Dear food-fan & beer-lover,

Welcome to the Easter Brewsletter from The Betwixt Beer Co.

---------------------------------------------------

In this edition -

Beer With Food? - It's mad, but it just might work!

Chester Food & Drink Festival highlights.

On The Wild Side - our new 'BeWilder' with wild-grown Wirral hops.

The Death of the Pint? - What's 68 millilitres between friends?

Local Press - Betwixt hits the papers.

CAMRA Local Historic Pubs Guide - drink while you ogle the interior.

New 'Guest Beers' from Northern Brewing, Cheshire

New Packaging - swanky half-litre swing-top glass bottles.

____________________________________________________

Betwixt Celebrates "Beer With Food Week"

To coincide with this prestigous event (what do you mean, you've never heard of it?) we at Betwixt thought we'd also try to promote two of our favourite things - beer & food, and daringly, encourage people to combine the two in some way!

The campaigning week itself was focussed specifically on enjoying food with beer in pubs, but as we sell our beer at local farmers' markets, we thought we'd widen it out to include enjoying beer & food together at home.

Whether it's matching a fine dish with a decent beer, or including beer in your cooking, we think beer with food is a great idea, and one oft-overlooked by pub & restaurant chefs, drinkers, diners and home cooks alike.

Through the winter months, we have been enjoying a hearty slow-cooked Beef in Beer Casserole (an English take on the Belgian classic - Carbonnade Flamande).

Braising steak becomes meltingly tender in a rich herbal, spicy beer gravy - earthy mushrooms add to the mix and root veg and onions give texture and a touch of sweetness. Potatoes help mop up the last of the lovely beer gravy, while pickled beetroot add a touch of colour & and some acidity to match the stew's richness.

Comfort food at its very best and so easy to cook. (recipe online soon).

Other ideas for beer cuisine include old favourites such as Steak & Ale Pie, Beer-battered Cod & Chips, or Bangers & Mustard Mash with Beer & Onion Gravy.

If you're after a classic English lunch, try a simple Ploughman's, all of the ingredients can be sourced at your local farmers' market.

You could use Kirkham's fantastic mature Lancashire cheese, (or Bourne's mature Cheshire?) with tangy pickles from either 'Route Ginger' or Neale's farm, on fresh, crusty local bread from Kirkby or Wirral, all washed down with a cool glass of hoppy 'Sunlight' beer (or Eddisbury Cheshire apple juice for the non-drinkers).

As well as cooking with beer, pairing dishes with beer can give some surprising results, often when it is matched with foods that wine might find 'dificult' to cope with.

Beer famously goes well with curry, but replace the ubiquitous cold lager with a decent flavourful ale like our 'Sunlight' and it becomes a heaven-made match.

The hop flavour & slight bitterness of a decent golden ale cuts through both the buttery richness of the ghee and the heat and spice. With your palate refreshed by the beer, you're now ready for another mouthful of spicy curry.

For more about beer & food see the new section on our website -

____________________________________________________

Chester Food & Drink Festival.

"Hello" to any of you who signed up to The Brewsletter after trying our beers at the Chester Food & Drink Festival over the Easter Bank Holiday - we gave away a huge number of beer tastings, we hope you enjoyed it!

Highlights for me included the look of pride and shock on the face of fellow local brewer, Pene from Jolly Brewer, Wrexham when it was announced she had won 'Beer of the Festival'.

www.jollybrewer.co.uk (site under construction)

We were later told that, after several re-counts, our bottled 'Sunlight' came second to Pene's cask beer by just one vote!

___________________________________________________________

Ales from the Crypt.

Early Spring saw one of the essential events in the local beer-lover's diary - The 'Ales From The Crypt' Beer Festival (organised by Liverpool CAMRA, in the unusual, but fine surroundings of Edwin Lutyens' Catholic Cathedral crypt).

If you were lucky enough to grab yourself a ticket, you may have had the opportunity to sample our special version of 'Sunlight', re-named 'BeWilder', and served straight from the cask.

Late last summer, a friend & I picked a small amount of wild hops from the hedgerows of a South Wirral village (even under duress we won't divulge their whereabouts - we want to pick the crop again this year!).

We kept these un-kilned, fresh hops in the freezer until a suitably important occasion arose. When festival-time aproached we added a handful of the hops to a few casks (known as "dry-hopping") & waited a week or two to see what difference it would make (- it adds a bit more bitterness, and an interesting herb/mint flavour).

Using fresh, un-dried or 'green' hops is similar to using fresh rather than dried herbs in cooking - more of the natural flavour compounds & essential oils of the hops are present and these then add to the flavour of the finished beer.

Using fresh wild hops however is a bit of an unknown - when we buy commercially-grown hops, we know the sorts of flavours to expect from the particular hop variety (e.g. the East Kent Goldings we use in 'Sunlight' have a fruity orange character). Also our hop-merchant tells us how bitter the hops are, so we know how much to add to give our beer a slight hop 'tang', but without being too bitter.

With the wild hops, the only information we got as to how they might taste in the beer was from the smell when we rubbed a small sample of hops in our hands, and the taste when we infused the hops in some hot water - we were intrigued how it would turn out, so we gave it a go. We liked the result & hope you do too.

If later on in the year, any budding botanists amongst you spot hops growing wild in or around the Wirral, please do let us know; we will gladly give you a finder's fee of a bottle or two of beer made with your wild-picked hops. (likewise if any of you have hops growing in your garden, and fancy picking them for our beer)

Most of this small batch of BeWilder was sold at the Liverpool Beer Fest, and apart from a couple of firkins to The Ship&Mitre (Dal;e Street, Liverpool) & Travellers Rest, (Higher Bebington, Wirral), we bottled the rest and it's currently on sale at our local farmers' markets.
(sadly, since writing the above, we've sold out of 'BeWilder'! - wild hops permitting, late summer will see it return, in its wildly hoppy way)

___________________________________________________________

What's The Point of the Pint?

Rumours abound that as part of an EC deal, Britain may have to agree to give up the pint, in favour of the metric half-litre.

It has been argued that the difference between the two is negligible, but, if my maths is right, there's actually about 12% less beer in the half litre than the pint. (568ml v. 500ml)

In terms of Betwixt, we currently sell our bottled beer in metric volumes (1-litre & 500ml), but if you buy our cask beer on tap in a pub, it will be served in pints & half-pints.

Personally, I have a soft spot for the pint, and as long as drinkers get the quantity that they ask for, and understand how much is in it, I don't see any reason to do away with it. (another debate rages elsewhere about the legislation surrounding the definition of a full pint & the associated consumer rights situation).
____________________________________________________________

Betwixt Hops Into The Local Press.

We have recently been getting some welcome attention in the local papers - Echo writer Paddy Shennan made mention of us in a piece profiling the recent Liverpool CAMRA Beer Festival.

His Daily Post colleague, Mike Chapple wrote a great piece about Betwixt, extoling the virtues of our fresh craft-brewed beer (& the headblowing nature of his Dad's homebrew!)

We are also mentioned in the new Echo 'Merseyside Pubs Guide'
(£1.50 from local newsagents)

We will put these fine publications up in our new 'press' section in our redesigned website, once we've had a chance to scan them in.

www.betwixtbeer.co.uk
_______________________________________________________________

CAMRA Liverpool Historic Pubs Guide

It's been said that excepting London, Liverpool has the finest array of unspoilt & beautiful old pubs in the country. Many of these fine pubs are also on CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors, but with the local focus of this publication, the authors have allowed more space for background information and some beautiful pictures.

Published by CAMRA - Campaign For Real Ale, (Liverpool & Districts Branch) more info via www.merseycamra.org.uk/

_______________________________________________________________

New 'Guest Beers'
In order to offer a range of beers, in addition to our 'Sunlight' we are currently also offering 'guest beers' from our sister company, Northern Brewing (Blakemere Craft Centre, Sandiway, Cheshire - where we brew our 'Sunlight').

This range of guest beers all have one thing in common, the use of intensely flavoured American hops. These typically give vivid fruit flavours - especially grapefruit, lemon & peach; but try a taste or two & see what you think yourself. Like our 'Sunlight' they are bottled straight from the cask, bottle-conditioned, fresh & tasty.
_______________________________________________________________

A Bit of Bottle.

After comments from customers looking for a smaller bottle than our normal 1-litre, we have recently trialled a new bottle, initially with our limited edition 'BeWilder' but now with our regular 'Sunlight'.

If you haven't spotted these swanky, new, amber, swing-top, half-litre, glass bottles, look out for them at our regular farmers markets - every weekend on Merseyside. Let us know what you think.
_________________________________________________________________

If you have any questions, comments, or anything else you think we should mention in future emails, please do drop us a line,

Cheers

Mike,
Brewer/Owner,
The Betwixt Beer Co, Wirral.
Tel - 0779 296 7414
Email - brewer@betwixtbeer.co.uk
Web - www.betwixtbeer.co.uk

The Betwixt Beer Co. Fresh, flavourful craft-brewed beer from The Wirral Peninsula - 'Betwixt The Mersey & The Dee' PS the website, home deliveries, party-kegs & full firkins (72pints) are now all online: www.betwixtbeer.co.uk }