UK Edition
A pint of beer for £22? In this case, it's worth every penny
A bar specialising in boutique beer, the Craft Beer Co in the heart of trendy East London, was caught selling a pint of beer for the eye-watering price of £22.50 on Monday.
“How much!?”
Twenty. Two. Pounds. Fifty.
But if you think that’s too expensive, then you’re wrong.
The cost of Alesmith Brewing’s “Speedway Stout Jamaican Blue Mountain”, considered one of the world’s best beers by those who make sure they know that kind of thing, is deemed to be absurdly dear for one reason: because it’s beer.
If this was a wine, the equivalent cost of a 750ml bottle would be £33.75 – which works out at approximately £11.25 for a large 250ml glass. Even in the most modest of East London wine bars, this is what one would expect to pay for something half-way down the wine list.
While not cheap by any means, even at twice the price it certainly wouldn’t attract the interest of national news outlets or, indeed, the indignation on social media.
The problem is the pint. It’s an iconic yet archaic measure by which modern beer, especially those with a strength of 13% ABV, shouldn’t really be judged – yet still are. It’s a legacy of a sepia-tinted yesteryear when beer seldom strayed above 4% and was designed to refresh after a long, hard day’s toil – back when Britain built stuff and we had proper jobs.
But now, we’re not so thirsty after work. Beer is stronger, more flavoursome and we’re drinking less of it. While the vast majority of lagers and cask ales are still designed to be drunk in pints, as the increasingly creative craft brewing scene conjures up a growing number of different beer styles, many at higher strengths, many simply don’t suit a pint glass – and “Speedway Stout Jamaican Blue Mountain” is just one of them.
It’s a decadent dark beer with more in common with a Port than a pilsner and, as such, is no more suited to a pint glass than a bottle of rare Petrus. It’s designed to be sipped in small quantities from a snifter or the kind of stemmed glass more readily associated with after-dinner drinking. To contextualise the cost further, it’s worth noting that Alesmith Brewing is a bit of a big deal in the world of quality beer.
Back in the 1990s, when Southern California was desolate, dystopian beer drinking desert bereft of anything but tasteless tumbleweed, Alesmith was one of, if not the first brewery to start making flavoursome beers inspired by the ale-making traditions of both Belgium and Britain.
Back in 2006, we wrote and researched a book about the burgeoning craft beer scene on America’s West Coast called, rather cleverly, Good Beer Guide West Coast USA. It’s still available in some bookshops and becoming more out-of-date as every day passes – get a copy while you can. Anyway, our research tour of every microbrewery, beer bar, brewpub and artisan ale-maker on the West Coast, unparalleled in its scientific rigour, actually began at Alesmith in San Diego.
Back then, CEO and brewmaster Peter Zein was working on second-hand dairy equipment in a ramshackle brewery on the edges of town – capping and labelling his all-natural, bottle-conditioned beers by hand. Even back then, its beers were consistently bringing home the bling from the world’s most revered brewing competitions and, even though it has grown into a bigger brewhouse, it is still widely considered as one of the best craft brewers in the world – recently named the fourth best by Ratebeer.com, the online beer rating website that zips its anorak all the way to the top.
Every year, in California, hundreds of beer boffins still queue round the block for hours for the much-anticipated annual, ticketed release of its small-batch, Speedway Stout aged in bourbon barrels. Over here in the UK, where the American brewing scene has been the inspiration for the boom in small breweries, Speedway Stout is also like catnip to craft beer connoisseurs – especially this particular version which is blended with cold brewed Jamaican Blue Mountain gourmet coffee beans which, it says here, are apparently rarer than a newborn Nigel.
Rare and seldom seen over here, brewed with amazing ingredients and integrity by one of America’s most respected brewers, this silky smooth stout is widely considered one of the best in the world and you get a glass of it, albeit a modest one, for £7.50. Given that people happily pay more than £6 for a pint of very average lager and more than £3 for a cup of coffee in a cardboard cup, that seems really rather reasonable.
The Thinking Drinkers are drink experts and comedians. They are performing their brand new show “Thinking Drinkers Pub Crawl” on a nationwide tour from October to March. See thinkingdrinkers.com/events for details.