Women beer-lovers host beer and cheese tasting

A group of beer-loving women is holding a beer and cheese tasting in central London next Wednesday, 8 October,  to encourage more women to discover the delights of our national drink.

Dea Latis – named after the Celtic goddess of beer and water – was established by a handful of women working in pubs and breweries, and hosts regular tastings to demonstrate beer’s versatility as a partner with different foods.  The beer and cheese tasting is being held on:

Date:               Wednesday 8^th October

Time:              3.00 – 5.00 pm

Venue:            The Bishops Finger,  9-10 West Smithfield, London EC1A 9JR

Guests will be offered five different beer and cheese combinations, from goat’s cheese and fruit beer to traditional ale and cheddar. Hosting the event and explaining the beer and cheese matches is Annabel Smith, one of the country’s only female Beer Sommeliers.

Annabel says, “The hallmark of a great match of beer and cheese, or indeed any food and drink, is that they enhance each other’s taste.  Beer works especially well with cheese as its natural carbonation cuts through the fattiness of cheese – which is something wine can’t do.”

Tickets, including five beers, cheeses, expert talks and tea/coffee, cost £17 per person. Please visit our Eventbrite page to buy tickets:  http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dea-latis-beer-and-cheese-tasting-tickets-12781994289?aff=es2&rank=0

Further information:    Ros Shiel, ros@shielporter.com

Lisa Harlow: lisa@lisaharlow.co.uk

Beer and chocolate… what’s not to like?!

Details are now confirmed for the Dea Latis Beer & Chocolate tasting. This is now in its third year, making it an annual tradition for anyone wanting to break two Lenten abstinences in one afternoon!

We will, once again, be tasting a selection of beer and chocolate matches suggested by brewers, who will be on hand to explain their choices and answer questions.  So please join us:

Date:     Tuesday 27^th March

 

Time:    2.00 – 4.00 pm

 

Venue: Draft House Tower Bridge, 206-208 Tower Bridge Road, London SE1 2UP

All female beer brewing competition won by Dea Latis member

Trumpet heralds at the ready:  DeaLatis member and confirmed beer advocate Louise Ashworth is the winner of a competition for women to create a recipe for their perfect beer. Louise’s fabulous recipe triumphed and later in Spring she will be travelling up to Grantham to brew ……. Wheat Watchers! 

Jane Peyton, Principal of the School of Booze devised the competition in collaboration with Sara Barton at Brewsters Brewing Company as a way of inspiring women to consider brewing beer.  Entrants were asked to take inspiration from one of DivineFairtrade chocolate brands and come up with a beer that they would want to drink.  The prize was for the winner to brew their own recipe with Sara at Brewsters.

Louise described her inspiration for Wheat Watcher’s “My idea is for a wheat beer with raspberries as I think that a lot of women, and men, can be put off from drinking real ale as they think that it will be too bitter. I think that wheat beer is delicious and can be more accessible for non-ale drinkers than many other styles of beer. Unfortunately it isn’t always easy to find a wheat beer in the majority of pubs. I would really like to see wheat beer more widely available and hopefully the beer that we are going to create will be onsale in a large number of pubs.”

Jane and Sara were really impressed with the quality and inventiveness of the competition entries.  Dozens of women entered (and a few men too!) and Sara judged the entries blind.  She chose these recipes as the top 3:

 1st place: Wheat beer with raspberries. By Louise Ashworth

Inspired by Divine Dark Chocolate with Raspberries.

2nd place: Stout with raspberries, cardamom and black pepper. By Orla Lambe

Inspired by Divine Dark Chocolate with Raspberries.

3rd place: Golden ale with chestnut honey and thyme (the honey is supplied by the entrant’s friend from local bees) by Hazel Paterson

Inspired by Divine’s Fruit and Nut

Sara chose Louise’s entry as the winner because she “liked the contrast between the light fruity style of the wheat beer and the dark chocolate with raspberries and felt it would really complement the flavour of the chocolate. Wheat beers are a very interesting complex product with interplay between malt, hops and yeast in particular giving a deceptively full flavoured brew. I am really looking forward to producing the winning entry and am sure it will go down well with publicans and drinkers alike.”

Another really inventive entry was by another DeaLatis member – Niki Skaife, publican of the excellent Masons Arms, Bishop Monkton, near Harrogate.  Niki received an honourable mention for her delicious sounding Mild with Sloe and Juniper.

Jane and Sara had such fun with this competition – and judging by the amazing recipes that came in, so did the women who entered.  It was obvious by all the recipes that us women love flavour! 

When Louise’s Wheat Watcher’s beer is brewed we’ll let you know – maybe you’ll find it on the bar of a pub near you…..

A Dream Come Brew

Have you ever dreamed of brewing your own beer in a proper brewery as opposed to a bucket in the airing cupboard?  I have.  Many times.  Then last year I met Sara Barton, founder of Brewsters Brewery at the launch of Project Venus’s brewing collaboration – Venus Jade.  I confessed my aspiration and Sara responded with an emphatic ‘Do it!’

Turns out that I was not the only DeaLatis member harbouring the brewing fantasy because when I mentioned it to Marverine Cole (@BeerBeauty) and Shea Luke (@RealAleGirlShea) they also had that ambition. We discussed our ideal recipe and decided on a dark spicy winter ale. So on a very auspicious date 21/1/12 (it’s a palindrome) the three of us accepted Sara’s invitation to ‘do it’ and we travelled up to Brewsters Brewery in Grantham and did it!

And as I write this, a wonderful yeast that smells of green apples is bubbling away and turning our 30 barrel brew into delicious beer.  What an incredible thought. But who knew what hard physical work it is to brew beer?  Hauling the malts around, hoisting buckets up high, pouring the contents into mash tuns and coppers, and then the cleaning afterwards.  Oh the cleaning – raking out the mash tun, poking around in the hot copper to extract the thousands of whole hops, washing out vessels and leaving the brewery as we found it.  But what satisfaction!And what fun.  All three of us virgin brewers felt as though we were in the best toy shop imaginable – and one in which lunch was served with Brewsters Pale Ale, and Brewsters’ brand new Black IPA (called Cruella) decanted straight from the conditioning tanks.  Heaven.

In a couple of weeks Brewsters will cask and bottle condition the beer for sale through their ‘Wicked Women’ range. We’re waiting to mention the beer’s name until the launch party in late February or early March – most likely at London’s Tap East with its incredible range of beers (thanks Glyn!) so hopefully you’ll come and taste the difference.

Huge thanks to Sara, Sean, and Richard at Brewsters for making our dream come brew.  I’m even more in love with beer than I was before and my maiden voyage on the brew boat has made me even more obsessed with brewing.  We’ve done a winter brew, but there are three more seasons in a year.  So how’s about it BrewsterSara, Beer Beauty, and RealAleGirlShea?

By Jane Peyton, Principal of the School of Booze

Duchesse de Bourgogne – a beer that’s impossible not to like?

We’re halfway through our Dea Diets – our quest to swap wine for beer during January to prove to the world that beer is lower in calories.

And our pal Jane Peyton at the wonderful School of Booze has written this review of the beer, Duchesse de Bourgogne, exclusively for Dea Latis. Why not give it a go this weekend and let us know what you think of it?

Try this experiment.  Choose a female friend who professes not to like beer.  Discreetly open a bottle of Duchesse de Bourgogne from Belgium and decant into a wine glass.  Don’t tell her that it is beer and watch her reaction as she sips it. And then wait for the ‘Get Away!’ response when you ‘fess up that it is not an unusual type of red wine, rather, one of the most amazing examples of our beloved malt & hops brews.

Duchesse de Bourgogne (6.2% ABV) is a superb example of a lambic beer.  This means the yeast gives the beer a sour tangy sweetness and some unexpected flavours.  I included it in a tutored beer tasting last night and the group suggested wood, lemon, spice, must, Balsamic vinegar (usually a sign of stale beer but welcome with this exceptional ale).

This is a Flanders red ale made by blending younger and older beers that have been aged in oak barrels. It has a highly perfumed nose of sweet-sour cherries and vinegar.  On the palate it has a mousse-y mouth filling texture with intense cherry fruit and sour-sweet characters.  I find it more-ish and a real delight to drink.  Perhaps part of my delight is the anticipation of subverting the attitudes of women who assume that beer is all bitter, bulky, and blokey.  Not this one!