Ska and Camden Town. It was always going to happen, wasn’t it? We were destined to get it on. And what happened when we did hook up (it happened in the back of a van in downtown San Diego…). We drank beer, then drank some more beer, and then drank some more beer. Then someone said: Hey, imagine what would happen if Hells Lager and Modus Hoperandi combined into one super beer? That’d be awesome, man. Let’s do it. Let’s brew it! Let’s brew a Rude Boy lager hopped like a motherfucking IPA!

And we did and it’s ready to go!

Rude Boy is a 6.8% ABV American-hopped imperial lagerbier. Made with all pilsner malt and fermented with our classic lager yeast, it’s hopped and dry-hopped (and dry-hopped again) with Columbus and Cascade hops giving 68 IBUs and a huge aroma of citrus and resinous hops – it’s a smashed up version of Hells and Modus. It’s had six-weeks in tank, it’s unfiltered and it’s tasting awesome!

There isn’t much of it so get it while you can – it’ll be on at the Brewery Bar until it runs out.

Last week we sent five pallets of beer to Sweden for the Stockholm Beer and Whisky Festival! Jasper and Christine are going over there for a couple of days to talk beer (and probably drink some, too). We’re over there with Wicked Wine, so that’s where you’ll find us (and hopefully you might find Camden Town in Sweden more often in the future…).

We’ve sent a whole range of different beers, including some of our collaboration with Ska Brewing (it’s a 6.8% American-hopped lager called Rude Boy), the last remaining kegs of 1908 (EVER!), kegs of Camden Ink, our hoppy nitro stout, and then loads of bottles. Jasper is also speaking on Friday 28 September at 5pm.

This is our first trip to Scandinavia and we’re damn excited about it. Come and say hi if you’re going!

What’s that? On Friday there’ll be a street lined with amazing food traders outside the Brewery Bar?! Hell yeah – Street Feast is back!

A whole, wonderful bunch of street food traders will be here from 5pm cooking a huge variety of delicious things and inside we’ll have a bar lined with the freshest beer in town.

Here’s who’s going to be cooking your dinner! What are you having?

The Horseshoe, in Hampstead, needs a new GM.

A few years ago Jasper started brewing in the cellars beneath the pub before deciding to move up, out and into railway arches and start Camden Town Brewery. There’s no beer made in the pub anymore but it sells the full range of Camden Town beers plus guest brews, great wine and a fantastic food menu.

The GM is moving on and we need to fill his huge shoes. The GM will need to manage all aspects of the business, be able to organise and communicate, be personable and approachable, have a great knowledge of the food and drink industry and want to bring their own ideas in to help push The Horseshoe forward. The GM is responsible for back of house, budgets, pricing, etc, as well as front of house and making sure everything is wesome. Great service is a major part of the role.

Want to manage The Horseshoe? If you’re interested or want to know more then send us an email on blastoff@camdentownbrewery.com

Fresh hops, ready to make amazing beer

Hops are perennial growing plants which are harvested once a year. We are currently in the middle of the hop harvest in the northern hemisphere when all of the year’s hop crop is picked and processed in a few manic weeks.

Rows of hops ready to be picked

Out in the hop gardens, rows and rows of bines reach six meters in the air, hanging heavy with bright green hops. A trailer parks up and a tractors with a crows nest drives up behind. Two people at the top of the nest cut the bines down and someone stands in the trailer and makes sure it fills up neatly – it’s rudimentary but the process works. Then the hops, still on the bine, surrounded by their leaves, are taken to be processed. The air is fragrant, heady and thick and almost immediately the soporific effect makes you dozy and calm. Tractors speed around carrying trailer-loads of just-picked hops while people tear hops from bines or throw long lines of them into great, hulking machines. From there the hops are separated from the bines, dried and packed. Down in Kent, England’s hop garden, the process is still similar to how it was done decades ago.

From field to factory, next the hops get stripped from the bine

The process is amazing to watch and it smells incredible. Freshly-picked hops have a soft, giving texture like a rosebud. Rip them open and inside are the oils; rub then between your hands and it’s ripe, fresh, very green and delicate, grassy like cucumber. After drying they become papery in their texture, more brittle almost, yet crushing them in your hands brings a deeper, more intense flavour. Hops are dried and packed as quickly as possible to keep them as fresh as possible – they need to last for a whole year until the next harvest.

A field that's already been harvested

This is the one time of year when you’ll see green hopped beers. With hops going from garden to kettle in a few hours, undried, it’s beer’s ultimate seasonal product – look out for some in the next few weeks (unfortunately we haven’t got any green hops this year… maybe next year!).

Right now hop fields and gardens in Europe and North America are filled with people harvesting hops ready to make fantastic pints of beer in the upcoming year.

Everyone say hello to Christine! She’s Camden Town’s Sales & Marketing Manager – before coming to us she worked selling online technology (yawn!) in Brooklyn and in London, now she spends all day talking to great people about great beer!

Name…
Christine Poreca

Job title…
Sales & Marketing Manager

For breakfast today I had…
Muffin from Pret… eating on the run!

Today at work I have to…
Research, Strategise, Sell!

If I wasn’t at work, I’d be…
At the pub

Favourite CTB beer…
Camden Ink – such a beautiful beer, both in appearance and flavour.

Favourite non-CTB beer…
Jeeze, that’s like asking parents to pick their favourite child (if they had thousands of delicious children). If I had to name one, I’d go with Troeg’s Nugget Nectar. An Imperial Amber Ale with a nice malt backbone and loads of hops. I love it so much, a friend home-brewed a clone of it for me (although he’s nice enough to say we brewed it together, I mostly watched) here in London, since it’s only available in the US.

My favourite hop is…
Sorachi Ace – lemony, creamy deliciousness. Unfortunately, not used that often.

When I’m not drinking beer, I’m drinking…
Coffee

The last beer I drank was…
Camden Pale Ale

If we could brew any beer at CTB it’d be…
Berliner Weisse. Love sour beers and the low ABV makes it light, refreshing and sessionable.

If I could brew a beer with anyone in the world, it’d be…
Anthony Bourdain. He’s got an amazing palate, will try pretty much anything and has great taste in music. So, we’d have a kickass day brewing together.

Favourite album to drink to…
Lucero, ‘Tennessee’

Favourite place to have a beer…
Any craft beer bar in London, really. So many awesome new pubs/bars opening every week. Such an exciting time to be in London, drinking craft beer!

Favourite food to go with a beer…
Has to be a cheeseburger…with American cheese

Want beer? Christine is the person to talk to! You can email her on Christine@camdentownbrewery.com. Or you can follow here on twitter – @HopGirlinLondon.

For the last 18 months we’ve been helping Byron with their craft beer menu. The whole process is great fun and our role is to open beers, talk about them, let Byron pick their favourites and then tell their staff a little more about them.

The first list called for an enormous tasting of around 100 beers from all over the world. From there the list was cut down to the ones which tasted the best, looked good and would create an interesting menu which set Byron apart from everyone else, giving a really exciting mix of British and American beers. The list included some classic craft beers like Brooklyn Lager and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and newer beers like Hells Lager, Odell Cutthroat Porter and Kernel IPA.

With a successful first menu, work started on a second menu. This time the two restaurants who had sold the most craft beer up to that point came to the brewery and got to try beers for the next list. Again we lined up loads of craft beers, had a big tasting and the staff got to pick the beers they loved the most. We also got them to design the perfect beer for a Byron: gold, fruity, fresh, dry and refreshing was what they said. We brewed Byron Pale Ale based on what the staff wanted.

Then the third beer list… The middle list brought in some beers unique to Byron’s list (Ska and Uinta), and we wanted to keep some special beers, but we also wanted some of the classics to return, so Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is back. We’ve also got two canned beers on the list: Kona’s Longboard Lager and SKA’s Modus Hoperandi (cans are great!). And there’s also Bear Republic Racer 5, an American IPA. Tom, Byron’s MD, went out to California to meet Bear Republic personally to sort out getting hold of these beers – while there he also met with Ska and arranged for the cans (that’s what makes working with Byron so good – they work hard to build that personal relationship in order to get the best stuff). The list also features great cider from Little Creatures Brewery. Plus Hells Lager and Byron Pale are still there. The third list launched this week in all the Byron restaurants – check it out.

Time to enjoy a couple of cold beers and delicious burgers!

(The day the menu went live, we started arranging a tasting for the next list. Byron select a range of beers and we help them drink them – yeah, we’re lucky and we love our job. What do you think would work well on the menu?)

On Thursday, we’re thrashing it out in the brewery to try and come up with the plan for the beers for next year. We’re getting some more tanks, so we’ll have more capacity to make more beer and this should free up the smaller tanks in the brewery for extra beers. As the people who drink our beer, what would you like to see from Camden Town in 2013?

We’ve got Hells Lager, Pale Ale, Ink and Wheat. Should we add another beer (in keg and bottles – there won’t be any cask) to the permanent range? If so, what works?

Would you like to see any of the beers we’ve made in the last year come back, either as one-offs or regular beers? That could be Gentleman’s Wit, USA Hells or Black Friday? (Or Showboat Brown, Red IPA, Bleeding Hops, Inner City Green?)

What styles would you be most interested in seeing if we were to brew some one-off beers during the year?

Should we bottle more beer? How about cans of Hells? Or Ink?

We’ve got some wine barrels coming. What should go into them?

Here’s your chance to let us know what you’d like to see from Camden Town next year and we’ll discuss it all during our meeting!