HIP HOPS: THE CRAFT BEER REVOLUTION

14 Aug 2014 By David Fuhrmann-Lim

HIP HOPS: THE CRAFT BEER REVOLUTION

By Tony Naylor

Brewer Jamie Hancock is having a “moment”. He is recalling the occasion, 10 years ago, when he tasted Magic Hat #9, his first proper, hop-loaded, American pale ale. “I was working in a pub in Leicester that was starting to get in Goose Island and Sierra Nevada, but that Magic Hat was like: ‘Bloody hell, this is a totally new thing.'”

At the time, Hancock drank Belgian beers and traditional English cask ale, but the imports he was beginning to come across from the burgeoning US “craft beer” scene had a revelatory intensity of flavour. “It was the fruitiness of the hops. You can get those flavours with British hops but you have to use absolutely loads, whereas American hops are intense with pine, orange and big citrus flavours.” Today, those flavours are everywhere in the UK. Over the past decade, the headline news about British beer has been grim: 31 pubs close every week; UK alcohol consumption is falling; we are drinking less beer. But among a new generation of grassroots beer fanatics, the story could not be more different. The past few years have seen a huge upsurge of excitement around creative brewing and radical new beer styles.

Read the rest at The Guardian