. You walk into a bar and there are people sat at every table, here in the US you do one of two things, wait for a table to open up or try somewhere else, in the Czech Republic you find the table with enough space for your group and ask if the seats are taken, if not you join that table. There is something about that friendly exchange with a stranger that I miss, maybe because it was this way of doing things that helped me overcome the crippling shyness of my teens and early twenties. When your beer comes, you cheers your new table mates and on you go, knowing the cheers will be reciprocated. In that interaction strangers become acquaintances, and sometimes even friends, and so the pub achieves one of its great purposes as society's greater leveller.

Throughout the decade of writing Fuggled I have no doubt waffled at length about my favourite pubs in the Czech Republic, Pivovarský Klub where I met Mrs V, Zlatá Hvezda where I watched Liverpool twice a week most weeks during the football season, or even Bruska, the place with just tankové Pilsner Urquell on tap, but that was irrelevant because it was a damned good pint every time. One place though that I rarely seem to have mentioned, and also the beer that pulled me there time after time, is U Buldoka - in fact a quick search of the site shows that I have made passing reference to it all of twice. The beer that I drank in U Buldoka was always Zlatá labuť Světlé Kvasnicové pivo 11°, brewed by Pivovarský dvůr Zvíkov. Whenever I throw my mind back to the many, many half litres I drank of this beer, two descriptors come to mind, sherbet and pear drops. Zlatá labuť 11° was a lovely, lovely beer - having not had it in nearly ten years I can't comment on what it is today - and U Buldoka was a great place to sit for an afternoon and just merrily drink your fill.

One of the delights of U Buldoka in winter is the big green thing you can see in the picture above, which I got from the U Buldoka website. That my good people unversed in the ways of Central Europe is a masonry heater, used for radiating heat throughout the room by virtue of a fire in the belly of the beast. These things are phenomenal at keeping a room warm, and so sitting a good distance away in the middle of winter becomes an art form in itself. Come summer, the fire is not lit, so it makes a handy place to prop yourself up against and use for stashing empty glasses. When I was writing the Pocket Pub Guide to Prague, several of the pub tours just so happened to pass close to U Buldoka, so my photographer Mark and I would finish up the chosen route for the day and then pop in for a pint or several, well ok then, just several. U Buldoka has so many of the things that I associate with a "good pub", dark furniture, dim lighting when the evening comes (nothing worse than glaring light bulbs to ruin a place's atmosphere), good beer, efficient staff, and simple but filling food. There are times when I would like nothing more than to take my twins for a stroll along the Vltava, perhaps from Čechův most down to Smíchov, crossing the river a couple of times, finishing up at U Buldoka for a well earnt pint or several, oh who are we kidding, several.

May be one day Mrs V and I will get back there, until then there are always the wonderful memories.

The Session 140 Announcement - #Pivo

The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic.

I was wondering to myself what the theme would be for this month's iteration of The Session, and so on looking at the list I realised that there was no theme for October. A quick scan through themes passim revealed a glaring topic omission, so I pinged Jay and Stan and hey presto they agreed to let me host The Session again!!

In the autumn of 1999 I jumped on a bus at London's Victoria Bus Station and spent the next 20 or so hours making my way across Europe to the mother of cities. The Czech Republic, most specifically Prague, would be my home for the next ten years, although my original plan had been just one year and then moving on to visit as many former Soviet countries as possible, best laid plans of mice and men, and all that jazz. I still remember my first Czech beer in situ, I'd had a couple of Czech lagers as a college student in Birmingham, a half litre of 10° Budvar in a little pizza place among the paneláky of Černý Most. Beer was to be part and parcel of life for the duration of my stay in the country I still wistfully think of home. That my dear readers is the theme then for The Session this Friday, Czech beer. You could write about any of the following:

• reminiscences of a trip to the Czech Republic
• a Czech beer that is your go to drink
• lesser known styles of Czech beer, tmavé or polotmavé for example
• the booming craft beer scene in the Czech Republic
• small Czech breweries that deserve a wider audience
• a beer you love inspired by Czech styles

So let's has a love song to Bohemia and her beers, the land that gave us the original pilsner, and so much more.

#TheSession 137: Mitteleuropäisches Bilé Pivo

This month's Session is being hosted by Roger at "Roger's Beers...and Other Drinks", and the theme as stated is:

German Wheat Beers. I would like to clarify for myself the similarities and dissimilarities of weissbeers, kristall weizen, weizen, hefeweizen, etc. I’d love to read about the distinctions all you brewers and beer researchers know about regarding the various “styles” of weissbeer, experiences in brewing and drinking the beer, it’s history. Yeah, whatever you’d like to say about German wheat beers will be great.

I wish I could remember what my first weissbier actually was, though I well remember the occasion. I was at college in Birmingham, West Midlands not Alabama, and it was the British equivalent of spring break. There was a small coterie of folks at the college I went to who didn't go home for the week of spring break due to distance. The Outer Hebrides being a 24 journey home meant I stayed in Brum, my best mate Cristi is from Timisoara in Romania, so he didn't go home either. Being at theological college and training for ministry, we were officially discouraged from partaking in the devil's brew, but most of us would have the occasional pint at weekends, oh and I could tell you about a reasonably well known evangelist who was on the idiot box post college absolutely pissed as a fart one afternoon. Anyway Cristi and I had decided we would go to a concert during the break. The Mutton Birds were playing at the Flapper and Firkin and before the gig we wandered into a different pub on the canal, got a couple of pints and sat at a table outside, next to said canal. As I said, I had a pint of weissbier, it being 1998 it was probably Schöfferhofer or something, all I really remember was thinking it was rank to my untrained mind. I had half a mind to pour it into the canal, but it looked polluted enough as it was. I wouldn't touch wheat again until I was living in Prague.

Fast forward about 8 years to 2006, a group of my mates and I were in Pivovarský klub before heading to our regular haunt to watch the footie and one of them is raving about this German wheat beer that they had available, lo and behold the very same Schöfferhofer comes to the table. On a spur of the moment I decided to get one as well, just to see if my tastes had changed, fully expecting to hate it. My tastes had indeed changed in the intervening 8 years and so I had a couple more. The next time Mrs V and I went to Pivovarský klub I tried the Primátor Weizen and I liked it a lot, maybe more than the Schöfferhofer, I was getting a taste for wheat beers. On a trip up to Berlin in 2008 I had a pint or two of Memminger for breakfast, weizen was now a confirmed part of my drinking life.

Something that I was not aware of though as weizens took an increasing share of my drinking habits was the existence in the Czech Republic of "bilé pivo", which translates into English, in common with "weissbier" and "witbier", as "white beer". Apparently "bilé pivo" in Bohemia predates weizen in Bavaria and most historians of beer believe that "bilé pivo" migrated from the former to the latter before falling out of favour in its homeland, so much so that great Czech brewer František Ondřej Poupě is famously quoted as saying "wheat is for cakes, oats for horses, and barley for beer". Today weizen is making a comeback in the Czech lands, both under the modern Germanic name and the older Czech term.

All this thinking about Central European Wheat Beers got me thinking about my need to get back on the homebrew trail, twins inevitably take up the majority of free time that used to be used for brewing, and as soon as time allows I think I will brew another batch of my own "bilé pivo", which I call Böhmerwald, the German name for Šumava on the Czech/German border, which in a nod to the Bohemian origins of the weissbier style is hopped 100% with Saaz and is a lovely later summer thirst quencher.

The Session 136: Farm Brewing in Virginia

Another month has flown by, and here we are again on the first Friday of the month thinking about The Session. This month, Dave from Brewing In A Bedsitter, aka @Ramblin_Dave on Twitter, is hosting and his theme is:

Whether it's about the success of modern craft breweries like Jester King and Burning Sky, the worldwide spread of saison or the revival of international interest in Northern European traditions, farmhouse brewing is an recurring theme in the beer world....

You could talk about how the word "farmhouse" is used in modern craft breweries, or about historic brewing traditions. You might want to think about how, if at all, the two are related.

If you think that farmhouse brewing or farmhouse beer refers to something meaningful and relevant in modern beer, you could write something touching on what it means to you. What's its defining element? Is it about style, ingredients, location or something else? Would you call a crisp, clean pilsner or a hoppy IPA a farmhouse beer if it was brewed from local ingredients in a medieval barn? What about a mixed fermentation barrel-aged saison brewed in a light industrial unit in a suburb of Manchester? Why does any of this matter?

If you want to get specific, maybe talk about one or more beers or breweries that you think embody some aspect of the idea of farmhouse brewing. Or if you're a homebrewer, you could talk about ways that your own beer has been influenced by it.

Conversely, if you think that the modern idea of a farmhouse brewery is largely just about marketing and aesthetics then you could have a go at dissecting and deconstructing it. Where did it originate and what are its roots? Who popularized it? How is it constructed and signalled? Most importantly, why are people so keen to buy into it?

Here in Virginia "farm" breweries have exploded since the passing of SB430 back in 2014, which established a new brewery license type specifically for breweries located on farms. The relevant addition to the beer licenses section of the Virginia Code reads as follows:

Limited brewery licenses, to breweries that manufacture no more than 15,000 barrels of beer per calendar year, provided (i) the brewery is located on a farm in the Commonwealth on land zoned agricultural and owned or leased by such brewery or its owner and (ii) agricultural products, including barley, other grains, hops, or fruit, used by such brewery in the manufacture of its beer are grown on the farm...

The law sets out quite clearly what the definition of a farm brewery is, as far as the Commonwealth of Virginia is concerned:

• produce no more than 15000 Bbl per year
• brewery is on agricultural land in Virginia
• brewery uses that farm's agricultural produce in its beer

The first brewery to take up this license type is just down the road from me here in Central Virginia, the wonderfully monikered Lickinghole Creek Brewery. I have to admit that I have only been to the brewery itself once, Mrs V and spent several hours sitting in the midst of glorious views, drinking the first batch of their Enlightened Despot Barrel Aged Imperial Stout (I realise some will be shocked by the thought of me drinking anything barrel aged) and eating extra mature cheddar cheese with crusty bread. I was also a big fan of their session IPA, Til Sunset, until they stopped making it.

In keeping with the requirements of SB430, Lickinghole Creek grow a portion of the barley they brew with, as well as wheat and rye, and many of the herbs, fruits, and vegetables that go into beers like their Carrot Cake and Rosemary Saison. In the spirit of keeping things local, they also get some of their barley malted at Woods Mill Malting.

In the 4 years since Lickinghole Creek became the first farm brewery in Virginia, at least 10 more breweries have got in on the act. So whether your in the south west of the Commonwealth, or up north, close to DC, there is likely to be a farm brewery making beer with the produce of their land near you. You're really only shit out of luck if you go east of Richmond, at lest until later this year when Virginia Beach will be getting in on the act.

Of course, when you think about it, farm brewing in Virginia is really nothing new. Peter Hemmings brewed with corn and wheat grown on the Monticello plantation of his owner Thomas Jefferson. James Madison was so impressed with the beer produced by Hemmings that he wanted to send one of his slaves to Monticello for the autumn brewing season so he too could learn the craft. The earliest recipe I have seen for a uniquely American farmhouse beer is from southern Virginia, and dates from 1765, for perhaps the original pumpkin beer, known as Pumperkin, which used that fruit for the fermentables.

All this reminds me that I still have a bottle of that original batch of Enlightened Despot sitting in the cellar...

The Session 135: Roundup

A couple of Friday's ago, I jumped into the breach in order to host the 135th iteration of The Session, the monthly blogathon which encourages beer bloggers to write about a shared theme on the first Friday of the month. The theme I asked people to write about was 'Sepia Tones', a trip down your own personal beery memory lane.

Everybody's favourite beer writing couple, Jess and Ray of Boak and Bailey took the theme delightfully literally in presenting images from old school pubs 'dominated by shades of brown'.

Up in Ontario, Alan wondered if my theme was an allusion to the idea that we drink in order to "fill in the gaps", and gives us an interesting take on the being of memory and how it relates to boozing in our younger years.

Dean at The Beerverse recounts his personal beer story, starting with his dad asking for a beer from the fridge, and the 10 year old Dean duly obliging.

In my own post I recalled my local pub in Birmingham when I was a student, which is sadly no more, and also my favourite beer in my early years in Prague, which is also sadly to become no more and was the genesis of the theme.

On Instagram, KN published this image of a 'precursor to the nostalgic dominance of PBR'.

This clutch of content is everything that I am aware of with May's Session, but if there is anything else out there in the beery internet on this theme, let me know and I'll add to the list.

Oh, and please, please, please think about signing up to host a Session, go here for more.

The Session 135: Sepia Tones

As the host of this month's Session, I feel a tad embarrassed that having stepped in at the last minute it has taken me a few days to get my own post written and posted. Life with twins.

As I said in the initial announcement, I wanted us all to engage in a little beery nostalgia for those lost pubs and beers that were part of our formative years as beer drinkers. Melancholy and its attendant nostalgia comes easily to those of us with Highland roots, booze often just brings it into a sharper focus.

Let me tell you a story. When I was 19 I left the safety of life on the Isle of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides for the bright lights of Birmingham. It was the first weekend in October if memory serves, and I started college, studying  for a degree in theology at the Birmingham Bible Institute with a view to becoming a minister of religion. Moving from an island with a population comfortably south of 1500 to the second largest city in the UK cramming about a million people into little more than 100 square miles was, erm, interesting to say the least.

On that first Sunday in Brum all the single students went for a walk around the Edgbaston area to get our bearings, wandering from Pakenham Road, where we lived, to Calthorpe Park and back. Making our way toward the Bristol Road we passed a McDonalds, next to which stood a  fairly nondescript box of a building on which hung a sign that said 'The Trees'. I took a mental note to return when I had a moment and see what delights lay within.

A couple of afternoons later I snuck off for a pint. My memory of The Trees is that it was a run of the mill residential area boozer, and that they had Caffrey's on tap, and I loved Caffrey's at the time. A couple of afternoon pints at The Trees became my routine, I guess I should have known even then that the fact I just wanted to have a couple of jars away from people at college was a pointer that I would never really realise the aim of being a minister. Maybe then I could have gone elsewhere for my degree, and studied something that deep down I wanted to, history or German for example. In a weird twist of fate I later learnt that my older brother's then girlfriend had once been a barmaid at The Trees.

The Trees is gone know, demolished, the land awaiting redevelopment, though the McDonalds remains. A sign of the times perhaps.

Let me tell you another story. When I was 23 I again left Benbecula for a major city. This time I went to Prague, reasonably freshly minted BA (hons) in Theology in hand, recently broken up with my then fiancee, and with my parents encouragement not to get stuck in the relatively empty north west of Scotland. I was off to train as a Teacher of English as a Foreign Language, with a plan to spend a year in Prague and then go off to different countries every year, before heading home to become a minister, I still clung to the vaguest notion of faith then. However, now I didn't worry about heading to the pub for a bevvy, the long moralistic arm of the Free Church minister's disapproving righteous scowl couldn't make it to central Europe (I wasn't Free Church but the church I went to, while independent, had lots of connections in the Free Church on North Uist).

That first Sunday afternoon in Prague, having arrived that morning on the 24 hour bus from London (I hate flying), I sat in a pub/pizzeria in Černý Most with a 4 cheese pizza on my plate and a half litre of Velkopopovický Kozel in my glass. Kozel was still independent back then, before merging with Pilsner Urquell in 2002, and the beer was like nothing I had drunk before. A lager that was packed with hop flavour, finishing with a clean bite, and so moreish it would have been remiss not to have at least one more, no wonder the first phrases I mastered in Czech were 'pivo prosím' and 'ještě jedno'. While most of my friends stuck to the ubiquitous Gambrinus, I hunted out Kozel wherever I could, and happily one of the main expat brunch hangouts, Jama, had it on tap.

Kozel was the genesis of our theme for this Session, as this week they announced they are getting rid of the Kozel Premium, the 12° lager in their range, and sepia toned memories of those first years in the Mother of Cities came flooding back. Much like the beer, it was bittersweet.

Session 135 Announcement: Sepia Tones

The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic. Each month, a different beer blogger hosts the Session, chooses a topic and creates a round-up listing all of the participants, along with a short pithy critique of each entry. (You can find more information on The Session on Brookston Beer Bulletin).

This morning I went looking for the theme for this month's Session, and discovered there was none, so I am stepping into the breach.

As the title of this post suggests, today I want you to put on your sepia tinted glasses and indulge in a little beer nostalgia, a bit of personal beer history you might say.

What kind of things would be suitable topics for today? Well, here's some suggestions:

• Discontinued beers that you miss.
• Breweries you once loved that are no longer around.
• Beers that are simply not what they once were.
• Your early steps in the world of beer drinking, whether craft or just in general.

There you have it, get melancholy, drag up memories of good times gone by, and join us in this month's Session (I'll be posting mine later today).

Cheers!

The Session: Three Things

My post for this month's iteration of The Session is a tad late, something of a theme recently, but when I last looked at The Session's web page, no topic had been announced, and I only discovered the topic this morning. Our host for this month is Jay Brooks, one of the founders of The Session, and his theme is looking for answers to three questions, so let me oblige....

Jay's first question is:

what one word, or phrase, do you think should be used to describe beer that you’d like to drink. Craft beer seems to be the most agreed upon currently used term, but many people think it’s losing its usefulness or accuracy in describing it. What should we call it, do you think?

The word that immediately springs to mind is classic.

When I think about the kind of beers I like to drink they are all well established styles with widely accepted parameters. Think about a pilsner, four simple ingredients is all that it needs, malt, noble hops, lager yeast, and soft water. Consider the best bitter, again the simple interplay of good pale malt, with some crystal or toasted malts chucked in for flavour and colour, English hops, characterful yeast, and whatever water you have knocking around essentially. The third in my classic triumvirate is dry stout a la Guinness. When you drink an example of any of these styles you know what to expect and that for me is part of their appeal, I don't want to be challenged by random ingredients, twists, or new fangled ideas of what a beer style could be, I want a quality interpretation of a classic style.

Question the second is:

what two breweries do you think are very underrated? Name any two places that don’t get much attention but are quietly brewing great beer day in and day out. And not just one shining example, but everything they brew should be spot on. And ideally, they have a great tap room, good food, or other stellar amenities of some kind. But for whatever reason, they’ve been mostly overlooked. Maybe 2018 should be the year they hit it big. Who are they?

This is a very difficult question to answer, especially when you consider what is meant by 'underrated'? Rated by whom? Depending on how you answer that question, you could argue that Sierra Nevada are underrated because for the trend chasers they are insufficiently sexy, even though they simply do not make a bad beer in their range.

Assuming though that we are not talking about such ratings, my first choice would be the winners of the Fuggled Amber Beer of the Year for 2017, Olde Mecklenburg Brewery in Charlotte, NC. Olde Meck are a rarity in the American brewing scene in that all their beers are German styles and they don't brew a single IPA - fancy that, a brewery sufficiently confident in their products so as not to pander to the IPA worshippers. Whether it is their altbier, pilsner, dunkel, or Oktoberfest, every beer I have has from them has been superb, and whenever I go to South Carolina with Mrs V, I know I will be stocking up for the return trip as they are yet to be distributed in Virginia.

Sticking with the Carolina theme, my second underrated brewery is actually the oldest brewery in Columbia, South Carolina, Hunter Gatherer. I still remember my first trip there, having walked 7 miles from Mrs V's childhood home into the centre of Columbia a couple of days after Christmas in 2011. As they are currently in the latter stages of opening a production brewery, I am limiting myself here to their brewpub, which is in many ways the archetype of a brewpub that I would love to open. A fairly limited selection of only 4 beers, technically 5 but their don't brew a lager so they have Warsteiner (if memory serves) on tap, but each well made and tasty, bare brick walls, wooden furniture, and excellent food coming from the kitchen. I make a point of visiting whenever we go south, you should too.

The third and final question is:

name three kinds of beer you’d like to see more of

This one is relatively simple:

• Best Bitter - there is only one brewed with any regularity in this part of Virginia, and it's my recipe. I am not sure if the American drinking public really get the idea of a bitter in general, perhaps confused by the notion of a bitter beer or even the idea that hoppy beers don't have to taste like grapefruit juice. Whatever the stumbling block, I wish more breweries would take the bull by the horns and make this wonderful style, and then serve it at cellar temperature, from a beer engine.
• Dark Mild - sure there is a healthy dose of self interest here, being the founder of American Mild Month (which will be back this year for it's 4th outing), but I tend to think that any brewer worth his or her salt is well able to brew a mild and make it interesting. Sometimes all I want after work on a Friday is to down a few pints in short order, and mild is the perfect beer with which to do so.
• Altbier - there are few better beers than fresh altbier, and while there are a few available locally, they all seem to use crystal malts to give the expected colour, but then contribute a slick sweetness that really doesn't work with the style at all. More examples like Olde Meck's Copper would be more than welcome.

All classic styles, all wonderfully well made, and all worth sitting in the pub for hours drinking, which is kind of the whole point of beer as far as I am concerned.

The Session 130 - Festival Perfection

The final first Friday of 2017 is upon us, so of course that means it is time for this month's Session, hosted by Brian Yaeger. For this month, Brian asks us to imagine our ideal beer festival, and so without further ado, let's dive on in....

Firstly I have something of a confession to make, I can count on the fingers of less one full hand the number of beer festivals I have been to. That's no comment on beer festivals themselves but rather an admission of the fact that if I have a choice, and a potential alibi, I will avoid big crowds at all possible cost. I can also count on the aforementioned fingers the number of people capable of coaxing me out of my introvert cave to attend such an event. Clearly then, the first requirement for the Fuggled Festival of Beer is that it be a relatively small and low key event.

To facilitate such a low key event, the venue would preferably be out in the sticks a bit. Not necessary in the wilderness of the beautiful Shenandoah National Park, but in a hotel in a small country village would do nicely. The event would also be outside so that those hardy souls who make the trek have magnificent vistas of mountains and fields to drink in as they drink their beer. If the venue has some kind of courtyard then all the better. Actually, if the venue were a hotel with a brewpub and a courtyard, with views of the countryside, that would be perfect.

As this is a beer festival we should give some consideration to the beer itself, and in keeping with my theme of being low key, I would limit the number of breweries in attendance to somewhere between 15 and 20, and then further limit them to having a maximum of 2 beers available. Said beer would be draft only, so that attendees get the freshest taste of beer possible. Breweries are free to bring whatever beers they feel like serving, whether it's flagships, seasonals, or one-offs, it's entirely up to them.

This being my beer festival, it would primarily be a drinking festival rather than a tasting one, as such beers would be available in either half pint or full pint sizes (and pint here means the 20oz imperial pint). We're all adults here, so the only limit on the amount attendees can drink is based on their ability to hold their bevvy, keep their significant other happy, not be a nuisance, and not run foul of the police. We're all adults here right, so personal responsibility is important.

So we have our venue and the beers sorted, but what about box office? Straight off the bat I will say that I hate the idea of buying tokens with which to trade for beer, especially when the price of the token is more than the cost of a beer at the festival in a local pub. I also hate the idea of having a set number of beers as part of my entry fee. As such, entry at the door would be relatively cheap but would include a half pint glass, made of actual glass and not plastic. If attendees would prefer a full pint glass, there would be a small surcharge on the entry fee. The entry fee would be as low as possible to allow it to cover the cost of the venue and glassware. Brewers would then be selling their beer to the attendees at whatever price they feel appropriate, so total cost to an attendee would be the cover fee plus however much they actually choose to spend.

Getting away from the logistics and the beer for a moment, I would want to have a snack stand as well pumping out food that goes well with beer. Think a central European sausage vendor and you're in the right ball park, we're talking snacks not meals. I would also arrange a couple of local bands to come and play sets during the festival, though it would be more a background noise kind of thing than a focal point of the event.

As I re-read this with my editor's hat on, two things strike me. Firstly this is basically my vision of a good pub writ large, and secondly it bears a marked resemblance to the first Slunce ve Skle festival that I went to in Plzeň back in 2008. It was at Slunce ve Skle that I met Max for the first time, drank plenty of good beer from small breweries I had never heard of, and hung out with an eclectic group of expats and locals just reveling in good beer with good company. It was a perfect afternoon's drinking, one that I would love to recreate.