The ever
excellent
Campaign for Really Good Beer recently issued their call for Beer of
the Year selections (**and then announced
the winner, which I'll mention at the
end).
I'm a
stats geek, I love lists and I use Ratebeer to record every new beer I try.
In short, I was built to choose my beers of the year. In fact, I took the
whole nomination process so seriously that I ended up writing copious notes for
myself, to ensure the rigorousness of the submission.
Here
then, for your information and 'enjoyment' is a schemata showing how I came to
settle on the eventual selection of my 3 beers of the year for 2012.
First
task was to scour
my reviews on Ratebeer, to see which beers earned the best
marks during 2012. The results are as follows (showing which beers
scored 4.7 out of 5.0 and so on):
{I'm not doing links in this post, otherwise I'd be here all night. I have been here all night anyway, but .....}
4.7
1.
De Molen Mooi and
Medogenloos
2.
Mikkeller Beer Hop
Breakfast
3.
Kernel Black IPA III
4.
Lindemans Cuvee Rene
Gueuze
5.
Brodies Hoxton Special
IPA
4.6
6.
Brewdog/Mikkeller I
Hardcore You
7.
De La Senne Jambe de
Bois
4.5
8.
Mikkeller Beer Geek
Breakfast
9.
Lion Stout
10.
Kernel Double SCCANS
11.
Nogne India Saison
12.
Ska Modus Hoperandi
13.
Mikkeller/Grassroots
Wheat is the New Hops
14.
Gouden Carolus
Hopsinjoor
15.
De Ranke Saison de
Dottignies
16.
Kernel IPA Summit
17.
Tiny Rebel Urban IPA
18.
Brodies Smoked IPA
Now aside
from beers specifically falling within those three highest score 'brackets', I
also felt that there were some which, though they had scored lower, left such a
positive impression on me, that they deserved to be included in this
conversation. These are they:
Selected
highlights
19.
Kernel Brick
20.
Brodies London Lager
21.
To Ol Raid
22.
De Molen Amarillo
23.
Buxton Imperial Black
24.
Beavertown 8-Ball Rye IPA
25.
Guinness Foreign Extra
Stout (Nigerian)
26.
Arbor Single Hop Citra
27.
Brodies Hackney Red
IPA
28.
Nogne Imperial Stout
Now inevitably
there will have been other beers which I really enjoyed but have missed.
I've tried to minimise that risk, but it's still an outside possibility. That's
life. I'll live with it.
Having
selected the contenders, I still needed to pluck three from within. The
most straightforward thing would be to pick the 3 beers I liked best, from that
group which scored 4.7 - such a trio would look like this:
Top 3
by score
De Molen
Mooi and Medogenloos
Kernel
Black IPA III
Brodies
Hoxton Special IPA
The other [alternative]
thing to do, would be to nose through the whole list and then pick the three
which give me the warmest, fondest feelings - such a list would look like
hence:
Top 3
by ‘hunch’
Brodies
Hoxton Special IPA
Tiny
Rebel Urban IPA
Nogne India Saison
OK, have
you noticed anything? Yes, we have a clear winner, which is Brodies
Hoxton Special IPA. Well done to them, very well deserved. However,
in terms of submitting a trio to CAMRGB, I still needed to make a
decision. It came down to one of my enduring internal wrangles - i.e.
does scoring/reviewing a beer on Ratebeer always reflect exactly how much you enjoy it? If you think yes, then the beers with the
best scores are the best. Simple
as. However, if you think that there is some contextual x-factor which
impacts upon how much you enjoy a particular beer, then there is a real chance
that your Ratebeer scores (based as they are on technical proficiency*) will
not capture the pleasure gained from imbibing the beer in question. Now
obviously this is deeply boring and naval-gazing beer geekery, so I will cut to
the chase and say that I decided to pick my three 'hunch' beers, i.e. the ones
which I believe I loved the most this year.
But it's
been a great year for beer. No debating that.
As an
addendum, here is a list of breweries and how many times their products featured
in my Top 28.
Mikkeller - 4
Kernel - 4
Brodies - 4
De Molen – 2
Nogne - 2
Buxton -
1
Brewdog -
1
Guinness
- 1
Beavertown
- 1
To Ol - 1
Arbor - 1
Tiny Rebel
- 1
De Ranke - 1
Gouden Carolus - 1
Lion - 1
Dottignies
- 1
Ska - 1
Lindemans
- 1
De La
Senne – 1***
Almost as
equally fascinating (I think), and by this measure then Mikkeller, Kernel and
Brodies are joint top of my tree - which pretty much sums it up.
**The Overall Result
In the
time it took me to write this post, CAMRGB performed the much more impressive
feat of counting up all the votes and publishing the results. According then, to the members and supporters
of the Campaign for Really Good Beer, the beer of the year was Kernel S.C.C.A.NS.
IPA. I must admit, that even though it
wasn’t on my list, I’m pleased that a Kernel beer won, as they are a
magnificent brewery.
So I
didn’t back the winner, but ho hum it’s no biggie. The main thing is that loads of people have
managed to identify loads of lovely beers this year, which made this year a 12
month celebration of erm lovely beer.
[unbelievably poor sentence].
*I have
always intended to write a fulsome blog post, which attempts to explain the
fascination of and the mindset required for a full appreciation of
Ratebeer. I daresay I'll do it, once I perform some significant self
analysis.
***Eagle-eyed UK beer fans
will be aghast to see that no Magic Rock beers made my list of 28
finalists. I’m a bit surprised myself,
but there is good reason: almost 11 months after beginning this blog, with the
aim of trying to bring Magic Rock and other top breweries to the pubs of Birmingham….. they have
still not arrived. Aside from the odd [extremely]
isolated occasion and at beer festivals, I have still never, NEVER glimpsed a
Magic Rock beer on a handpull in the city.
I have witnessed not a single one of those lovely Magic Rock pumpclips
winking at me, as I entered a bar.
Surely, surely this cannot go on for much longer? Next year’s new batch of Birmingham ‘craft’ pubs must surely right
this wrong (surely).
