Britain has a long history of brewing traditional cask beers, using the finest, freshest ingredients and is unique to the great British pub. With more breweries than ever producing the nectar of all beers, it can be quite daunting knowing how to pick the perfect pint.

Cask Marque’s Annabel Smith is the UK’s only female beer inspector. She’s keen to dispel many of the myths that surround cask beer, such as it being fattening, and just a drink for men and help men and women pick, pour and enjoy a mouth watering pint (or half pint!).

Log onto our web TV show where Annabel will do a live taste test and talk about the difference in taste and range of beers on offer. Alongside her will be Kevin Steppe, menu development chef from pub restaurant group Chef & Brewer to tell you how to match the perfect pint with the perfect dish.

Annabel Smith and Kevin Steppe join us live to discuss everything beer.

For more information visit www.chefandbrewer.com

H: Vickie Letch

A: Annabel Smith - Cask Marque Beer Inspector

B: Kevin Steppe – Menu Development Chef, Chef and Brewer

H: On the show today, I’m going to take a look at just what makes beer so special.

Credits

H: Hello and welcome to Taste Talk, I’m Vickie Letch. For centuries, us Brits have been enjoying a traditional pint of beer. In fact, not so long ago, beer was drunk in place of water, as it was a safer option. Whatever your level of knowledge or interest in beer, you’ve come to the right place, because today we’re going to be exploring the following; The history and basic definitions of beer. We’ll be dispelling the myths and we’ll also be learning about the perfect beer and food matches, which I have to say I’m particularly looking forward to! A very warm welcome to Annabel and Kevin, thank you both for being here. Now Annabel, let’s start with you, a little birdie tells me you’re somewhat of a beer expert

A: That’s right. I’m the only female beer inspector in the UK, so I travel the length and breadth of the UK testing the quality of cask beer in pubs.

H: That’s quite an accolade to be the only woman doing that job in the UK, isn’t it?

A: It’s an absolute honour

H: And I bet you have lots of fans out there?

A: it’s interesting going into a pub, because a lot of people don’t associate women with drinking cask beer

H: So how did you end up doing this job?

A: I ran a pub for a long time, so I had…I learnt my craft in cask beer when I was running a pub. Learnt up on flavours, varieties as well some of the off flavours that occur through beer, and so when I went to earn my Cask Marque it was my dream job

H: Because it is a very broad subject, I’ve been learning just from chatting to you two this morning, so let’s go back to the very beginning. What is cask beer, how is it made and where does it even come from?

A: Cask beer is very different from other types of beer, such as lagers or stouts. The product when it’s brought into the cellar, it still needs some work doing on it, which is what the conditioning process is. The main thing to remember is cask beer is a living product, it’s unpasteurised, and the cellar-man or the publican has to create naturally occurring CO2 within that beer

H: OK, so how is cask beer made?

A: We’ve got four main ingredients. We have hops, malted barley, water and yeast. Now every grain of malted barley contains a huge amount of fermentable sugar. So that malted barley is ground up, mixed with hot water, and then the liquid that’s produced is drained off. This is called wort. That wort at the moment does not contain any alcohol, but as soon as we start adding yeast, and then we add hops, to add aroma and bitterness, some more flavour to that beer, that’s when we produce a cask ale, and it’s wrapped off into a container and sent into a pub where the cellar-man finishes the process

H: So where does it come from

A: Well all beer has its roots in Ancient Egypt, but if you think about the climate element of Northern Europe, we’ve got the perfect climate for growing grain. So beer has always been associated with Northern Europe, whereas wine has always been associated with the hotter countries in the world. And up until the 17th century, ¾ of brewers in this country where women, because it was a daily task, it was like making bread. It was only when the Industrial Revolution came about that production of beer became more industrialised. When people moved into the newly formed cities, pubs grew up and beer drinking really took off then

H: So how do we know we are drinking the perfect pint?

A: We tend to identify a perfect pint on four criteria. The first one is the temperature of the beer. The second one is making sure that the beer is absolutely clear. We want to make sure that there’s some very good aromas on the nose, such as citrusy, and finally is the condition of the beer – by condition I mean that it should always have a bit of a tingle on the tongue, and that’s the excess carbon dioxide, which has been produced by the conditioning process

H: So its actually quite simple when you know the things to look out for, isn’t it? So I’ve got my pint of beer. This is sort of an age old debate, and I know lots of my friends discuss this quite heatedly when we go to the pub. How big should the head on your pint of beer be?

A: It really is customer preference. It does make a taste difference, for example we have quite big North/South divide in this country, so for example many Northerners will like a good, thick collar on their pint, whereas the further South we go, you’ll tend to find we get a looser head, it won’t be as tight and you perhaps won’t get as much as much head on the pint. It doesn’t mean the beer is flat though if it doesn’t have a thick head on it

H: That’s so interesting that it has that divide. Kevin, as a beer drinker, let’s take off your official hat for a moment, if you were just a punter like us in a pub, if you were served a pint of beer and you perhaps didn’t like the size of the head that was on your beer, would you say something to your Landlady or Landlord?

B: Absolutely, I would yes, I’d ask them to re-pour definitely, because for me I think it’s as Annabel said previously, it’s all about that perception of whether you’re going to have a bit of fizz in your pint and it’s not going to be flat, so yes I would

H: Just while we’ve got you chatting away then, can you explain a little bit about your role and what you do

B: Certainly. I’m a food development manager within quite a large pub chain, of which we’re in one of those today, one of our pubs. By that, I mean I develop ingredients and food products and dishes and whole menus for products within the portfolio

H: Now Kevin a little bit later on we are going to delve deeper into that relationship between beer and food – I’m looking forward to that chat – but first, can you please help me in some myth busting, because there’s lots of old wives tales out there regarding beer. For example, lots of people would say that cask beer is flat

A: OK, if you ever get served a pint of cask beer that you think is flat and it’s not giving you that tingle on the tongue, it’s a clear indication that that beer has been on sale for too long. In other words, it’s lost all its condition. If that’s the case, you send the pint back

H: So a little bit like what we were just saying about the head on the beer, have some confidence. You know how you like your beer to taste. Make those complaints if you need to. Now, I’m going to make a confession now. I really stick to my beer drinking for holidays. I know I’m on holiday when I’ve got a nice, cool beer in my hand and one of the reasons I do that is that I look at it as quite a calorific and fattening drink, is that something that we can bust or is that fact?

A: Definitely. There is this myth about beer, specifically cask beer, giving you a beer belly. Now that’s absolutely rubbish, that’s the quantity of beer that you’re drinking. So if I give you an example, half a pint of 3.8% beer will contain 89 calories. If we compare that to a medium size glass of white wine, that will contain 129 calories

H: I am so surprised! I have to be honest I am so surprised that you’re saying that, I’ve always considered it to be the more calorific of choices, that’s really interesting

A: It’s the least calorific drink you can order across a bar

H: Brilliant. I may just change my ways.

B: I think it’s about consumption though, isn’t it?

H: Absolutely. We do say across the board in life everything in moderation and you can really put that to absolutely everything. What about the fact that people would argue it’s full of additives?

A: Again, it’s a totally natural product. I’ve explained the four ingredients that go into cask beer. A lot of those ingredients are sourced locally as well, so we’ve got a great heritage and provenance associated with cask beer

H: And we’ve had a little talk about having the perfect pint, but what temperature do you think the beer should be served at? Lots of people think that it’s room temperature

A: Right, well take that back a stage, 50 years ago room temperature would have been quite cold because there wasn’t the prevalence of central heating, so nowadays when we’re sat in warm pubs, cask ale should be served at between 11 and 13 degrees, which is exactly the same temperature as a beer cellar, that is a cool temperature. It’s not warm, and it’s not room temperature

H: I see. And what about this whole notion that beer drinking is for the older gents and the older gents only?

B: I think that’s another myth. I mean that used to be the case certainly, but nowadays lots more…it’s being drank right away across the genre and right the way across the age groups as well. So you can go into lots of pubs, with lots of young, professional ladies trying a cask grade beer out. They’re great, fantastic products with lots and lots of layers of flavours. They just need exploring really.

H: Do you think, Annabel, that ladies are leaning towards a certain type of cask beer

A: Females do tend to like the lighter beers, and a lot of the brewers have latched on to this and said, actually if you can make a cask beer look a little bit more like a lager, you will recruit more female drinkers. One thing we do have to bear in mind is that females have a very heightened sense of bitterness on the tongue, so if you serve them a very, very bitter beer, it dries out all the taste buds. Females like floral, sweet, fruity beers. We know over the past 12 months the number of female cask beer drinkers has doubled to 1.3million in this country

H: And also, we don’t always have to go for those big pint glasses, just in case we think it looks slightly unladylike, there are other options so we can have half a pint perhaps

A: Half a pint, or even a third of a pint glasses, so you can try some different types of beer

H: Good segue, because that’s exactly what I want to do right now. I’ve worked up a bit of a thirst with all this chat. We’ve got some really fantastic examples of cask beer, so shall we start at the very beginning. You’ve got your Best Bitter, if you’d like to arm yourselves you two and once we’ve had a sip, Annabel, tells us the characteristics we’re looking for, when we’re tasting a bitter

A: OK, before you even taste it, you’re going to smell it. Really get the aromas because a lot of the taste you’re going to get is through your nose. So I want you to smell, really fresh. You might be able to smell slight toffee or caramel in that nose

H: I’m picking up a sweetness. I don’t know if with my untrained nose I would have said toffee and caramel but I can certainly smell something sweet going on there

A: So when you taste it, make sure that you roll it round on your tongue because you’re sense of bitterness is right down the sides of your tongue and right at the back

H: As we do this, Kevin’s already had a couple of sips of his I see

B: I did smell before!

H: You did smell before!

A: So first of all you can see, it’s a lovely cool temperature, it’s not warm at all. And you might get a slight fruitiness coming through from that beer

H: Yes! There’s something, there is a sweetness. Very nice. So that’s the first one, that’s our Best Bitter and a little bit later on, Kevin, we’re going to go back to these beers and actually ask you to marry them up with some food, so I’m looking forward to that, but now let’s move on to something that we would all know as quintessentially British, which is Bombardier, but why is it quintessentially British?

A: All the ingredients that go into Bombardier are locally sourced. It’s a very copper coloured ale, which is like a traditional British ale, so beautiful colour on it, and you will tend to find with this one that it’s got lots and lots of malty flavours which match perfectly to many foods

H: Great, thank you very much. So straight away you can see that it is darker in colour and it is that copper colour isn’t it?

A: it’s a beautiful copper coloured ale

H: So again, are we smelling before tasting?

A: Definitely, you should get some real malty notes on it

H: So when you go out and you’re just having a casual drink, do you always give your pint of beer a good whiff?

A: Definitely, everyone should

H: We can learn from your ways. It’s completely different to me. It smells completely different

A: The beauty about beer is that we’ve got nearly 3,000 different varieties and beer in this country, so every one will be slightly different and you will always find one for your favourite, so when people say to me I don’t like beer, it’s almost like saying I don’t like food. It’s just that they haven’t found a variety that they really enjoy

B: It’s about experimenting as well, isn’t it? Keep trying all the different varieties, because there are lots and lots of beers out there. Especially with the emergence of micro-breweries, producing some fantastic cask beers

H: Traditionally, do you think people stick to their brands, they stick to the beers they like, or do you think actually as a group of drinkers, are beer drinkers the type of people that would try different things?

A: Publicans are getting a lot better at actually offering samples of a new beer to their customers, so their customers can try it, and see if they would like to change from brand to brand. Cask beer drinkers in particular, they do like to try lots and lots of different flavours, rather than just stick to one particular brewery

H: On that note then, lets move on to Dukers. Now why is this so different, what makes this so different from the others we’ve tried?

A: You will see straight away when the beer is handed across the bar, that it’s a totally different colour to the first two beers we tried. This is an awful lot paler, in fact this particular beer can be served quite a bit colder, right down to 7 degrees without picking up any off notes on it. So you can see it’s paler

H: A real difference in colour actually

A: So this is a beer that’s brewed in Edinburgh. It’s got quite a low strength, 3.8%, so if you can imagine sitting in a beer garden in the middle of summer, with a very light ale this. When you smell it, you’ll probably pick up some floral notes on it

H: Yes

A: Now this is an India pale ale, so it is quite highly hopped

H: Very good again

B: How floral is that?

H: It’s a completely different experience. You’re really opening up my eyes to the world of beer. It really is like a different drink

A: Lots and lots of condition in it and this will appeal to such a broad range of beer drinkers

H: As will the final choice that we have. Now this was a shocker for me. It’s sort of like the dessert wine of the beer world, the Chocoholic. Unlike wine you can add ingredients to beer to change their flavours

A: Absolutely. You still remain with those four base ingredients, but you can add syrups, or you can roast your malt a little bit more to turn into chocolate malt. This is a Chocoholic beer, this is brewed in Manchester, so it’s what we consider a speciality beer, but you could add heather, or honey, or strawberries or raspberries, we’ve just got a plethora of different ingredients that we can add to beer to change the characteristic, so we’ve actually we’ve got a lot more of palate to work with than the wine maker

H: I mean, straight away you see the colour, that’s undeniable. And I can smell the chocolate. Very nice! I love that! You’re going to have to prise this one out of my fingers, I really love that! What do you think the steadfast beer drinkers are like with the flavoured beers?

A: Like I say, they have a very adventurous palate anyway, so they like to try different types of beers, different styles, different types of flavours, and that’s the beauty when we come to the food industry, that we can actually match many of these beers to different items on the menu.

H: Yes, exactly, in fact we’re going to be talking to Kevin about that in the next part of the show, so stay where you are, I want a few minutes alone with my Chocoholic, and we’ll be looking in the next part at those perfect food matches with your pint, or is it the other way around?

Break

H: Hello and welcome back to Taste Talk. Kevin, I understand you’re a bit of whizz when it comes to making meals work better with beer

B: Well I don’t know about being a bit of a whizz, but we’re certainly starting to explore the opportunities which are present now in cask beers, because there’s a massive depth of range and flavours, and it’s a journey that we’re embarking upon and really starting to explore. The main thing to remember, there’s no rights and wrongs here, it’s about trying them out, exploring and seeing what works well for you

H: So is this quite a new idea, a new notion?

B: I think it’s gone on and what we’ll talk about later when we talk about the type of pairing I’m going to propose today for you, is looking at, it’s not just about pairing similar like for like flavours, so you’ve got your sweetness through your malt, sweetness you’ll see that coming up again and again and again, natural sweetness within foods, but it’s also about looking for contrast as well, so you can have complete things at opposite levels of the spectrum as well, which work really well together when you eat them

H: So let’s start then with Best Bitter, because we’ve tasted all these lovely beers, but if I’ve got a pint of Best Bitter, what sort of food would I look to accompany it?

B: What I would look for with a Best Bitter…a traditional bitter is a bitter flavour. It’s very hoppy, with a dry aftertaste. I think it works really, really well with grilled meats, so we were looking at something like a mixed grill, where you’ve got a sumptuous black pepper pork sausage, you’ve got fantastic caramelization of the rump steak where you’ve seasoned, a little bit of oil either on your pan or on your grill, so you’ve got natural caramelization and the sweetness coming through the product, which works – they’ve got a subtle contrast, which works well. For me, it’s what I think of with a Best Bitter

H: Well, you took me there. I was there with my mixed grill having a lovely time, so thanks for that. What about the Bombardier?

B: I think for me, the Bombardier is perhaps the most complex in terms of flavours and layers, and I know you noticed that when you tasted it. There’s so much going on there, for me it’s a rich, malty, almost tangy hoppy flavour, if that makes sense, and it’s got lots of spicy aftertaste so again, I’m going to be a bit contentious with this one because lots of people would say oh yes, you can have pie, it works great with them. We’re actually tasting it here with a chicken curry and again, the reason behind that is the complete contrast. You’ve got the sweetness within the malt within the Bombardier which works really well with the sweetness with oils and the spices and those complex layers, and the hoppy finish helps just clear the palate. I think it works really, really well

H: So Annabel, I can see you’re nodding in agreement with Kevin

A: I thought it was very interesting choice to put a traditional British ale with a curry, which wouldn’t occur to most people to do, but when Kevin started talking about the spiciness of the hops in that beer, it just gelled straight away

H: Ok, so from Bombardier to Dukers

B: Again, Dukers, fantastic beer for me, I think it’s my favourite today of what we’ve tasted and as Annabel said, extra hops were added because it is an Indian pale ale, it was produced to be transported over to India. This one, I find it’s got a rich malty flavour, it’s got a malty flavour to it, a lovely crisp finish. It works really well with grilled fish and vegetables. So I’m looking at today, we’ve got a fantastic Shetland organic salmon, which we’ve wrapped in a little bit of smoked pancetta. The baking is in a really hot oven, which allows the natural sweetness in the sugars in the salmon, which works really well with the rich malty flavour in the Dukers. It also works fantastically, this beer does, with a pork pie. Again natural sugars within the pastry

H: With a bit of mustard?

B: Why not?

H: Good, I’m glad you said that. See, that to me, you’re describing the perfect sunny afternoon, with the fish meal, or having a lovely picnic with the pork pie

B: And I think the temperature was right, wasn’t it?

H: Yes

B: Probably a little bit cooler than all the others and certainly a lot more female friendly

H: So another one I think the ladies will certainly be a fan of is Chocoholic. Kevin, do not let me down, what are you going to pair this with?

B: Well, I’m not going to disappoint you. We’re going to serve it today with a wonderful hot chocolate brownie, which we serve with a sweet cheery compote, and again the bitter chocolate-y, slightly hoppy flavour, compliments the sweetness of the Belgian chocolate within the brownie so it works really well together

H: Gorgeous. Would it have to go with a sweet dessert?

B: No, not always, definitely no. You could try it with a wonderful wild boar burger, which is quite a lean meat, wild boar, so we add a little bit of pork and a little bit of pork fat, a secret chutney and we add a little bit of apple for some sweetness, so we can balance that all up with the burger and it works, again, really, really well with the bitter chocolate notes that you get through the beer

H: So Annabel, a lot of it actually is about balancing the flavours and sometimes having a contrast of flavours between your food and your drink choices

A: It can be a contrast, it can also be a compliment and you can either match the colours of the beer to the colour of the food, for example the Caledonian Dukers IPA going really well with the fish is a bit like a dry white wine going well with fish

H: Absolutely, so this weekend, I’m in my local, I’ve chosen my meal, can you just sum up a few pointers that I can look out for when it comes to choosing my drink

B: My advice to you would be experiment and certainly try – we’ve touched on a few little attributes, but have a word with your barman, they should be able to offer you the beers that they’ve got on tap at the weekend and they can give you a little bit of guidance about what they think would go well

H: Thank you very much. I have to say, I have thoroughly enjoyed both of your guidance through the world of beer, it’s a huge world, isn’t it? Vast! Thank you very much. If you want more information do have a look on the website, chefandbrewer.com. For now though, I think we’re going to stay behind and I think we’ve earned ourselves a nice pint. Yes? Are you in? Good. I’ll see you next time. Bye bye.