Having confessed my ignorance of Crafty Stuff in my last blog, I set out to further my education with a visit to a Craft Beer Co. outlet in Holborn, London. My thirst for knowledge knows no boundaries.
With a range of 30 keg beers, 15 casks and 50 bottled beers to assess, this was never going to be a flying visit. My fellow customers packing the bar and spilling over onto the roped off pavement may not have shared my academic interest but it was clear that experimentation and discovery was their prime motivation.
I understand what cask beer is and bottled beer is a bit of a giveaway but I am still not much wiser as to why Kernel IPA is a craft beer and John Smiths isn’t. It would seem that to be a Craft Beer you need to come from a very small brewery, have an a.b.v. that can also translate as a price per pint and have a quaint, quirky or suggestive name. Craft Beer, it seems, can be Lager, Porter, Amber, IPA, Bitter or Sour with ab.v. ranging from 3.2% to 13%. Given that the common denominator is keg dispense I would be interested to learn the official CAMRA line on Craft.
I pursued my duties diligently, making my way through a number of interesting keg and cask offerings. At one stage, I did seriously consider cancelling my Summer holiday and booking a room on the premises for a week. I did resist the temptation to sample the Speedway Stout at £22.95 for a 750ml bottle of 10% porter. I suppose it would be fine if you want to use a whole week’s units and disposable income on one drink and perhaps ideal for someone about to go into hospital for a hip operation.
The visit was not without incident as with fifteen cask beer engines in situ I could not help but notice that each hand pull spout had the obligatory screw attachment at the end to accommodate a sparkler. I wonder if the management had ever wondered why? My question as to whether they would ever used a sparkler seemed about as welcome as Rolf Harris in a Kindergarten but I continued the line of inquiry, pointing out in my best non Northern dialect that the sparkler is not just about the head but about the activation of the wonderful flavours, enzymes and textures lurking below the meniscus. “Sorry Mate! We don’t do Sparkler but we give good head!” mmmmmmmmmmm?