A few days
ago,
Boak & Bailey posted a blog entitled “
Four Beers, Three Write-offs” in
which they said that a friend had recently returned from their holiday in
Norfolk and with them they brought back some bottle conditioned real ales from
Norfolk.
Three of
these beers were “absolutely foul”
and one was “just about drinkable”.
“One was just about drinkable — an unassertive yeast and some
pithy hops made it bland but faintly aromatic — but more by luck than intent,
we suspect. Another was an accidental, gushing lambic; yet another smelled like
pickled lemons rotting in a drainage ditch and tasted like unfermented wort;
the fourth had the aroma of blue cheese and tasted like alcohol-free wheat beer
— chewy, grainy water.”
They
described these beers as “These were
exploitative, gift-shop, tourist-trap beers.”
Boak and
Bailey did not mention the names of beers so one commenter raised the question “Why don’t you name them?” and the
reasoning behind not naming them was fair, the owners of these small
micro-breweries have a hell of a lot more at stake than a blogger does, they
don’t want to do any harm.
The way I
see it is, you can say you’ve had some bad beers but I think before publicly
naming and shaming these beers you should at least email these brewers and give
them some feedback. If they don’t reply after say, a week, then I think it would be fair to warn the good people of the
internet. Brewers should welcome feedback, not ignore it, regardless of whether
they disagree. It’s about customer service.
An example
of great customer service that I’ve experience from a brewery: Last summer I
had waited ages to get a bottle of Jiggle Juice from the now closed
NorthcoteBrewery in Norwich. I had heard such good things about it so I was excited. I
got home with the bottle, opened it, poured it into my glass and it just wasn’t
right. It smelled bad. Tasted even worse, it was sour, almost medicinal so I
sent them a DM on twitter and the lovely Jen replied saying “Wow, that sounds
like it was oxidised... really sorry. Give me your address and I will send you
another bottle”. And so she did along with a bottle of Sunshine Jiggle as an
apology. Because their brewery was only a 5 minute drive from my house, Jen
personally dropped them off at my door. That’s customer service. That’s a
brewer who really cares.
Ok, so maybe
you’re not going to get treated as well as that by some breweries but you need
to at least give them feedback and quite frankly, if they don’t even reply
that’s a bit bitchy.
We’ve all
had bad experiences with beer, be it bottle, cask, can or keg and the problem
is that most of us don’t bother giving feedback.
Now, being
from Norfolk I was particularly interested to know what the beers Boak &
Bailey had so they sent me a DM on twitter with the names of these beers. I’d
never had any of them bottled before but I had two of them on cask this
previous weekend at Dragon Hall Beer Festival and none of them were as
described. Completely different dispense method. Maybe it’s their bottling
that’s not up to scratch but the thing is, as Boak and Bailey points out: Are
they delusional and think that they’re genuinely sending out really good beer
or are they bottling it knowing that it’s not working for them and sending it
out anyway?
Now
obviously, no brewer is going to give the latter answer so that’s something we
have to answer for ourselves. Which is impossible really. All we can do after
an experience like that is avoid beers from that particular brewery just in
case all of their beers are in the same terrible condition or just terrible.
Now the
thing that made me
really angry was
one commenter on the post who claimed that Boak & Bailey were attacking
Norfolk beers and telling people not to drink Norfolk beers because they’re all
crap. This commenter is an absolute fool. This spawned a
rather wonderful blogpost from Jen from Northcote brewery saying how wonderful Norfolk beer is and
there are some cracking ones on there.
Generally,
living in Norfolk, I don’t really drink many bottled conditioned ales from
Norfolk as the vast majority of them are available on cask in
The Fat Cat at
some point in time but I feel that I need to drink more so I can get more of an
opinion.
Right, so
the conversations continued all throughout the day and night on twitter when it
got to a point where a local brewery jumped in:
“Really interesting comments about the
merits and demerits of Norfolk bottle-cond beer”
MISSING THE
POINT AGAIN.
When I
expressed my anger at this they said they phrased it poorly to be within the
character limit. I think they could’ve left out Norfolk as although these particular beers were from Norfolk, it WAS NOT AN ATTACK ON NORFOLK BEERS! If
a friend had come back from Yorkshire or some other place and brought back some
truly terrible beers we’d still be seeing this kind of blog post.
The same
brewery also asked another local brewery who owns a shop in Norwich “So what % of beers from your shop would you
avoid?” now this pissed me off. I called this unfair. I don’t think you
should publicly ask that kind of question. I don’t want to know that there are
X amounts of beers in this guy’s shop that he wouldn’t drink personally. He
replied saying there are a lot he has bought for himself that he has poured
down the drain so I asked “Is that
because you don’t like them or because they are genuinely bad beers?” and I
never got a straight answer. The best I got was “Some people like them”. Fair enough, you’re going to sell beers
that you don’t like but if you know that there are beers in your shop that are
genuinely bad beers WHY THE F**K ARE YOU SELLING THEM?
That was the
tipping point for me. It pissed me off.
What’s your
take on all of this?
Now, as for
bottle conditioned Norfolk beers I like and you should definitely seek out:
Panther
Black Panther – A nice dark, chocolatey stout with hints of vanilla. Very sweet
and roasty.
Tipples
Hanged Monk – A Traditional Mild. Quite nutty and roasty with a hint of
chocolate.
Northcote El
Salvador – Coffee IPA. Coffee bitterness, with some citrusy and roastyness.
(There are barely any bottles of this in existence so if you want one get in
contact and I will send one to you)
This has
been a very long post. I was quite angry last night. I shouldn’t get so angry
over beer conversations but I can’t help it.
It all boils
down to two things:
Boak &
Bailey’s post WAS NOT an attack on Norfolk Breweries.
And
You should
ALWAYS give breweries feedback if their beers are really that bad. If they
don’t bother replying, openly tell the world and maybe they’ll notice and get
back to you.
1,200 words
and it’s all out of my system.
Peace.
Nate
