Hurray for summer ales - and ****** to the jobsworths!

Have you noticed? Every time the sun dares to poke through the grey blanket that, much of the time, passes for a UK sky some do-gooder pundit pops up with a dire warning. Apparently we are all about to come to a very, literally, sticky end. Unless We Take Precautions. They get paid well for this nonsense.

The latest I heard from a Radio 4 'expert' was that the best thing is to stay in doors during sunlight hours, preferably, if I got this right, smothered in sun screen just in case we have to stray outside and with tightly closed shutters (where do they live?) to prevent warm air cunningly sneaking in. We were also warned to lay off the coffee and tea (what?) - drinking, of course, at least three litres of water a day in case dehydration creeps up. Without getting into detailed bladder issues here, I wonder: is there time for that?

Ok, some of it makes sense; like checking on an elderly neighbour and maybe wearing a hat if you're being hit by the midday sun. But do we really need them to tell us this stuff?

The other target which, of course, it just wouldn't be right to leave out of any nanny state script is the demon alcohol. Don't - especially - touch the diabolical stuff in hot weather they preach. It's the shortest road to dehydration hell. Just as if pubs don't have enough to worry about at present.

Funnily enough this problem does not seems to effect Europe. Do the Italian's quit quaffing espresso? Do the sales of vino plummet in France? Do the Czechs stop shifting vast quantities of their lovely lager beer at the slightest hint of a few rays? I don't think so.

Celebrate British ales
And I have news for these preaching 'jobs-worths'. The summer is a great time to celebrate British ales. And what's more we should all get out there on a glorious sunny evening and do our stuff for the Great British Pub. What better than to sit in a pub garden and enjoy a cool beer (or Pimms for that matter) after a day at the coalface of recessionary Britain?

The times of cricket and warm ale as a UK PLC trademark are long gone. Light, fruity summer beers with just the right bitter undertone and served at the correct temperature are, in my view, probably the most exciting development of the British drinking scene in recent years. Not least because they are terrifically accessible with a plethora of the stuff about. And, largely, what good stuff it is too.

Some, like Moorhouse's Blond Witch, one of the pioneers, are so good they have become permanent ales. But a lot pop out just for the season and it gladdens the heart to see people who are usually lager or smoothflow merchants taking to them with a gusto.

Sat in my local the other day a chap who was usually committed to a keg mild got stuck into some Everard's Sunchaser with such enthusiasm it was sheer delight to witness. When that ran out he moved deftly onto the slightly pokier Daleside's Pride of England. Good man.

There are far too many to list here. But look out for anything from Roosters,of Knaresbrough, which does light fruity, hoppy beers all year round and terrific seasonals Butcombe Blond, Woods Summer That and Summer Pale from Acorn Brewery, which just screams 'cool, tasty and refreshing' as soon as you look at the pumpclip.

New B&P Ale arrives
Of course, the really new brew to do the job is Brunning & Price's very own Original Bitter. This ale took a while in the coming. Several months and several brews, in fact, after Phoenix first took the brief. Well that's committees for you. But, hey, splendidly, Original has appeared just in time for the long summer evenings. The time when you need a good tasty supping tipple at a strength (3.8%) which won't - anxious sun watchdogs should note - clang any big dehydration bells.

It looks damn good too. A traditional amber colour rather than blonde it has a fine tight white head that clings delightfully, ringing the glass with each gusty sup. Proper northern ale this. Light fruit and floral notes - hints of fresh grass if you swirl it - hit the nose and then gently dance on the tastebuds before a dry and tantalising bitter finish creeps quietly in.

A generous gift from Kent Golding hops, that bitterness develops nicely on those beery buds at the back, urging another creamy, fruity slug. Yes, the committee got it right in the end.

This is just the stuff to watch sliding down the glass, an orange sun slipping away or even a warm rain falling, as we count our beery summer blessings. Those pundits eh? They just don't know what they are missing.

Coffee delights (yes coffee) in Yorkshire and the story of the straining civet

Heard the one about the coffee bean that is found in the, ahem, waste matter of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradouras hermaphroditus)?

Well, living a sheltered life in the beer world, I hadn’t, until the other day when I visited Taylors of Harrogate for a bit of coffee tasting.

Apparently, the weasel or cat-like beast produces the Kopi Luwack, the most expensive coffee bean in the world, from its bottom. First it eats the red berry containing the bean or seed and then the enzymes in the civet’s stomach get to work to add flavour before nature takes its course. Then some poor blighter has to retrieve it.Makes brewing ale look very simple. Apparently, to reassure the fastidious, all the washing drying and roasting gets rid of any lingering,er, unpleasantness. So don't worry.

Now what, I hear you ask, is a beer writer doing wasting drinking time tasting coffee? Good question. But life never ceases to surprise with the Beer Writers Guild.

A few of us visited the inner sanctum of the famous Yorkshire tea and coffee emporium that is the sibling of the even more famously indulgent Bettys tearooms (famous in Yorkshire anyway, and that must make them the most famous in the world), to taste a few coffees and sober up a bit We'd just enjoyed a visit to the much venerated Roosters Brewery (more of that later) of Knaresborough.

Now coffee for me is normally just a bit of a pick me up about 11am. After dinner coffee, pah, I've never really seen the point, unless you are the unfortunate soul that is driving. However, this was interesting. And coming immediately after a sampling of Roosters’ ales, it sort of pointed up the similarities of this tasting malarkey.

Funnily enough, though, we spat it out. Just to avoid getting a bit manic, I guess. This was a wee bit tricky. Thank goodness we hadn’t done that at Roosters - far too good to waste.

The ebullient Mike Riley took us through the whole coffee buying process. Blimey, not being much of a supermarket shopper, I never realised there was so much to it. We tasted coffees from India, Sumatra, Jamaica, Rwanda, Brazil and Ethiopia, the birthplace of the stuff apparently, and other parts of the globe I had hardly heard off. And this was real coffee with character, not the homogenised stuff that comes ready to jump in the pot.

And that’s where the synergy with ale creeps in. Like craft ales, as opposed to the industrial stuff, this is all about quality and provenance. And Taylors is highly committed to ethical sourcing, making sure that its suppliers offer fair play to their workers just as they are pledged to paying a fair price. This touches a cord - I know of a few pub companies that could usefully take a tea leaf out of their book here.

Eee tho’, what a job that Mike has eh? Coffee, as it happens, is a very tropical plant and can thrive only in hot countries, so, as Chief Coffee Taster (oh yes), he gets to jet off to sun spots all over the world to inspect crops – a bit like the Del Monte man. Who would have thought life could be so exciting in the world of brewing up a cuppa?

Anyway, back to the tasting. The trick, apparently, is to draw the coffee across the palate with a slurp – so it hits all the taste buds - and then deftly aim a quick gob at the spittoon. Mike could do it as smoothly as a magician produces a rabbit. The rest of us, well, noisy and messy, very,very, messy. Watching a post luncheon cohort of beer writers do this is not a pretty sight.

Just as erstwhile wine trade man Sean Franklin at Roosters expounds passionately about fruity hop flavours, Mike too waxes lyrical about hints of grapefruit from Kenya, nutty flavours from Nicaragua, the caramel sweetness of Colombian and full flavoured chocolate from Sumatra.

And then there is Monsoon Malabar. Now this is an interesting story. It’s sort of reverse of the India Pale Ale tale of the 1800s, whereby the beer improved as it negotiated the dodgy 18,000 mile journey around the Cape to reach the sub continent. This stuff came the other way to please the well-to-do Victorians. It too benefit ted from jollying along in the trade winds, developing smokey and spicy qualities that seemed to go down well with 19th century taste buds.

However, the advent of the Suez canal speeded the job up a bit too much, and as a consequence the coffee lost some its flavour. So now the conditions of the sea journey are recreated by opening the doors on vast warehouses in the monsoon season. This creates moist air around the coffee beans, causing them to swell and develop, before being shipped out.

Yes, there’s a lot more to coffee than I ever imagined. No longer now will I glibly throw a teaspoon or two in the pot of a morning as my thoughts dwell on the delights of a fine cask ale. No, no, now I will pause and reflect on the exotic and exciting world of coffee. And I’ll spare a thought for the long suffering civets, dutifully passing those beans for our delight as I ponder – does it hurt much?