What I like about Camden Town Brewery…the place is a boost
of sunlight, as easy as a bee that wants to be a bee and know it’s a bee; two
or maybe three years have pressed on since I last set myself before its mast of
a lauter tun and it still feels as if a friendly and fulsome zephyr is soft
brushing its way about the non-Osmond gleam of the stainless steel where beer
is made.
What I like about Camden Town Brewery…the place is both
young and old; it’s about hanging out and also hanging about like an upside
down bat in the railway arches that wire flex themselves outwards beneath the
track that passes through Kentish Town West (‘Good Beer This Way’ says a sign);
it’s buzzy in a way that wouldn’t have gone down well with the Essenes but also
has a hussy/Hussar-like swagger of rock’n’roll off-handedness that I’ve always
been drawn to, and because this is beer everyone can join the club, one sip and
you’re a cool kid, whether topped by an ironic flat cap or dressed by Burton.
What I like about Camden Town Brewery…the brewery is a calm
space and is taut in the sense that all is order and in order and it is
friendly, lagery and larger than life and I love the six 120-h/l tanks in which the beer sleeps the sleep of the just; back in the 1980s when I was getting to know
north London and didn’t really care what sort of beer went into my glass as
long as it was German or Czech the very idea of tanks standing down here would
have been a puzzle…
What I like about Camden Town Brewery…beneath the stairwell
onto the brewing platform I spy Doug Odell as I ascend the steps. He’s here
because he’s here — a collaboration brew between him and Camden, a Baltic
Porter, a rich throughput of ideas that makes modern brewing so exciting. And
it’s time for a beer, an unfiltered USA Helles, fresh, unfiltered, a throw in
the air of flavour, an appetising high-five of crisp bitterness, the sort of
beer that rarely lasts long in my glass. And like the beer, I’m soon gone, a
train to latch onto, but like spring rain I will be back.
Sunlight? You didn't notice the huge fuck off flats literally 10 feet away, blotting everything out then?
ReplyDeleteMetaphorical sunlight, wasn’t talking literally about it — I noticed nothing but the surrounds of the brewery
ReplyDeleteAh. Never understand whst people are driving at Reggie.
ReplyDelete