The headline says it all, really. The 2011 SIBA Great Northern Beer Festival kicks off at the Mercure Piccadilly (formerly the Ramada Piccadilly) Hotel in Manchester on Thursday and runs through to Saturday, with 250 cask and 100 bottled beers on offer.

Tandleman has checked the casks and is in charge of health and safety at the event so you know that beer and drinkers alike are in good hands. And it will all be served in the proper, Northern manner, with a sparkler on the pump for body and head alike, and a clean glass for each drink, which is quite simply the most civilised way of running a beer festival.

Jo and I had a great time at last year’s event, which was by far the best beer festival we’d been to to-date (and still is, unless this year’s can beat it). So we’ve done the sensible thing and booked Friday off work so that we can get on down to the Thursday evening session with our drinking trousers most definitely on and the prospect of a mere 50 yard stagger to the tram stop to see us safely home again

Anyone else planning on being there on Thursday evening? Drop me a note via the comments below and maybe we can say hello and have a beer on the night.

In which I usually post a half-dozen links to items of interest I’ve spotted around the Beerblogosphere since my last Six Beer Links post. But seeing as I’ve been on holiday for a couple of weeks since my last proper read-through my RSS feeds and tuned back in to find 717 unread items waiting for me, I’ll be posting stuff in longer-than-usual batches until I’ve caught up…

1. Here’s a video chat with three members of Bellowhead, back-stage at this year’s V Festival on the subject of touring, brewing and diverse other things [via properganderonline.com]. Folk and Ale? Winning combination.

2. SIBA has launched (or possibly re-launched?) their ‘Local Beer Champion’ accreditation scheme for pubs who do their bit to support breweries in their region. More info at www.siba.co.uk/sibalocals.

3. This year’s 2011 CAMRA Champion Beer of Britain – Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde – looks like one I’d definitely like to try. And I’ve enjoyed many a pint of the always excellent runner-up (Marble Chocolate) and a one or two of the third-placed (Salopian Shropshire Gold) before now. Congrats to all three breweries!

4. The People’s Pint y’say? Good idea, having a lower-strength option on the bar for extended sessions. Bloody stupid name though. Would you be tempted to try a beer that sounds like a government initiative?

5. Via www.siba.co.uk, news that Molson Coors has announced plans to invest £175m in its UK breweries, including the recently-acquired Sharps. Which is a Good Thing in anyone’s book, surely?

6. Gotta love those Ralph Steadman labels from Flying Dog. Here’s news of a new one, courtesy of beernews.org.

7. Will Hawkes has profiled Sussex brewer Dark Star for The Independent Online [via darkstarbrewing.co.uk].

8. Zak Avery discussed the Is Saison the New Citra?, decided it isn’t and then explained his flavour-profile-based conclusion.

9. Mark Dredge got a few things off his chest with a piece on beer branding and I have to say I find myself nodding in agreement with just about everything he says there.

10. …his piece also prompted Boak and Bailey to follow up with a few simple but rather excellent Branding Tips for Small Breweries.

11. …and on the same topic, Jeff Pickthall’s PumpClip Parade blog was featured in a Guardian Online article on Real Ale’s Image Problem.

12. Over at Eating Isn’t Cheating, Neil has been looking into the world of Foreign Export Stouts and mentions a couple I haven’t tried yet.

13. Via Brew Wales, news that Brains Original Stout may soon be appearing in a larger Tesco near you. Any new bottled stout on the supermarket shelves is a cause for celebration (and worth a try or two) if you ask me.

14. Pete Brown encountered brilliant bar service at BrewDog Edinburgh, based around the principle of friendly, good-looking young people handing out hundreds of free samples of beer (he’s got a point there, what’s not to like?)

15. Martyn Cornell got a bit hot under the collar about Roger Protz and Otley Brewery’s new Burton Ale, which due to an accident of 1970s brand reinvention, apparently isn’t a Burton Ale.

16. BrewDog have announced the winner of their 2011 Photo Competition. I voted for the swimming dog myself, but there you go :)

In which I post a half-dozen links to items of interest I’ve spotted around the Beerblogosphere since my last Six Beer Links post.

1. Our local CAMRA branch has announced its Pub of the Year and the honour goes to the Hare and Hounds in Holcombe Brook. Reckon that’s do-able by bus from Bury town centre, if we picked the right one. And by Jove, they have an Alecam on their website so you can see what they’re serving before you set out. Fantastic idea!

2. Keeping it local: as a fully paid-up and positively evangelistic member of the pro-sparkler brigade, I thoroughly enjoyed Tyson’s paean of praise to the humble yet wonderful sparkler. “Never has something so small given so much pleasure to so many.”* Hear, hear and well said indeed!

3. Fantastic idea number two: these rather fantastic animated images look like an excellent idea. I don’t know how much the US agency that came up with the process would charge for putting them together, but if I was working for a brewery, I’d be straight on the phone to see what it would take to get them on our website. That last one in particular – doesn’t looking at that just make you incredibly thirsty? [via @DeucharsIPA]

4. And another one: August 4th is International IPA Day. “Attention all craft beer evangelists, brewers, bloggers, and suds-savvy citizens! On Thursday, August 4th 2011, you are cordially invited to participate in the largest international craft beer celebration and virtual conversation the world has ever seen.” It looks like there might be an event on at The Port Street Beer House. I’ll be needing to book a day’s holiday for August 5th, then…

5. This thought-provoking post from the blog of online beer retailer Beermerchants.com had me nodding in agreement throughout. It’s perfectly true, when you stop and think about it for even a minute, it really is an amazing time to be a fan of excellent beer.

6. Equally thought-provoking: Sharp’s Head Brewer Stuart Howe talks about the value of feedback; good when it comes in the form of up-front, constructive criticism and not so good when it involves somebody slyly taking the piss. “Spare a thought for brewers like me when you are sampling beer but most of all be honest and constructive with them. Some of the most important improvements I have made to my techniques have been wrought from criticism. The most profound betrayal of a brewer is to slag his beers off behind his back.” Sounds like a bit of a no-brainer, but maybe it’s something that we beer reviewers and beer bloggers could do with keeping in mind from time to time, eh?

*I was going to insert a gag about the rampant rabbit, but someone beat me to it in the comments on Tyson’s post ;)

Lurking next to the Orcs Black Ale, I found this bottle of CAMRA 25th Anniversary Ale.

Brewed back in 1996 by George Gale & Co (who were acquired by Fuller’s back in 2005), this 7.1% ale was brewed with Maris Otter barley and Fuggles, Goldings and Challenger hops.

I’m guessing it’s an IPA-style golden ale? Hard to tell through the brown glass, of course. I can’t find any information on the CAMRA website and Google isn’t turning up anything either.

I’m pretty sure this came into my possession by accident a few years back. I think it was courtesy of Jo’s Nan, who had decided to clear out her own drinks cabinet and had found this bottle lurking behind the sweet sherry, Bells whisky and Canada Dry. I said “thank you very much” and brought it home, at which point it disappeared into our drinks cabinet and was forgotten about until a few weeks ago.

The best-before date is given as April 2000, but with its 7.1% ABV and – from the sounds of the label – plenty in the way of hop-content, I suppose there’s a chance it might still be drinkable..?

What do the beer congnoscenti among you reckon? Best keep the cap firmly on? Possibly rank, but worth risking? Entirely safe to drink and most likely delicious? Or even, worth saving for CAMRA’s 50th anniversary in 2021? I’d love to know what the experts out there think.

Here’s a close-up of the label. Click for a larger version if you’d like to see it in a bit more detail:

CAMRA have announced that this year’s National Pub Design Awards are open for business.

So, if your favourite boozer has been tarted up recently, or you’ve found a new pub that’s a sight for sore eyes and a pure pleasure to drink in, why not give the landlord/lady a nudge in the direction of the online entry form? I’ll bet if they win they’ll be only too happy to show their beer-flavoured appreciation, eh?

Interesting article by Ed Gillespie on www.guardian.co.uk yesterday, on the subject of saving money and reducing your carbon footprint by buying local beer from independent breweries.

This, we’re told, is “Frucool” – a term coined by Gillespie (a director of London and New York based sustainability communications agency Futerra) to promote / explain / encapsulate the concept of achieving coolness through personal frugality.

In short: it’s a piece about the core principles behind CAMRA’s LocAle campaign. Albeit one that doesn’t once mention LocAle, or CAMRA. But still, it’s always good to see someone with a national media platform advocating buying beer from local breweries rather than multinational megacorps.

Thanks to Mark Newton for the heads-up.

According to the latest CAMRA real ale Premier League table there are twenty-five breweries in the Greater Manchester area. This total puts us a slightly disappointing 11th in the table; well behind our always-friendly rivals over t’Pennines, West Yorkshire, who are sitting pretty in the top-spot with 34. (Dammit, we need to open another 10 breweries in Greater Manchester! Tandleman, Tyson, what are you waiting for?)

But anyhow, Wars of the Beer-Roses aside (that not actually being the point of my post) I’m immediately intrigued to know how many of those 25 breweries’ brews I’ve managed to sampled to-date. Off the top of my head I’d guess maybe half of them. Then again, the figure could actually be higher. So here’s the plan:

Step one: Obtain a copy of the list. That’ll involve purchasing a copy of this year’s Good Beer Guide, then. Right, over to Amazon.co.uk (sorry CAMRA shop, but they’re only asking £7.99 and I get free next-day Amazon Prime delivery as well) and that’s on the way now (along with a copy of Pete Brown‘s Hops and Glory – been meaning to read that for ages) and should be here tomorrow.

Step two: Double-check the list against my posted Tasting Notes to-date and the as-yet un-posted scribbles in my pocket notebook. I realise that this technically constitutes some form of ticker-like behaviour, but I’m prepared to take one for the team there, in the name of supporting local (indeed: locAle) businesses.

Step three: Aim to track down one example of each as-yet un-sampled brewery’s best beers, hopefully before the end of the year (it’s always good to set yourself a deadline for this sort of thing, I reckon).

I rather suspect that step three might be the best bit. And there’s a Manchester Beer Festival on in at least one of the Manchester city centre Wetherspoon’s branches in a couple of weeks. That might help.

Chocks away!

CAMRA have announced this year’s supreme Champion Winter Beer of Britian. It’s Oakham Ales Attila, a 7.5%abv barley wine described by the brewery thus: “Fruit notes and elderflower on aroma. Taste of ripe red berries and citrus fruit with a long bitter fruity finish.”

Sounds bloody delicious, and I’ll bet there’s none left by the time I get to the NWAF tomorrow evening (my drinking buddy Howard is available, so that means a double-session for yours truly. Nice.)

The silver and bronze awards went to Elland Brewery‘s 1872 Porter and Sarah Hughes’s Dark Ruby mild, respectively, so that’s another two for the target list for tomorrow and / or Saturday. I’m looking forward to the next couple of evenings immensely…

In an act of joined-up thinking and cooperation apparently rare among beer-related interest groups, CAMRA and the British Beer and Pub Association have joined forces to launch the Axe the Beer Tax, Save the Pub! campaign, with an online presence at www.axethebeertax.com.

By signing up to the mailing list, you can send an automatically generated email to your local MP asking that they join the campaign and protest the estimated 40% hike in beer duty this year (including the recently-announced rise intended to “off-set” the 2.5% drop in VAT that’s supposed to rescue the ailing UK economy) that beer writers like Pete Brown have been vociferously challenging.

Head along to the site, sign up, show your support. Axe the Beer Tax!

I was bitterly disappointed to read on the BrewDog blog the other week that The Portman Group’s complaint against BrewDog’s packaging has been upheld. There’s plenty of background information via the link above, although of course we only have BrewDog’s side of the story at the moment: a quick glance at the Portman Group’s press release page shows that they still haven’t posted anything relevant to the case.

Anyhow, looking at the excerpts from the complaint that have been quoted (and vigorously contradicted) by BrewDog, it’s clear that it’s just one specific area of the marketing of BrewDog’s products that the Portman Group are objecting to. And as a marketer by trade, I feel reasonably qualified to comment on that sort of thing, so I shall.

The first thing to note is that it’s not the graphic design of the packaging, or the shape of the bottles, or even the name of the product that the Portman Group is objecting to, merely the wording on the labels (and the back-labels, at that). Neither – to the best of the available knowledge to-date – have they produced any actual data or statistical evidence that supports their claim: that the wording on the back-labels of BrewDog’s bottles leads to the sort of anti-social behaviour that the Portman Group is apparently (apparently…) so keen on stamping out.

Here’s the sort of thing the Portman Group is objecting to, and their reasoning for doing so:

(according to BrewDog) the Portman Group claims that the phrase “aggressive beer” on the Punk IPA label “is more likely to be seen applying to the drinker rather than the drink”.

How does that work, then? As a consumer and beer drinker, I for one would assume that the phrase “this is an aggressive beer” (to use the full phrasing from the label) would apply to the flavour and character of the beer itself; not that by drinking it I am likely in turn to become aggressive. In fact I rather object to the Portman Group’s implication that I lack the self-control and social graces to remain in control of my temper after however many bottles of beer.

The assertion made by the Portman Group is an entirely subjective and (as BrewDog point out), linguistically and grammatically incorrect one. Okay, obviously if someone drinks enough of the stuff – if someone drinks enough alcohol, full-stop – then there’s a chance they may become aggressive. But I hardly think using the descriptive term ‘aggressive’ (and quite specifially: to describe the beer itself) can count as an incitement to deliberate aggression, can it? No, I didn’t think so.

Next: the Portman Group’s assertion (again, according to BrewDog’s coverage and with regard to the labelling on Hop Rocker) that:

“phrases such as ‘nourishing food stuff’ and ‘magic is still there to be extracted from this drink’ implies it could enhance mental and physical capabilities”

Again, how so, exactly? As a consumer and beer drinker, I would assume that this was descriptive hyperbole from the brewer; a little light word-play to engage the imagination of the potential purchaser and convey a sense of the beer’s character and flavour. I certainly wouldn’t take BrewDog to task if I chose to drink nothing but Hop Rocker for a month and by doing so failed to be properly nourished and / or develop Harry Potter’s magical powers. Why? Because I’m not a complete bloody idiot and again I rather resent the Portman Group’s implication that I might be.

Listen, when I see a gang of yobs hanging around on street-corners with bottles of a micro-brewed craft ale like Punk IPA or Skull Splitter in their grubby mitts, instead of cans of Special Brew or litres of cheap, industrial-grade vodka, then I’ll acknowledge that perhaps they’ve been lead astray by the wording on the back of a BrewDog label. Until then, the Portman Group needs to gain a much-needed sense of perspective.

Let’s face it, it’s all just bloody stupid, isn’t it? As if the wording on a bottle of real ale is going to have any effect whatsoever on the anti-social behaviour and other medical and social ills caused by alcohol abuse. The sort of alcohol abuse that’s – it’s largely acknowledged – is only encouraged and worsened by cheap supermarket deals, the attractiveness of alcopops (such as Beverage Brands UK’s WKD) and pre-mixed vodka drinks (like Diageo’s Smirnoff Ice) to teenagers, or the mass-production of super-strength lagers such as Carlsberg’s Special Brew or Tennent’s Extra (made by Inbev).

The thing is, though, the likes of Beverage Brands UK, Diageo, Carlsberg UK and Inbev are all members of The Portman Group. So in short: the Portman Group is an organisation that lives in a very big glass house, but whose job it is to throw stones…

But rather than go after the very genuine problems caused by their own members’ products, of course they’re picking on the smaller guys, the independent brewers who lack the financial muscle or clout with the retailers to fight back. Presumably, they think that they can occupy the moral high-ground and – more importantly from their point of view – can be seen to be doing something to justify their own existence, without suffering too much in the way of opposition and without upsetting or attacking their corporate members.

Now, I’m sure all the group members’ products will have been very carefully vetted to ensure that their advertising toes the Code of Conduct line, but there are larger, more important social issues at stake here, and if the Portman Group really wants to make a difference, then they should look to put their own house in order first.

For a start, how about encouraging their own members to remove all those alcopops and discount-price, extra-strong lager from the shelves and turn over the spare production lines to more civilised, refined beverages instead? And how about they spent more time and energy genuinely promoting sensible drinking among teens (although that, of course, is counter-intuitive, business-wise… a teen drunk on alcopops is bad for PR but great for the bottom-line, after all) rather than pursuing frankly ludicrous complaints against small, independent breweries, whose customers are intelligent enough to know that they’re not going to turn into the Hulk by drinking a bottle of IPA? That way the Portman Group might rediscover a sense of purpose and be able to do some genuine, long-term good. Not, of course, that I think for a moment that doing long-term good is actually part of the Portman Group’s purpose. But they’re welcome to prove me wrong. And actions always speak louder than words…

Instead though, I fully expect the glass-house-dwelling Portman Group to continue to throw their stones, And this time, they might just have picked on the wrong target. That BrewDog blog piece ends with some characteristically ebullient fighting-talk:

“At the end of the day the Portman Group is funded by companies concerned about BrewDog infringing on their market share. They are acting like a cartel – in clear breach of EU laws on competition and freedom of speech. I intend to fight them every step of the way. We will take this to the courts, we will take this to the press, and we will take this to parliament. Can one determined little brewer bring about their demise? Possibly.”

A hopeless, David-and-Goliath battle? It might well be. But I for one think it’s one that’s worth fighting.

So, who don’t you your support, in the best possible way? Visit the BrewDog webstore and order a crate of their generally rather excellent beers. I did, and I’ll tell you all about them once I’ve had a chance to set up a sampling session.

Addendum: I dropped CAMRA’s press office a line to ask them whether any action was being taken with regard to the situation and the Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Mr Jonathan Mail (who was more than happy to be quoted here), said:

We have written to the Portman Group to express our dissatisfaction. The Portman Group are not fully taking into account the target audience of a product and whether any harm will result when enforcing its code. This is inappropriate and ultimately undermines the credibility of the code.

CAMRA’s Chief Executive Mike Benner is meeting with the Portman Group to discuss our concerns. Following this meeting we will consider what further pressure needs to be brought to bear on the Portman Group.

Which is very good to hear. Well done, CAMRA. I’ll bring further updates if I hear anything else from Jonathan or his colleagues in the press office.