Friday 13 September 2013

Bottle and cask

I went to a CAMRA Meet the Brewer event at a pub in South Manchester last night.

The brewery in question had three of its beers on draught in the pub and also kindly brought us some bottles to try. I was pretty impressed with all of them, including a Pils brewed with Czech hops that unusually was available on handpump as well.

What struck me most was the difference between the beers in cask and in bottle (the bottles are brewery rather than bottle-conditioned). The citrusy notes in the IPA for example were far zingier in the cask compared to the bottle.

There aren't that many beers that I drink in both cask and bottle. Most of the bottle-conditioned beers I regularly drink are from London brewers like Fuller's and Young's and either aren't available in cask or only in their pubs in the capital.  I also find that some brewery conditioned bottles – Robinson's Unicorn, Timothy Taylor's Landlord – are much closer to the cask versions than others.

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Join the Red Revolution

Salford rugby league club is relaunching itself at the last game of the season on Friday.

In a so-called Red Revolution, Salford's new owner Marwan Koukash is rebranding the club as Salford Red Devils.

I've always liked the fact that Salford, unlike other rugby league clubs, has avoided silly names such as Bulls, Broncos and Rhinos and stuck to simple ones connected to its history, first Reds and now Red Devils (the nickname apparently comes from a 1934 tour of France where a journalist dubbed them "les diables rouges").

Although the Salford rebranding has obvious socialist connotations, it also reminds me a bit of the advertising for one of the worst beers ever brewed in Britain.