Bringing it to the people

Apologies in advance for the double Anglophilia of these last posts.  But it's now the end of October, and so it's time for the second set of video blogs from British beer writer Pete Brown, and the brewer Peter Amor.  So I thought I would share, along with a few words about why I think what they are doing is a great idea.

First, Pete's video blog.   (Sadly, I have to link to them since vimeo won't allow them to be embedded.) The idea is to go around to different regions of the UK, trying craft brews (and also cask ales) and talking about them.  The idea is sort of two fold.  It promotes regional and craft brews, as well as promoting cask ales.  At the same time, it's meant to introduce people who may not have a lot of experience with these beers to their flavors and aromas.  (Okay, maybe that's three four more than two goals.)

I was excited about the first entry, and very thirsty after.  This second one is really good too.  He's not always terribly smooth in front of the camera (who is?), but he does a good job I think of expressing some of the joys of drinking these beers, and I really like his attempts to talk about the actual flavors and aromas of the beers in a non-technical way, tied more to the drinker's experience than the ingredients or the brewer's perspective.  This is amazingly hard to do -- ever tried to actually tell someone what the hop character in your favorite IPA is like?  What do you say once you get past "piney" or "citrusy"?

But what I really wanted to mention in this post was the accompanying video blog by Peter Amor.  These ones are different.  They are not about any particular beers, but rather they are about the brewing process.  The first entry seemed a bit stiff to me, but this one I think is great.  It's a very concise overview of the brewing process that is aimed at the layperson, but is both technically right and informative, without getting into extraneous detail.  Again, that's really hard to do!  A bit of Google-ing shows that Amor got his start brewing for Guinness before starting the Wye Valley Brewery in 1985.  Especially in this second video blog, I think Amor does a terrific job of showing the process and getting across the main technical details from a brewer's perspective, without making it seem like a lecture.

So great idea.  Good for them for trying to bring the love of beer to a wider audience.  And glad we are starting to see some of the same thing in the US; props to folks like Michael Agnew for helping to do a similar thing locally as well.