Liberty versus food

You seen that show on TV? Man vs Food? Where the American fella travels the land eating truely ridiculous amounts of grub from some very American places?

Yeah, well, some of it is nonsense, but you can't help but envy some of the stuff that he gets to try, and what always gets me is the BBQ. The Americans have a way of smoking and cooking meat that you just don't get in the UK, big servings with a halo of smoke in the meat, a 'bark' on the outside from long slow cooking and flavours that knock your head back.

We found that, right here in London.

Dukes Brew and Que up there is Hackney.

14oz Beef Ribs, Mesquite smoked and absolutely gorgeous.

Race you there.

Straight outta Langport

You don't really expect to find an American guy turning out truely cutting edge beers all the way out here in the Somerset Levels, but that's what Justin at Moor Beer is doing.

California born and bred, Justin Hawke arrived in Somerset via LA, San Francisco, Berlin and Oxfordshire. He brought out the old Moor brewery a few years ago, updated the equipment and started to brew some really good beers. He has a strong antipathy for finings, so sends out a lot of his beers unfined. To those brought up on the British mantra of clarity equalling good beer this is a little odd, but in reality the soft haze of Moor beers adds to the flavour and mouth feel, and does nothing to detract. The Germans and Belgians of course have no problem at all with hazy beer, so why should we?

Moor also use a fantastic wooden shield as their instantly recognisable pump clip, they just change the paper insert in the centre for the different beers. It's a simple solution to the pump clip issue, and looks a lot better than many of the plastic wonders that other brewers send out.

New out this week is 'Hoppiness' a 6.5% Pale with lots of hop admittedly, but a sweet and fruity charecter that leans toward a barley wine more than anything else. It's brilliant in the 660ml 'Bombers' that Moor bottle their beer in, but even better on Keg.

Remember, Drink Moor Beer!

Smokin' beer from the Bow outback.

Another month and another blog about a new beer being added to the liberty beers list. So far so normal.

But these ones speak to us. These ones are from our heartland in East London.

We spent a day the other week visiting two new breweries out East. we saw Beavertown and Hackney Brewery, both within a couple of miles of one another and definitely and defiantly part of the new East End.

Hackney Brewery is located in traditional style in a Railway Arch, and they have a cool little brewery there that has been going for a few months now. They called us in to see if we could help them get their beer out to a few more places in London, and when they said that their current special was called 'Liberty' then we knew that they where aware what time it was. How can we turn down an obvious match like that? So this week the first deliveries of Hackney Best Bitter, Blonde, American Pale and of course Liberty are out of the door.

The Best and Blonde are fine examples of the style, with a significant hop presence, but with an equally warm malt balance, The American Pale is a bit darker than you might expect, heading off toward Amber, but has a good flavour to it with the usual mix of American aroma hops, but with a bit more malt bite than many. The Liberty is brewed with, as you might guess, Liberty hops. Liberty is a hybrid American/German hop that can be used for aroma and bittering, and gives a good blend of the new American style and a very solid traditional German lager aspect. I really liked it, even if it didn't have such a brilliant name....

Beavertown.....oh Beavertown.

Dukes Joint is a pub just off the New North Road, it's got that look of slightly shabby bohemia that is clearly very expensive to achieve, and is run by a couple of guys whose photos on their website made me think where exactly the sort of hipsters that I was going to hate. Irritatingly enough, Logan and Byron turn out to be thoroughly good blokes, and along with James, who was schooled at The Kernel, do a fine job.

Stuck in the corner of the pub, across from the open plan kitchen, is the brew kit. Yeah, there is beer, but there is also a huge monolith of a smoker in the kitchen. The smoker is full of mesquite smoked Beef ribs. I've now lost interest in beer. I love ribs, I'll tell you about the ribs later.

Oh yeah, the Beer. They where brewing 'Smog Rocket' the Smoked London Porter when we got there, and it led to an extended conversation about the level of smokiness that the smoked malt gave the beer, and how the malt they had brought had different results from bag to bag. This batch is apparently back to form after a slightly less smokey result last time, but unless you tried them back to back you wouldn't call it anything but a really good and unusual smoked beer. We'd taken Ric, the Beer Sommelier from The Old Red Cow, along with us, and he liked it. A lot. If you drop into the Old Red Cow in Smithfield this week you might catch it on the bar there, if you get there in time.

Apart from Smog Rocket, you get 8 Ball, a Rye-PA that we really rate. There is a slight vanilla sweetness mid mouth with this that more traditional malts don't give you, and as you'd expect, plenty of Hop to finish. I like the style and along with the new Rattlesnake from Binghams, expect to see a few more Rye beers appearing over the next few months. Neck Oil is their 'standard' Best Bitter and it's also bloody good. Easy drinking it isn't as pallet blitzing as some beers can be, whilst retaining a fresh and modern aspect.

There are also the Alpha and Omega ranges, artist produced labeling and more experimental brews available in strictly limited runs. We'll see what we can rescue from the Cellar for you before it all goes.

Things, they are a changing....

More updates from the Liberty Beer nerve centre.

This week sees the introduction of our new reciprocal agreement with Bath Ales down in Bristol. In simple terms it means that they will be transporting both our and their beer to the new Liberty Beer base in Ilford, and we will be distributing their products to their customers in the London area. Liberty aren't selling Bath Ales products ourselves, but we can smooth the way for any of our customers who want to try their stuff.

New base you say? Yes, Liberty now have a more permenant home just off the A12 at Ilford. We are currently rushing about like lunatics to get it all straight and ship shape, but it has an extensive chilled area to ensure anything that isn't straight onto a van from the supplier will be kept in the best possible shape whilst it stays with us. We aren't changing our policy on 'just in time' delivery, but we can streamline supply of some none temperature sensitive products like Cider so that we can supply more lines, and means that we control the temperature that our Ales are stored at.

New Beers? Obviously. We are welcoming Buxton Brewery, Marble from Manchester, Mallinsons Brewery from the Northeast, Hawkshead from The Lakes, and Revolutions from Yorkshire over the next Month, We also have Brewshed from Suffolk comming soon, and finally have a proper deal in place with the marvelous Arbor Ales in Bristol for supply of three product lines that should be available on a weekly basis from now on, increasing as they move to their new larger brew kit later in the year.

Foreign Beers? Well, maybe. Steve and I are planning to speak to some US brewers about regular supplies on Keg, and a tasting trip to Copenhagen to check out the Danish micro scene.

More news soon.

So, do you like the new website?

As you might notice looking about, we've had a little update of the website. When we first did the job we used a lot of stock images and talked about the vision that we had for the business before it became what it is today.

What we have done now is start to use more images of our own products as they are presented by our own customers, so you might well see your own Pub on the site. we have also changed up the text to better reflect our personallities and where liberty beer is going today.

If you have any feedback for us on the changes, please get in touch.

What Next?

If you haven't seen enough NEW yet, then how about Red Willow from Macclesfield and Dancing Duck from Derbyshire in the next month?

That do you?

The Brewers.

It really is all about the beer.

Since December when I last posted, a few things have changed on the supply side of Liberty as well.

First, who has gone?

Well, Brewdog never really arrived, as it became clear that their ethos was very different to ours. And Plain Ales decided that someone else would do a better job of taking their beer into London, so we wish them both all the best in the future, but don't call us......

The unpleasant bit out of the way, who has arrived?

Well, we now have not one but two great English Craft Lager makers with Calvors joining us earlier in the year. Thier Dark Lager is really very good, and as with Cotswold they do it properly, with the beer 'lagering' in the tank for at least six weeks to give it the proper depth of flavour. It's completely different to most people's understanding of what 'lager' is if you've only ever drank bland Corporate fizziness.

Following hard on their heels, a Foursome of West Country brewers. Firstly we finally convinced Justin that we'd take good enough care of his casks and got the fabulous Moor Beer on board, if you haven't tried their unique take on beer, from unfined golden beers to big hefty dark and fruity 'Old Freddy Walker' than you really should. Somerland Gold in the Keg is probably going to be the taste of my Summer now I've found a pub nearby that sells it, and then there is Arbor Ales from Bristol. Arbor have a really strong range of cask conditioned beers that are a little bit from the left field, but truely excellent to drink. Their single hop monster 'Yamkima Valley' weighs in at a respectable(!) 7.5% ABV and saved my life the other evening when I wondered exactly why it is that I put myself through our weekly 'routine'. It reminds me EXACTLY why I love this job. It's mustard.

The other two, Cornish pairing Tintagel and Harbour, well, Tintagel enticed me with two really great beers at 'The Front Bar' in Falmouth, 'Harbour Special' and 'Cornwalls Pride' convinced me enough that they where worth the long drive to Cornwall, and over at Harbour they have another graduate of the Herriott Watt school of mad brewers working on a fantastic new brewery plant, so I very much look forward to their first selection of brews when they arrive this very week. If the pre-production test brews I was treated to at the brewery where anything to go by, they should be a bit special.

And so to the Welshers. Step up messers Tiny Rebel of Newport. what can I say? Any brewery that hands me a single hop Nelson Sauvin beer as good as 'Full Nelson' is straight on the list, and for youngsters they are deffinitely doing it right. This week sees another new beer out their box of tricks, 'Cutch' which has, in the Sesame Street tradition, many hops all starting with the letter 'C'. Thats Citra, Chinook, Cascade, Columbus.......

Still not done.

Ilkley came to us with an offer of their new MJ keg range, featuring the blinding Summit IPA and equally God like Fortis stout, but we quickly twisted their arm into letting us have their casks down here as well. They danced onto the stage with two collaborations, with Pete Brown and Mellisa Cole, they then topped that by drafting in HRH Princess Anne to brew a Jubilee Beer. Now, that's skills.

Last but by no means least, Grain from Norfolk have been working with us for a while, and enjoyed their second strong rotation last week with a chance to grab hold of their 316 Extra Pale with the new stainless pump clip. These beers are awesomely good anyway, but when you have this on the pump, well you are a Don. I'm hoping that we can soon get Grain available every week for you lovely people.

It was here, and now it's gone....

We did a clever.

Well, Rob at Rebel Brewing Co in Cornwall did most of the clever bit, brewing us a little diamond of a beer after we had a conversation about colaboration beers and Belgian beer in general.

Here's what 'Podge' from Chelmsford CAMRA and 'Podge's Belgian Beer Tours' Fame had to say about it (and this fella knows a thing or two about Belgian beers....)

"Very good label design.

Drunk at room temperature with full sediment.

Certainly a darkish beer with interesting aromas including some bubblegum, phenol alcohols and a touch of acetone and light pear dropy notes which lessen quickly. It is billed as 4.9abv but seems to have more taste/body than that The label says a wheat beer but it does not show these origins and wheat is not to the fore. Not over spiced, easy drinking and has lots of gobackability, ie you could drink more than 1 and therefore could be commercially successful.

"Dark spiced belgian style wheat beer" WTFIT I'd like to say true to the style but as there is no such thing this beer is not following a style..

Pretty good beer though."

We got six casks and a few cases of bottles from Rob in early May, and the casks sold the same day, which was pleasing. If you speak nicely to Steve you might be able to get some bottles, but to be honest he's guarding them pretty jealously and hasn't actually admitted to most customers that we have them.....

Some time later that same blog.........

Somethings gonna change.......

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, it's been some time.

Last time I blogged on here, it was back before Christmas, and things where going along swimmingly.

Since then, well, it's been absolutely manic here at Liberty Towers. we've been joined by a load of new pubs, a selection of fine breweries, we fell in with a big name, and fell out again just as quickly. We have been rattling along at such a rate that it's become a weekly fight against exhaustion, vehicle gross permitted weights and common sense just to get the beers out there to all our lovely customers, but we are loving every minute of it.

As you will see elsewhere, the website has changed a bit over the last couple of days, and it'll evolve a little more over the next couple until we get it somewhere nearer to what we actually want. It was good when we started, but we've rolled with the punches and swung for the gaps so often now that the copy actually bore very little similarity to what it is we actually do now, and it was all a bit formal and stilted, so we changed it.

There are a load of other things happening as well....

We are talking to some people about giving up a few more hard earned Pound notes to finance the first major expansion of Liberty Beer since we started, it'll enable us to do more beer for more people more often, but it does mean that in the next few months it might not always be Steve or I that you see for your weekly deliveries if you have managed somehow to get used to us. It'll also mean the end of the nasty and slightly comical hire vans, to be replaced with something far more in keeping with our 'brand' (ooooh get me!)

We will be announcing the grand opening of our new chilled distribution hub in down town Essex in the next few weeks, which will make our lives a great deal easier, and also a deal with Bath Ales down here in Bristol is on the cards that will see Liberty providing porterage for their beers in London quite apart from our own continuing expansion.

And we are heading rapidly toward our Birthday, and we have something special under our hats for that as well, I won't go too much on it at the moment, but it'll be quite different to any beer festival that I've ever been to, and we will be showcasing our entire range for customers, suppliers and consumers for 3 full days toward the end of the year with masses of entertainment, food and good stuff for you to enjoy. Stay in touch to see what we are up to a bit later in the year.