It's great that a lot of breweries are making super-hoptastic beers with loads of flavour, there are some great beers out there, but do we run the risk of forgetting what beer actually tastes like?
I'm not talking about bland lager or tasteless bitter, with corn syrup added to cheaply bump up the alcohol content and leaving the drinker wondering if there is actually any hops or malt on the ingredient list. No, I'm talking about a proper, well-balanced pint of something with great aroma, a solid malt backbone and nice bitterness and hop flavours, that's easy to drink and hits the spot. I've tried a lot of beers lately and some are great, but some are less than great. It seems to me that a lot of breweries are just chucking loads of hops in the boil, adding even more to dry hop with for aroma, but forgetting that it should be backed up with a decent malt backbone.
I recently got into a conversation about Brewdog with a brewer friend (a proper, full shiny stainless steel commercial brewery owner, not just a dabbler like myself) and he reckons he was extremely disappointed with Punk IPA when he tried it as, though it has an amazing smell and powerful hop flavour to start with, it dies off very quickly and leaves nothing behind. In other words, it has no balance with the malt. Is this because the recipe calls for loads of hops rather just the right amount of bitternes to balance flavours? Or does the amount of bitterness that initially hits your taste buds mask any other flavours that could be present? I'm no expert on beer tasting (though my brewer friend is) and I hadn't tasted Punk IPA properly in the past. I'd drank it on a couple of occasions but hadn't actually thought about what I was tasting. Add to that the fact it's too bloody expensive to buy regularly, and don't get me started on those 330ml bottles that all the 'cool' breweries seem to be using, I like a pint, not almost a pint, BAH! Anyway, I purchased a couple of bottles and sat down to taste them. He was right; the beer tastes and smells lovely but, once it's swallowed - nothing.
I recently went to a small beer festival held in a pub, and sampled a couple of local Yorkshire beers. One was absolutely lovely; amazing flavour and aroma and, despite being 5.4% it went down very well. Another beer I tried was an over-hopped IPA and I had a couple of pints as it was quite nice to start with despite being very bitter, but it started to be unenjoyable halfway through the second pint. I didn't buy a third.
Other breweries have managed to get the balance right. Try a pint of APA (American Pale Ale) from Windswept brewery (Lossiemouth, NE Scotland) and it has a big grapefruit hop flavour and aroma, but it's backed up with an equally large (and complex) malt flavour. Very nice it is, too!
Rothes Brewery (Rothes, Speyside) has just started up recently and makes some very good beers. They are not overly hoppy, but are very nice, balanced drinks. Just as beer should be, in my opinion.
A recent trip to the National Brewery Centre in Burton had me sampling a pint of Reservoir Pale Ale from the Burton Gate brewery and, again, a very decent beer and full of flavour.
There are probably thousands of examples of great, balanced, flavoursome beers from small breweries all around the world, so you don't need to fall for the brashly marketed, brashly hopped beers from any one brewery. Try a few, or as many as you can, then maybe you'll see what my problem is!
I shall stick to making my own balanced beers, and drinking good beers from other small breweries. I'm sure some would call them 'bland', 'tasteless' and 'uninspiring' but that's their opinion. Equally, all that you read above is mine. What's yours'?
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