How to keep making a pint of best

As the region’s beer-makers and drinkers prepare for the festive season, Martin Hesp visits one Devon brewery which has been making a new kind of ale to cater for modern tastes

Things come and go in the world of food and drink – bandwagons appear upon which everyone jumps for a while, until the next big thing comes along. It is particularly true when it comes to alcoholic beverages – newly created artisan ciders and gins have both been flying the public relations flag with great success over the past couple of years in the South West…

But what about that good old British staple, beer? Will it ever be in danger of being squeezed out thanks to the trendy new drinks which appear on the bar and on supermarket shelves?

Of course it won’t. The British will always love their ales – but more than that, beer keeps reinventing itself.

That’s what I found out at a Devon brewery last week. I spent several hours following the process that Otter Brewery follows when it is making a new beer (in this case its new Otter Pale Ale) and heard a great deal of talk about the kind of flavours and hints of sweetness and bitterness which attract modern beer drinkers.

I also am aware of beer’s constant reinvention because I receive emails and even samples of new products from breweries large and small around the Westcountry. For example, barely a month goes by without

Salcombe Brewery sending me some new brew or other and very good they are too. A bottle arrived recently when the brewery announced the return of its popular seasonal ale Stormwatch.

Brewer Sam Beaman told me: “I love creating our seasonal beers and Stormwatch is a firm favourite. Its release usually coincides with the arrival of more autumnal weather and indeed it was created with the storms lashing at the brewery’s windows. It’s the perfect pint for those chillier days.”

Stormwatch (ABV 4.0%) has a spiced caramel and toffee malt base with a balanced bitterness, followed by a smooth fruity finish. It is part of Salcombe Brewery’s seasonal range which includes the festive ale, Christmas Tide. They complement the brewery’s year-round beers.

Then there’s an email I received just as I sat down to write this article. It’s about a Cornish made beer called Jubel, which has been... “crafted to deliver the refreshment of a fruit cider, with the session-ability of a crisp lager.

“The lager is brewed to be dry and, when infused, results in a light-bodied and well-balanced taste, which is unpasteurised to retain the freshness,” says the email which explains there are two variants – and ‘alpine’ beer cut with peach and an “urban” beer cut with elderflower.

Jubel’s co-founders Tom Jordan and Jesse Wilson told me: “We discovered a refreshing beer tradition in the Alps which swiftly became the beer style we wanted to drink that no one brewed.

“We found beers too bland, but

ciders too sweet, and got excited about the opportunity to pioneer a new category. It’s been a whirlwind since – 300 accounts in our first three months, a sell-out London launch in Selfridges, a couple of World Beer Awards and Sainsbury’s wanting to launch us nationally. It’s been a bit of a mad year.”

Let’s get back to my day out at Otter Brewery, high in the Blackdown Hills. The WMN has featured the eco-friendly brewery before – as well as the forward-thinking socially and environmentally conscious ethos shared by the McCaig family, who own and run the brewery. But this time we were there to witness the making of a refreshing new beer better known as the abbreviated OPA…

As we began our brewery tour Patrick McCaig told me: “We’ll be meeting Keith Bennett, our head brewer, who did a four year brewing degree and has worked here for the best part of 18 years. He’s a class act – a next-generation artist. He is definitely one of the younger school and he recognises what makes new brewers click with the new drinkers. The beer we are brewing today is definitely part of that.”

Walking to the main brewing block at the eco-friendly site, which is located at the top of a deep valley in the hills, Patrick went on: “It all started here at the family home in the Blackdowns. If we had moved down to an industrial estate the brand character of the brewery – what we stand for – all begins to fade away. It would probably have made the bank manager happier – but there are loads of people making good beer in this country now – and every business has to strive to have its own individual character.

“If we can live in the hills in the old family style it just makes a difference between us and everyone else.”

When it comes to the ales the brewery chooses to create, Patrick said: “The temptation of any brewery is to have a scatter-gun approach and brew too many beers – but we’ve always felt we should have a stable of beers that everyone knows. Although we have extended that so we have a seasonal range.

“The latest one we released was Otter Amber, which was the first time we went into the world of American hops. As the nation began to move away from the classic bitterness of English hops, so they began to move into a slight sweeter American hop-based drink. And what we are doing today is an evolution of that – taking the next step forward. We trailed OPA last year, based on an American IPA – and it’s got some pretty wonderful American hops in it,” continued Patrick. “But it’s taking the hop character to a different level. Keith wants to balance everything – so there’s a balance of alcohol and strength – and the bitterness and the maltiness.

“A good beer should just slip down, whatever the strength. American beers tend to be a bit more challenging in terms of balance.

“The hops have two functions,” he explained. “One is to give the bitterness within the beer – and that can range from flavours of pure bitterness through to citrus. The other thing they give is aroma. If you had no aroma in a beer – when you go for a slurp it, there’s nothing there. It would seem almost quite naked.”

By now we’d reached the first room in the brewery plant which was the malt store and milling room where Keith was preparing the malted English barley for the brew. He proceeded to show me through the entire brewing process which, basically, is like a massive chemistry set that includes grinding and boiling and macerating. Some parts of brewing are like tea making, others resemble a mild form of pressure cooking – but one of the most important elements is in letting nature get on with its own work fermenting and turning sugars into alcohol.

Given a bit of equipment and just a couple of ingredients, anyone could make a beer – but creating a good beer is, of course,

another thing altogether. So much of it comes down to the individual skills of the head brewer and the flavour profiles he selects. And he really earns his money when it comes to making good beers retain a consistency of taste and quality, batch after batch after batch.

If you’d like a detailed description of how Otter Brewery is creating its new beer (indeed most of its beers) then why not have a listen to our Adventures in Rural Journalism podcast on the internet (you can find it on iTunes or on the Acast website for Android users).

Beer making is fascinating. It really is a form of alchemy, in which some malted cereal grains and a few bitter flowers are turned into something which appeals to many millions of people. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is. What I do know for certain is that we are fortunate nowadays to have some very good beer makers creating fantastic new ales here in the Westcountry.

A good beer should just slip down, whatever the strength