Is Harveys just a tad over-rated??

[Dandyman]

I prefer to drink beer because of the taste rather than the ABV for many the important aspect is the strength of the beer.

Which hardly applies to most of the beer brewed by Harveys. Best is 4%, Old is 4.3% and Mild is only 3%. I enjoy Darkstar ales but APA is 4.7%, Original 5% and Revelation 5.7% (Hophead is obviously a lighter session beer but you get the point).

 

[Hugo Rune]

To be honest it reads like self serving nonsense to me. People are free to drink what they want but to compare "craft beer" to real ale is like pretending that a suit mass manufactured in Shanghai is the same or even better than one made by a proper British tailor on the basis that the Chinese are using laser technology while the British are using "outdated" sewing and cutting.

Perhaps but it's really is all about the taste for me rather than tradition, old men's clubs & dull committees. From the previous posted link:

Over to Tony Naylor again to provide the final word;
‘Real ale's biggest enemy? British brewers who flood the market with dull, steady, fundamentally boring brown beers, on a flavour spectrum defined by Greene King IPA and Taylor's Landlord. Contrast this with America where uninhibited, challengingly hoppy craft beers are flourishing.’

 

[nwgull]

I like Harveys and I like London Pride as well.. (Bring on TV Burp?).

I don't think it's over-rated but it is over-priced at the Amex.

I like a lot of beers but not Directors. Gives me a dreadful headache.

Interesting. I like Harvey's, Pride AND Directors. I also drink in a boozer where a pint of the latter is the best part of £4 so I can't really complain about the price of a pint in the Amex either.

 

[Prince Monolulu]

All tastes the same and gives one gas, give me a decent Red any day.

 

[Buckeejit]

Good lively exhange of opinions on the profoundly important topic of quality ale - one of life's great pleasures!

Anyway, reckon there's one thing that there will be widespread agreement on here - Shepherd Neame beer is pretty vile stuff... if I ever see their name on a pub, I give it a VERY wide berth... their bottled version of Whitstable Bay is drinkable enough but can't come anywhere near redeeming them as a brewery...

 

[Dandyman]

Perhaps but it's really is all about the taste for me rather than tradition, old men's clubs & dull committees. From the previous posted link:

Over to Tony Naylor again to provide the final word;
‘Real ale's biggest enemy? British brewers who flood the market with dull, steady, fundamentally boring brown beers, on a flavour spectrum defined by Greene King IPA and Taylor's Landlord. Contrast this with America where uninhibited, challengingly hoppy craft beers are flourishing.’

I don't totally disagree with Tony Naylor. There are bland or poor British real ales (Shepherd Neame and GK among others) and while I think many US beers are over-aggressive in their hops I would not dismiss all of them especially those from the Pacific North-West and New England.

 

[BensGrandad]

Overrated yes. The standard bitter figures nowhere in the world rankings. Give me a good american or Belgian ale any day of the week.

When in the USA I tried some of their micro brew rubbish and that really summed it up rubbish.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Real ale is a beer brewed from traditional ingredients (malted barley, hops water and yeast), matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.

Keg beer undergoes the same primary fermentation as real ale but after that stage it is filtered and/or pasteurised. No further conditioning can therefore take place. The beer lacks any natural carbonation which would have been produced by the secondary fermentation and so carbon dioxide has to be added artificially. This leads to in my and most real ale fans opinion to an over gassy product. That is without getting into the issue of added chemicals, etc.

Utter utter rubbish. You can get plenty of unpasteurised and non-filtered keg beers.

 

[Dandyman]

Utter utter rubbish. You can get plenty of unpasteurised and non-filtered keg beers.

Such as ? Or are they not actually keg ?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

but why would you want to compare something being traditional with something going out of its way to be "modern", using hops from thousand of miles away? not for everyones taste. and using kegs is to enable forced carbonation of the beer, so the end product is more similar to lager in texture. as far as im concerned the Amex Harveys is always the same, which it would be being bright. bright is the same as kegged, except without the added CO2.

You don't half talk a lot of rubbish.

 

[beorhthelm]

Again, modern Ale Brewers such as Brewdog & Meantime DON'T ADD CO2!

theres a difference here between adding CO2 when kegging, and adding CO2 when dispensing. you cant get the beer out of the keg without pressurisation of the keg. you can tell when they are using sparklers and not a beer engine that the product is pressured, not to mention the diffences in the look, mouth feel and bloat after a couple of pints. the modern methods you are talking about are nothing of the sort, they are those used by the lager industry to clear their product and make it easier to ship and handle. and there's nothing wrong with that, there's many fine lagers. but theres another way, allowing the beer to drop bright then transfering to new clean casks, same effect of being easy to ship and handle. there's no way you could serve up normal cask ale in the Amex immediatly after rolling it 50yds from the store room.

my biggest, only in fact, issue with craft beer is how its got all sniffy in the same way as Camra. craft ale's enemy is desperatly trying so hard to be new and standing out from all the other craft ales, ending in over hopped, high ABV, steering towards a flavour spectrum dictated by the heavily citrus hops like Amirillo and Nelson Sauvin. end of day, theres space for Harveys best, Wild hop, Old, alongside Darkstar's Hophead, Partridge and so on. let unite against the common foe, the cooking lager.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

theres a difference here between adding CO2 when kegging, and adding CO2 when dispensing. you cant get the beer out of the keg without pressurisation of the keg. you can tell when they are using sparklers and not a beer engine that the product is pressured, not to mention the diffences in the look, mouth feel and bloat after a couple of pints. the modern methods you are talking about are nothing of the sort, they are those used by the lager industry to clear their product and make it easier to ship and handle. and there's nothing wrong with that, there's many fine lagers. but theres another way, allowing the beer to drop bright then transfering to new clean casks, same effect of being easy to ship and handle. there's no way you could serve up normal cask ale in the Amex immediatly after rolling it 50yds from the store room.

my biggest, only in fact, issue with craft beer is how its got all sniffy in the same way as Camra. craft ale's enemy is desperatly trying so hard to be new and standing out from all the other craft ales, ending in over hopped, high ABV, steering towards a flavour spectrum dictated by the heavily citrus hops like Amirillo and Nelson Sauvin. end of day, theres space for Harveys best, Wild hop, Old, alongside Darkstar's Hophead, Partridge and so on. let unite against the common foe, the cooking lager.

Lovely hop that, works wonders in a saison style.

 

[Monkey Man]

Harveys to me is kind of a birthright - like supporting BHA. I guess I do it without too much questioning.

But actually it's a superb example of a local, family brewer striving for excellence. It's not smug or complacent, or boring. It's run by very decent people being true to their craft. And over the years they've actually been very supportive of local microbrewers.

I enjoy beers by Dark Star, Burning Sky, Long Man and all the rest. But the trend towards very hoppy beers seems quite transitory to me and I suspect will be seen one day as being as naff as really oaky Chardonnay. There are some very gimmicky beers on both sides of the Atlantic and I reckon Harveys will outlive most if not all of them.

London Pride: had a fantastic pint of it in Chiswick once. But it tends to taste of cardboard everywhere else, at least to me.

 

[BensGrandad]

A practice frowned upon by Camra is regularly used in pubs to preserve real ales and allow them to be kept longer is to put a co2 line into the top of the cask if laid down on a stillage and about 1-2lb psi left going into it. It doesnt affect the dispense or taste but keeps the beer longer. Any body drinking it wouldnt know unless told that it was happening.

 

[beorhthelm]

Utter utter rubbish. You can get plenty of unpasteurised and non-filtered keg beers.

so, no different from a cask that needs to be settled a few days before ready then. we could just call it a cask then, couldnt we?

 

[SheffieldSeagulls]

You should all think yourselves lucky that it is available on your doorstep. Yes we have loads of good beer up north and especially around Sheffield, but we do miss a pint of Harvey's and we only get it on rare occasions when we travel south. Why does it not travel, not event to Beer Fests?

 

[BensGrandad]

Watneys used to do a bitter that was in a keg but had to stand as per real ale WEBSTERS but I think hey stopped it when Watneys brewery ceased to exist in the late 80s

 

[Man of Harveys]

Harveys to me is kind of a birthright - like supporting BHA. I guess I do it without too much questioning.

But actually it's a superb example of a local, family brewer striving for excellence. It's not smug or complacent, or boring. It's run by very decent people being true to their craft. And over the years they've actually been very supportive of local microbrewers.

I enjoy beers by Dark Star, Burning Sky, Long Man and all the rest. But the trend towards very hoppy beers seems quite transitory to me and I suspect will be seen one day as being as naff as really oaky Chardonnay. There are some very gimmicky beers on both sides of the Atlantic and I reckon Harveys will outlive most if not all of them.

Fantastic post. Agree with every word.

 

[Questions]

but why would you want to compare something being traditional with something going out of its way to be "modern", using hops from thousand of miles away? not for everyones taste. and using kegs is to enable forced carbonation of the beer, so the end product is more similar to lager in texture. as far as im concerned the Amex Harveys is always the same, which it would be being bright. bright is the same as kegged, except without the added CO2.

That is not so. A traditional beer is fine but why worry if we are making a beer with an an American hop. It's a good job that we do import hops because our share of the world market is now down to about 2% - mainly collected from Herefordshire.
So compare Brewdog IPA with a Carlsberg........a lager. Come on enjoy your Harvey but get serious mate if your going to join in.

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

Harveys to me is kind of a birthright - like supporting BHA. I guess I do it without too much questioning.

But actually it's a superb example of a local, family brewer striving for excellence. It's not smug or complacent, or boring. It's run by very decent people being true to their craft. And over the years they've actually been very supportive of local microbrewers.

I enjoy beers by Dark Star, Burning Sky, Long Man and all the rest. But the trend towards very hoppy beers seems quite transitory to me and I suspect will be seen one day as being as naff as really oaky Chardonnay. There are some very gimmicky beers on both sides of the Atlantic and I reckon Harveys will outlive most if not all of them.

Yep. As per MoH.