A visit to Hook Norton

Arcadia itself. Birdsong, cows lowing in the distance, a tall late-Victorian tower brewery lifting itself to heaven in front of me, pagoda like, greenness all around, the sour-sweet smell of brewing like spindrift in the air, I could only be at Hook Norton. This has to be one of my favourite breweries in England — hidden away in a beautiful village, down Brewery Lane, past the old maltings where now a Visitor Centre dispenses packs of beer that include Double Stout, Flagship and Haymaker, as well as being home to a compact but highly effective museum about Hook Norton, both the brewery and the village. I’ve been to the National Brewery Centre thrice in the past few months and nothing has given me as much a tingle about our national drink as the one long room at Hook Norton. The cheesy, Gorgonzola like smell of old hop sacks, a shelf of books from the early decades of the 20th century, guides to the breweries of England, old photos and artefacts, a pride in family, an old wort cooler, wooden barrels — there was something about it that inspired Proustian, Madeleine cake moments reaching back into my past, bringing up the innocence that accompanied my first discoveries of beer (it wasn’t campaigning that got me into cask beer but the flavour, the pubs, the Joycean-like evocation of community, the feeling of coming home, just like the first time I cooked from Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, a time when the earth was young).

I stand there chatting with Hook Norton’s avuncular MD James Clarke, with whom I have shared several pints in the last couple of years, a great guy, a beer man who has a tremendous pride in his family’s brewing heritage (we’re due to visit some pubs later). His great-grandfather built the brewery that stands so solidly in a dip in the village. Six stories high, a place of steps, whitewashed walls, wooden floor, banisters, and brewing equipment, a landscape of puzzles and conundrums and surprises — what’s behind this door? Oh, it’s the fermenting room, with open vessels. Rare these days. I remember the smell and sight of them at Young’s in Wandsworth and — conversely — Zywiec Porter in Cieszyn on the Czech Polish border. Why open? Does it help the flavour or the production? The answer — it’s always been done this way and why not continue this way? It works for Hook Norton and why shouldn’t it continue this way? There is a sort of Constructivist/Brutualist beauty about brand new stainless steel, but I also enjoy the air of a brewery that seems to have grown organically over the years, like a city that was once a settlement beside a river. Rus in urbe.

And then the beer: I have always loved Old Hooky,  a hint of mocha coffee, bossed about by bold citrus fruitiness and ending with a biscuity, cracker-like dryness; Double Stout, chocolate-coated coffee beans and a sensuous, luscious, creamy character. For those long hot sunny days, when it hasn’t rained for a while and the smell of dried hay in a barn is a tonic of its own, there’s Haymaker: bruised gold in colour while the palate is reminiscent of the tang of tangerine kept in line with a thrusting bitter note. The brewery used to produce a beer called Haymaker towards the end of the 19th century, just for the agricultural community — a saison perhaps? Then I had Flagship, lemon, sherbert, pungent and a plunge into the hopsack. An IPA? I asked James. He nodded. It’s not new (2006/07 I think?), but this one had passed me by. I dither and take a detour when offered a lot of bottle conditioned beers but Flagship was and is a glorious exception to the rule (I drink one now and think it on a par with White Shield). And as I sit here in another glorious part of the countryside I think of how far beer is from its rural roots — even though beer starts in a field its link to the countryside is broken as soon as those precious seeds of barley leave for the malting — and take myself back to the birdsong, the lowing of the cows and above all the spindrift of brewing in the air. Et in Arcadia ego.

A trip to the end of the line

Highgate was my debut brewery. In 1997. Though I remember being tempted by Greene King in the early 1980s — a pub I frequented was organising a trip but I wimped out, frightened by the damage that I perceived Abbot would do to my young frame. Highgate was old school Victorian coolness, all bricks and chimneys, snug and secure in the midst of Walsall terraces, the brewery as part of the community, the butcher, the baker and the tallow guy, that sort of thing. After that it was mash tuns ahoy. Yesterday was Green Jack Brewery in Lowestoft, along with Mark Dorber and Rupert Ponsonby, two beer people whom I’ve learnt a lot from over the years.

Green Jack? Aren’t they the brewery that won the best winter beer CAMRA thing with Ripper (CAMRA call it a barley wine and Green Jack’s Tim Dunsford says a triple)? Yes they are and on the strength of that it went into 1001 Beers. Maybe you’ve heard of their Orange Wheat? This is an English wheat beer with orange peel in the mix — rather succulent and luscious and refreshing. So why are their beers a mystery to me? Is it something to do with the fact that they’re the most easterly brewery in England (as far as I know)? It’s a long way to Lowestoft, one of those end-of-the-line towns like Llandudno or Penzance, where the train can only go into the sea if it wants to go further; places where people want to leave as soon as they can walk. Oh the irony though — before I tasted their beers I always liked the logo (a sinuous and twisted looking folkloric human) and the name — it appealed to the side of me that loves folklore and mythology. So there I was on a wet morning, eagerly looking about Lowestoft, a new English town, somewhere I had never been to before; I do love English towns, especially ones that have an unfancied and lonely air about them. Look beyond Costa Coffee, Subway and Poundland and you will see the ghost of what once was. In Lowestoft’s case the smoking industry (lovely kippers for breakfast this morning).

The brewery is opposite the football ground (nicknamed the trawlermen if you must know), down an alley and based in a building once used for — surprise, surprise — smoking herring. One side is taken up with a pod of stainless steel brewing vessels, formerly at Oakham’s Brewery Tap (their head brewer the irrepressible John Bryan is a good mate of Tim). And as I have written about Thornbridge here, stainless steel can be irredeemably seductive, a reflective meditation on the nature of beer. Further enlightenment comes with the fermenting vessels (of which there are five) — they all have portholes through which I can see the restless and anxious nature of the beer as it moves onto the next stage of its existence. There’s also a fragrant and fruity aroma in the air that can only come from the hops, a delicacy at odds with the clash and bang of barrels out in the yard.

So what’s next: we’ve seen the kit, asked the usual questions and are looking forward to getting to the brewery’s town pub, The Triangle. We go upstairs, pass a chap with his hair whitened by dust from the malt he’s pouring into the mill, and Tim starts handing out hops. Try this, have a look at this one, he says. Citra has a Seville orange, grapefruit and pineapple nose; Bramling Cross is reminiscent of tealeaves and blackcurrant, while Pioneer has a trio of pineapple, lemon and spice notes along with a hint of liquorice in the background. I’m not very adventurous with hops says Tim, but I know what I like. A pause as we continue to rub the hops between our hands, a favourite part of a brewery trip. Some questions and that’s the visit over. What’s next? Shall we go and taste the beers says Tim. I think so, don’t you? 

Take a trip to Sharp’s

Take a trip to the brewery at Sharp’s, a febrile and fast-growing business comfortably at home in the village of Rock, a place that takes its place in the pages of tabloid shame as the place where the well-bred go to ill behave. Across the mouth of the River Camel from Padstow I and others go, a short ferry’s ride, shorter still when the tide is out. Vast expanse of golden sand stretches aside the ever widening waters; to the northwest where the open sea waits to embrace the Camel, waves break and foam over the Doom Bar — a place of wreck and toil; but also a name for the bar-friendly Doom Bar, Sharp’s signature beer (see it: amber in colour; taste it: dry biscuity chewiness embracing sweetish citrus marmalade on the palate, quick finish, easy to drink).
Read more on Sharps? Go to www.beeralewhatever.com/breweries.html for further enlightenment.