Fuggled Review of the Year - Pale Ales

Pale Ales, whether English, American or of the India sort, have formed a large part of my drinking this year and form a nice little juxtaposition to the situation with Pale Lagers - the first 6 months of the year saw the occassional decent Pale Ale, while the second half has been a veritable flood of the stuff. I am sure some will find it too vague to lump together the various pale ale styles into a single grouping, of course not forgetting styles like bitter here, but it works for me (minor aside, does any one else find the BJCP style guides a bit hair splity?).

From a very strong field, the following three beers stood out:

• Kocour Samurai IPA
• Sierra Nevada Torpedo
• Bell's Two Hearted Ale

In my final month in Prague I was unemployed, having been made redundant, and was researching for my book, The Pocket Pub Guide to Prague (available very soon). On the days when Mark and I weren't sitting in various drinking holes, taking notes and pictures (which I have been setting in the text and they are fabulous!), you could often find me in Tlusta Koala just round from my flat imbibing this simply wonderful IPA. Seriously hoppy, served perhaps a tad cold but just right for the warm early summer afternoons, it was the refreshment of champions, or at least this champion of Kocour.

Recently I went on a day trip to Northern Virginia's breweries with Dan from CVille Beer Geek (most of the breweries were disappointing to be blunt), one of the highlights of the trip though was the Kybecca bottle shop in Fredericksburg where they keep a good stock of beer. It was there that I picked up a bottle of Sierra Nevada's gorgeous Torpedo. I am discovering that I like hoppy beers which have a good malty body, Torpedo is almost its perfect expression.

Charlottesville's best bottle shop/pub/nacho place is the magnificent Beer Run (seriously, the nachos are awesome and they have Fuller's Vintage Ale for just $9.99!!!) and it was here that while waiting for Mrs Velkyal to return with her ID and for the friends we were meeting that I decided to have a swift half of the Bell's Two Hearted Ale, and I was blown away, simply a gorgeous beer full of the citrusy flavours you expect from an American made pale ale, but with a subtle spiciness behind it and that sweet maltiness that I love.

Again a difficult decision to make, and for the first time this year a Fuggled award comes across the Atlantic, but only just. The Fuggled Pale Ale of the Year is:

1. Bell's Two Hearted Ale

One of the best discoveries of the last six months and simply good beer.

Fuggled Review of the Year - Amber and Dark Lager

This seems to have been a decent year on the amber and dark lager front of things, with new offerings from one of my favourite breweries back in the UK, the continued excellence of many a Czech polotmavé and tmavé, as well as a few good lagers from the USA in this category, although if I am honest the majority of amber and dark lagers over here are as crap as the pale ones.

The three beers which make the shortlist for amber and dark lager of the year are:

• U Fleků 13°
• U Medvídků Oldgott Barique 13°
• Kout na Šumavě 18°

Here I must make a confession, in ten years living in Prague, I went to U Fleků a grand total of once and that was back in June while researching for my soon to be released pub guide to Prague (released as soon I sort out a technical issue or two). I had avoided it purely because it is such a touristy place to go, had I known just how damned good the beer was, I would have drunk far less in my formative Prague years but drunk far, far better.

Whilst talking of seemingly touristy places to go, U Medvídků will always be a place I love and hanker for, whether for the lashings of Budvar, the wonderful Czech food (if anyone tells you Czech food is awful then they are pretentious knobs with no idea about being a normal human being), and of course U Medvídků's own range of excellent beers. As lovely as it is from a bottle, Oldgott Barique is simply divine on tap in the secluded little brewery area of this labyrinthine pub.

As for the Kout na Šumavě 18°, a magnificent Baltic Porter which rounded off many an evening in U Slovanské Lípy, I have to agree with the august Evan Rail that it is "simply miraculous". Beautifully smooth and rich, like a dark chocolate cake which is sinful beyond words but oh so damned good, as I say, it rounded off so many nights out to perfection.

This is, again, a very difficult decision to make, but when push comes to shove, I usually go for a beer which I can drink several pints of, as such the Fuggled Amber and Dark Lager of the Year for 2009 is:

1. U Medvídků Oldgott Barique 13°

I had the pleasure many times this year, with various people I have been lucky to get to know as a result of Fuggled, to sit in the brewery side of U Medvídků and polish off copious amounts of the Oldgott Barique - each and every every occassion as good as the beer lubricating the conversation.

Fuggled Review of the Year - Pale Lagers

My experience of pale lagers this year has been something of a mixed bag. The first six months of the year were in the Czech Republic, thus giving me access to endless amounts of quality pilsner style lager. The second half of the year has largely been one of disappointment in the American craft lager scene - seriously, almost every pale lager I have had here has been bland beyond description, with one exception.

My three contenders for the Fuggled Pale Lager of the year are:

• Kout na Šumavě 10°
• Blue Mountain Lager
• Zlatá Labuť 11°

The Blue Mountain Lager has been something of a life saver for me on those days when I really fancied a decent lager, how it didn't win any awards at the Great American Beer Fest is beyond me - perhaps the judges should spend more time in Germany and the Czech Republic before being allowed to judge lagers.

What can be said about Kout na Šumavě 10° that I haven't already said? Almost nothing to be honest, a 10 degree lager with more flavour and punch than many stronger beers is something to be savoured.

Discovering Zlatá Labuť 11° was one of my beer highlights of 2009 in general, it is quite simply a magnificent beer that deserves a far wider distribution than it has at the moment.

This is such a difficult decision, but for the second year running, the Fuggled Pale Lager of the year is:

1. Kout na Šumavě 10°

Kout is the beer I miss most from the Czech Republic and to my mind the finest expression of the Bohemian Pilsner style.

That Time of the Year

Between now and Christmas, I will be dedicating the majority of posts to the second, annual, Fuggled Review of the Year. Some of the categories for this year's review differ from last year, largely because moving to the US in June has opened up a greater range of beer styles to me, and so they need to be accounted for. I have also decided to add a couple of beer writing reviews, one for the beer blog I think has been the best that I read regularly in 2009, the post that I feel is the best that I have written this year, and the best individual post from other people's blogs.

The categories for this year's review of the year then are as follows:

• Pale Lager of the Year
• Semi-dark/dark Lager of the Year
• Pale Ale of the Year
• Dark Ale of the Year
• Porter/Stout of the Year
• Wheat Beer of the Year
• Specialty Beer of the Year
• Blog of the Year

The one thing which this year's review has in common with last year is the complete absence of any financial award, or even any meaningful history. It really is just a list of the highlights of what has been a very good year.

Paddling Up the Amazon

It probably isn't much of a big deal in the grander scheme of things, but heck it got me excited.

On Friday afternoon as I was preparing for the 6 hour drive from Charlottesville down to Columbia, South Carolina, to go to a friend's engagement bash, I got an email from Lulu.com. Usually the only emails I get from Lulu are to tell me about a sale for one of the two Fuggled calendars or some guff about special deals on shipping if I buy 10 paperback books. I duly opened said email to give it a quick scan, and my chin almost hit the floor. It appears that Lulu have selected the Fuggled calendars to be listed on the Amazon Marketplace!

Being listed on the Amazon Marketplace rather than the main site is probably akin to playing in the Europa League instead of the Champions League, but hell the EL is still a European competition worth winning, so I am undoubtedly chuffed to bits about a wider audience seeing the calendars and maybe making some beer lovers happier this Christmas!

According to the email, both the Prague Pubs calendar and the Beer calendar will be available on Amazon from this Wednesday, December 9th. And yes, I am still chuffed to bits about it.

Pocket Pub Guide - Prague

Back in June, having just been made redundant, I spent an ordinate amount of time in some of Prague's most blogged about and generally well-regarded, for whatever reason, pubs. Many an afternoon you would find me trawling around the city with my friend Mark - who did the pictures for the Fuggled calendars which are advertised to the left of this post. I bought one just to make sure that the quality was good, and I have to say I am deeply impressed and anyone with fond memories of drinking in Prague really should buy one, better, buy the pair.

The purpose of all this travelling, drinking and photography was not simply to make a couple of calendars for Fuggled, but rather to write a guide to 40 of Prague's pubs. I hesitate to use the word "best" because it is such a subjective thing. Rather I chose 40 of the pubs in the city which I think are good pubs, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they have a wide choice of beer, or obscure micro-brew from the Bohemian villages, in fact a few of them are Staropramen pubs, not great beer but there are some good pubs selling Staropramen in Prague.

Recently I got the complete set of photography produced by Mark - and people, if you need any photographic needs in, or about, Prague then talk to Mark, so skilled it is frightening at times and a top bloke to boot - so I have been going through the pictures deciding which ones to use and where. In order to at least get the book available, I have decided to first release an e-book version before I go for the printable version through Lulu.com.

The plan is to have it available within a week to ten days, so blogging might be a bit slow next week while I set the pictures and make this the best project I can.

Smoke Free Virginia

Apparently there is now a smoking ban in place for restaurants in Virginia, how does this affect me? Well, for a start, there are no such things as bars in Virginia - bars in the sense that most people understand them, watering holes, drinking dens, places with beer and maybe some snacks. To serve alcohol in Virginia it is required to serve food as well, effectively making a pub in reality a "restaurant that serves alcohol" to quote Dave over at Musings Over A Pint.

From my experience of going to "pubs" so far, very few of them have been smoky in the slightest - now admittedly my frame of reference for a smoky pub would be one of the various dark places in Prague that filled up fairly quickly with a blue fug, and you left reeking incredibly badly. But I think making restaurants no smoking is a good idea, simply because eating dinner and inhaling copious amounts of second hand smoke really isn't all that pleasant, it ruins the food for a start.

This has, however, convinced me that Virginia needs bars where the food available includes crisps, chocolate bars and pre-made sandwiches for the hungry, nothing fancy, but something which is easy to do and doesn't require massive capital investment in building a kitchen. I have to admit that I am a bit confused by the law here about what qualifies as food in order to serve alcohol, so if any of my Virginia readers can enlighten me then I would be very happy.

I do however have a problem with smoking bans in principle. What is the point of having a perfectly legal, if unhealthy, habit and then proscribing partakers in that particular habit from performing their perfectly legal act in given places? Why not go to the heart of the problem and ban tobacco (and yes I know the tobacco lobby would be up in arms)? But part of me also wonders, when will the prohibitionists attempt to force similar "alcohol bans"? Now, it would be easy to convince ourselves that the nutter prohibitionist movement could never impose another alcohol ban, but they did it before and would love to do it again, indeed I know of a few towns in the US which are "dry".

Perhaps what is needed in Virginia is a campaign for the law to be changed, and allow bars and pubs to open which are primarily "wet-led" to use the British industry parlance. I would posit that there is scant evidence that insisting on serving food in order to serve alcohol makes people likely to drink less, so why hobble entrepreneurs with ridiculous legislation? While I am in a slightly campaigning mood, I would also like to campaign for the legal age for alcohol consumption to be lowered to 18, it a person is old enough to pay taxes, smoke, vote, die in the army, then by what justification do you deny people the right to enjoy a pint at the end of the day. Also, I want to see the requirement for carding people who look over 30 in shops and other places serving alcohol outlawed - have these people never heard of "innocent until proven guilty". Yes it can be difficult to tell, but you should only card when you are not sure.

Here ends today's lesson.