Categories
Beer history videos

VIDEO: Hop Harvest, 1965

From the fabulous British Pathé archive on YouTube, this short film, made in 1965, is entitled ‘Tomorrow’s Beer’ and shows cockney hop-pickers at work in Kent.

Apart from the groovy music and barbecue, it could have been shot at almost any time in the last 150 years.

On a related note, Kent Green Hop Beer Fortnight starts in a few weeks time, from 26 September to 12 October.

Categories
beer reviews bottled beer

Companionable Silence With Westerham

Westerham beer bottle cap on a map of Kent.

Westerham Brewery of Kent share with their bigger neighbours, Shepherd Neame, an apparent fixation on World War II, and a certain conservatism in their style of brewing.

Based on the five bottled beers we’ve tried this week, however, we’d say Westerham has one big advantage over SN: a superstar yeast strain. It was cultivated from a 1959 sample from Westerham’s original Black Eagle Brewery, taken over by Ind Coope and closed down in 1965, sleeping peacefully while other breweries’ yeasts were ‘cleaned up’ and so lost their character. It seems to add layers of complexity to even fairly ‘standard’, cleanly made beers.

William Wilberforce Freedom Ale (4.8% ABV, bottle-conditioned) is sideboard brown and offers lots of toffee and caramel, but is also notably clean. The use of (Fairtrade) sugar (an inexplicable taboo in self-consciously ‘craft’ brewing) adds some dryness that is missing from some similar beers. It is not exciting, as such, but we found it extremely satisfying.

Scotney Pale Ale (4%) is the palest beer in the range — lighter than, say, the amber of Young’s Ordinary, but certainly no ‘pale’n’hoppy’ lager-alike. There are ghosts of tangerine and pine from the hops, but it stops short of flowery or perfumed. It has a fairly intense bitterness which sucks the cheeks in. Overall, we’d call it clean, spicy and English.

We’ve been conditioned to expect from an IPA either (a) huge amounts of citrusy hop aroma or (b) no hop aroma at all (Greene King). Viceroy India Pale Ale (5%) is somewhere in the middle, alongside Worthington White Shield. The bitterness is pronounced — almost too much, but not quite — and with a tannic quality we associate with properly brewed tea. We also got more spice, this time almost Christmassy (cinnamon?). There was the faintest hint of a not-quite-right savoury flavour as we neared the end of the bottle, but the big hops defeated it.

Scotney Best Bitter (4.3%) was, for us, the only clanger: all toffee and caramel, and not much else, along the lines of Sharp’s Doom Bar. If you like this style of beer, however, you might appreciate that this is more bitter than many examples.

British BulldogBritish Bulldog (4.3%, bottle conditioned), with Winston Churchill on the label, was, in some ways, the most interesting of the bunch. Ostensibly similar to Scotney Best, it seemed paler in colour and was far more complex. Bottle-conditioning gave it an extra zing and extremely draught-like. It took a moment or two before we realised: it’s a dead ringer for cask Fuller’s London Pride at its best. We detected a very faint roastiness, a spot of green apple, some sweet orange peel, and numerous other flavours and aromas which, dialled right down and blended together, made it subtle and fascinating. Our clumsy pouring gave it a slight haze but no ‘floaters’. One to buy by the case.

These are beers that, on the whole, don’t demand your attention — they are neither hard work nor aggressive — but, at the same time, are from from bland. They keep a companionable silence.

DISCLOSURE: Robert Wicks at Westerham sent us samples of his Audit Ale and Double Stout because we’ve expressed an interest in beers brewed to historic recipes in the past. We’ll be writing about them in a future post along with some similar beers we’ve accumulated. The beers mentioned above were included to fill up the box.

Categories
Beer history london

Gone hopping in Kent

Hop picking in Kent, 1875.
Hopping in Kent, 1875, from the British Library, via Wikipedia.

From East London (1901) by Walter Besant:

They ran through Wapping and along Thames Street, which is empty on Saturday afternoon; they ran across London Bridge, they poured into London Bridge Station. One of the girls knew the name of the station they wanted; it was in Kent. They took tickets, and they went off.

They had gone hopping.

Thousands of Londoners in the season go hopping. I  wish I could dwell upon the delights of the work. Unfortunately, like the summer, it is too soon over. While it lasts the hoppers sleep in barns, they work in the open, they breathe fresh air, they get good pay, they enjoy every evening a singsong and a free-and easy. The beer flows like a rivulet; everybody is thirsty, everybody is cheerful, everybody is friendly.

When it was over Liz returned, browned and refreshed and strengthened, but fearful of the consequences, because she had deserted her work. But she was fortunate. They took her back into the factory and so she went on as before.

Categories
pubs

Canterbury Tales

Canterbury is on the tourist trail from London and takes less than an hour to get to on a high speed train from St Pancras. It’s a fascinating place with a proper ‘altstadt’, unlike most British cities, and plenty of pubs. A bit of online research before our day trip took us to the following which were reckoned by various sources to be the best.

1. The Parrot, Church Lane, is a Young’s pub with a commitment to guest beers carried over from its days as a free house. On our visit, we were blown away by Hopdaemon Incubus (4%) which is a dark but nonethetheless flowery, hoppy thirst quencher. The pub itself is a 14th century building and full of character with low timber ceilings, nooks and crannies and soft lighting.

2. The Unicorn is also wooden beamed and cosy but (as the euphemism goes) very much a local pub. There was a mixed crowd including skint students (“Shit, I’m 5p short!”) and a group of amusingly grumpy blokes at the bar who the bar staff refered to as “the sad shelf”.  The beer on tap was pretty boring (Shepherd Neame Masterbrew,  Deuchars IPA) but there was more Hopdaemon on tap and in bottles.  A pint of Golden braid was OK and not unlike one of the lesser beers from Hopback. Green Daemon Helles was like one of our homebrews (so, nice enough, but with rough edges). Their famous Skrimshander IPA was malty and biscuity but a bit muted. Maybe bottling doesn’t suit it?

3. The Cherry Tree is a very odd place. It looks like a scuzzy student pub, with a knackered tiled floor, dirty tables, loud metal music and some astounding offers on vodka shots.  Despite that, along with the rock chicks and lads with face piercings, there were a few CAMRA types and couple of pissed blokes in their fifties chaining Kronenbourgs. The ales were mostly forgettable, except one called Harrier which was a deliciously roasty, mellow mild. Shame we didn’t manage to get the name of the brewery.