Sell Me Ishmael - Introducing Up Front Brewing

It was inevitable that brewer Jake Griffin would one day launch his own brewery. It was just a matter of where, when, who and what. 

Brewer Jake Griffin on tour!

Up Front Brewing launched in Glasgow in March this year, unleashing two great beers - Ishmael IPA and Ahab stout - at the Inn Deep pub in Kelvinbridge. They sold out in a couple of days.

In fact, his first batch of kegs sold out quickly pretty much everywhere they went, such was the strength of Jake’s reputation, and indeed the growing praise for Ahab and Ishmael.  

Jake Griffin made a name for himself in 2012 when he and his pal Chris Lewis (who’s just set up his own Dead End Brew Machine) won a homebrew contest, organised by the Institute of Brewing & Distilling, with their brain-melting Zombier porter. The beer raised eyebrows and secured Jake a stint at Fyne Ales. The Argyll brewery also went on to unleash the beer to an eager public. 

A few years later and Jake graduated to become head brewer at Drygate, though the plans for his own brewery had clearly been fermenting for quite some time. 

Rather than regarding his a rival, his current employers are fully supportive - Up Front is based out of Drygate, and Jake has a canning contract with Williams Brothers of Alloa (who part-own Drygate). In fact, Drygate is home to a few other “gypsy” breweries - Floodline, Monolith and Heidrun.

Jake’s also working on sorting out a national distribution deal, and the ambitious brewer is this weekend transporting 500 of his cans down to Bristol for the Festival of Apathy, organised by artist Stanley Donwood, the man behind pretty much all of Radiohead’s artwork. Jake’s also hoping to get along to a few beer festivals closer to home, assuming he can get the time off!

Donwood also happens to be the man who designed Up Front’s labels (how Jake and Stanley met is a story in itself by the way). His labels are distinctive and beautiful - sweeping black and light lines of an angry sea surround the titular characters. See below of pics. 

But how do they taste? Having missed the launch, I picked up a couple of Up Front’s cans from newly opened beer shop Grunting Growler in Finnieston.

Ahab is a smooth, rich and multi-layered stout with heaps of fruity US hop flavours smoothly balanced against black coffee, roasted and chocolate notes, with some sweetness and a wee bit of smokiness there too. At 6%, Ahab stout is easy to drink, waxy, medium bodied and full of flavour and character. And it’s black dark like the fatal captain’s own watery tomb.   

In contrast, Jake’s other launch beer was Ishmael. A hearty US-style IPA, also 6%, that pours a glowing amber with a thick white head. Again, Jake’s gone for hefty amounts of American hops, with grapefruit, tangerine and resin flavours all singing out. A clean, robust toffee-like malt backbone remains like an anchor. Ishmael IPA is lively and big of character, with a long-lasting finish that, like the poor sailor himself, stays with you until the bitter end. 

http://www.upfrontbrewing.com/

Glasgow Beer Week - starts today!

Glasgow In A Can, by Simon Varwell

Hey, guess what! Today is the start of Glasgow Beer Week. That’s right, the city that invented heavy engineering and alcohol is spending a whole week celebrating yon malts, hops, yeast, sugar and water thing. Sure, those boffins at Lonely Planet might reckon Scotland will be the place to be NEXT YEAR, but you really need to get over to Glasgow THE NOW.

Workers throughout the city are being encouraged to take extended, boozy lunch breaks. Pop-up bars will be, err, popping up in shopping malls, high schools and old cemeteries. Dour bar staff will be replaced by attractive, friendly ones. The city council is planning to turn the Chambers into a craft beer hall AND will also be subsidising taxi fares for mild and heavy drinkers. Meanwhile, FirstBus, SPT and yon other transport providers are putting on additional services to cater for the extra drunkards, with plans afoot for a special freedom of the city beer pass that’ll get you onto any bus going anywhere (cause rest assured the polis will be putting on extra patrols to check the roadworthiness of your car). Best of all, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has declared a bloody hangover amnesty!

Other slightly less cool Glasgow Beer Week events include a vegan beer and food testing at the BrewDog pub opposite the Kelvingrove Galleries, and a Michael Jackson appreciation at West Brewery. Wee bit suspect that one but who doesn’t like moonwalking and squealing sh’moan when half-cut?  There's also a meet-the-cask do at the wonderful Blackfriars, as well as a (tbc) live homebrew event. (Bet you I’m bloody working that day. Hmmmm .... )

Supermarket Aldi is even in on the act and is stocking up on quality craft beers just so we don't run out. Yaldi!

The whole thing climaxes messily with the SIBA beer thanksgiving prize event in the southside next weekend, where they’ll be casting judgement on the best beers of 2013. Looking forward to the fallout from that one. 

Glasgow's about to get very crafty

Pollokshaws Burgh Hall.

Weekend after next is a special one. Not my birthday nor a brew day; it's the Scottish Craft Beer Festival in Glasgow.

It promises to be quite an occasion, with a good selection of beers and brewers on tap. A few exceptions, but it's got a good geographical spread, from the Northern Isles to the east coast to the Borders.

And just cause craft beer is all hip at the moment, don't be expecting no swanky craft beer pub for this do though. The event takes place in the elegant, but old, Pollokshaws Burgh Hall. That's right, Pollokshaws ... in the south side. On the other side of the river. I'll need some sort of map and fare to get there ...

Call of Duty: Black Hops

Did you ever play Dungeon Master on Atari or Amiga, with its crappy graphics, naff sound, but awesome gameplay and characters like Gothmog, Sonya, Linflas and Wuuf? Remember how you felt when the dungeon's gate opened for the first time and it was just you on the edge of 14 levels of darkness and days of gamer angst? That's exactly where I am right now.

Apologies to FTL Games & Nintendo.

I'm about to start home-brewing. I've spent much of the past year prattling on about hops and malts, citrus and caramel, it's time I got to grips with the process of packing these flavours into a glass bottle. It's like I'm in the Hall of Champions about to choose my four adventurers. 

After months of negotiations, and even agreeing to move house, I have managed to secure a small cube of cupboard space just the right size for a 40-pint fermentation barrel. But winning agreement from my end-of-level bosslady was just the first stage; I also had to choose whether to go for a kit, and if so, which one.

First part was as easy as decking Dhalsim in Street Fighter: Noobs start with a kit. And seeing as I was too busy playing games in my teens and twenties to brew my own beer, solving that puzzle was easy. So I moved promptly on to: which kit.

Oh dear, there are many.

Fortunately, I have a crack.

It's the home-brew haven on Dumbarton Road. Inn House Brewery is like a real-world PokeMart. But instead of PokeBalls, potions or antidotes, it's stacked floor to ceiling with tins, tubs, barrels, flasks, bottles, and packets of yeast and hops. (For those of you sick of my shoddy videogaming metaphors, it's like an old-fashioned ironmongers, but beer and wine stuff instead of tools, screws and fuses.) 

And thankfully the vendor's more like Beedle than the Happy Mask Salesman (one hopes).  After a series of dumb questions that really did play out like a scene from Zelda, I think I'm going to accept the Cooper's Starter Kit quest. That I can swap their starter lager for a Brewmaster IPA is like an in-game special bonus. And you know what, if I muck it up and brew a bad batch I can always respawn.

(Fans of Xenon 2, and Assault on Precinct 13, this song's for you. Cx)

This secret will change your life

Fairy magic by the Black Cuillins. Image: Damian Shields.

I want to share a secret with you. Before you read on you need to make sure no one's reading over your shoulder. This one's for you and you only. Keep on the lookout for prying eyes.

Beer is the News

Munro's in Glasgow. Just opened. 

In Glasgow, new bar Munro's has finally opened on Great Western Road. It's putting itself out there as a craft beer bar, so I'm greatly looking forward to getting along and sampling the cask ales they've got on offer. Their website's not doing much, but their Facebook and Twitter chat is a bit more lively. Good luck guys. 

PR super agent and micro-berwer Seb Jones of Speyside Craft Brewery got himself in the pages of The Herald AND the Forres Gazette with the news he's launching a Save the Dolphins-type ale. If you drink enough of their Bottlenose Bitter, it says on the label, you turn into some sort of James Bond meets John McClane eco-warrior. Or maybe profits to charity or something. Read about it here, here or here. 

Meanwhile, those beer nuts at Inveralmond got a bit of a write-up in The Courier for getting a six-figure funding boost from, err, oh, the article didn't say. Well, this, err, six-figure investment should afford a wee bit of expansion, both in capacity and in export markets. Great stuff.

Then there was this little ditty in The Herald about Houston hostelry Fox and the Hounds landing a deal with a major upmarket national deli chain to stock their rather drinkable Crystal beer. Aldi wants 7000 bottles of the stuff. Not bad at all. 

Finally, there's the splendid announcement that The Herald and Sunday Herald are to host a craft ale event on Sunday, March 24th. Kicks off in Citation in Glasgow at around noon, and lasts four or five hours. The do has someone speaking at it. You get lunch AND beer. You also get to tug on the beards of brewers from Alechemy, Eden, Innis & Gunn, and Loch Fyne. Tickets are £30.

Kill List

Last post I mentioned a couple of daft decisions I'd made recently. Starting a blog about beer and then pledging to not drink for 31 ever-lengthening days is probably one of the daftest decisions I've ever made. I may have mentioned how fun it's been.

But it means I've had time to think about what beers I want to try, and about what I want to do with this site. I've put together a Kill List of beers I'm going to try on or after February 1st.

Top of the Twistedmouth Kill List is Skull Splitter by Orkney Brewery. On the back it says:

Skull Splitter is our strongest ale: which is named after Thorfinn Einarsson who was the 7th Viking Earl of Orkney. Sophisticated, satiny smooth with a deceptively light character, it is a tribute to our colourful forbear. On the nose, this strong beer has a fruity malt character, with hints of dark fruit, spicy hop, dates and figs. On the palate, rich and complex with sweet toasted malt, molasses, fresh and dried fruit and hints of warming spices.

Molasses and figs. That's beautifully over the top for a beer that's 8.5% and is surely going to make my eyes water and leave me with some sort of UTI. I'm half thinking about getting a can of Tennent's Supey and some paint-stripper and doing a wee Pepsi challenge or something ...

Next is a strong stout by Tempest, a Morello Cresta 4 grain stout. I bought this purely for the lo-fi, hand-printed label. I love that. It's 7.0%. A session ale for Borders folk then.

What else?

Well, I got me a Cromarty Brewed Awakening, recommended by my new beer chum Magnus, who has his own beer blog (far, far superior to this one). He also suggested Cromarty's Red Rock and Tempest's Cresta Black and Red Eye Flight, but I didn't see them in my last visit to Hippo Beers. Ho hum, next time.

And just before you start thinking I can't think for myself, I've also included West's St Mungo's lager cause it's my local brewery. And a Dragonfly amber ale from Fallen Brewing Co, cause it's from near where I grew up and not because it has a nice label and a dragon in the title, oh no.

Now, a wee clarification: as well as dumbass decisions, my last post may have falsely given the impression that this January has just been a series of loathsome days that have been relentlessly tiresome, each one more miserable than the last, apart from two auspicious days. This is not true; a couple of other great things have happened.

My wife and I learnt how to play Netrunner. And Utopia happened.

Happy (late) Burns Day.

Hippo Beers, My Favourite Shop

Sometimes my kids ask me what my favourite shop is.

Well, I quite like Forbidden Planet but it's too cramped and often too busy. I loved A1 Comics until they got rid of most of their comics. I loved Go Outdoors for the miles of aisles of ropes and boots and waterproofs and camping stuff that I really, really need but never could afford. I have a wee fetish thing for Aldi and its crazy middle row. But they all leave me, well, wanting.

Hippo Beers entered my life in November. We've exchanged glances from a distance. Had the odd flirty exchange. They have my details but not been in touch. I don't know, should I contact them? Maybe I wrote my email down wrong. Maybe they lost it. Maybe they've been too busy and not had time. Maybe their PCs are down. Or their internet. Maybe I should call them. Just to check they've still got my email. Would that be pushy? Would that just be weird?

But what if it's because they don't like me?

Their shop on Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow has more than 300 beers in stock at any one time. About a dozen shelves of Scottish beers. A bay of ciders. Ales from England, Europe and the US. They have wheat beers and anti-allergy ales. Porters and stouts and wines and whiskies. They probably have the cure for cancer buried in there. Here's an article the Evening Times wrote about Hippo Beers last week.

It's a neat shop, an airy shop, a shop you like to spend time in, wander about in. Read the labels and not feel a twat. Have a chat with the staff and not feel a twat. Buy one beer and one beer only and not feel a twat.

I think I might be falling in love.

Beer, the first. Alechemy Cairnapple IPA.

Bought from the top left corner of the Scottish bay of shelves at Hippo Beers on Queen Margaret Drive. It's a beautiful shop. A wonderful shop. A happy shop.

This IPA from Alechemy is a full flavoured, hoppy and delicious beer. Robust and fruity, I guess that's where the Cairn and the Apple in the name come from.

Drank on my son's birthday. Would hoppily have again.