Train of thought

The train of thought begins with an article by Ray Anderson in the excellent Brewery History, autumn 2012, One Yeast or Two? Pure Yeast and Top Fermentation, which is about the production of beer using a single strain of yeast, as instigated by Hansen at Carlsberg in the late 1880s. It then passes through London not long afterwards with Hansen trying to persuade British brewers that a single (pure) strain was better than what they used.

It’s all aboard for Copenhagen (and Carlsberg again) now where Claussen isolates the organism ‘responsible both for the condition in [well conditioned English stock beer] and for their flavour’. He calls it Brettanomyces. The rest of the journey passes most enjoyably, as journeys do, and then in the last paragraph Orval and the work of Tomme Arthur (with particular reference to Cuvee de Tomme and its use of a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and three Brettanomyces variants] are referenced — and a sentence leaps out at me: ‘We may see further developments along similar lines in the future as free-thinking brewers search for diversity of flavour in their products.’

I’m reminded of TS Eliot from The Wasteland, a poem that was a constant companion in my 20s: ‘We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started’. Which I think is an excellent summation of the adventurous breweries making beer at the moment; they don’t always get it right but more often than not they do — and what they are doing is rediscovering what went before and we arrive where we started.

The train of thought isn’t over yet.

The train idles in the station, waiting for a driver, and this gives me enough time to think about: how some folk think it’s so wrong to put beer into 750ml bottles as if there is a cosmic law that beer should remain in a pint glass or a 500ml bottle, after all no one complains about Jeroboams; how the whistle is not blowing hard enough for session beers or even table beers, beers that you can drink all night without ending up wearing your trousers back to front (I always like to finish with a couple of stronger beers, but then I used to drink port once upon a time); how the ‘end’ of the extreme beer ‘cult’ is applauded as if a dictator were being lynched (though yesterday they lunched him) and yesterday — over at one of the most incisive and intelligent UK beer blogs — there is fretting over breweries that do something different and perhaps survive on a small obsessive fan-base.

I’ve had my say over there, but with all this fretting about beer being big and bold, noisy and noisome, hoppy and happy-clappy, Bretty and bigtime, unfiney and piney, popular with transient hipsters, innovative when nothing is new beneath the sun, I do wonder if the fretters (people of all beer shades of opinion) perhaps forget that some brewers genuinely want to create new flavours, new collaborations, new ways of delivering beer (though new as in West Side Story was a new story even if it was Romeo & Juliet brought to modern life) . 

I like the idea that styles and the idea of what constitutes beer can shift shape, even though the stolid beers of the ‘I know what I like’ crowd still rule the roost at the bartop; I like the idea of  beer connoisseurship (and before someone makes a point about beer connoisseurship being some sort of fancy-pants, cheer-leading, holistic PR guff here’s something else from Ray Anderson: ‘a considerable amount of acid is formed, accompanied by ethereal substances, the taste and flavour of which cannot fail to attract the attention of any connoisseur by their striking resemblance to the flavour of stored English beers’ — Claussen, 1904). I just like what beer can be capable of.

And on this train there’s music and when I wrote about music I enjoyed bands such as Blue Nile, Hula, Microdisney but then I also liked Sonic Youth, Einstürzende Neubauten, Soviet France, The The and on another spectrum Nick Drake, The Smiths and the Monkees. I’ve got similar tastes in beer. 

Going Wild in the country

Brett the brewer talks about gerbil cages

Some of the best breweries I’ve visited sit in the middle of nowhere: Dupont, Kacov, Hook Norton and now Wild Beer Company, to where I walked for a couple of miles up and down country lanes on Saturday (home is hidden away somewhere between Castle Cary and Shepton Mallet, right on the eastern edge of Somerset, in a lovely little hamlet called Westcombe). The day was a sort of launch for the brewery, a chance to try some of their beers, to engage with their ideas, to meet up with the like-minded. Fresh was their signature pale ale, a button-popping, corset-stretching joy of a juicy, luscious beer with a bitter, dry, peppery finish. It was gorgeous. Scarlet Claw was a red ale, with Centennial in the boil and finished off with Simcoe. The malt bill is also intruging — Mild ale and Brown plus CaraAroma and CaraRed from Weyermann in Bavaria. It had a slightly creamy texture, silky almost, with lots of voluptuous grapefruit and pineapple notes, but also a delicious hint of what I can only describe as cherry-flavoured toffee. And then to the beer that Wild men Andrew and Brett descibe as ‘what we are all about’. Modus Operandi is described as an old ale that is then aged in wood and has wild yeast chucked into the mix. The earthy, chocolaty, Bretty, herbal, woody, vinous, cherry and balsamic vinegar nose just stunned me with its complexity. In the mouth it was a case of chocolate going off the rails, Brett in the train’s cabin pulling all the levers, while earthy sexiness, chocolate, cherry and soft vanilla passed through all the carriages before arriving with the sort of bitter finish that makes you realise why you like beer and want to keep drinking it. Or to put it another way, melodic and harmonic but strong willed in its character — Mahlerian perhaps. Possibly one of the best beers I’ve had this year and yet another indication of the way British craft brewers are really  starting to up their game. If you’re in the vicinity of Bristol this week, I hear some is being delivered to the Colston Yard…

You’ll find Wild Beer just right of the photo’s centre,
in that little hamlet on the side of the hill

Wild Beer

Andrew Cooper and Brett Ellis at Wild Beer Co,
come back in the autumn and the place will be rocking

Picked up at a small rural station, Castle Cary, where Glastonbury gloamers have their own Dunkirk every June. Down the lanes we go, the warm sandstone of the area glossed onto the houses, hedges, high, hiding, totally appropriate it seems given the name of the brewery I’ve come to see: Wild Beer. In the car sit the brewery’s founders Andrew Cooper and Brett Ellis (he’s the brewer and from California — another appropriate name given the mission of the brewery). Into a yard, where Westcombe Cheddar is made (one of Slow Food’s three designated Cheddar producers along with Keene and Montgomery) and into an empty space, formerly where pickles and chutneys were made (the smell of all-spice and vinegar seems to cling to the air, as if reluctant to leave). Three large wooden barrels stand all alone (and in them the brewery’s Modus Operandi sleeps the sleep of the just), athletes on a plinth, all at equal height; elsewhere there’s more space or to put it another way the lack of equipment is the dominant theme. There’s no brewing yet, stuff is on its way and you can expect beers to emerge sometime in the autumn (appropriately the start of the old brewing season in the past). And then we’re off again through these lush lanes to the Three Horseshoes in Batcombe (they do a mean Ploughman’s). Beer is brought out of a bag by Brett, in small bottles, some capped, some in PET containers, all brewed on a small system at home, and we’re off. A grapefruit zing in the glass, some acidity and a farmyard earthiness (think of that indefinable link with the earth, that erotic charge, that sense of connection you get when you recall the moment you smelt the aroma of the farmyard, that you get with a great Burgundy). This is a prototype I am told; ‘we are going for a way to make a lambic inspired beer’. It’s zesty, pithy, with grapefruit and orange peel and a wrap around fullness — I think of throwing ripe fruit against a dry stone wall on a hot summer’s day and deeply inhaling. Welcome to a west country lambic. Next up is Fresh, an APA, with canned mango, fresh ripe papaya and a hint of banana on the nose. Orange marmalade rushes forth on the palate and I think of a sun-warmed bowl of tropical fruit in a nice kitchen. It’s not a wild beer but ‘it’s a beer we love to drink’. We have more beers, all of them excellent, infused with Brett, others barrel aged. Ah here’s Modus Operandi, ‘the beer that says what we are all about’ beams Andrew. Brett-infused and barrel aged, it’s a 7% beauty that is a marriage of sweetness, vanilla, grapefruit, lush tropical fruit, plus a dark malt cloak thrown over the shoulder in the manner of Zorro. How romantic. I think I love it. There are saisons with Brett, an imperial vanilla espresso chocolate stout and a mellifluous DIPA — and then it’s time to go back through the lean lanes, the hidden lanes of East Somerset and take the train west. This is a brewery I am excited about and I respectfully suggest that you should be.