Christmas at
the old Courage Brewery by Tower Bridge began with Black Velvet and oysters.
Not just any Black Velvet, though, as Jim Robertson (the head brewer at Well’s
and Young’s, who began his career on the south bank of the Thames) explains. “Every
Christmas, the brewers got together in the sampling room, all dressed up, at
noon on Christmas Eve,” he says.
“The head
brewer would produce a 13-year-old magnum of Russian Stout and a 13-year-old
magnum of vintage champagne - which I’m
lead to believe is the optimum age for vintage champagne, but I’m not an
expert! And the two were mixed together
in an old enamel jug in the sample room
to form the brewer’s Christmas Black Velvet. Then the porters came in
from the market with huge plates of oysters; we started our Christmas
festivities with black velvet and oysters.”
It’s no
wonder that Robertson, who worked at Horselydown between 1977 and its closure in 1982, has
been the driving force behind reviving this most fabled of beers. It was in
2006 that the resurrection of this beer – which was last brewed in the early
1990s – first became possible. “That was when we [Well’s and Young’s] bought
the Courage brands,” he says. “That immediately refreshed my memory. The major
brews that we produced were Courage Best and Courage Directors - but IRS caused
most excitement.
“It took
probably about three years to get anybody else interested in it. There was not
much enthusiasm four or five years ago for strong bottled beers: it was
perceived to be flying in the face of commercial wisdom. But I was very
passionate and I talked to ex-colleagues from Courage: a chap called Tim O’Rourke,
who I’d worked with for many years, and others. They teased me: ‘when are you
going to bring it back?’
“The key
moment was when we started to work in the US with an export team. I was at a ‘Meet
The Brewer’ function in Philadelphia, in a bar with the importer, and the bar
owner said: ‘You used to work for Courage. Would you like to try some Russian Stout
I’ve got stacked away in the cellar?’ So with great enthusiasm, we tucked into
the poor chap’s stock of bottles going back to the seventies! Much-treasured, we
polished them off. He said it was about time we started brewing it again and
replenished his stock.”
And here we
are. This second vintage has been well-received, although beer geeks would surely
like to have had a taste from the barrels that were seeded with Brettanomyces -
but never released to the public.
“We did some
experimentation where we took some of the brew off, put it in separate barrels
and seeded it with Brett,” says Robertson. “That produces a very interesting
beer but for me it wasn’t correct. It wasn’t Russian Stout. I’ve no doubt,
particularly in America, there would be a heck of a lot of interest in a
barrel-aged Brett version but that wasn’t what I wanted to produce.”
If that
seems a little bit of a shame, then the beer that has been released is ample
recompense. The effort required to produce it has been written about elsewhere but the steps taken to make sure the second vintage (2012)
matched the first as closely as possible in terms of flavour are interesting. “I
don’t believe the average drinker would be able to tell the difference between
the vintages,” he says, “but I noticed some difference.
“The second time,
we brewed six times as much beer as in 2011. There was quite a significant
difference between batches – six brews, divided into two maturation tanks. One
matured better than the other- it was a matter of yeast quality, I believe the second
batch got too much dead yeast and hop from the fermenter. We re-pitched the
second one, and blended it together before bottling. That meant that the final
blend of 2012 was very similar to 2011.”
Robertson’s
experience with IRS has clearly whetted his appetite for brewing historic
beers, of which there are a number in Well’s and Young’s portfolio. “There’s a couple I’d like to work on,” he says.
“One – which
I’m keeping under my hat - is a very
standard, working-class beer which goes back to my Courage roots, and another
one that I can tell you about - because we’re just about to launch it - is McEwan’s
Scotch, which is seven per cent ABV. Again we’re really focused on the American
market. It’s totally different to other beers in that category: sweet, full-drinking
and lower in hop character.”
I spoke to Jim Robertson recently for
an article in the Financial Times. Not everything he said could go into
that story, though, so the rest is here. Strictly speaking, of course, he’s not
really a London brewer - but his experience of London beer and brewing surely
qualifies him to appear here.