Hasta La Ideas

Explore the city’s emerging microbrew culture through a carefully curated iPhone app

As a city that created many of the world’s greatest beers, London has seen its brewing industry take on somewhat of a downward spiral over the last 25 years or so. This is quickly changing, however, thanks to a number of curious individuals throughout the capital whose newfound interest in the brewing process is leading to a huge craft beer renaissance.

To fully navigate the Big Smoke’s microbrewery movement beyond the three we highly recommend, check out the new iPhone app Craft Beer London—your geographical guide to nearly 30 craft breweries and the pubs and shops serving them. Using your current location, the app’s map allows you to see what’s nearby, while carefully considered reviews offer valuable insight on which beers you might like to seek out.

From Hackney, the hub of it all, to breweries south of the river Thames, Craft Beer London has it covered with a selection sure to impress any beer nerd. Casual sippers will also delight in the list of pubs, a thoroughly rated guide to some of the city’s finest drinking dens.

Updated regularly, Craft Beer London sells for for £2 (about $3 USD) from iTunes.

The accidental birth of the perfect summer beer

In 2002, a whiskey distiller approached Dougal Sharp, a top brewer at Caledonian, to create a method of brewing whiskey that would give it an ale finish. Sharp invented a process that would impart a beer flavor onto the oak whiskey casks, but to his surprise it would be the beer brewed in these casks that would be too good to throw away. Born by accident, Innis and Gunn was launched in 2003 by Dougal and his brother, Neil, based on this oak cask aged brewing process.

In March 2012, Innis and Gunn released their first limited-edition Irish Whiskey Cask stout. “We have never brewed a stout before, but when we heard we could get ahold of those exceptional barrels, we got very excited at the prospect of maturing a Scottish Stout in former Irish whiskey barrels!” says Dougal. The Innis and Gunn Irish Whiskey Cask is the first beer to be aged in former triple-distilled Irish whiskey barrels. The result is a dark beer with a chocolate and treacle taste, hints of oak and vanilla, and a crisp whiskey finish.

Although stouts are not typically considered a summer beer, the whiskey finish makes this beer surprisingly refreshing. A perfect bottle to add to the backyard rotation, this stout tastes great when paired with this summer’s Euro Cup festivities and bratwursts on the grill. Four packs of Innis and Gunn‘s Irish Whiskey Cask beer can be found for a limited time in the US at Whole Foods and other retailers for $13.

The future of nightlife as conceived by a cross-disciplinary team of club-going creatives

“We wanted to show design in action, not on a pedestal,” said Heineken’s Global Head of Design Mark van Iterson as he walked us through “The Club”, the first project of their Open Design Explorations, a pop up nightclub in the Tortona district during Milan’s Design Week. He wasn’t kidding around. The culmination of a year’s work, it represents an ambitious collaborative research and design project that he led with a hand-picked team of 19 club-going young designers from São Paolo, Tokyo, New York and Milan.

The cross-discipline team, mostly students and young professionals, includes interior, product and fashion designers, architects and graphic designers. The crowd-sourced finalists were invited to present their ideas at Pecha Kucha events, at the end of which the team was selected. The team visited clubs in all four of those cities (we participated in the Tokyo tour), and shared and collaborated on ideas, leading to the design elements brought to life in the pop up club. Van Iterson coached the group along with Professor Buijs and six industry experts.

“It was new for everybody to co-create cross-disciplines, cross-cultures, cross-time-zones,” says van Iterson. “We collaborated in an online hub, a kind of virtual creative lab. Some were more comfortable in the open ideas phase, others more in the detailing phase, some fueled the overall concept, others stayed within their discipline. But that’s the beauty of diversity.”

The hub served to mediate ideas while the designers worked remotely. “The portal was the open lab where we all came together,” says van Iterson. “It was bridging all continents and timezones, stimulating cross fertilization and kept the creative juices flowing through new progress, new insights, new briefs.” Heineken sought to create the perfect club—the rare combination of place, space and crowd that makes for a good time. “If you get the energy, the interaction and the vibe right, the club is a great club,” relates van Iterson. “And design can play a crucial role in facilitating that.”

Similar to how car companies use concept cars to have a dialog with their fans and customers, Heineken sought to create a physical place to express new ideas, and to present them to the world’s largest gathering of design professionals during Milan’s Design Week, with the goal of having a conversation around innovation in the club space. Van Iterson’s expectations are realistic: “For sure, certain elements will never make it to ‘real clubs’, but other elements might impact on club design or Heineken design worldwide for future years.”

Uniting The Club’s three spaces—which include a lounge, bar and dance area—is an origami theme that is applied to every element, reflecting the “changing perspectives” concept that fueled the project. The layout takes a cue from the team’s logical sequence of a typical night out: Connecting, getting a drink, discovering, dancing, cooling down and ending the night.

Walking through the completed concept, we found innovative details throughout. A video-mapped DJ booth pumps out killer beats as waitresses in extravagant origami uniforms and custom-designed shoes serve Heinekens from an origami-shaped tray that rests comfortably on the arm and holds up to eight bottles securely so that servers can use their free hand to open the bottles with a matching opener. An interactive bar features video display counters that lets you order another round with the tap of a finger, and a massive display made from more than 2,500 Heineken bottles features programmed images interspersed with live feeds from the dance floor. A wall on the dance floor has numbered shelves to place your drink while you dance, and a black origami wall glows with graffiti from the attached chalk pens, allowing club goers to get graphic in a harmless way.

Open Design Explorations is one of several crowd sourced design initiatives Heineken is leading, which live at Heineken’s Ideas Brewery.

The Club will be exhibited until 20 April 2012 from 13:00 – 23:00 daily at Via Privata Gaspare Bugatti 3, Zona Tortona, Milan. Even the club’s construction was important. Because the club was designed to be easily transportable, assembled and broken down in a cost-effective and sustainable manner, it’s likely that you’ll see it an event near you soon. See more images of the concept club in our gallery.

The winning design looks to the future while representing Heineken’s 140-year history

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Selected from a pool of six finalists among more than 30,000 entries from 100 countries, design student Rodolfo Kusulas of Monterrey, Mexico and freelance designer Lee Dunford of Sydney took top honors in the Heineken Limited Edition Design Contest, and their winning design will be featured on the brand’s 140th anniversary bottle. The judging panel was comprised of CH’s own Evan Orensten, Mark Dytham of PechaKucha and Heineken’s Head of Design Mark van Iterson.

To commemorate their 140th year, Heineken issued an open call for collaborative bottle designs on Facebook. There, Kusulas and Dunford connected to kick off their collaboration on a clean, energetic bottle design inspired by Heineken’s rich history and incorporating the star logo. By representing the iconic red star as a Pangea-like conglomeration of land masses, Kusulas describes the idea of a shrinking world where “the continents are becoming compressed together. Long distance travel is achievable in shorter and shorter times, and our lives are lived out online. The future sees our planet condensed—just like the red star here.”

Though launched as a way to honor 140 years of history, Heineken took a decidedly modern approach to the milestone, bringing together perfect strangers like Kusulas and Dunford—not to mention the thousands of other entrants, and fans from across the globe tasked to vote on their favorites—through social media. “Open innovation and crowd-sourcing are hot topics, but there are only a few examples in which it delivered really successful concepts,” says van Iterson. “This is a beautiful case to show that it can be very valuable to open up the opportunity for creative input from consumers all around the world.”

“The standard of all three of the finalist designs was incredibly high—each of them could have been winners,” says Dytham. But Orensten, in particular, was drawn to Kusulas and Dunford’s scheme—”It’s striking if you glance at it,” he notes, “but if you take the time to really look at it to see what’s going on it’s a really considered and impressive design.” The judges also felt Kusulas and Dunford best captured the spirit and heritage of the venerable beer with a design that also looks to the future. In that vein, their work will be featured as part of Heineken’s 140 anniversary bottle pack to be sold worldwide from December 2012.

Southeast Portland’s micro roaster and bean-to-beer experimenter

Portland has developed quite a name for itself over the years as a hub for coffee innovation. Whether it boils down to exotic beans, an experienced roaster, the espresso machine or the whole package, each boutique that opens up has a fresh spin on coffee that goes beyond gimmicks and instead delves into absolute coffee nerdery. One of the more recent shops to open up in Portland’s Southeast Industrial area is Water Avenue Coffee (WAC), a casual cafe serving up brews at its 50-foot long bar built from century-old reclaimed fir.

WAC is the brainchild of Barista Exchange founder Matt Milletto and former Stumptown roaster Brandon Smyth. Using their respective knowledge, the duo has created a coffee roasting plant and full-service bar that’s as experimental as it is straightforward. After tasting WAC for ourselves—you can pick up a bag online or at their shop—we checked in with Smyth to learn more about what makes this Portland outpost so unique.

What kind of roaster do you use at WAC?

I roast on a slightly modified 1974 SASA Samiac 20-kilo coffee roaster built in France. What makes these machines unique and sought after is they were handmade at the time, and customized for the purchaser. The one at Water Avenue was constructed for a lefty who evidently loved fire engine red. They also sport dedicated motors for the cooling tray, tray agitator and exhaust. So, with the addition of a Variable Frequency Drive to the exhaust motor, the roaster can have complete control over the airflow during the roast. This is a huge advantage for a micro-roaster like us with delicate and unusual coffee cultivars with vastly different flavor profiles and seed density. Changing the airspeed during certain times while roasting can bring out sweetness, acidity, or produce a super clean cup. For espresso roasts I can slow down the airspeed, creating a very sweet, balanced roasts perfect for shots, or speed it up to bring out the lemongrass notes in an Ethiopian single origin. We are stoked to have this 1,700-lb Frenchman as a part of our daily operation.

From where do you source your beans?

The beans are sourced through a nearby importer or, ideally, directly from the farmer. I’m heading to El Salvador in a couple of weeks to purchase some coffee for next year from some amazing farms: Finca Manzano, run by Emilio López Díaz, champions experimentation with production to create coffee that gets better with every crop, and Fincas de la Familia Menendez that grows the insanely delicious Pacamara hybrid varietal on the upper slopes of their Las Delicias farm. That Pacamara has consistently been my favorite coffee since I first sampled it, and we are really excited to bring in WAC’s own lot for 2012.

WAC is also sporting new, custom Tyvek bags that are 100% paper, compostable, tear-proof, watertight, reusable, and most importantly, white. We are dorking out over them and they are inspiring excitement with our design and engineering regulars.

You’re brewing a Northwest Pale Ale from coffee beans?

We have had a lot of success with our Oak Barrel Aged Sumatra experiments, and are planning on expanding our R&D super lab to tackle some other uncharted territory—like how to brew a real coffee beer. Not a Porter or Stout, but a bright, clean, Northwest Pale Ale. We are currently in the development phase, and enjoying the process immensely.

What does this process involve? What are some of the challenges it brings when compared to brewing coffee?

This process involves a huge amount of experimentation to get right. Right now we have been focusing on the synergism of a lighter roasted coffee with the bitterness of a pale ale. To date, this hasn’t worked well, but we are experimenting with roast levels and the timing of introducing the coffee into the mix. The biggest hurdle to overcome is how to find a coffee varietal at a specific roast level that will not overtake or compete with the flavors already present in the ale. We want the acidity and floral notes in the coffee to shine without becoming too astringent or not complimenting the already flowery nature of the hops.

It has been a real fun experiment thus far, but we haven’t had many batches come out worth celebrating over. It will take a while to get this right, and perhaps it is a doomed venture, but it is something that when perfected Portland will embrace wholeheartedly. This city loves exciting, daring flavors, and its three loves—children, coffee and beer.