I tend to drink IPAs, bitters and golden ales depending on my mood, but now the taps are overrun with IPAs that look the part yet rarely offer a particularly great experience.
When I go to the pub when in ‘town’ and I’ll have an India Pale Ale (IPA) because I don’t drink lager. I don’t drink this fizz because it has evolved to become formulaic piss water and tastes awful. Well, not all lager is awful; try a Falifornia from Skinners and you’ll get a lip-smacking glass of loveliness that reminds you of the days when ‘export’ was the good stuff to look for in the pubs. Indulge me for a moment as I reminisce over a glass of 1664 from the bars in Strasbourg, or indeed the occasional whisper of a boatload coming in to restock my local Kingston boozer. We’re going back to the 90s here. Those days are long gone.
Where did everything go wrong?
So what happened? The same thing that always happens with multinational conglomerate businesses pursuing ever-increasing profits at ever-decreasing costs, I imagine. The end result for many of these beers is that brewing is now a factory process that can produce consistent, quality-assured beer for the masses that tastes overly carbonated and decidedly bland.
For me, the problem starts with craft brewery Beavertown. I’ve never had a pint of Neck Oil that wasn’t brewed in a 150-hectolitre vat in Enfield, as I wasn’t local to Hackney when it originated. It’s no great loss, as I live in a place where other great beers are brewed that haven’t yet sold out and are still available in abundance. Other notable changes include Camden Town Brewery, acquired by AB InBev in 2015 and now also brewed on a mega-site in Enfield. Lagunitas, fully acquired by Heineken in 2017, is now also brewed in Europe rather than exclusively at its original American breweries, and Goose Island, acquired in 2011 by AB InBev – the brewing giant behind Budweiser – is now produced on a far larger scale and, to my palate, bears little resemblance to the original flavour profile.
Mass producers
Successful independent breweries being swallowed by global brewers is one thing. Another is the proliferation of cynical hipster-style brands that give little indication of the brewing giants behind them. These often come in 330ml cans into which they pour copious carbonic crap. You can usually spot these in supermarkets, where the price is suspiciously low and the originating brewery is tucked away in tiny letters or just denoted with a brewery location on the back of the can. I’ve also come to regard the 330ml can as something of a warning sign.
These so-called ‘zombie beers’ – craft-style brands now owned, produced or licensed by the brewing giants – are all over the shops. Blue Moon, from Molson Coors; Shipyard IPA, brewed in the UK under licence by Carlsberg Marston’s; and Chieftain IPA, from Molson Coors, can be added to those mentioned above.
Creating good quality beers
There’s a good story brewing though, because a number of established brewers are re-tooling their factories to create good-quality modern IPAs. Folly Road, a sub-brand of Wadworth Brewery, makes a genuine range of tasty craft beers. I mentioned Skinners already, but its buyout, or rescue, by Cornwall-based Goodh Brewing, is a celebration story involving the relocation of the business to the Skinners site and the re-hiring of the head brewer. If you like premium bitter, try Figgy’s Brew for a real treat. Badger has always been making interesting beer, and Tangle Foot is legendary, but these aren’t modern-day beers, so consider St Austell, another fine Cornish establishment that branched into making variants of Proper Job and has its Small Batch Brewery for experimental, mostly limited-edition beers.
Independence and family-run traditions seem to be at the heart of good beer-making, which isn’t entirely surprising. People who love beer love beer more when it’s made by people who love making beer. A truly virtuous circle, if ever there was one.
Microbreweries
The goodness continues, because there are amazing microbreweries around the country sticking to their principles, or perhaps just not yet bought out, and they can have real ties to the communities they grew up in. I don’t know much about most of them because they’re not available for countrywide distribution, for the exact same reason that keeps them great. A little research is all it takes to find what’s genuinely wonderful in your area.
I found out from researching this piece that Big Smoke, a beer I like immensely, started in the back of a pub I used to drink in. I should have spotted it last year really, when I dropped into the Antelope and the entire counter was lined up with its complete range. Disappointed that we’d only popped in to have a drink while deciding where to have a celebration brunch, we settled on having a burger and drinking as many of the range as I could squeeze into a 90-minute stopgap. They really are good.
I’m blessed in that my local taproom scours the country to source specialist beers, and among them I found out that both Kingston, with The Park Brewery, and Mitcham, with Drop Project Brewing Co., have excellent breweries making craft beer. It’s the first and only endearing quality Mitcham has to offer, but I can highly recommend its beer. The Ewell Tap is run by the owners of the Jolly Coopers in Epsom, which makes its own ‘Fuzzchat’ brand, staying true to small-batch brewing principles that give its beers a distinctive taste and character. I do enjoy Fuzzchat Stout when the mood takes me.
Drink local
Before I drift completely into a hazy, hoppy happiness, I’m reminded of the point: good beer isn’t hard to find, it’s worth paying extra for if you don’t want formulaic slop, and there’s almost certainly something surprisingly local to you that’s worth a try. So next time the bar offers you a suspiciously trendy can with a cartoon skull, a neon fox or a name that sounds like an unfinished indie band, have a quick squint at the small print. If the beer was born in a boardroom, leave it there. Find the one made by people who still smell faintly of malt and bad decisions, and raise a glass to them instead.
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