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Small Beers are a style of beer rarely seen these days. NERAX is fortunate to have not one but two of these cask ales on offer this year. Small Beers are the product of a brewing technique that dates back to medieval times, parti-gyle brewing.

In an article in Brewing Techniques magazine Randy Mosher said this about parti-gyle brewing:

“One technique that has almost disappeared from modern practice is parti-gyle brewing. This technique involved drawing off the first part of the mash and using it to make strong ale or barley wine, then remashing the grain and drawing off the second runnings for a more ordinary, weak and watery concoction called small beer, the light beer of its day.

The fabrication possibilities of the time made it relatively easy to construct large wooden mash tuns, but the technology required to construct equally large kettles had yet to be developed. Consequently, English ale breweries often made three brews from a single mash – strong (XXX), common (XX) and small (X) beer. In fact, this is the historical basis of the categories of Belgian Trappist beers: triple was made from the undiluted wort from the mash, double was made from the runoff from reflooding the first mash, and single was made from a subsequent infusion.”

The first of our beers is from the John Harvard brewpub in Connecticut, and the second is from our very own Marshall Wharf Brewing Company in Belfast.

The folks at Marshall Wharf initially set out to make a Barley Wine. That beer reportedly finished off in the 12% range. We’re not getting that beer at NERAX, but I’m sure looking forward to trying it somewhere here in Maine. The small beer, Little Toot, was a natural part of the Barley Wine project. It’s not finished yet, but it seems to be headed for a range of 4.1%-4.5%  This one on cask should be a lot of fun.

Safely back in Portland, it’s a good time to reflect on my experiences at the National Winter Ales Festival in Manchester. In particular, why work at the festival as a volunteer rather than just going as a punter? The work is hard, and all we get is a t-shirt and some free beer, so why do it?

As one of the people who help run the NERAX cask ale festival in Boston, I enjoy the opportunity to learn at the Manchester festival. Manchester seems to attract experienced festival managers from across the UK. Most of the volunteers I met either run a local festival or have a significant position running the Great British Beer Festival in London in August. The opportunity to talk about running festivals is unique, and I inevitably return with new ideas and insights.

There’s far more benefit than just the intricacies of festival management. In my experience volunteering at a festival offers an intensity and breadth of interaction with beer culture that is unavailable in any other way. Just attending a festival offers a unique chance to sample an incredible variety of beers side by side. A volunteer however has a much richer experience.

I particularly like working at the trade session of the festival, wherein brewers and industry people gather. Nowhere else do I get to chat with so many industry people at one time. Putting my NERAX hat on, it’s a great place to recruit speakers and source beer for our festival.

Interacting with fellow volunteers is equally enjoyable. Taken as a group these people know beer as well as any collection of individuals in the world. This is a terrific place to talk about beer! Add in the experience of setting up the beer, caring for it, maintaining cooling systems, and organizing service at the bar, and you begin to see the attractions for a beer lover.

There is another compelling reason for volunteering: without volunteers these beer festivals simply would not exist.

If any of this sounds attractive, we always are looking for new volunteers at NERAX. The festival runs 25 March through 28 March, and we set up Mon and Tues, the 23rd and 24th. You can volunteer for setup, one session, or multiple sessions. We have jobs of every description and skills level; all are welcome. For every session you work you get free admission to another session, a couple of pints of beer, and a Redbones sandwich.

You can sign up at our website, www.NERAX.org

Oakham’s Attila from Cambridgeshire has been selected Champion Beer of Britain. This is a 7.5% Barley Wine described by the brewery as having “fruity notes and an elderberry aroma, with the taste of ripe red berries and citrus fruit and a long bitter fruity finish”. It tasted wonderful, and I’d hardly argue with that description.

Here’s how it was selected… I got recruited to serve beers at the tasting so got to see the process for the first time.

The Winter Festival tastes beers in four categories: Old Ales and Strong Milds, Stouts, Porters, and Barley Wines. There were five or six beers in each category; each beer had won a tasting at a local festival.

The judging panels for each category consisted of five people selected by the competition organizer. The leader of each tasting panel was an experienced beer taster. The rest of the panel contained a mix of brewers, pub owners, and novice tasters – there was a real effort to get a cross-section of experience. Each taster received a packet of material beforehand describing the attributes and expectations for their category of beer. The objective is to judge how well each beer expresses the style, not just whether a taster ‘likes the beer’.

There are five bars at the Winter Festival. One of the bars contains only the beers in competition for the champion beer.

The tasters meet at a round table in an isolated room, and have a scoring sheet with columns for each coded beer, with space for four considerations: appearance, aroma, taste and after-taste. They code each 1-10. The scoring weights taste heavier than the other three considerations. The leader calls for beers one at a time. The serving people (my colleague and I served for the Stout tasting team) then take their trays to the champion beer bar and collect coded glasses with samples of the first beer. This process continues until all six beers are tasted. During the scoring discussion among the tasters is encouraged.

The logistics for all this is impressive. Including requests for re-tastes, we handled over 100 glasses of beer, and to my knowledge none got mixed up…

Competions like this are a big deal to British brewers, with significant commercial impact. The festival trade session followed the announcement of the results, and trade discussion of the judging and results was pretty intense.

Marbehan! And the Brassigaume Beerfest

And so, last weekend we went to a little town on the Luxembourg-Brussels rail line – obviating any possibility of drinking and driving by using public transport.

Marbehan is a small dormitory town serving Arlon and more importantly Luxembourg has been the location of an unusual beer festival for the last 5 or so years. I learned about it from the ‘always handy’ Tim Webb guide to Belgium and LUXEMBOURG. First time we went there it was a revelation; we got off the train to what seemed a barren spot in the desert. Then we found the way to the festival by luck more than judgment – in actual fact the festival was and still is held in a tent at the local sports centre. These days there are good signposts put up by the organizers – for those of you that have NOT been there yet.

As I said it is an unusual beerfest. Their precepts are that only invited small brewers from the Gaume (a region that covers the surrounding area into France and Luxembourg too.) are there, mind you, there are the odd aberrations – this year a British Brewer was there as well as one from northern Italy, one of the stalwarts was not invited – Millevertus, as the Organiser thought he was now contract brewing – against the ‘rules’ – bit of a play on words, as the organizer is the brewer/owner of the Rullesbrewery, close by.

Enough of the background/preamble. We arrived at the station to find that we were not the only people to alight there; it seemed a bunch of teachers from the International School in Luxembourg had the same idea as us. Unlike us, they had no idea where to go, so it was the arm in the air, and the usual – ‘follow us we know where to get decent beer in this town.’ Basically a 15 minute walk downhill (shame, I would have liked the slope the other way, so the stumble for the train is easier). We got to the sports centre easily – it was still light!

When we entered the tent, we had the usual waves of recognition from the usual brewers we see at beer fests in Belgium, and having brought our ‘last years’ glasses with us, all we needed was tokens as this was an all token festival, – even down to the food offerings in the beer tent. In the tent door, you could have gourmet cuisine á la Biére on camping tables – tres chic! That you had to book for.

Naturally the Brasserie de Rulles was there along with the likes of Caracole – being served by the ‘Confrérie des Decapsuleurs’ – AKA ‘The brotherhood of the Bottle Openers,’ some really nice guys who also make their own brews – yum yum. The Brasserie de Fantome was notable by his absence, and when I asked Gregoire – ‘Mr Rulles’ he just went off in a kind of huff, as he had no idea why Danny of Fantome had just disappeared into the ether. All in all there were around 25 different breweries there, all you need to do is Google Brassigaume, and you’ll see the list of them, so pointless reiterating this. I did ask about the British brewer who was supposed to have been there, I was told – Douane! Á Calais! The guy had been held up at Calais by the customs officers, and him with a truck full of beer… can’t think why…

Shortly after that Stuart of the Tigertops Brewery actually arrived, on his own. So, guess what, I went back into beerfest mode – just like NERAX earlier this year. We hauled his stand out assembled it, and no sooner than we had the hand pumps laid on the bar top, we had people wanting to buy beer !!!! (what is this – anyone would think we’re at a beer festival!) – 20 minutes later we tapped the racked casks (for anyone wondering, racking is a process where the cask conditioned beer is allowed to settle and mature in one cask so it’s ready for serving – like in a pub, it’s then decanted into another sterile cask, so the beer is real and cask conditioned, but as easily usable as keg – but has to be used within a day or so.). As Stuart had been on the road since 5am he took a well needed breather, and I began to serve the draught beer – using the real handpumps he had brought – a novelty for the locals!

As it was quite early the punters were still quite thin on the ground, but the line grew when they heard I speak not only French, but Luxemburger in addition to English, on account the visitors predominantly were Francophones, and few had any English to ‘speak of’ – oops what a pun…. I even had a German guy turn up and try his English on me… I understood his English, but he had no idea what I said in reply – one of the problems when you know a little language… It’s not the formulation of the question that’s the problem, it’s understanding the reply! – been there…

The beers Stuart had brought were really quite good, a beer called Challenger, no not named for the shuttle, but named after the hop content – and being a hophead, that was my mainstay for the rest of the fest. The other was a ‘Ginger Beer’, but saying that, it was not a soda, far from it. The beer was excellent and had so much Ginger root added it was like… Well dare I say an American brew readied for the GABF, absolutely brilliant. As I could describe the beers to the locals in their vernacular sales went well. For myself I had been trawling up and down the inside of the island bar setup, sampling snifters of the other breweries’ wares, so I was quite well on the way.

The beerfest went on into the evening, very pleasantly I have to say, as I was still tippling the wares of the other brewers – just on grounds of quality control of course……hic…

Sadly, all things had to come to a conclusion, we had calculated it would take 15 minutes to get back to the station so left in time to catch a fast train back to Luxembourg.

I decided we would leave the fest 25 minutes before the train arrived – it took us the additional time to say all our goodbyes, and then to find the station after taking a wrong turn, ignoring my wife’s suggested subsequent directions and using my innate knack of getting back on the correct route, we arrived 5 minutes before the train – phew!

In fact the bus driver would not take payment, as we were ‘International Travelers’ our rail ticket was good for the bus too!

And that was our day at the Brassigaume. What I didn’t mention was I didn’t travel home empty handed, as Stuart was very grateful for the help, I had a 75cl and two 33cl’s in the backpack – all unusual beers – vis-à-vis, one was the ‘Podges Stout’ for my wife. (This beer, named for a friend of ours is a really quaffable beer.)

And so to bed, to dream of the trip to Hasselt in a couple of weeks and their super beerfest.