Greene King IPA wins silver award

I thought the true IPA style was fairly strong (say between 4% and 5%), fairly pale and quite dry. Examples that spring to mind, though neither was called IPA, are Worthington White Shield and the excellent English Ale once marketed by Whitbread, which was actually a Fremlin's beer sometimes known as a stock ale, I believe.

If you're going for the historical style, you're looking at something with a still higher ABV, starting at about 5% and getting to insane levels in some cases. You're also looking at an extremely bitter and occasionally hoppy beer (as compared with the American extremely hoppy and usually extremely bitter, but often fairly sweet, ales).

The Submarine Captain wrote in uk.food+drink.real-ale on Mon, 09 Aug

I honestly can't say I've noticed an improvement, though I didn't try it at the GBBF.

Oh dear. Shirley there is a way round this? It does seem a pretty easy way for a brewer without a full set of scruples to make a change, even a minor one.

Agreed. However, I'm rather less enamoured of the concept of an annual CBoB than I was before.

Dave

Yes, you take the beer sampled from one of the 18's. Now would the CBoB organiser be devious enough to do that?

The first thought people should be giving is that the submissions for CBoB come through a complicated route and depend on people having tasted many examples over previous months for the beer to have even appeared on the list for consideration.

Perhaps GK really have improved the product?

Apparently what turned up matches the current output to pubs.

A suggestion (post flood) in the bar that night was that perhaps the poor quality in pubs was down to the licensees...

(Ooops, that's bound to upset someone)

Knowing the people involved in organising the competition I feel confident in saying that they would be deeply offended by the suggestion.

We have a rather dedicated guy that does lab testing to stop that. As I said elsewhere apparently the supplied beer matched current supplies to pubs.

How about

1. Perhaps the cellarmanship in the CBoBv cellar was a bit better than the average GK pub.

Purely personal opinion and all that, but you do wonder.

That sounds like a folk memory of last year.

Brewery bars this year faced the entrance or the BSF bar (with the exceptions of Woodfordes, Ridleys, Theakston and Wychwood.)

In message , Steven Pampling wrote

If GK are so worried about poor quality in their own outlets why don't they sack the managers that are giving their brand such a poor reputation.

Steven, we all know there's no great mystery to good cellarmanship. It's just a matter of professionalism and following the rules. My local pub sells a *lot* of IPA (2 18s a week) and the cellarmanship is excellent, but the beer rarely rises above 'quite good'. I write as someone who has defended GK against what I consider to be unjustified attacks by other CAMRA members.

Best biiter in Britain it isn't.The very idea is laughable. I'd be genuinely surprised if actual corruption had taken place, but I have no idea how this judgement was arrived at. Everybody else I know is equally perplexed.

I do hope the people involved in reaching this decision aren't going to adopt a bunker mentality here. Ordinary CAMRA members are entitled to know what's been going on. We don't pay our subs every year to be made to feel foolish.

Best regards, Paul

-- Paul Sherwin Consulting

The competition is of beers as they appear for judging. If for whatever reason the others were not on top form, or not to the personal taste of the judges then the result may differ from expectations.

The big thing to note - and no one really seems to be looking at this - is that the Champion Beer of Britain is Kelham Island Pale Rider. It isn't getting the level of publicity it deserves while a runner up is being argued about.

Can anyone give me a good reason why people shouldn't be shouting from the rooftops about Pale Rider? Is it not one of the best beers in Britain and rightly judged as current Champion Beer of Britain? Forget the nearly made its and concentrate on the winner.

Strangely enough so was everyone in the office - including the person that organises CBoB.

Whatever happens in the follow up to this, the answers won't appear here swiftly as the CBobv organiser isn't on the net. I believe paper copies of specific items are sent to them.

Totally proving the total stupidity of CBoB. That it is awarded on the personal tastes of a majority of a panel of what 10 or 12 people. So 6 or 7 people may think it good and it's the best in the country. I think not!

People say it's cheap publicity for CAMRA. I'd say it very cheap publicity for the brewer and very little publicity at all for CAMRA.

Sorry you seem to be mixing publicity and controvercy here. I sure KI are tring hard to get as much publicity as possible out of their award, and I'm sure we'll soon be seeing TV adds saying GK IPA is the best bitter in the country.

They are, but the voice won't be heard as loud as GK's.

Steven Pampling wrote in uk.food+drink.real-ale on Wed, 11 Aug 2004

Well, would they?

It's implicit in what I (and possibly others) were saying before: to be honest, GK IPA is not a beer I would have considered submitting for CBoB. I'd be surprised if many individual CAMRA members had nominated it, and I can't recall seeing it win a local award.

Yes, I did accept this possibility (in the bit you snipped); but I also said that I hadn't tasted any evidence of this improvement myself, nor have many others, it would seem. This latter point wouldn't surprise me if it was a small local or micro brewery, but it does for a brewery of the size and distribution of GK.

Cheers

Dave

In article , Steven Pampling writes

No, it comes from not reading the map in the programme correctly! I didn't remember seeing the GK bar.

Any such judging, be it for beer, cider, wine or any food, is judged by a small panel and relies on their personal tastes. CBoB is no different in that respect from other competition.

I believe that the finalists for CBoB are shortlisted from recommendations by CAMRA members, winners of local beer festivals' etc., so Greene King IPA must have pleased rather more than 6 or 7 people.

How would you suggest any improvement in the judging process, and what are your qualifications for assuming that your criticisms are valid and should be heeded?

In message , Paul Sherwin writes

The cider&perry award people take great care to avoid ringers by making sure the producers cannot guess which sample is going to CAMRA. Its not enough. A really determined producer can produce a large batch of 'improved' product and flood all the likely intermediates with it at the right time.

Takes some guesswork but I believe it has happened (cant prove it so I wont name the 'product'). The good news was they needed to produce so much 'improved' stuff we actually got to drink some of it in pubs and it was very good. The bad was less than 1 in 10 pints were the good version ;(

For cbob there's a narrow time window for delivery, in theory a brewery could alter its entire production for a week or 2 and guarantee getting a fixed barrel to cbob. To actually get entered they'd need to improve the product permanently but I suspect they would only need to supply to a small number of pubs to play the system - after all do you judge a beer based on the poorly kept version in most pubs or just the well run ones?

Eventually we'll find out if GK improved their product or if 'something else' happened. I really hope they improved it, once we get over the embarrassment the award might encourage GK to not slip back into mediocrity and we all win. We don't like brewers based on their actions

- *if* they change their behaviour we need to change our opinion of them.

I am so pissed off that a brewery who came second is getting all the publicity. Let's hear it for Kelham Island! Their Pale Rider has been a magical beer for a good 15 years now and the staff there deserve all the congratulations and publicity they can get.

As opposed to a brewery who gets loads of publicity anyway and is getting more because disgruntled people are choosing to give it to them for free.

Bah humbug.

Roy Bailey wrote in uk.food+drink.real-ale on Thu, 12 Aug 2004

Yes, that's what the CAMRA website says (once it's finished hurling unnecessary cookies at you). I guess there's quite a lot of entries for GK IPA from the 'etc' category (unless I missed all the local awards it won).

Hopefully, but I'm not (yet) one of them.

I can tell when an egg has gone off. But I can't lay another one.

Dave