Brewdog sound in serious trouble.

I'm pretty much the same. Beavertown have the best glasses (we've all nicked one) and I'm happy with all three, but Punk is the best drink. I prefer a local IPA, but all three are perfectly fine with me.

I actually enjoyed a lager at the weekend. I spent the weekend in Sheffield at an art fair and they were serving Stancil Pilsner. It was very, very good. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a lager (apart from the first one on a very hot day just to quench your thirst).

Anyway, back to the point, losing Brewdog would be a sad day for me, even if the owner is questionable. They make a nice drink.

 

I'll try to find Stancil. I spoke to a craft brewer in St Petersburg, and he said brewing a genuinely good lager is far more difficult than making a decent IPA as there's nothing to hide behind. Big hop flavours can mask a lot of deficiencies in the beer. In a lager, any "off" flavours are immediately obvious.

For a truly exceptional lager, I'd definitely recommend Schiehallion by the Scottish brewer Harviestoun. Haven't seen any in England for a while but will definitely grab some if I see it.

 

As a CAMRA member, I took advantage of an offer for a box of Bewdog beers a couple of years ago. Their idea was to get you to take a box on a regular basis. There were a couple of beers in the box which I quite liked but most of them were far too hoppy for me and they all tasted much the same - and the price was eyewatering. I cancelled after the first box and for the next year had several calls trying to get me to change my mind.

 

There's quite a lot to unpack in the word "lager". To most it conjures up a pint of Harp or Carlsberg or something similar but the term actually refers to the brewing process, where fermentation takes place at a much colder temperature than British beers. Belgian beers are all lagers but the range of colours and flavours is vast. I like the dark ones, try a Grimbergen Doble Ambre or a Leffe Brune, neither are remotely like the yellow tasteless urine from Carlsberg...

 

They used to serve Stancil at the wath tap, don't know if they still do.

 

a lager drinker enters the debate!

i'll start by saying i don't like beers, anything you can smell before tasting puts me off. I've tried the odd IPA as this seems the closest of the craft sector to a lager and it wasn't for me

Now here's the thing, not all lager drinkers just like carling, there's quite a market for craft / small batch lager and any brewer with half a brain would be exploiting it as best they can, Brixtons Coldharbour and Left Handed Giants Helles being 2 of the ones I've enjoyed, the key thing being they stick to the pilsner/helles taste and don't try to appeal to bearded cardigan wearing craft drinkers some craft lager breweries do try too hard in this respect.

On topic though i kinda see what Brewdog have done , they do it well if you want a large chain pub with pretty similar offerings in every one, the owner seems a fella not for me but his company has changed the pub scene, no mean feat that.

 

Throw the name of the bar out here, and I may pop in and sample your wares.

 

" Belgian beers are all lagers "

No far from it, in fact Belgium is the last bastion of top fermented ales outside Britain and Ireland.
Whilst all the europils type stuff is lager, most of their national specialities, Krieks etc and Abbey/Trappist brews are actually ales...Chimay and Leffe are two famous ones. They also have a tradition of 'Scotch' ales that gained traction around First World War time, originally imported, several enterprising Belgian brewers made their own which are still going today.

 

"a lager drinker enters the debate!
i'll start by saying i don't like beers, anything you can smell before tasting puts me off"

This is not a criticism BTW.
You've been brought up on the British version of lager, produced by huge breweries ( mainly from the late 1960's) who's only aims were to put something that was not traditional on bars at a premium price. Rather than try and emulate the best of the high quality European lager brewers in ie Czechoslovakia and Germany, they opted for the North American model of highly processed, ultra cold, stable lager with little taste or aroma...Carling Black Label being the most successful, or alternatively lagers would be seen on the bar with a foreign sounding name, some would be genuine names brewed under license, but dumbed down to be a shadow of the actual European brew, both in taste and alcoholic content. The best genuine European lagers were a celebration of aromatic hops...beer that reeked with hop aroma....sadly we only got cold and arguably flavourless.

 

without question all true, has the palette of this country shifted due to over sanitisation of taste, flavour and smell or did the breweries identify what people were wanting?

 

The 50's and 60's in particular were a period of hostile takeovers in the industry, our area is a fair example of the time, we had two main breweries, Barnsley Bry and Clarkson's, the town was also supplied to some extent by John Smith's in Taddy and Stones in Sheffield ( others on a lesser scale). All these companies supplied the traditional product. Unfortunately all these companies were taken over by national combines, known as the Big Six who had no intention of supplying the traditional beers, over a period 'our' breweries were closed down and the beers were replaced by low quality, lower alcohol processed beers made anywhere in the country by Whitbread, Courage, Bass Charrington. The Big Six owned 95% of Barnsley's boozers, meaning that unless you put up with the new low quality product you didn't drink. The 1976 Good Beer Guide described Barnsley as ' a beer desert'. For anyone starting drinking at that time there was only a choice between a processed low quality ale, or a processed low quality lager....the difference was the Big Six pushed Lager with the most expensive advertising campaigns Britain had ever seen. It could be argued that the big brewers identified that cold, fizzy lager was a great way of weaning a new generation of fizzy pop drinking young uns onto a premium price product, rather than the acquired taste and accepted prices of traditional beer.
This model was replicated almost all over the UK, Scotland and Wales lost almost all their brewing heritage, only a few pockets were left and the Big Six could sell us exactly what they liked irrespective of quality or local tastes and traditions. It wasn't a time of selling us what we wanted, virtually the only beer available was what they wanted to sell into a highly monopolised market place due to the tied house system.

 

I can certainly concur on the difference between a brand brewed in the UK and a brand brewed in Europe.

Years ago, we wandered to the Stella Artois brewery in Leuven. Didn't go in, but marvelled at it's scale. We had a drink in a nearby place and since we were nearby, plumped for Stella. We'll drink some lagers. Dry hopped or some of the more recent ones cut with fruit or brewed to bring out a fruit flavour.

Anyway. The Stella in that bar was completely different to the UK. It had a hint of floral to it, the bubbles remained much longer. It was slightly darker I'd say too. It had flavour, which was a shock.

I'm not bothered about Helles, it just feels a fad that everyone has jumped on since Camden did so well out of it. I much prefer wits, wheats or sours if it's warm and I want to quench my thirst.

But lager has it's place. Just a shame it has a big place considering the huge scale and range of options available.

 

I stand corrected

 

It's a good mistake to make...follow it up next time you're in Belgium, they have some magnificent ales....although I have to admit I can't drink the sour wild yeast stuff.

 

I love Tennents, perfect session lager.

If it had a goat herder on the tap and was called El tennentino it would be massive.

 

I went to Bruges 2 years ago and sampled a couple of fine beers. Also got totally smashed at the Derby beer festival once on bottled Belgian beers. My mate and his wife were so pissed that they "forgot" to get off the train at Burton and ended up in Tamworth....

 

I was in Bruges earlier this summer. So many fantastic beers and bars. The house beer in De Garre is out of this world. 11% mind so not exactly a session ale!

 

Wuss ;-)

 

Also a beautiful city. We cycled there from a camp site on the coast near De Haan.

 

We went probably 12-15 years ago and as much as we love Belgium, Bruges just wasn't our cup of tea. Even in February it was rammed.

Ghent I'd say is probably our favourite, but Mons, Mechelen, Namur and Leuven we also really enjoyed. And thinking about it, Brussels is probably my personal favourite. Just love the place. If we ever travel again, I think that's probably where I'd angle for.