HB&B Blog — Norfolk

What’s with the spate of “Italian” style pilsners being released by British breweries lately? And just what the hell is an Italian pilsner anyway? First released in 1996, Birrificio Italiano Tipopils was, and still is considered by many as something of a game changer. A world apart from the likes of Peroni or Moretti, Tipopils takes a soft, bready malt body, much like a traditional German Helles, then dry hops the beer using the Spalter Select variety, giving the beer heady floral and lemon zest characteristics. The inspiration for this hoppy lager didn’t come from the US as you might...

In the past, when I’ve been asked which food-and-beer pairing I’m most proud of, the first that comes to mind is one from our book, The Beer Lover’s Table – the cover recipe, in fact – for prawn and mango coconut curry, paired with a hazy, tropical double IPA. New England IPAs and their ilk can be difficult to have alongside food – they’re so potent, so rich and bold, that they overwhelm many dishes. The secret is to find food that matches their intensity, ideally with some complementary flavours; maybe it isn’t so revelatory after all that fruity, pungent curries are...

  According to New York Times writer Sam Sifton’s oft-quoted Pizza Cognition Theory, “The first slice of pizza a child sees and tastes (and somehow appreciates on something more than a childlike, mmmgoood, thanks-mom level), becomes, for him, pizza. He relegates all subsequent slices, if they are different in some manner from that first triangle of dough and cheese and tomato and oil and herbs and spices, to a status that we can characterise as not pizza.” In other words: Your first slice of pizza will always be the One True Pizza to you. As a child of the Chicago suburbs, my...

When I visited Duration Brewing’s idyllic Norfolk home in West Acre last summer, head brewer and co-founder Derek Bates told me he wanted to brew “lots of lager”. The brewery was still in its proto-stages of development then. The medieval barn that was being converted into the building that would eventually house the equipment which makes its beer still lacked a proper floor and drainage. However, it was no less breathtaking – the building and the surrounding fields, farms, forests and streams all added to the sense of place Duration was looking to foster in its permanent home. The brewery...

People sometimes ask me how I come up with the inspiration for these columns – whether I begin with the beer or with a dish. The answer is: haphazardly, and the order of operations tends to vary month by month. In this case, I began with the beer. Duration Brewing’s Promise of Spring “Norfolk Witbier” is a 5% dream of a wheat beer, which drinks dry and clean and has only a minimal ester profile. It felt like the right thing for the seasonal transition: an optimistic omen of warm and sunny days ahead, of the end of a dreary,...