Simon Buckley's monthly Journal column

Simon Buckley, chief executive of Evan-Evans brewery, has a new monthly column in the Carmarthen Journal (see the Out and About section this week).
Fed up with the election ,with still just over a week to go?
My advice is hit the supermarket and get some bottle ales in to try. Sit in the garden and enjoy this fantastic spring weather. Don’t be shy, try the Welsh beers first.
Some 34 years ago, when I joined the brewing industry in Llanelli, every brewery brewed fizzy bottle beers. Bottle beer then was very definitely the poor relation to cask beer.
Cask ale is still the King of Ales, but increasingly we are seeing more and more of the crafted bottle beers, many produced by the small brewers here in Wales.
Iven Kelleher, my graduate brewer joined me for a tasting. We tasted 10 bottle beers, and for the sake of being even-handed and fair, we did not taste our Evan-Evans bottled beers, Cwrw and Warrior. That would have been too easy!
One thing is for sure, is the quality of the product is as varied as some of the raw materials used by the brewers. Many of the small brewers’ beers frankly lacked the quality and finish of the more professional brewers. But our views are just that - our views.
Try the beers we list and see whether you agree with our best three. We will not name and shame, instead we have selected the best three, and I am afraid they represent the experience and quality of the brewery they come from.
In simple terms what makes a good bottle beer; remember that bottle beers are processed, then filtered, and finally pasteurised before Co2 is added to fizz the beer. During the process, many of the unique flavours of the beer can be knocked out by filtration. Too much Co2 and the beers have a hard bite and are too fizzy. The skill at getting this right is the difference between good and bad.
The best bottle beer we tasted was brewed by the largest brewer in Wales, SA Brain. Up and Over, widely available throughout Wales, was a fine example of a bottle beer, malty, fruity, slight sweetness, with a lovely floral bitterness. It could either be drunk on its own, or drunk with a mixture of foods from Fish through to exotic Chicken dishes.
Second was SA Gold, another Brains beer, and third Rhymney Brewery’s Export. Experience and quality shone through.
The other beers tasted, were Double Dragon, Cwrw Braf, Brains SA, Tomos Watkin OSB, and three from smaller breweries, which were not very good.
Next month, it’s time to get out and meet some of our local brewers and taste the cask beer of West Wales.
See earlier post -
http://sirgarblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/simon-buckleys-new-column-in-journal.html