{"id":1898,"date":"2012-12-27T12:56:33","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T12:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=1898"},"modified":"2012-12-27T12:56:33","modified_gmt":"2012-12-27T12:56:33","slug":"shoreditch-blonde","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=1898","title":{"rendered":"Shoreditch Blonde"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Shoreditch<\/a>
The Beer of My Novel? (Image linked from Redchurch Brewery website)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

There\u2019s a report on the BBC website today<\/a> about the increasing fashionability and popularity of craft brewing in London. Its main focus is the Beavertown Brewery in Hackney where the brewer is Robert Plant\u2019s son.<\/p>\n

A few years ago it was only bearded, beer-bellied types who were proudly out in their appreciation of real ale and the vast number of diverse styles that offered an alternative from the industrialised, mass-marketed poor-man\u2019s pilsner styles that dominated bar counters in this country. (Stella Artois always gets stick for leading the bland lager pack but I actually think Stella is relatively well-made and has less of the chemically taste of the cheaper brands.)<\/p>\n

But now craft beer is, to use a Sunday supplement phrase, \u2018achingly trendy\u2019. Craft beer isn\u2019t always real ale \u2013 punk anarcho-brewers like Brewdog<\/a> take pride in setting 41-year old CAMRA\u2019s (the Campaign for Real Ale) nose out of joint. But, generally, the presence of living yeast in the brew gives a marvellous complexity to a well-brewed beer and the majority of new British brewers (with a few exceptions like Greenwich\u2019s Meantime) tend to use traditional methods.<\/p>\n

In the last year or so, I\u2019ve been to a lot of the new craft beer outlets in London \u2013 the two Cask Bar outlets in Pimlico and Hatton Garden, the architectural oddity of the Euston Tap<\/a>, the Brewdog pub in Camden, Tap East in Stratford Westfield and so on \u2013 and I\u2019ll perhaps plan a visit soon to Hackney to visit Beavertown.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ll be even keener to try and find the beer whose photo from the brewery\u2019s product page I\u2019ve linked to above \u2013 Shoreditch Blonde<\/i> by the Redchurch Brewery. They\u2019re based in Bethnal Green but the name is an obvious reference to the famed Redchurch Street \u2013 maybe, apart from the Leake Street tunnel near Waterloo, the most active graffiti art area in London.<\/p>\n

Beer plays quite a part in the novel and the character who has a passion for it is cool, urban Kim \u2013 James just drinks lots of it (at the start of the novel, anyway, before he goes on his personal narrative beer journey).<\/p>\n

So, in another of those extraordinarily touches of serendipity that give me a little hope that the novel is tapping into the Zeitgest<\/i>, the beer is based on a German style and brewed with German malt. I\u2019ve been looking for a significantly named beer for Kim to serve James in a scene early in the novel \u2013 and now I\u2019ve found the perfect one. Now to find a pint of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  There\u2019s a report on the BBC website today about the increasing fashionability and popularity of craft brewing in London. Its main focus is the Beavertown Brewery in Hackney where the brewer is Robert Plant\u2019s son. A few years ago it was only bearded, beer-bellied types who were proudly out in their appreciation of real … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Shoreditch Blonde”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[323,154,936,863,136],"class_list":["post-1898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","tag-beer","tag-london","tag-redchurch-brewery","tag-redchurch-street","tag-shoreditch"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1906,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}