Melissa Cole, beer writer and author of popular beer blog Girl’s guide to beer: Taking the beard out of beer, gives us the lowdown on Neil Morrissey’s latest madcap beer brewing show…
There’s a bit of me which feels that, as a female beer writer and passionate ale fan, two men in a bath full of bubbling brews should definitely fuel a few naughty thoughts.
But, as it turns out, when one of them is a fellow beer scribe you’ve known for a few years and the other is an actor whose uber-laddish persona leaves you with the strong suspicion he’s going to fart in the tub, it’s sadly a lot less appealing.
However, that slightly disturbing personal disappointment aside, Neil Morrisey’s Risky Business was an entertaining, and refreshing watch last night, because it provides the perfect antidote to all the doom and gloom about the state of our beer nation.
Observing the lads kick off their homebrewing process late in the evening, only to get frustrated with its lack of progress, was not only amusing but genuinely highlighted the fact that the pair weren’t lying when they said they had never brewed before – because if they had, they’d know that most brew days start at 8am for a reason!
And it was great to see the looks of excitement and anticipation on their faces as they took their very first sip of home brew – and it was also incredibly gratifying to see the people of Harrogate from all walks of life embracing real ale; albeit under some Morrisey-induced pressure.
If you were sitting on your sofa, relating to this loveable yet slightly hapless duo and contemplating giving this lark a go yourself, may I suggest that you also get a Tim Ashton on your side. As top dog at London agency, Antidote, Ashton’s despairing expressions and severe reality checks for this pair of over-excited puppies were insightfully brilliant and, rightly, kept their paws somewhere near the ground some of the time.
And whilst he was so wonderfully, and brutally, correct about how much they were in danger of getting ahead of themselves in terms of sorting out the pub and actually building their micro-brewery before going to the world and announcing that they were brewers, he was so tremendously and stupendously wrong in all his perceptions about current demand in the beer market!
You see, the micro-brewery sector is the only part of our domestic brewing business to have shown consistent growth over the past few years as people tire of commodity brands, become more attuned to regional cuisine and look more locally for their liquid pleasure – and rightly so.
And having sampled the cask version of Morrisey Fox Blonde Ale, (or MoFo as it shall now forever be known), I can tell you that this is the kind of citrusy, refreshing and flavoursome beer that the public is increasingly turning to, and do you know why? Because British beer drinkers are increasingly attuned to what beer behaving badly tastes like – and it comes in cut-price supermarket multipacks, not out of a cask.
Catch up on the first episode of Risky Business
Comments
Risky Business-what a great documentary,but what an arrogant, idiotic and insensative moron Neil Morrissey is!! On the first episode he stated that ‘anyone who goes out of business in a pub is stupid’. How NOT to win friends and influence people! I am one of the may people who sunk their savings, time and effort into a pub and lost everything. I only hope that he loses any money he has invested and it produces a more humble specimen. Luckily his pal Richard Fox is top fella and will no doubt keep the venture solvent. The only thing Morrisey brings to the show is “celebrity” but even that ar best is D list.
I have a passion for great beer and import one of the only state owned brewery beers in Germany – called Rothaus. It is an outstanding brewery which produces beer of the utmost quality with a lot of tradition and passion. I find it funny that Becks Vier and other sub-standard lagers, full of rubbish ingredients and sub-standard quality, are sold in this establishment, purporting to sell quality beers – i.e. their beer is supposedly good?? but will the British public buy this beer just because it has had certain publicity
Did anyone else hear what Neil said to the team on his mobile about what he was going to do after coming off the set of Waterloo Rd in celebration of their success!
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