We tried to get a good pint in several places in St Ives but, with few people around, we were often stuck with something vinegary and boring from the bottom of last season’s barrel.
We had much better luck with bottled beer and one of the discoveries of the trip was Carn Brea Brewing Company’s One and All. It’s from a Cornish recipe (allegedly); distributed by a Cornish company in Redruth; but actually brewed by Hepworth on the other side of the country, in Horsham, Sussex.
Despite the clear bottle and lack of bottle-conditioning, it was lipsmackingly fresh — ‘brown’ tasting and malty, but with a powerful hit of fresh hop flavour, which almost convinced us it was still alive.
It went brilliantly with the excellent crab sandwiches at the town’s posh Hampstead-on-sea style deli. They also stock St Austell’s Clouded Yellow. It’s nice to see a bit of thought put into the beer selection in a trendy cafe — so many just fill their fridges with Stella because it’s “reassuringly expensive”.
2 replies on “Fake Cornish Beer in St Ives”
I think Carn Brea was originally from a Cornish micro-brewery (Ring o’ Bells?), but they went bust and their beer recipes were subsequently brewed on license by Keltek (also Cornish), which has since moved to Hepworth. Can’t remember my sources now, but that’s what I managed to work out when I wrote up tasting notes for Carn Brea Scuttled a while back.
Carn Brea didn’t go bust, their brewery was wrecked by fork-lifts smashing up the kit done by persons unknown. Their beers were pretty poor, though.