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Monday, 10 March 2014
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Black Velvet, Brett and the beer that came back from the dead
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.
Friday, 3 May 2013
An Argentine brewer in London
This weekend sees the first London's Brewing, at which over 30 of the city's best breweries will present their wares. It's a sign of how far London's beer scene has come in the past few years - and few brewers have come as far as Julio Moncada...
Julio Moncada’s life took a decisive turn the day he first walked into a London pub. “I saw these things on the bar, these handpumps,” he says. “I'd never seen them before. I said to the barman: ‘What is that? Can I try it?’
“With my wife, I decided to open a deli. I
thought it would be nice to have the brewing equipment behind the counter and to produce my own beer for the
deli. That was the first step, when I thought it could be a business.
“I think the spread of good beer is everywhere,”
he says. “I think there are probably 200 microbreweries in Argentina now,
opening up everywhere. Patagonia is quite a big area for microbreweries:
there’s lot of European communities there.
“There’s actually a town in Cordoba, they do the Oktoberfest, it’s a German colony. They start exactly the same day as in Bavaria. That was one of the first places I really enjoyed beer, I went when I was 17. After that, I was going every year.”
It’s an exciting, confusing time for beer in
London, as Moncada acknowledges. Barely a week goes by, it seems, without a new
brewery opening. “When I decided to open a brewery, I got a phone call,” he
says. “The first person who called me was Paddy Johnson from Windsor and Eton,
he explained to me what the London Brewers’ Alliance was about, and that I was
brewer no 14. How many do we have now? 40, I think.
A number of these breweries are and will be in
West London, where craft beer is yet to fully take hold as it has in the
Eastern half of the city. It’s an interesting peculiarity (perhaps explained by
the relatively high cost of living in West London), but the overwhelming
majority of London’s best places to drink beer can be found in its eastern
half.
“I always want to experiment and try something
new. I’m always happy to try something new. What we like to do is try something
and give it to people, to see their reactions. With our porter, for
example – we wrote three different
recipes, gave it to a pub, gave it out for free. The punters voted for which
one they liked best.”
Julio Moncada’s life took a decisive turn the day he first walked into a London pub. “I saw these things on the bar, these handpumps,” he says. “I'd never seen them before. I said to the barman: ‘What is that? Can I try it?’
"It
was completely different to what I was used to, so full of flavour and aroma.
It just blew my mind. From that day on, I have been drinking cask
ales, I have been trying different beers all the time. I haven’t stopped
since.”
That was in 2001. 12 years on, Moncada is not only
a keen drinker of cask ale but a producer, too, having set up his eponymous
brewery in Kensal Green just under two years’ ago. It’s not something that the
35-year-old would have predicted when he left his hometown of Villa Mercedes in
the Argentine province of San Luis. That part of the world is better known for
its wine: Moncada grew up near to Argentina’s
most famous wine region, Mendoza.
“Becoming a brewer was an accident more than a
plan,” he says, smiling. “I didn’t think I would ever own a brewery. [After I came to the UK] I was a homebrewer
for five years: I was more into cooking, I wanted to become a chef. I did
different courses and worked in different restaurants around London to get
experience. But it was very demanding ...
“It was after a course at [brewing training
centre] Brewlab in Sunderland that I decided to just be a brewer: on the train
back, I phoned my wife and said: ‘Forgot about the deli. This is what I want to
do’.”
If brewing English beer (Moncada currently
produce seven beers, all of them in traditional British styles) in London is
an imaginative choice for an Argentine, it seems plenty of his countrymen have
also been converted to craft beer. Moncada is a regular visitor to his home
country – where Quilmes, a flavour-light pale lager, is ubiquitous - and made
his latest trip home in April.
“There’s actually a town in Cordoba, they do the Oktoberfest, it’s a German colony. They start exactly the same day as in Bavaria. That was one of the first places I really enjoyed beer, I went when I was 17. After that, I was going every year.”
Moncada is now a Londoner. The beer may be
improving in Argentina, but he has no plans to return. “I’m established here,”
he says. “My kids were born in London.
This is my home. I don’t see myself moving out.”
“At the last LBA meeting, we had another 10
planning applications to go ahead. By the end of this year, there should be at
least another five new breweries. In 2014, there will be more. It keeps going
up and up.”
“It is more difficult in West London,” Moncada
admits. “Often, we need to do business over there [in East London], but there
are lots of microbreweries there, too. I’m like a foreigner!”
With the business thriving (Moncada, who along
with brewer Sam Dicksion does all the work for now, is aiming to increase
capacity and take on new staff soon), says this presents a problem. “Our
biggest challenge now is to find and convince new pubs around here to stock our
beer,” he says. “We have the problem with the tied pubs, there are so many
around here.”
Perhaps some new beers will convince local
publicans to take a chance on a local brewery. Although Moncada concentrate on
English styles for now, that won’t always be the case. “We don’t want to get
stuck in a routine,” says Moncada.
If that sounds like fun, it clearly is. Moncada
is soon to open a bar at the brewery (initially one Friday a month, but perhaps
more often depending on demand) and the atmosphere at the brewery is happy and
optimistic. “I’m really having fun,” says Moncada. “This job has stressful
elements – we want it to be a success, to stay in business for many years to
come - but I’m having a good time.”
Friday, 15 March 2013
'I've never met a brewer that I don't like'
How many
breweries can a big city like London support? Depending on how you work it out,
there are somewhere in the region of 40 now: it seems a lot, but In 1700 there were
190.
Steve is
clearly excited by what the future holds. “I've never met a brewer that I don’t
like,” he says. “They’re mostly really nice people and they do it because they
love it. That’s the kind of industry I want to be involved in. There will
always be competition because we want to sell our beers. But we've got to work
together as much as we can.”
You can buy the Craft Beer London book here, while the app, which is now available for Android, can be downloaded here.
Historical
comparisons notwithstanding, London’s brewing boom continues apace. New
operations are opening all over the city, from Southwark basements to
Walthamstow pubs via industrial units in Hanwell. Such is the
demand for space that some brewers are sharing: that’s what’s
happening as the last-named, from where Weird Beard and Ellenberg’s are ready to spring their wares on a thirsty public.
It’s also
the case in Penge, a part of London most famous for its amusing name and
the fact that Bill Wyman, erstwhile Rolling Stones bassist, grew up there. This
is where Late Knights, whose beers have until now been produced in
Middlesbrough, should be brewing soon. They’ll be joined by Shamblemoose and SignatureBrewing on a site that has in the past been a wine warehouse and a
slaughterhouse.
“I live 150
yards away from the brewery,” says Steve Keegan (pictured above), the man behind Late Knights. “We
came over to have a look to see if it would work – it was an absolute state. It
was chaos in here. You could tell it was a good place for a brewery though.”
It’s a
particularly interesting development for Craft Beer London since the app
actually played a (very small) part in ensuring Late Knights ended up in Penge.
I knew Steve, having contacted him for information for the app, and I knew the building’s owner, Graham Lawrence, because he owns
Mr Lawrence, a wine bar and former off-license in Crofton Park, where I live.
Graham said that he was interested in getting involved in a brewery, I
mentioned Late Knights, and a thus-far fruitful relationship was born.
Steve’s beer
history goes back a little further, though. Until recently, he was employed by
Fuller’s to manage pubs: he played a big part in turning the Union Tavern (in
Westbourne Park) and The Barrel and Horn (in Bromley) into the craft-beer dens
they are today. Before that, he ran pubs in Richmond, Oxford and Finchley. Suffice
to say, he knows a little bit about beer and the pub trade. “I’ve been working
in pubs since I was 14,” he says. “I’ve dabbled in homebrewing in the past, I
felt I understood it. [When I left Fuller’s] I thought it was time for me to do
something for myself – to take a risk.”
Steve, 30, had
been making beer during his time off from working for Fuller’s at the Truefitt
Brewery in Middlesbrough, which is run by Matt Power, who Steve has known since
he was eight. He decided at Christmas that he could no longer do both jobs. “I
had to make a decision,” he says. “Do I
continue to work for Fuller’s and do both jobs half-arsed? Do I focus on the
pubs - or the brewery? I spoke to my family, my girlfriend, and this is what I
decided. When I went back after Christmas, the first thing I did was hand my
notice in. I don’t think Fuller’s are
entirely happy, but in all honesty I didn’t expect it to reach this stage.”
Penge-brewed
beer will soon be on bars across the city, but another central feature of Steve’s
project is still at the planning stage. It also involves Graham Lawrence and his
much-missed off-license, which until the end of January was one of the best
places in the capital to buy beer. Beer-lovers disappointed by the closure of Mr
Lawrence (you can still buy beer and wine online), though, will be
placated by the plans Steve has for the place: license-issues allowing, it will
be a brewery tap for Late Knights, and more besides.
“We’d have
the full Late Knights range and a selection of other London micros,” he says. “Eight,
perhaps 10 hand pumps. On keg we’ll have other American-style beers; we want to
do a large bottled selection – 100 bottles and 100 whiskies. The bottles we
will also sell as off-sales, so what you could get from Mr Lawrence you’ll be
able to get from the bar. I’ve got the experience [of running pubs], I have the
level of knowledge that we’ll need.”
As Steve says, other London
brewers will also be on the bar – including, no doubt, The Kernel, who have a
long relationship with Mr Lawrence. Steve is keen to help others out as
he has been helped.
“I got a
helping hand from Matt [at TrueFitt],” he says. “I want to offer that to other
people. Like Shamblemoose: Matt and Lera [O’Sullivan] used to be locals at a
pub I worked at in Richmond. Lera told me they were going to open a
microbrewery.
“When I was
looking into setting up this brewery, I spent an hour on the internet trying to
track them down – I knew she was an American brewer living in Guildford, so I thought
‘I must be able to find it’. I couldn’t find them, and ended up going out to
get a haircut. When I got back, she’d emailed me! This was 18 months after I’d
spoken to her for ten minutes. Asking me advice – “oh, we’re looking at pubs, can
you help me do projections.” So odd!”
And then
there’s Signature Brewing, who make beer in collaboration with
musicians. Steve met the three men behind the brewery (Sam McGregor, David
Riley and Tom Bott) a few months back and a plan was hatched. “I started
talking to them, giving them advice,” he says. “Like how to get beer in pubs. They've done some cuckoo brewing at Titanic [in Stoke] and at London Fields. They’re
coming to do some brewing here every month; we’ll see what happens.”
You can buy the Craft Beer London book here, while the app, which is now available for Android, can be downloaded here.
Friday, 15 February 2013
Brewing in the shopping centre
London has a lot of breweries but not many native brewers. There are a few, most notably Alastair Hook at Meantime, but it’s striking just how many of the city’s most well-known brewers come from somewhere else. Jim Wilson, the East Londoner who’s in charge of the shiny brew kit at Tap East in Stratford, is something of a rare beast.
The story of how Wilson, born in Bow and brought up in Dagenham,
came to cask ale demonstrates neatly why this is. “I used to be an avid
Carlsberg drinker,” he laughs.
“That was until I went up to Lincolnshire with
my partner to visit one of her friends. We went into a country pub, there was
lots of ale; I though, let’s try that. That’s what got me into home brewing
and drinking the usual suspects like
[London] Pride and Bombardier.
“I used to go out with my mates and it was always ‘ten pints
of lager and one pint of that weird brown stuff’. My mates would say: ‘oh it’s horrible, why do you want to drink
that?’ ‘It’s not, it’s got flavour.”
Wilson’s refusal to give in to public humiliation has
prepared him well for his role at Tap East, which, he tells me, is the only brewery in a shopping centre in the whole of Europe. Tucked away in the corner of the
huge Westfield shopping complex (which sits alongside the Olympic Park), the
brewery is on show to the world – or at least those who wander past on their
way into the shopping centre. All that stands between Wilson and a constantly
changing cast of smokers, amblers and fascinated toddlers is a large window.
Of course, it means that Wilson, 26, can see what’s going on
outside, too. That was particularly handy during the Olympics, when all manner
of famous sportsmen and women flitted past his brewery. Some of those taking
part even partook of his beer, he says. “I remember there was a Puerto Rican
doctor – he was really interested, I showed him around the brewery. We had all
manner of East European coaches drinking in here, too.”
If things are a little more humdrum these days on the other
side of the window, Wilson’s brewing is going from strength to strength.
Yesterday he brewed a Blood Orange Pale Ale with noted beer guru Melissa Cole (“I’d
never seen a blood orange until earlier this month,” he laughs) and the size
and flexibility of his brewing kit means experimentation is easy. “I’d like to
try a Pilsner; Not that many small breweries that have that opportunity – to
try different stuff, keep the beer world turning. It’s a case of, ‘let’s have a
go and see what we can do’.”
Perhaps Wilson’s late conversion to cask ale has created this
expansive approach to brewing. For a number of years, he was a refrigeration
engineer – then came that Lincolnshire revelation. He began to homebrew, and a day
helping out at Brentwood Brewery in Essex turned into a full-time job. He was
there for two-and-a-half years before coming to Tap East in April of last year.
“It was a new challenge, I knew the guys
at Utobeer,” he says, matter-of-factly. “It’s a nice place to work.”
Certainly, Wilson takes a lot of satisfaction from seeing
his beer being enjoyed. “There’s nothing better than coming in on a Monday and
seeing all these empty casks – at least someone has had a good weekend!” he
says. “It is very rewarding, that’s the best part of the job.”
He is also quite heavily involved with the London
Brewers’ Alliance. “Because we meet
each other regularly, we know what everyone is doing. It keeps everyone on
their toes,” he says. “We want to improve beer in London. It is an exciting
time to say the least." Wilson now lives just outside London, in Chelmsford, but he’s
still delighted to be part of the city’s burgeoning beer renaissance. “It’s
great to be part of the history of brewing in London,” he says. “To work where
you’re from – it’s really rewarding.”
As for the future, Wilson is fairly open-minded. “I’d love
to have a restaurant with a small brewery, doing American-style food, not
over-complicated,” he says. “Or work for a big brewery. Hopefully by the time I’m
there, some of the smaller guys will have grown – but I don’t think I’d ever
have my own brewery. Too much stress. All you want to do is make the beer but
there’s too much other stuff.”
Friday, 18 January 2013
Bermondsey's reluctant brewer
“I’ll just
turn that down,” he says with a smile. Behind him is the brewing kit, a gift
from Evin O’Riordain at The Kernel when they moved from their own Bermondsey
railway arch to a bigger one, and a huge pile of boxes filled with bottles.
Smith, sporting
a thick woolly jumper and an even thicker beard to combat London’s winter
chill, is somewhat wearily attaching Partizan’s stylish, witty labels to the
bottles: not everything about brewing is as glamorous as some appear to think.
But Smith
wasn’t attracted to the world of beer by glamour, but by money. Back at the
tail end of 2009, he was working as a chef at a restaurant in Chelsea which was
struggling to pay its staff.
In order to deal
with his bills, he got a job at The White Horse in Parson’s Green, where he
ended up working in the cellar. That’s how he met Andy Moffat, head brewer at Redemption in Tottenham. “Andy was dropping off some casks,” he says. “I’d been
homebrewing and asked him if he wanted some help.” He did.
More than
two years on, and having enjoyed the full Andy Moffat experience (“He’s almost
too nice at times,” laughs Smith. “It gets to five o’clock and you want to
finish your job but Andy’s pushing you out of the door!”) he has his own
brewery.
If it seems a
natural next step, it didn’t appear that way to Smith. “It wasn’t something I
intended to do,” he says. “When I was a
chef, it was always ‘are you going to open your own restaurant?’ ‘No, I’m not
interested!’
“I had a
chat with Andy in January. We talked about my future, I felt I wasn’t getting
anywhere anymore. It felt like I was doing a 9-5 job. He’s a really open guy to
talk to about that. He said I could try and get a job at a big brewery like
Thornbridge, or start on my own – which I wasn’t too keen on.
“I talked to
a few people, including Evin (The Kernel), and he offered the brew kit for
nothing. That was decisive – it was almost impossible to decline.”
If Smith sounds at all half-hearted, a taste
of his beer should be enough to dispel any misgivings about his commitment. The
Foreign Extra Stout, in particular, is excellent: it comes from an old Courage
recipe, he says, and it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as some of
London’s other recent revived recipes.
“The beers I
make are the beers that I want to make. They won’t all be very strong [like the
FES, which is 8.6 per cent]. I’m making a Saison which should be four or five
per cent. They have to taste good. With strong beers, it’s like reducing a
stock: the more you reduce, the more flavour you get. That’s what I want.”
Smith’s
background in cooking makes him an interesting brewer. Plenty of people have
compared brewing and cooking, but Smith isn’t so sure. “Organisation is the big
thing you learn in cooking – have everything laid out,” he says.
“That’s
helpful in brewing, too - but when you’re cooking, you can taste as you go
along. If you make a dish and didn’t taste it until the end, that would just be
the worst thing to do. There’s nothing you can do about it when you’re brewing
– you have to wait until the end, fingers crossed.”
His career
as a cook began in Leeds, and it’s there that he first got a taste for great
beer, too, at one of the country’s foremost craft-beer haunts. “We used to go
to North Bar; it was a big chef hangout on Friday and Saturday night – you’d have
a bottle of [Schneider Weiss’s wheat dopplebock] Aventinus after you’ve
finished service on a Saturday night. It’s about eight per cent but it goes
down incredibly easily!”
Smith believes
that London has something to learn from Leeds when it comes to beer
appreciation. “The drinking culture there is different,” he says. “You can go
to a nightclub and drink cask ale, which is unheard of down here.”
Labels:
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craft beer,
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Location:
London, UK
Friday, 26 October 2012
The malt man
Hops get an awful lot of attention. These little green cones are the undisputed stars of the craft-beer world: any self-respecting drinker can tell his Citra from his Nelson Sauvin, his Simcoe from his East Kent Golding. Brewers have helped to fuel this hop mania - Brewdog used to advertise Hardcore IPA as having more hops in it than “any other beer brewed in the UK”, for example. Hops are hip.
Malt is not quite so fashionable. Despite being the real engine room of any beer (like
Charlie Watts to hops’ prancing, pouting, gyrating Mick Jagger), malt doesn’t
appear to excite drinkers like hops can. It’s a shame, especially since Britain can
boast any number of beers which give malt the co-billing it deserves (balance,
I think they call it).
One of the
best examples of this type of beer is brewed here in London – and that’s official.
Sambrooks’ Wandle was recently named the best World’s Best Bitter at the World Beer Awards, where
judges hailed its “nice fruity nose
[while the flavour boasts] fresh tobacco with biscuity malt and floral hops.”
Part of what makes Wandle so good is the malt: Sambrooks use
Maris Otter, a type of barley revered for the nutty, biscuity richness it
contributes. “We decided
right from the off to go for Maris Otter,” says Duncan Sambrook, founder and
owner of the brewery. “It’s widely – and rightly – regarded as the Rolls-Royce
of malts.”
Anyone who
steps inside his brewery – wedged between Clapham Junction station and the
grey-brown Thames – will take in great lungfuls of toasted Maris Otter aroma.
It’s a traditional scent that denotes a largely traditional brewery, although
not one that is stuck in the past: Sambrook’s now have a keg ale on the market,
a pale ale that undergoes a period of krausening.
“We’ve
produced something that is a cross between a lager and an English pale ale,”
says Sambrook, 34. “It was just [about] trying to do something innovative and
see how the market responds to it.”
It’s an
interesting move from a brewery which has always sought to offer Londoners a
taste of traditional British cask ale. Sambrook, who comes from Salisbury and
still speaks with a soft West-Country twang, was surprised when he came to the
capital at the paucity of breweries. At that stage he was working in the city
but when in 2008 he decided to become a full-time brewer, his motivation was
clear.
“I always thought
that London was an untapped market for craft beer,” he says. “Where I grew up,
we had fantastic microbreweries like Hopback, Ringwood, and more traditional
ones like Hall and Woodhouse. I was very lucky. I was surprised when I came to London and there was only Young’s and
Fuller’s – and then Young’s left.
“Cask ale is
an inherently local product. That’s true everywhere in the country – look at the furore over Tetley’s shutting down
[in Leeds], for instance. I met the guys from Leeds Brewery last week, and I
love their advertising, with the hints from the Tetley advertising – ‘the last
brewery left in Leeds’. There’s all these pubs up there now which they couldn’t
ever supply – overnight, they’re saying, ‘we want your beer in’.”
For all of
his passion for tradition, Sambrook is delighted by the proliferation of
breweries across London. More good beer available means more interest in good
beer. Sambrook’s has certainly grown over the four years of its existence: they
now produce some 5,500 barrels a year, which equates to well over a million
pints.
The tide may
be turning in Sambrooks’ favour. There seems to be a move back towards
session-strength beers, like The Kernel’s much-admired Table Beer, which weighs
in at just 3 per cent. It’s a trend that Sambrook (whose brewery regularly produces
Wandle, at 3.8 per cent, Junction, at 4.5 per cent, Powerhouse Porter, at 4.9
per cent, and Pumphouse Pale Ale, at 4.2 per cent) is understandably happy to
welcome.
“I hope it’s
the next thing for craft beer,” he says. “We’ve often debated where the market
is going. I’ve not fully embraced the American hop thing – I love those beers
but our culture in the UK isn’t about that. My expectation is that over the
next two or three years you’ll see brewers asking: what are we good at? We’re
good at producing low-abv beers packed with taste, at using British ingredients
– more malty drinks, porters, stouts.”
Which brings
us neatly back to Maris Otter, and Wandle. Sambrook admits he was surprised at
the World Beer Awards triumph. “I was absolutely delighted,” he says. “I’ve
always been cynical about beer competitions. I’m delighted that this was picked
by a panel of independent judges on a blind tasting. Some of the other competitions
you’re a bit sceptical about why things get chosen.
“I’ve always
thought that Wandle wasn’t a beer that had the flavour profile to stand out –
the best thing about Wandle is that it is a lovely, delicate beer. It doesn’t
necessarily stand up against something that is packed full of hops, that has a high
abv, and therefore if you’re judging it in a competition you’re likely to go
for the other one - but if you’re drinking it on a day-to-day basis you’ll probably have Wandle,
because it’s delicious.”
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