Hop OZ97a: Rejected in 1960, Rejoiced in 2015?

For the Spring issue of CAMRA’s BEER magazine I wrote a feature on English hops. It looked at how the industry has shrunk to a size which threatens its ongoing existence but shows an interesting future through the research, development and breeding which takes place at Wye Hops in Kent.

Through Wye Hops, and its previous incarnation Wye College, seven new English hop varieties have become commercially available in the last 12 years. These new varieties have arrived thanks to cross-breeding and the application of new research into pest resistance and growing systems (hedgerow hops, for example, which grow lower to the ground than the typical climbing bines).

Through this breeding, around 1,400 unique seedlings a year are produced, each with potential to eventually become a variety. The vast majority don’t make it, of course, but each year a few progress to further testing – the whole process of picking the parent hops to breed with to picking a decent harvest to brew with takes 10 years. Endeavour has just come through that process and others are close behind.

There’s also the National Hop Collection (NHC), which holds 780 different varieties; some are female (it’s the female hops which are used by brewers) and some are male (just used for breeding). Some of the hops in the NHC were bred and developed years ago only to be rejected as being undesirable to brewers, others have simply been used as breeding hops because of positive qualities they give in the process without being tested for their own brewing characteristics.

Now Dr Peter Darby and his small team at Wye Hops are exploring the NHC to see what they can find, looking at rejected old varieties and testing ‘breeding’ hops for their brewing potential. One of those hops is currently known as ‘GP75’. It was used as a breeding hop years ago because of its high resistance to powdery mildew without ever having an oil analysis or flavour assessment made on it. When Dr Darby tested it he found a grapefruit-like citrus depth. Growers in the British Hop Association liked it, there was a successful pilot brew with the hop and it’s now close to farm-scale propagation.

This brings us to OZ97a.

As the issue of BEER was published, Pressure Drop Brewery in North London released a beer with the 2012 harvest of an English hop called OZ97a, or the mystery ‘Hop X’ as the brewery were calling it. Sean Ayling of Pig & Porter has also brewed a beer with the 2011 batch of this hop, as has a homebrewer in Kent. Those breweries got the hops from Kent Brewery who, in 2011, were invited to the NHC and to see the British Hop Association’s breeding programme. Being a local brewery they were interested in the local hops; being a brewery who like American-style IPAs, they were especially interested in punchy, fruity flavours from local hops.

“It is our firm belief that there is nothing to stop UK hops equalling or even surpassing the qualities of [hop varieties from US, Australia and New Zealand], and that if only we could help to encourage experimentation and development we could see a revival in the hop industry in Kent and beyond,” says Paul Herbert of Kent Brewery.

“While walking around the fields [of the National Hop Collection] I had a eureka! moment when I smelt one of the cones. Peter made a note of this and a few months later asked if we would like to take the remainder from that harvest for brewing.” With just two plants of each variety in the collection, some went for further analysis while the rest went to Kent Brewery. A little while later Paul gave some to a local homebrewer but by this time the hops were “quite old and dry” and the results weren’t as expected.  When he was also offered the 2012 harvest, “it was immediately obvious that these had much greater potential.”

As there was such a small volume of hops, Paul passed them on to Pressure Drop who used them in a simple pale ale recipes on their compact 50 litre system. “The results were exactly as we hoped, producing a taste and aroma that could stand up to the very best that the New World can throw at us.” Different batches – from the homebrew to Sean Ayling to Pressure Drop – have given apricot, pineapple, lychee, grapefruit, melon and tangerine. When I tried beers brewed by Sean and Pressure Drop I tasted all of those things and more. It’s delicate, elegant, wonderfully fragrant, fruity and utterly intriguing.   

So what’s the story behind OZ97a?

Professor Salmon ran the breeding programme at Wye College from 1906 to 1953. His work “laid the foundations for all hop breeding during the twentieth century,” writes Dr Darby in Brewery History. Prof Salmon gave us Brewers Gold, Northern Brewer, Bullion, Bramling Cross and others. Dr Darby explains: “OZ97a is a selection from Professor Salmon’s breeding programme. It was a seedling growing at position OZ97 but it was the second interesting seedling to be planted at that position over the period of his programme and so he added the letter ‘a’ to the code to distinguish it.” By the time Dr Ray Neve took over the breeding programme (he gave us Target, Challenger, Northdown and others) from Prof Salmon in 1953, OZ97a had already progressed to farm trials, which is lucky because Dr Neve re-organised the whole breeding garden and numbering system and the hop could’ve been lost. OZ97a was assessed in 1957 and 1958 and reached commercialisation stage in 1959, when it was sent for brewing trials.

Dr Darby, via British Hops

The report for this trial, published in 1960, a year after Prof Salmon died, considered three potential new varieties for their brewing qualities: one of these was released as Early Choice; another was “considered acceptable but, being sensitive to wilt disease and mosaic virus, found little favour with growers”; while OZ97a was “considered unacceptable to brewers in 1960 and it was concluded that ‘these brewing trials indicate that a number of brewers would not be willing to use this hop even at 25% replacement of their normal grist’ because ‘it has strong American flavour.’”

(Dr Darby doesn’t yet know the heritage of OZ97a but will be visiting the Wye College archives in May to find out when the original crossbreed was made and to read any of Prof Salmon’s notes on the variety. After this he’ll know more about the hops used to produce it)

“With such a damning report and without Salmon to champion his variety, it was put in the germplasm collection,” leaving just two plants. From there it’s been a fortunate survivor, making it through an outbreak of wilt disease in 1978 and a major cull of breeding materials that Dr Darby was forced to make in 2006 when Wye College was closed and Wye Hops Ltd was set up (there’s too much history to go into here but it involves government funding being dropped for Wye College and the British hop breeding industry effectively becoming self-funded as a new company, Wye Hops Ltd).

This is where it loops back into the work of Dr Darby, Wye Hops and the British Hop Association because “the hop collection is being systematically re-assessed by the British Hop Association [and] there are many hops in the collection which have never been assessed for their aroma or whose aroma was rejected in the past but where modern craft brewing might find more interest.” In 2012, the part of the collection housing OZ97a was part of the re-assessment and it was picked out blind as being suitable for tests as a dried hop, along with 12 others. “Dried samples of this hop were submitted to a panel of assessors at Charles Faram and the verdict was that it had intense pineapple and citrus notes: it was highlighted as one of the hops to consider further.” It was also selected independently by a group assessing the aroma potential of hops in the collection. Along with Paul at Kent Brewery, that makes three groups who have all selected the same hop from blind tests. “This cannot be a coincidence,” says Dr Darby.

OZ97a was rejected by the standards of 1960 but could be of considerable interest to brewers now and it will be discussed by the British Hop Association in April. “I would be quietly confident that they will arrange for OZ97a to be propagated for planting on a farm or two,” says Dr Darby. “If they do go ahead with it then it will be propagated during 2013 from our two plants in the collection and planted in 2014. Cropping will be from 2015 onwards. Until then, all that can be available is the small amount from the two mature plants in our collection.”

How many other hops were rejected 50 years ago which might be appealing to brewers today? How many wonderful varieties simply haven’t been tested for their flavour or aroma yet? Add to this the potential to then use these varieties in the breeding programme and it’s an exciting prospect. As brewers and drinkers get enticed by the juicy, fruity flavours of American and New Zealand hops, OZ97a lets us know that we can also grow them here in Britain.

The conclusion of my story in BEER was that British brewers need to use British hops or face losing them. There’s a lot being done in the industry to develop exciting new varieties and OZ97a and GP75 aren’t the only ones that we should be looking at. Hopefully the next few years are going to be very interesting and produce some wonderful new British hops with flavour profiles we haven’t tasted before, complimenting the traditional varieties we’re rightly famous for.   

Tastes change and the big breweries follow

When Germans and German-Americans first started brewing in North America in the mid-19th century, they used recipes from their homeland. These would’ve been amber-coloured, flavoursome liquid-bread, matured for months in pitch-lined barrels in cool cellars. They were lagers, opaque, but thanks to the lagering time which allowed the yeast to drop they were brighter and lighter than the muddy, dark, prone-to-sour English-style ales which had been brewed since colonial days.

In Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and especially Milwaukee, lager breweries were started by German émigrés. To begin, their beers were mostly drunk by other Germans in their local areas. These German drinkers, foaming mug of lager in hand, also brought with them their drinking culture of leisurely mugs in beer halls with music, dancing, family and food. This was a stark contrast to the spit, sawdust and smoke of American taverns, where speed and greed were valued over pleasure. Americans were drinking spirits in the dark while the Germans were drinking lager in bright beer halls.

Men with the surnames Anheuser, Busch, Best (to be passed on to Pabst) and Uehlein (Schlitz) had started their breweries. And they grew quickly, re-writing what brewing was in America and creating their own fortunes with ingenuity, determination and ambition. These were the guys who first used refrigeration for beer, who first pasteurised their beer, who built enormous automated bottling lines (in the 1890s, Pabst’s bottling line employed over 900 people and could fill 75,000 bottles an hour per spindle of their line; they had 96 spindles), developed transport networks around America in order to sell more beer and grew local, then national, then international companies.  

As the numbers of German-Americans grew, so their beer spread further and Americans started drinking it. But the American taste for beer was different to that of Europeans: they didn’t want the ‘heavy’ Bavarian beers, they wanted something lighter – it was the German historical nourishment of liquid bread versus the American need for drunken speed. So beers evolved or new brands were released to satisfy the market demand.

In the 1870s, brewers looked back to Europe and saw the bright beers of Bohemia – pale gold, light-bodied, clear and sparkling. This was the style of beer which Americans would like, the sort of beer they could drink lots of. But it proved difficult to brew. Europeans used two-row barley but Americans used six-row barley; six-row is rich in protein and some of that remained in the finished beer, forming a haze or unsightly clumps, as well as reducing shelf-life (this is still pre-pasteurisation). Darker Bavarian lagers could hide this haze but pale Pilsners couldn’t. And this new beer style arrived at the same time as glass became the drinking container of choice: suddenly beer had to look good.

This is where adjuncts come in. Brewers needed something with starch and useful sugars to reduce the amount of barley. Corn worked; it absorbed excess protein in the barley and stretched the six-row further (meaning less needed to be used for beer-quality reasons rather than financial ones), but it also added an unpleasant flavour as it contained oil. A better adjunct was rice. This new light, clear lager was now a beer unique to America, used in order to produce a better, brighter beer, not a cheaper one. And this modern beer was exactly to American tastes where quality quickly became associated with pale and sparkling.

Throughout this period, the successful breweries – Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, Schlitz – were focused on quality, consistency and reaching new drinkers, and they brewed, by all accounts, some of the best beers in the world, reaching a notable high in the battle at the World Expo of 1893 which awarded Pabst the medal for which it still wears a blue ribbon today – Budweiser took second place, beating lagers and ales from around the world, including the German beers which inspired the new style of American lager. 

Then came Prohibition. More than a decade dry, America had turned to soda and 13-year habits are hard to kick. Those dry years saw big advancements in life: people now spent time at home where they could listen to the radio or spend time with their family, and if they drank then they did so at home (packaged beer was 10% of the market in 1919; by 1940 it was split 50-50; by 1960 it was 80% packaged), or they’d go to the movies, where they’d watch svelte Hollywood starlets sipping cocktails (post-Prohibition, obviously), a sight far removed from the bouncy Bavarian beer wenches.

Then came recession, the Great Depression, World War II and ingredient rationing. Some brewers changed and cheapened recipes to keep away from bank managers or to keep up with demand; others, including some of the big guys, for whom premium quality was essential, refused to compromise on ingredients and so brewed less. When recession and rationed ended, some breweries just carried on using the adjuncts, liking the savings they made on cheaper ingredients.

Times changed again. The knock-on from Prohibition to war to general technological, commercial and industrial advancement saw a very different America in the 1950s to how it’d been 40 years earlier. The ‘drinking demographic’ of 20-40 year olds was low in the 1950s and spirit sales went up while beer sales went down. Dieting and bad health became part of the public conscience and beer was unable to rid the wench’s fat-fingered grip. The rationed diet of the last two decades also saw a blanket blandness and a palate that wanted sweetness combined with a new desire for convenience, so mass-market beers sat beside sliced white bread and packets of processed cheese.

As had happened in the 1870s, when the amber beers of Bavaria became the pale beers of Bohemia, so in the 1950s Americans wanted less-demanding drinks and beer changed to suit to the tastes of the nation.

Enter lighter beers, drier beers, weaker beers and, in the 1970s, Lite beers. These brewhouse changes happened with a backdrop of mergers, takeovers, buyouts and breweries going bust, as the big boys looked to spread across America while the small breweries just tried to keep going. Survival was made harder as consumers started looking for cheaper beers over premium ones – the big brewers adapted and had the mountainous volumes to push prices lower and lower, forcing the small breweries to fight over dimes, not dollars. Brewing corporations brutally ruled the market.

Then things changed again. The liberal, world-conscious and curious attitude of the 1960s and 70s saw people travelling more and experiencing other cultures, which saw import beers rise in popularity. Then came homebrewing (though still illegal until 1979), an extension of a growing knowledge of food and ingredients, and a way away from the corporations and towards small producers. Changes were happening while the big brewers were still perpetually searching for new markets, still spending millions on advertising and still changing their recipes by reducing rather than adding flavour.

The change started with Anchor, New Albion, Sierra Nevada, Redhook, Boulder Brewing, Mendocino Brewing and others. Then come more and more. Followed by an on-going burst in America since the 1990s. In 1880s, there were over 4,000 breweries in America, which dropped to around 1,500 before Prohibition, of which less than 200 survived to the repeal of the amendment. In the mid-1980s there was only around 80 breweries owned by 60-odd brewing companies. There are now around 2,000 craft breweries in America with over 900 in planning (in the UK, in 1910 there was over 4,500 breweries, dropping to just 191 in 1980; now there are over 1,000). The small guy now had a say.

‘We are the 5%’ has become a proud bumper-sticker-slogan for the craft beer minority of America. Brewing is booming, even if the big companies, which are now really big companies thanks to mergers and takeovers, still hold the huge majority of market share; the monolithic giants are being pushed around by a growing army of little guys.

In the 1870s and again in the 1950s, German-American breweries changed their recipes to suit what the drinkers wanted. Now look at the last 15 years. The main brands rarely change but big brewers are always searching to be at the forefront of things, to position themselves to slot into different markets with different products: Blue Moon, Budweiser American Ale or the Brewmaster’s Private Reserve, Shock Top, Green Valley Brewing or see the list of AB-InBev brands, especially the Michelob brews which includes a lager funked up with brettanomyces and a Rye Pale Ale. The big brewers are now having to seek inspiration from the craft breweries, from the guys who are closer to the drinkers, more able to see how tastes are developing and shape where things go.

But this isn’t about the big brewers any more. While it’s interesting to see what they do, they are being reactive instead of proactive. The forefront of the industry is now taking place in small mash tuns around the world by brewers who are creative and passionate and dedicated to making great-tasting beers with personality and character and flavour.

The current trend is towards big flavour in beer. It’s the antithesis of the light/lite lagers which dominate bar tops and home fridges. These beers show you how different beer can be, how varied, how exciting. Not long ago, the beers of Belgium would’ve converted new drinkers but now it’s more likely they’ll have a double IPA than an abbey dubbel, and we have American brewers to thank for that, but we can also look at New Zealand, Sweden, Italy and the UK as countries who are taking beer further, doing new things, giving drinkers more and better choices.

And choice is what’s great about beer right now. It’s hard to introspect what’s happening in terms of changing tastes but we can anecdotally see that more hops are being added to beers, different hop varieties are being used, strong beers are no longer fearsome, breweries are experimenting with different styles, ingredients and yeasts, sour beers are a big thing in America, barrel-aging isn’t slowing down, old recipes are being recreated and new ones are changing what we thought we knew about beer.

Before travel networks were laid across America all beer was local. This allowed for those 4,000 breweries to operate in the 1880s as each had their own market. With roads, trains, ships and planes, plus pasteurisation, bottling, canning and refrigeration, breweries were able to ship beer further and look nationally instead of just nearby. Now provenance is back. There’s an interest in where things are from and there’s a parochial pride in supporting local businesses and community. And that’s making room for more new breweries to start filling their fermenters all over the world.   

Tastes change. The big brewers have always had to react to the tastes of their drinkers: opaque, heavy amber lager became pale and sparkling pilsners which then became lighter, drier lagers. Now flavour is back and drinkers are more knowledgeable and curious than ever. The full-on aroma of American hops is an exciting change to the tastebuds, a rich stout is deeply satisfying, a sharp sour is refreshing and complex and lagers have their flavour back. 

Tastes change and who knows what’s next. Who knows how the big brewers will react to it – maybe it’ll be buying more craft breweries, maybe building new breweries of their own and backing it up with advertising spend, maybe we’ll see them recreate their pre-Prohibition lagers. Who cares how they’ll react; there are a handful of them and thousands of us now. As knowledge grows, as people experience different beers, as the thousands become tens-of-thousands and the mash tuns go from 5 barrels to 50, so tastes will change and drinkers will want different things. The past is fascinating; the present is exciting; the future is going to taste even better.  

Sources

A lot of the history stuff comes from reading Maureen Ogle’s excellent Ambitious Brew. If you haven’t read it then you must. The whole story of American beer is deeply fascinating and was the inspiration for writing this.

Ken Wells’s Travels With Barley also helped form my knowledge of American beer.

Randy Mosher filled in some gaps on the history of American beer in Tasting Beer.

The Oxford Companion to Beer is always a great resource to dip into.

Stats and figures come from The 2011-2012 Cask Report, the British Beer and Pub Association’s Statistical Handbook 2011 and via pages linked above.

Images from here, here, here, here, here and here.

Blog 500! Why Beer Matters

This is my 500^th blog post! I’m being a bit lazy with it and posting something I wrote last year for the ‘Why Beer Matters’ competition, run by Pete Brown and The Publican. Pete posted this on his blog but I’ve never published it here. It feels like the right kind of post for number 500.

Why Beer Matters

Our distant ancestors, the cave men and women, had the campfire. They would gather there, they lived around it and socialised around it, they learnt their life skills in its glowing, flickering flame. It was the centre of the community, the source of warmth, the source of heat to cook, the place where stories were told and learning happened. We don’t have campfires, we have the pub.

It’s the early drinking years which are the important ones. They come when we are trying to discover who we are and who we are going to be, and they help to shape us into that person. In the pub, at this time, we become more socially aware of ourselves and others and catching the eye of a mate becomes the primary motive for almost every action. Strut to the door at 17, acting grown up, feeling 27, ballsy. They let you in (of course they shouldn’t but everyone knows this pub lets you in). It’s the first step. Inside, the area opens up. It’s a man’s world and you’ve taken your first adult steps. Ordering the first pint is a ritual ceremony and with that beer in your hand you are now a part of the adult world.

Those early years are fraught. There’s ID checks, your mates having too many, the knock-back from the girl, the running out of money when you want another drink, learning about life, talking to people, being a shoulder to cry on or a voice of reason, acting stupid, spilled drinks, loose lips and broken hearts. But there’s more than that. There’s the laughter, the fun, the growing up, the being with friends. I can picture the pub we drank in: dark and dingy, a loud rock club-pub, always smelly, always crowded, always smoky, always hot, always surrounded by friends. It was my campfire.

And in that pub, or in others, or at a friend’s house with some bottles, or in the park with some cans, that’s where I learnt so many things, so many life skills: effective communications (ease the raging drunk; say hi to the girl), societal order (that’s the manager so act sober; they are the cool group), self-control (I shouldn’t have had that last pint), budgeting (I’ve got £5.20 and a burger is £3 so what can I get to drink?), how to attract a mate (play it cool, smile, what’s the worst that can happen?), how to deal with rejection (‘Can I buy you a drink’, I slur, ‘Err... no’, she says), responsibility (looking after the one who had too much). And we learn these things on our own, away from the comfort and security of the parental nest. We are growing up, in the pub, pint glass in our hand: the beacon of beer is always there, a flaming torch to guide us.

And it’s always there. It’s the reason and the excuse to catch up with old friends; it’s the oil of our social life. Let’s go for a beer. Beer is currency: ‘thanks for your help, I’ll buy you a pint’. Beer is the offer of friendship: ‘Pint?’ Beer is business; beer is passion. Beer is food, beer is life. It’s there in the good times and the bad, like a familiar friend to laugh with us or ease our pain with us. It’s in the fridge when we get home from work or it’s at the forefront of our minds as the clock hands ache around the last hour of the last day of the week. As we move along the beer-drinking path it opens up a wider view over the whole, vast plains of possibility. It can be the simplest cold lager on a hot day or it can be the most complex, rich barley wine on a cold night. It can be challenging and thought provoking; enlightening and inspiring; light or dark or a thousand shades in between; smooth or rugged; mild or tongue-twisting. It comes in fat, round glasses or tall thin ones; it’s hand-pulled and frothing into a dimpled mug or carefully poured from a dusty old bottle into a crystal tumbler. And then there’s the nonic pint glass: the stunning vision and lasting beauty of great British design, right royally branded with the crown. Holding it provides the same comfort as your loved one’s hand: it just feels right; the perfect vessel, the perfect size and weight. We get halfway through and already we want it re-filled so that it looks handsome and proud and full of colour and life again. It’s the pint glass, that guiding light, which we’ve known since we were taking our first, uneasy grown-up steps back from the bar after saying for the first time, ‘Can I have a pint please?’

Our pub is the caveman’s campfire. We grow up there, we become ourselves there, we make important decisions there, we go there after a long day, we eat, we share experiences, we relax, we have a beer there. It’s changed from those primitive and fraught pub-going adventures and we’ve learnt the important things about life and love and where we are and where we’re going. Now we can just sit back and enjoy it, say cheers to our drinking partner and take a deep, long pull on that pint in our hand. Beer: it’s more than just a drink and it matters because it’s always been there and it always will be; the guiding torch around our campfire.

The vanguard of modern beer media

Despite being laden with a heavy bag filled with too many bottles of beer, despite the lack of sleep and excess of everything else, and despite the prospect of a bus for the last leg of the journey home, nothing could stop the smile muscles from getting a good workout as I left the Beer Bloggers Conference on Sunday.

As weekends go it’s hard to find one better: great beer, great food, great company, great entertainment, great fun, all multiplied ten-fold because it all pulled together perfectly. As a prospect the weekend was an odd one: what the hell is a Beer Bloggers Conference?! Ignore the name, look at what we did, look at how everyone reacted to it as that’s all you need to know.

But as I was leaving, as the beer haze was lifting and being replaced by the bastard behind the eyes, it became clearer that what we’re doing – writing and reading blogs; loving good beer – is incredibly important.

There is slim space for beer appreciation in traditional media and it seems to be getting harder and harder to place articles, despite the fact that more and more people are discerning drinkers and that Britain has got a brilliant brewing past, present and future. And people want to read about it. This lack of printed word opens up the online space and opportunities which don’t exist elsewhere, and this is key (although, with newspaper readerships serially in decline, and online use ever on the up, does this lack matter to all but the ones who live off writing?)

When I want to find out something the first place I look is Google. When I wanted to learn more about beer as a thirsty 21-year-old with pint in hand, I learnt about it through Google first and books second (plus I needed to Google what books to buy). With mobile technology and the daily draw of social media making the internet ever-more pertinent in our lives, it’s natural that we spend more time online and use it in different ways; the declining print runs of newspapers is concurrent to the increasing hits on their websites, kindle books now outsell physical books two-to-one on Amazon. Things are changing.

And this change is important for beer. Anyone can now easily create their own online content and we can all choose exactly what we do and don’t read: web 2.0 gives us power as content creators. Why is this good for beer? Because it’s allowed anyone to have a voice and the more voices there are the more people know about good beer and the bigger and better it will become.

There’s also an audience of drinkers online who want to know more about beer. For every one person who writes a blog there are a handful who comment and hundreds more who just read (it’s the 90-9-1 idea). The readers are every bit as important as the writers because you are the ones who go out there and drink the beer and tell your friends.

The internet is beer’s medium and it’ll be through the internet that it is able to grow beyond the borders of the printed page. The word ‘vanguard’ was used a few times over the weekend and it’s a good choice: the internet is still young, blogs are still young, and the people who are writing about beer online, and those who are routinely reading about it, are, as Darren from BeerSweden writes, “the vanguard of modern beer media.”

If drinkers want to search for information about beer then they go online. What they tap into Google will often return links to blogs on the first page. And with bloggers based around the world there’s so much coverage and potential, way more than could be achieved offline. This also means we’re a worldwide community, an army ready to mobilise at any time and loft our pints into the air; together we’re stronger.

Beer lovers should be excited about the future because it’s only going to get better and blogs are a very important part of that – we are not just sitting in our bedrooms sipping free beer and crap tasting notes. A post-Conference blog from Bad Attitude Brewery about the importance of blogs is brilliant and everyone who is interested in beer should read it. Ultimately, we are telling a never-ending story where pints and bottles are the characters in an always twisting-and-turning tale, punctuated by the occasional low but with many great highs and where readers can take part in the story themselves by picking up that pint and drinking it.

Brewers create the words, bloggers tell the stories, drinkers bring them to life.

Life goes on

This is my entry into the Oxford Brookes and Wells&Young’s Beer Writing Competition. I started writing three different stories but the submission date coincided with my first week at a new job and so I barely spent any time on them, sending this in on the cusp of the deadline. I’m not especially happy with it and it could be improved, but this is the version I sent in for judging. Zak and Adrian have both posted their entries. The winning entry by Milton Crawford (you should read his Hungover Cookbook – it’s excellent) is now online and it's very good.

Image from here

He finishes his tea, cleans the plate, knife and fork under the hot running tap and checks his watch: 5.45pm. A nod to himself – he’s right on time – and he takes his coat, fixes his cap to his head, picks a small pile of coins from a row of other identical piles, takes the keys off the hook by the door and leaves.

George spends the day in his workshop working on a few projects or passing time, or he’s fetching some items from the town. He’ll normally take a nap in the afternoon following a sandwich and reading the paper, then later he eats his tea and leaves at 5.45pm for a drink. Walking down his street, the hanging sign is like a star in the sky; the pub on the corner like his second home. 

George had his wedding reception in this pub. That was 53 years ago. He wet the head of his three children and six grandchildren here. His wife worked here behind the bar and cleaning some mornings, until she couldn’t work any longer, and then they held her wake here. He’s seen the owners change and while he might not like the latest couple’s curry nights during the week and loud music on Saturday nights, they kept his beer on so he won’t complain.

“Alright George!” the barman calls as he collects himself from the cold and enters the cosy comfort of the pub, his pub.

He nods before taking off his cap. He doesn’t need to call his order as a pint is poured for him. He stands at the bar and looks around to see who’s in tonight. It’s quiet. The landlord and his pretty young barmaid, a couple on the way back from work, some young lads making a noise in the corner, a chap at the bar minding his own business.  

“George, how’s that rocking horse coming along?” A voice asks from behind as the door closes. George turns to see the familiar face of Michael. “Make that two, Gary.”

“Oh, you know, it’s getting there,” he nods to himself.

Michael sides up to George at the bar, leans back against a stool and then leans forward to speak softly.

“Say, George, did you hear about Mrs Randall?”

George hadn’t; Mrs Randall runs the Post Office and has for as long as George’s memory will recalls. He’d always had a soft spot for her.

“She’s not good. Doctors haven’t given her long.”

George drops his head.

“It gets us all, you know, that’s one thing to be sure of.”

Two pints stand full on the bar. A glowing amber with a crown of creamy foam.

George takes the exact change from his pocket, without looking, and hands it to Gary.

“Thanking you, sir!” says Gary.

George has the pint to his lips and takes a long, slow gulp before moving across the pub and taking his seat opposite the bar. This is where George sits every night. Every night. Before the last owner left, in gratitude, he built a plaque for above George’s seat. “Here sits George”. Michael joins him on the next table over.

From here, George just sits. A man comfortable doing nothing more with his time than sitting, watching and listening. Passing time. Drinking his beer.

Another slow gulp on his pint. The news is starting on the TV hanging in the corner. Bad news, sad news, unwelcome news, money, governments, death and taxes. He listens but he heard the stories on the radio earlier.

The group in the corner finish a round and start another, calling their order from across the pub.

“Four more, mate!”

“Coming up, lads.” Gary returns while clearing plates from a table of diners.

Another couple have arrived and they order their drinks before sitting silently.

The group of guys have had a few already. They laugh and talk too loud, talking about things they shouldn’t say at that volume. Young lads.

Michael has opened an old address book, tatty and dog-eared, and he flicks through it. George watches and his stare alerts Michael, who speaks without looking up.

“Half of these names aren’t here anymore.”

“Life goes on.”

The barmaid leans back against the bar, typing fast into a phone. The lads stare, dreaming. She looks up embarrassed, hearing them talking about her. Flattered, blush cheeks.

The noise lulls, backed only by the TV reporter and the chatter coming from the corners of the pub.

The silence is pierced by the tinny, high-pitched beeping of a mobile phone. George only notices when he realises that it’s coming from his pocket.

“Bloody phone,” he says, fumbling for the shiny black thing his son bought him last year. Retrieving it he looks over the top of his glasses at the glowing screen. One new message.

He pushes a few buttons but nothing happens.

“Bloody...” Michael looks up.

“I’ve got one of those things, too. I can use the internet on it and check emails.” He takes a phone from his pocket. “Apparently.” He shakes it like an old brick.

George’s large, wood-worked fingers press heavily, inaccurately, on the keys as he tries to press the right combination to unlock the thing. On the fourth attempt it works.

“‘Hi grandad, I played rugby today and scored a try. See you soon.’ Ah, wouldn’t you know. He’s a good little sportsman that one.” Michael looks up, eyebrows raised. “My grandson – little George.”

He attempts to lock the keys but it doesn’t work, instead opening up another menu. He eventually gives up and puts the phone back in his jacket pocket.

He sits back, a proud smile creeps across his face as he takes a mouthful of the beer.

Time passes. People come and go. Some have food, some settle back with beers, bottles of wine, orange juice. The news is still on in the corner. Michael finishes his beer and leaves – “See you, George”. George runs a list in his head of the things to do tomorrow. It doesn’t take long. He remembers to get the old news stories of his rugby playing days to show to little George next time he sees him.

Another couple arrive to be greeted by the barman. Two chaps perch at the bar silently sipping pints. Another guy reads the paper in the corner obsessively checking his phone every few seconds. The barmaid flirts with the rowdy group. They invite her out after work. She might, she says.

Just as George is finishing his beer and looking at the lacing of foam down the glass, the door whooshes in cold air from outside and a familiar voice orders a pint while looking around.

“Dad, there you are!” George looks up. “Make that two pints,” David, George’s eldest son, says to the girl who is now back behind the bar.

“I just came to see you,” he says to George.

George gets nervous at unannounced visits. It usually means bad news. He shuffles on his short wooden stool and plays with some bar mats on the table as David places the glasses down, sits back, sighs and takes three long gulps of beer.

“That’s better,” he says. “How’s things, Dad?”

“Oh, you know, still going.”

“I went to the house but you weren’t there so I figured you’d be here. Anyway, we’ve got some news...” He takes another gulp of beer through a barely-stifled smile. “I’m going to be a grandad. And you’re going to be a great-grandad!” George looks up, relieved, shocked, delighted. “Ali and Joe are expecting.”

“Wonderful. Wonderful.” George’s face awakens, stretches wide with a smile. “Wonderful news.”

They talk, they drink their pints slowly, sipping between stories and news, catching up on the grandchildren, the family. Around them the TV still plays, the barman still serves, the lads in the corner order more pints, the girl plays on her phone, a couple order dessert, people come and go, life goes on.

When David’s phone rings he answers it quickly: “Just in the Moon Under Water with Dad. Yep, I’ve told him the news, he’s delighted. Ok, see you later.” He hangs up, finishes his beer.

“Right, do you want another pint?”

BrewDog: The Brewery Tour

Hanging out into the icy North Sea, in the distant fishing town of Fraserburgh in Northeast Scotland, a flying Punk IPA-blue flag tells you where you are.

Hidden behind huge silver conditioning tanks, towers of bright casks and lock-ups loaded with ingredients, it’s like the kind of base camp you'd expect in an ‘80s kids movie: chaotic, cramped, loud, energetic. This is BrewDog.

It’s cold here. Remote. Nearer to Norway than the lights of London. Everything is overcrowded, piled up high; space is the stuff between everything else and there isn’t much of it. The upright silver torpedoes dominate because there are lots of them – 20, 24, 27, I don’t remember. In the far right corner as you enter is the mash tun and copper, heavy metal is blaring out of a stereo nearby, an assistant brewer is shovelling a mush of used hops. Turn left and the middle of the brewery, hidden in shadow behind a wall of boxes and tanks, is the bottling line, a clanking, chiming, busy unit. Next is packaging with pallets wrapped in black and a mountain range of boxes. The little online shop area takes up the back wall, a few t-shirts, open cases of beer, flat-packed boxes ready to be filled and sent to your house. Then towards the head offices, past a freezer turned to -80C, past a little kitchen and toilet (complete with Kerrang magazine and empty can of Lynx), past a wall of awards and into James and Martin’s office, which is empty apart from two tables, an old armchair, a corner unit and a few bottles. This is BrewDog HQ.

A little later we see the barrel store: “Do you want to see the barrel store?” Martin asks. Of course we do. It’s across the industrial unit, another lock up. Outside are empties, blackened by time, ready to be filled. Martin removes the bung and we dip our noses in. A ghost of the whisky within is like an olfactory echo, the angels share still sloshing around. Inside is like walking into an abandoned gangster movie. Derelict, cold, dark, tripping lights, broken glass, puddles on the floor. The barrels are piled up next to an open unit which feels incomplete without a battered and bloodied guy tied to a chair and facing three bruisers with guns and brick fists. It’s a strange building but made remarkable with a stack of old barrels, faded branding telling you of their past life, chalk-marked telling you of their future life.

To look at the brewery from the sea is to get a new perspective on it. The beach arcs around almost beautifully, a redness to the sand, a darkness to the water. There’s not much around and you realise how far from everything this is. From this side the brewery looks small, like a makeshift castle, like something from a kids’ fantasy story, patchwork and cobbled together. And in many ways it is just that. This place has been built from the imaginations of James and Martin, almost four years of work, quickly adding more and more, expanding until there was nowhere left to expand, no more room for big silver tanks or turrets of orange casks which can’t be built higher. It’s an incredible place.

And it makes you feel like anything is possible. Everything is possible. Less than four years from nothing to this. Another 18 months and it’ll be a new site, a bigger one. Breaking their own records all the time, brewing 24/7 to attempt to keep up with demand, it’s a frantic place, always busy, and over 30 work in the brewery alone, yet it’s like a choreographed routine where everyone knows their own parts as well as everyone else’s. It’s mesmerising to watch, to be a part of, even for just a day.

Yes, that is an ice cream van.

I like BrewDog. You don’t need me to tell you that. Seeing the brewery, making a beer, hanging out... it’s made me like them a whole lot more, to get a new respect and perspective on what they do and what they’ve done. Could you start a brewery today and then come back in March 2015 and say you will turnover £6million, have a restaurant and three bars, be available around the world, including major UK supermarkets, sending out 8,000,000 bottles of beer a year? It’s awe-inspiring. It’s awesome. And the brewery itself is a mad place, just like you’d expect, never stopping, always busy, filled with energy, controlled in chaos. It’s made me realise and appreciate just how much hard work has gone into it and that’s something you don’t see or hear about very often.

I’m now excited to try the beer we designed and brewed. It’s been lagering for six weeks and it needs some dry-hopping but it should be ready soon. I can’t wait.

Here I'm teaching Avery about hops. They add bitterness and aroma, I tell him. 

This has taken a long time to post because I’ve been writing about it for a magazine and wanted to get that done first, ensuring I didn’t double up on my words or the story. I’ve added some photos to facebook, if you want to see more (again, not all of them, as the best ones went to the magazine).

Some Unusual Brews

I've written a piece for the Guardian’s Word of Mouth about some of the more unusual ingredients used in beer around the world, including jelly fish, saliva, weasel poo and tomatoes... Here’s the full post.

The piece was written as a double act to go with one about ancient ingredients and their current uses, which can be seen here.

What’s the most unusual ingredient you’ve tasted in a beer?!

Remembrance of Beers Past

I’m in my flat. It’s September and almost sunny. I pop the swing top of a chunky bottle and pour it out while I’m concentrating on making dinner and doing other jobs. I’m juggling and making a mess and I’m not thinking about the beer but as soon as I raise the glass to my lips and take one mouthful I’m whooshed away and I’m sitting in the Pivovar Modra Hvezda and microbrewery in Dobrany. I’m sitting at a table, the brewer at one end, me at the other, surrounded by others, with lots of glasses in front of me. My hand goes to the glass in the middle and lifts it up, takes a gulp and says, inaudibly, how much I like this beer. Back in my kitchen I feel a warmth moving outwards from my heart in a quickening of its beat; the memory comes alive in me. I remember that it had a striking flavour which hadn’t been present in anything we’d had all weekend, an egg custard tart quality, but in a subtle-not-weird kind of way. I remember how I drank more and more of this beer until it was gone. I remember its silky body, the sweetness and creaminess of it; I remember how much fun that hour at the brewpub/hotel was and how everyone was buzzing when we left. Standing in the kitchen at home, raising the glass to take a mouthful, I’m thrown to that memory.

The brewpub/hotel from the outside.

“I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence.”

Of course, it’s no ordinary cake which Marcel Proust is writing about in Remembrance of Things Past; it’s a madeleine. For Proust, “the past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us).” This material object could be anything. For Proust it was a piece of cake soaked in tea. For me, it’s beer.

The Modra Hvezda lager (it's the 10 degree unfiltered) isn’t the only beer to have this effect on me. A few weeks ago I shared a bottle of Racer 5 with Mark from BeerBirraBier and it simultaneously took me on a wild memory ride to four different places (such is the power of this beer for me) – just a mouthful of it is powerful enough to do that, which is probably why I call it my favourite beer. The strange thing is that I don’t remember the taste of the beer in the memories, instead it’s the rosy and hazy experience it conjures back in my mind.

Racer 5 in the Bear Republic brewpub.

“Our senses of smell and taste are uniquely sentimental,” writes Jonah Lehrer in Proust was a Neuroscientist. “This is because smell and taste are the only senses that connect directly to the hippocampus, the centre of the brain’s long-term memory. Their mark is indelible.” Lehrer explains that the other senses are processed by the thalamus, which is the source of language and the “front door to consciousness,” meaning that sight, sound and touch “are much less efficient at summoning up our past.” By taking a mouthful of beer (or cake or anything else), the brain can pin it to a distant memory and recall it from the library of our mind.

But the memories I’ve recreated are not fully complete. They are powerful flashes of the moment which brings back a feeling more than anything else. I can see the image of it but it’s almost static, like someone has taken two or three stills and is playing them back to back, creating a jarring video effect. I remember being there, I remember little details, but mostly I remember the feeling.

These memories “do not directly represent reality,” says Lehrer. “Instead, they are imperfect copies of what actually happened, a Xerox of a Xerox of a mimeograph of the original photograph.” Memories require a “transformative process... we have to misremember something in order to remember it.” By drinking these beers I’m flung to a great memory and in my mind this has a cumulative effect and makes it better; a halcyon glow fills the senses. I don’t remember how tired, drunk or hungover I am in any of the memories, that headache isn’t there nor am I was worried that I don’t have enough money for breakfast or that I don’t know where my hotel is, instead I bring back a snapshot of something which means a lot and I raise it up in my mind to something bigger and better and each time it happens the beers and the moments continue to get better and more important to me.

These are the sorts of beers we don’t forget. They are also the beers which we raise to be more than perhaps they should be. Is the Modra Hvezda lager a great beer or is it just the lasting memory of a great moment? Is Racer 5 my favourite beer or have I just been lucky and had some unforgettable experiences with it in my hand. Strangely, I’ve had it more times than just the four which flash into my mind, but they don’t come back instantly, instead they take a little more searching until I remember them.

Beer is a visceral time machine capable of lifting us from reality and dropping us back in a distant memory, visiting places we hadn’t forgotten, just merely stored in the annuls of what’s already happened. By having these transformative remembrances we raise the original moment in our minds and it gets better and better until it ostensibly becomes something of fictional quality. But this isn’t a bad thing. It’s good to have these special beers and special moments and they are rare drinking experiences; it makes beer an important part of our past and present.

Have you ever experienced this kind of Proustian remembrance? If so, what beer? Or what food? Or whatever else?

I’ve written something similar before. That time it was how Deus takes me to my last Summer Ball at university (the Taste of Memories). I have a similar thing with Mythos which, despite having countless pints in the last few years, I still recall a particular few. Desperados is there too and it’s my 21^st birthday and we’re standing in my garden, it’s freezing cold and dark and we’re drinking a mini keg. Then there’s the time we’re drinking a mini keg in a swimming pool.