The men in the white coats

I wrote my first article about beer in the autumn of 1996, about a new brewery in the part of Somerset to which we had moved two years before, Moor Brewing. The brewer didn’t wear a white coat, neither did John Gilbert at Hop Back, which I visited with the local CAMRA branch, or most of the SIBA guys I met at Tucker’s Maltings. I then moved onto bigger breweries: Young’s, Adnams — here the head brewer wore a white coat, a commonplace garment in the brewroom of the family brewers at the time.

Has this fashion died out? Not entirely, but I don’t see the new generation of brewers looking like lab assistants (mind you, do lab assistants look like lab assistants these days?). Is it because it’s redolent of an older, browner time or will it return in an ironic fashion in the same way as flat caps seem to be worn by some ironic hipsters? Who knows, but the main reason I mention the white coated head brewers is because this week I received a press release about the retirement of Wadworth’s Trade Quality Brewer Adrian Wood, who was definitely a man who wore a white coat (after all he had been in the business for 44 years and remembered when the head brewer was routinely addressed as Sir and the sales reps wore bowler hats). I first met him at Palmers about 2001 (where he wore a white coat, as does his predecessor to this day), when the brewery still had a vertical open cooling system, and then saw him over the years through his SIBA activities and at Wadworth.

As his leaving gift he brewed the latest of Wadworth’s Brewer’s Creations, which given Wood’s time in the trade was a 5% amber-coloured bitter, of which I received a mini-keg. And I enjoyed this ‘brown’ bitter immensely.

There are times when my tongue needs a break from blitzkrieg hops, strong melancholy stouts and even elegantly crafted Pilsners and all I crave is the kind of beer that I soaked in during the cradle of my drinking time. As long as it’s well made and eminently drinkable then I’m happy. And this one made me happy, with its big sweet grainy nose, almost redolent of rich sweet tea, while in the mouth it was a bittersweet and orange-like flurry of white notes, classically Seville orange marmalade, plus a whisk of caramel, some deeper tones of berry (blackberry perhaps?) and a pleasing bitter note coming in at the end of the palate, before its dry, bitter finish. It’s very drinkable and while you could say that there was nothing challenging about it, there is something welcoming and wilful about it. The men in the white coats can still cut it. 

Bateman’s XXXB — Old School Bitter

I’m sitting in the Bridge, it’s Saturday afternoon; in front of me on the pine table a new book from the antiquarian bookshop several doors down. A pint also stands there, off-white collar of foam atop, darkish golden brown beneath; meanwhile Danté the pup wriggles about trying to get a sip of the beer (our dogs always like a drop — poor old Monty the boxer was partial to Old Freddy Walker, Jack the Jack Russell likes anything and everything, he’s a bit odd like that). The beer is Bateman’s XXXB, an old favourite; bittersweet, liquorice and toffee mingling on the tongue and around the mouth, a dry bitter finish, chewy almost; this is a big mouthful of beer. It’s robust, tannic, plain-speaking, blunt almost in its flavour; take me as you find me; a pean to crystal malt. I’m enjoying it and it’s time for a second, and then I start thinking about this old school bitter. It’s been around since the end of the 1970s, and become a familiar on the premium beer guest circuit, Lincolnshire’s answer to Broadside perhaps. Old school? I’ve been rather partial to Founders’ Dirty Bastard, really love what I’ve had of Kernel, while BrewDog’s Hardcore IPA remains a favourite (though I wasn’t that enamoured of the bottle of I ♥ Hardcore I tried), but even amidst this blitz of hop-edged flavour I find myself drawn back to the old school of XXXB. It was almost like returning from some buzzy city in which you’d made your home to the town you had grown up despising and realising that were things about it you loved. This epiphany also made me recall the brief wobble I had with Double IPAs in the US during the summer, when it just got too much and I craved US Alts, Saisons, Pilsners and Tripels. It was only a brief divorce but did my palate and sanity no end of good. So back in the Bridge the second pint is ahead of me, an old school bitter at its best and a substantial reminder that the search for the new and the post-modern sometimes needs to be put to one side and the old school revisited.