Greene King IPA wins silver award

I hadn't realised that this newsgroup gave publicity. The discussion here, about GK IPA, is between people who already know what they like and what they don't. KI Pale Rider may be marvellous, but this discussion is taking place under the heading 'GK IPA wins silver award'. So it should be about that, not about some other beer that's won something else.

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

16:46:11 +0100 MID: [snip good stuff - agreed]

Yes, but we'd all agree about that, and it's much more fun to have an argument.

Dave

Chris, I don't think GK care very much what people in this ng say about them. If they do, they won't be very pleased, as almost all comment has been negative.

Pale Rider is a very good beer which most subscribers to this ng will know. The fact that it won cbob is perfectly understandable, unlike the runner up.

BTW, I'm not 'disgruntled', I'm astonished and very angry, because I know GK IPA well and I know the mileage GK will get out of this bizarre judgement. We've got enough bloody GK around these parts without it turning up in the freehouses as well. CAMRA as an organization has a case to answer.

Best regards, Paul

-- Paul Sherwin Consulting

Christine12/8/04 1:22 PM

I'm no expert, and I understand the arguments being expressed here about the Silver winner. However every effort should be made to stop abuse of such competitions

FWIW, the last pint of GK IPA I had was last weekend. It was a very pleasant pint, but hardly a big talking point. Also drank on a very hot day outdoors. That often seems to bring out subtle esters and the finer points of flavour sometimes anyway (with a gang of bloody large wasps trying to get in on the act in my case!).

I was pleased to see Pale Rider win. I love PR, it is standard fare in one of my Buxton locals and regularly guests in a couple of others. It is very consistent. However, I wonder how much the hot weather and associated thirst psychology in London affected judging decisions for that? Is that also not a factor here?

Some people would describe PR as a Summer beer (as per the seasonal light coloured brews which appear all over right about now) - and one with a quite high abv. Having said that, I do drink it all year. Awarding top place to a light-coloured fruity and bitter brew like this - made using American hops

- just seems more likely due to the very hot weather?

Finally, how can any competition awarding an overall Champion beer ever manage to please everyone's ideas of rightness and fairness. It is a non-starter IMO.

The threat from the pubcos like the Spirit Group with their growing spreading power, soaking up good outlets and screwing up others by turning everything into a plastic world of Crap Pints R Us, is far more important surely than bitching about a runner-up award.

CR

It's easier if you spend a fair amount of time looking at the scale plans but I'm so glad GK got a spot that ensured at least something approaching the prominence they deserved. (Maybe Olympia 2 would be a better spot ;-)

Pale Rider and Easy Rider are both great ales in fact we had both of them on at Bromsgrove Beer Festival.

The winner of our beer of the festival was Oakham Bishops Farewell however.

Church End's Pheasant Plucker was my personal favourite.

In message , Steven Pampling wrote

Judging by what else was thought to be good probably not.

In message , Chris Rockcliffe wrote

This also describes the GK policy very well.

And there lies the problem. If the award is devalued in people's eyes (and I remember the uproar when Ind Coope DBA won) then all the beers are tainted.

It may be, of course, that GKIPA is an outstanding beer, and that our prejudices mean that we believe it is crap even before we taste it: only in a blind tasting will it ever be recognised as a good beer, if that is the case.

Or it may be that there have been some amazing casks of GKIPA about in the last few weeks - much as there were some amazing casks of TTL about when they used to win the award.

I tend to favour the latter case - but the former case may well be the situation.

I see no point in having a CBoB award at all. It's totally subjective, one persons great beer is anothers duff beer.

One persons view about its validity. The view is totally subjective. If you see what I mean.

You could consider that until CAMRA did CBoB the industry running its own competition was the only standard. I have been to the brewing industry setup at Burton[1], seen their standard of beer keeping and tasted the results. It's difficult to describe the state of the beer and I can only say that with that level of beer keeping at their flagship competition it is no wonder the big brewers promote keg so much.

[1]An ex-brewer got some tickets and invited me. An insight into how little some of these people know, and how much the ones that do know are afraid to say.

I think that the even more amazing thing about this GKIPA saga is all of the unreported beer of the festival awards that it must have won to ever be under consideration to be the CBoB. Or even more amazingly perhaps thousands of CAMRA member have been bombarding HQ with letters demanding its inclusion!

Alan12/8/04 10:32 PM

I actually didn't realise that until I took a look at GKs website. I like or have enjoyed at least 6 of their branded cask ales.

I'm not in the trade so don't take too active an interest... But why does this brewery appear to be copying the worst pubcos like Spirit Group in all their dreadful policies. What they do AFAICS is get rid of any individualism as if it were a bloody disease.

What they also do is remove all possibility of managers of outlets being creative, being profitable and more importantly doing anything more than hanging onto their caretaker jobs - selling whatever they are forced to buy from a central purchasing system at inflated prices.

People used to complain at the breweries stranglehold on the nations pubs, lack of competition and forcing s**te beer on us. Isn't the situation getting worse than it was before in many places? Obscene profits creamed off by companies and individuals who never touch a cask - physically or metaphorically speaking.

The brainpower here in this NG should be able to shed some more light.

CR

For those who dont know there is currently a trade and industry enquiry into pubcos. SIBA recently made a written submission which may be of interest and address's some of the issues raised here

CAMRA, SIBA and IFFB Recently worked on 'the cask ale report'

We really feel that this is the start of a big change that will be benefical for all of us.

Ben Harrison

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Dave Wickett, who owns Kelham Island, also owns two pubs and a club. One of the pubs is in the USA - how many pubs do GK own over there?

He's not exactly the most publicity-shy person I've come across either, and Pale Rider has been available in bottle form in local supermarkets for a couple of years now, to say nothing of it in draught form in some pubs in Sweden, courtesy of yours truly.