Latest 'Iechyd Da' column from the Carmarthen Journal
The latest 'Iechyd Da' column written by brewer Simon Buckley in this week's Carmarthen Journal -
The annual pilgrimage to the Abergavenny Food Fair is over for another year.
If you have never been, then pencil in the middle weekend of September next year, it’s an event that you should not miss.
A shop window for Welsh food? Well not quite; there were more stalls from across the Severn and from the hinterland of Wales than from down West. Nevertheless, it is unquestionably one of the finest food fairs in the UK.
You could not escape the cosmopolitan crowd looking for new and exciting products, conservative in what they taste, but nevertheless looking for the new trends in what to cook and eat.
Beer was not a centrepiece of the show.
The simple fact is that what was once the natural accompaniment of our nation with food, has now been relegated to the fridge for special one-offs when it’s too cold or wet to go to the pub.
However I sense a change is coming, with supermarkets such as ASDA looking for change, to bring quality to the market.
The new-style bottled beers are made to new production criteria which allows the breweries to get as close as they can to the Champagne of Ales, cask beer.
Beer should now be back on the posh people's drink list when out shopping.
Not a couple of bottles for the gardener to drink outside with his patron's ham sandwich, but to be drunk and enjoyed with the very best local produce.
Beer offers the greatest range of healthy alternatives to wine.
Combinations of rich flavours that add to the food experience, and give you the opportunity to drink something that more often than not is hand-crafted and natural.
If you don’t like the gentle fizz of bottled beer, which reduces when you cool it, then ask your ‘local’ to sell you a couple of pints of your favourite cask beer to take home.
So what do we drink with what?
I am an unashamed lover of cheese.
At Abergavenny, tucked away in the cheese section surrounded by larger stalls of French and Italian producers, was West Wales’s finest cheese maker, John Savage-Onstwedder, Caws Teifi.
What a mouth-watering selection of cheeses!
Pick any of John’s cheeses, some good local bread, and find yourself a bottle of good Welsh bitter.
I could tip you in the right direction if you need some help, I know an award winner or two!
Not too bitter to destroy the subtle flavours of the cheese, and you will have a fine lunch by anyone’s standards.
Add to that some local home cured ham, chutney from the WI, close your eyes and you will think you have gone to heaven!
Don’t forget to come to the Carmarthen CAMRA beer festival next week, and try the myriad of new beers from Wales.
There’s one I know you will like, crafted to celebrate the birth of the eighth generation of our brewing family.
I think its one of the best I have ever brewed. I wonder why?
The annual pilgrimage to the Abergavenny Food Fair is over for another year.
If you have never been, then pencil in the middle weekend of September next year, it’s an event that you should not miss.
A shop window for Welsh food? Well not quite; there were more stalls from across the Severn and from the hinterland of Wales than from down West. Nevertheless, it is unquestionably one of the finest food fairs in the UK.
You could not escape the cosmopolitan crowd looking for new and exciting products, conservative in what they taste, but nevertheless looking for the new trends in what to cook and eat.
Beer was not a centrepiece of the show.
The simple fact is that what was once the natural accompaniment of our nation with food, has now been relegated to the fridge for special one-offs when it’s too cold or wet to go to the pub.
However I sense a change is coming, with supermarkets such as ASDA looking for change, to bring quality to the market.
The new-style bottled beers are made to new production criteria which allows the breweries to get as close as they can to the Champagne of Ales, cask beer.
Beer should now be back on the posh people's drink list when out shopping.
Not a couple of bottles for the gardener to drink outside with his patron's ham sandwich, but to be drunk and enjoyed with the very best local produce.
Beer offers the greatest range of healthy alternatives to wine.
Combinations of rich flavours that add to the food experience, and give you the opportunity to drink something that more often than not is hand-crafted and natural.
If you don’t like the gentle fizz of bottled beer, which reduces when you cool it, then ask your ‘local’ to sell you a couple of pints of your favourite cask beer to take home.
So what do we drink with what?
I am an unashamed lover of cheese.
At Abergavenny, tucked away in the cheese section surrounded by larger stalls of French and Italian producers, was West Wales’s finest cheese maker, John Savage-Onstwedder, Caws Teifi.
What a mouth-watering selection of cheeses!
Pick any of John’s cheeses, some good local bread, and find yourself a bottle of good Welsh bitter.
I could tip you in the right direction if you need some help, I know an award winner or two!
Not too bitter to destroy the subtle flavours of the cheese, and you will have a fine lunch by anyone’s standards.
Add to that some local home cured ham, chutney from the WI, close your eyes and you will think you have gone to heaven!
Don’t forget to come to the Carmarthen CAMRA beer festival next week, and try the myriad of new beers from Wales.
There’s one I know you will like, crafted to celebrate the birth of the eighth generation of our brewing family.
I think its one of the best I have ever brewed. I wonder why?
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