Do regional beer tastes still exist?

During the lockdown I have made a list of places I want to visit, it’s a sort of game, an arcade of dreams with an element of playfulness. On my wish-list, amongst bars in Brussels, Bamberg and Berlin, is the Vine in Brierley Hill, home of Batham’s. I haven’t been there for a few years and for some reason this has become one of those places I want to visit. I have even tried to devise a sort of pub crawl that would also take in The Beacon, home of Sarah Hughes Brewery, which I last visited in 1998. As I considered and planned this expedition, which is several months in the future I suspect, a stray thought tumbled around acrobatically in my mind, unclear at first, then becoming more cogent and focused: are these two pubs and the beers they brew one of the last outposts of regional beer tastes in the UK? 

When I first started writing about beer in the late 1990s the idea of regional tastes was pretty simple — mild in the Midlands, sweeter beers in the Southwest (though flat Bass in Bristol), brown ales in the Northeast and so on. I pretty much followed the party line of what had gone before and was being written then but my belief started to waver and when it came to writing Britain’s Beer Revolution with Roger Protz I was of the opinion that the idea of regional beer tastes in the UK was dead. 

It’s a view that seems even more steadfast these days as the most stubbornly resistant of regional beer tastes and styles seem to crumble before the widespread use of New World hops and a growing thirst for hazy, juicy pales. You’re more likely to find a beer style (albeit tweaked and turned inside out and in the company of fruit and herbs) from central Europe in a modern brewery’s portfolio than something your great-grandparents might have drunk. 

Or is that true?

I have spent a few days on and off thinking about regional beer tastes and am starting to wonder if they do still exist in patches, almost surviving in the manner of various speciality cheeses that Slow Food have always been keen to protect. Do drinkers in the Black Country still like the mild their parents and grandparents drunk even though the original drinkers were apparently drawn to it because they needed a low-ABV beer that could refresh and replenish after a day working in a car factory or foundry, most of which are gone? What was and remains the difference between a bitter made in Yorkshire and one made over the Pennines in Lancashire? I had an interesting conversation with Taylor’s head brewer Andrew Leman about that subject several years back. Do drinkers in the Northeast still hanker for sweeter brown ales?

On the other hand, could it be that regional beer specialities become a future trend? When we get back to the pub will ice cream stouts or Haribo IPAs (ok I made the latter up but you know what I mean) still be as popular? Or will there exist a thirst for more balanced beers that have a link with the locality in which the drinkers live, as is seen in food with writers and chefs rediscovering and championing traditional regional dishes.

Could it be that if a Black Country mild with its sweetness and low alcohol or a Kentish ale with its dryness and use of local hops were French or Italian, there would be campaigns for its survival and it would become a celebrated style? Or will they inevitably go the way of Burton, Dorchester Ale and South Devon White Ale? 

When I can start travelling again I will start my search. I wonder what I will find. 

Wednesday Beer — The Cream Ale

Don’t laugh but apparently some people have been asking Anspach & Hobday whether their Cream Ale has lactose in it (as if the inclusion of lactose is some sort of craft beer Reinheitsgebot) — it doesn’t, but, being based on a beer style that was both pre-Prohibition and remains in the repertoire of a few US breweries, it contains flaked corn and oats. 

I first read about Cream Ale when Randy Mosher filed his review of Pelican Pub & Brewery’s Kiwanda Cream Ale for the first edition of 1001 Beers. The idea of this single-hop beer with a light colour and body but which Randy still thought good enough to be sampled intrigued me. 

Fast forward to 2015 and I’m driving between Seattle and Portland over six days for a travel feature and aiming to get to as many breweries as possible, which is how on a gloomy Monday lunchtime I arrived at Pelican’s Pub right down on the beach at Pacific City in Oregon (city is a bit of a misnomer as from what I saw the place looked the size of a suburb of Rhyl). Naturally, I ordered the Cream Ale, which was light and delicate with a moussec-like mouth feel. It was an excellent beer for lunch and dovetailed magnificently with a plate of fish tacos. 

As for Anspach & Hobday’s Cream Ale, I presume it’s the corn that helps to give it a lightness on the palate, while the oats add a smooth mouth feel. There is a floral and citrus nose, while the palate is herbal, delicately fruity and dry in the finish with a ring of bitterness continuing as if a visitor was pressing down insistently on the doorbell. 

This is a smooth and soothing beer, with a lot more character than I recall from Pelican’s Cream Ale. One other thing, The Cream Ale is a lightly hazy in appearance, which is a bit ironic as Cream Ale in the 19th century came about because US brewers wanted to emulate the brilliance of the lagers that were sweeping all before them (according to Jeff Alworth in his magnificent Brewery Bible). Next, I’d like to see a pre-Prohibition lager if anyone is interested in making one. 

Travel stories

I am feeling itchy, in need of a roam beyond the run of home. I want to be on my way to Prague, or Berlin, or Bamberg, or even, at a pinch, London. However, I’m still in Exeter, a lovely city and I love living here and I drink some great beers here but after 12 weeks of my universe being constricted to the local park, Aldi, Sainsbury’s and the butchers around the corner, to paraphrase Jim Kerr, who I once interviewed in the 1980s, I want to travel. 

I want to walk along the platform at Midi in Brussels, and then make my way to Moeder Lambic Fontinas and order a glass of Tilquin Gueuze and feel its tingle and tapestry of flavours on my tongue. After several of these, I want to continue into the city centre, with the hope of catching the aromatics of fries drifting through the air like wraiths and aware of people going back and forth, with both purpose and the lack of purpose in every step, and I want to walk up the steps to Poechenellekelder, where I shall fall upon a freshly poured glass of Taras Boulba and then ask for a bottle of Dupont’s Moinette Blonde. Is that too much to ask?

Or if it is, maybe I want to walk out of Berlin Schönefeld in the direction of the train station and pop into the rustic-looking tavern that is run by Augustiner and set myself up for the roistering and rumbustiousness of Berlin with a litre of Helles. Then I shall get on the train into town, probably embark at the madness of Alexanderplatz and walk partly along the Spree to Markthalle Neun in Kreuzberg and drink beer at Heidenpeters, somewhere I have been visiting and drinking at for several years. And with a bit of luck, if it this time of the year, I might be able to order the brewery’s full-bodied Maibock. Later on? I shall make my way back over the river to Hops & Barley and drink deeply of the Dunkles brewed there. Currywurst? Yes please. And tomorrow afternoon I shall head over town to Foersters Feine Biere and drink a lot of Franconian beer. 

I want to get off the station in Bamburg, glance at the massive maltings named after the town (there are two, did you know, the other being Weyermann’s) and then walk up into the old centre of the city and push my way into the wooden womb of Schlenkerla’s tavern, where I shall indulge myself in plenty of rauchbier and once my thirst is frequented I will stroll over, weather permitting, to Brauerei Greifenklau, in whose beer garden I once sat and heard the thunder in the surrounding mountains, while diving deeply into the brewery’s clean, malty, minerally and earthy Kellerbier. I think I shall be there for some time. 

But I can’t do any of this at the moment so instead I think and I write and this is what I think and I write because I write about beer and travel. 

Beer is the drink of the barbarians, the drink of the victors, the losers, the drink of the mother, the lover, the carer, the father, the misfit, the outlier coming in from the cold, the saviour, the coward, the bawler, the bawling baby, the refugee, the soldier, the minister, the spinster, the swimmer, the fastest person in the race, the one who preferred not to be paced, the other, the cut loose, the one with the juice, the tailor, the sailor, the tinker, the spy, the cry baby, the high roller, the stranded and you and me and you over there. That’s all. 

Wednesday beer — Mondo Colouring In

Could you ever get bored of IPA? Will you ever get bored of IPA? Is there a kind of IPA that bores you to tears and makes you want to rip up your membership card of the great world of beer and return the celestial vouchers of beer appreciation by first class post? What is it that might rankle with you when it comes to IPA? The inclusion of fruit, spices and whatever else is hanging around and begging to be used in the kitchen? Or maybe it’s mixed fermentation, a Yeti-like yeast strain or the complete loss of hope when a soda IPA comes along (as it will)? I’m being rhetorical, not being me or you or anyone, but just wondering what it is about IPA that has made it the punchbag and the leaky cauldron and the three wise men of beer all rolled into one? 

On the other hand, I could just enjoy an IPA, which is what I have done with Mondo’s Colouring In, a 6.2% extra pale version of craft beer’s constant presence, that according to the sleeve notes has been dry-hopped with Mosaic, El Dorado, Enigma and Simcoe (oh and yes there is oats in the mash). Mosaic indeed, if the chopped chives alongside ripe mango on the nose is anything to go by. This is the kind of aromatic that is almost green in its sensuality and — to take a different tack — it is perhaps reminiscent of chopped spring onion with orange and mango embedded in it. More chives when I drink it, alongside a suggestion of orange, mango and blueberry, followed by a full-bodied mouth feel and a dry and lightly bitter finish. If this beer was a canvas the hops used would be bright and bold colours with splashes of reds, greens, blues and oranges, the kind of artwork that you would hang in the hallway to remind you that no, you won’t be getting bored of IPA. 

Roger Ryman — an appreciation

Roger Ryman with Brian Turner (left)
and Alastair Gilmour (right), when he was
the British Guild of Beer Writers
Brewer of the Year in 2006 (see the official
citation is at the bottom)

This is not an obituary of Roger Ryman, whose death was announced at the end of last week. It is an appreciation of someone I had known for nearly 20 years. I first met him at St Austell in 2001, whilst researching my debut book West Country Ales (though we’d spoken over the phone before this). We got on well and over the years I went back to the brewery many times, had beers with him in various places and always contacted him if I had a question on the brewing process (I found an email from 2006 where I’d asked him about lautering when I’d come back from visiting a couple of Alt breweries). I remember when the news came through that St Austell had bought Bath Ales, I rather cheekily emailed him to ask if he would sort out what I then perceived was a diacetyl issue with some of their beers. He took it in good heart. He took me around the newly commissioned brewery in late 2018, I was fascinated by it and you could also see the quiet pride he took in overseeing the project. He was one of the great brewers of the last couple of decades and is rightly hailed as the person who put St Austell on the national beer map (I also think he had a valuable ally in the shape of former Managing Director James Staunton). Here is the profile I wrote of St Austell with a particular emphasis on Roger’s influence for Britain’s Beer Revolution, which was published in 2014. This is my appreciation of him. I will miss him.

Here comes a double IPA, bruised gold in the glass, sharp and zestful on the nose alongside a blast of tropical fruit (ripe peach/apricot skin perhaps). A sip from the glass and a further run of tropical fruit on the tongue, a big boost of bitterness with a juicy malt sweetness holding it together while its long tail-end finish of bitterness seemingly goes on forever and ever. This is a beast of a beer, whose heart beats wildly on the American west coast. You can almost hear the waves bearing the surfers to shore. Or can you? There are waves and surfers close to the brewery from where this beer emerges — we’re not in southern California but southern Cornwall. 

Big Job is crewed ashore at St Austell, the august family brewery that is definitely part of the British brewing revolution. There’s a delicious irony at play here — back in the 1990s St Austell (or St Awful as they were known then) would have been seen as just another brewery treading water as beer sales fell and pubs closed. Yet the brewery is still about and rocking the beer world. What happened? Two words: Roger Ryman. 

Late in 2014 and I’m at St Austell with the 
two Rogers (thanks to Susanna Forbes for this)

Back in 1999, a tall, gig-rowing, rugby-playing Lancastrian took on the top job in brewing, that of a head brewer. He’d come from Maclay’s in Scotland, hardly a den of seething innovation but he was iron-like in his resolution to change things at St Austell. 

‘When I was interviewed for the vacant Head Brewer’s job,’ recalls Ryman, ‘I made it clear to the MD-in-waiting James Staughton of the opportunity that I saw for the company. The business had a solid estate of pubs and a strong regional identity, while the brewery itself, although not modern, was housed in a structurally sound granite building, and not threatened with imminent physical collapse. Why would this brewery not be successful? I was clear in my ambition that with the application of good brewing practice, innovation and focus on beer brand development I could see no reason why it could not double its sales in ten years, own a nationally revered cask ale brand and sit proudly at the top table amongst regional and family brewers.’

If history, as James Joyce had Stephen Dedalus say in Ulysses, ‘is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake’, then Ryman was the alarm clock for St Austell. Granted they had a heritage going back to 1851, but what Ryman did was merge its traditional values with a modernistic approach that continues to drive the brewery forward to this day. 

The beer that made Ryman’s name and drew drinkers to the bar was Tribute, a luscious insurgent of a sparkling ale first brewed in 1999 under the name Daylight Robbery (a reference to that year’s eclipse). In his words, ‘it was a modern pale ale characterised by significant late hopping with US and continental varieties’. He used Fuggles from England, Styrian Goldings from Slovenia and the American hop Willamette with the result being a zesty, citrusy, juicy beer with a boisterous bittersweetness. 

However, important and successful as Tribute was (and remains), Ryman, supported by Staughton, has pushed to make St Austell one of the most successful and dynamic English breweries (it is said that some family brewers, when wishing to reinvent themselves, talking of ‘doing a St Austell’). A friendship with Karl Ockert from Bridgeport Brewery in Portland, USA, led to the birth of Proper Job, a sessionable strength (4.5%) American-style IPA. He did nano as well with a small microbrewery that can produce 10 firkins each brew. ‘It offers me,’ he says, ‘as head brewer the opportunity to get out of the office and back to sleeves-rolled-up-brewing. There is nothing better than a Sunday in the micro-brewery concocting a new recipe — no meetings, no e-mail and no phone calls!!’

There has been a fleet of beers produced over the years, some of them blazing a trail across the sky never to return others taking their place in the pantheon of St Austell greats. Dark beer? Then how about a smooth stout based on a 1913 recipe or that controversial style Black IPA with Proper Black. Lager? There have been both Czech and German lagers produced, as well as a Bock complete with billy goat image on the label, while beers from the wilder shores of brewing have included barrel-aging, souring and the addition of all manner of fruits and herbs. Early 2014 saw the emergence of Tamar Creek, which Ryman described as Flemish sour red ale that had been matured in oak barrels with Cornish cherries. The finished beer was polished and pleasing and pulsated with a tart, vinous character on the palate. 

These days St Austell’s beers take the drinker on an exhilarating voyage around the modern world of brewing, a journey that wouldn’t have been possible without Roger Ryman’s innovatory approach along with the stellar support he received from James Staughton and, of course, his team on the brewing floor. 

‘St Austell Brewery have been brewing beer for 160 years,’ he says, ‘and we plan to continue brewing beer for another 160.’ 

A blurry shot of Roger Ryman at Thornbridge in 2007 after
the wood-aged beer seminar I organised for the
British Guild of Beer Writers — that plastic bottle at the end of
the table contain’s Greene King’s 5X, which the then head
brewer John Bexon had sent up to taste.

British Guild of Beer Writers Brewer of the Year, 2006

St Austell’s Roger Ryman has brought a very traditional family brewer into the 21st century (making the old nickname of St Awful totally superfluous), made a success of Tribute in the guest ale market, introduced beers such as Proper Job, a Cornish Weisse and Admiral’s Ale, firmed up old favourites such as HSD and Tinners, as well as used his small micro-brewery to explore styles of beer not usually seen in companies like SA — Czech dark lagers, wood-aged barley wines, a luscious coffee beer, a Cornish Heavy and his refreshing take on a Kolsch amongst others. He is also the driving force behind the annual Celtic Beer Festival, which celebrated its eighth anniversary at the weekend — an event that celebrates beer and brewing’s connections with the local community. If you haven’t been to visit it then I suggest you do so now. All this, while still producing popular beers such as Tribute. You could say he works in a space where the pragmatism of regional brewing meets the innovation of craft brewing. He is our Brewer of the Year.