Current Issue Highlights
Breweries and The City
When your favourite brewery is swallowed up by a bigger rival, how does it affect the taste of your favourite beer?
The house beer at the White Horse in Rottingdean on England’s Sussex Coast is named after the pub. It’s a good gimmick, and in many cases, house brews are excellent beers brewed specially for the pub by the local small brewer.
But there’s a story behind White Horse Bitter. 
It’s a version
of Morland Bitter, once brewed in Oxfordshire, now brewed in Suffolk. Greene
King, based in Suffolk, bought Morland Brewery in the late 1990s, and promptly
closed it. The brewing of Morland’s beers, including Morland Bitter
and Old Speckled Hen, was transferred to Suffolk, or Bury St Edmunds, to
be more precise. Greene King were entirely honest about this, and the fact
that they subsequently changed the ingredients of Morland’s beers
(and others they had bought, including Ruddles).
Some felt it was misleading to sell these different-tasting beers under the same name. The Campaign for Real Ale banned these beers from its next Great British Beer Festival, and this was reported in The Times, among other newspapers. No-one asked the beer-drinking public what they wanted. All the decisions which affected the taste of their beer were taken in Bury St Edmunds.
Greene King has hit the headlines more recently for barring access to its pubs to beers other than those it brews itself. So, again in Sussex, drinkers have noticed that their local ale, Harveys, has disappeared from the bar in many Greene King pubs. Instead, they are being offered the usual Greene King line-up, plus the odd ‘house beer’ such as White Horse Bitter.
London brewer Fuller, Smith and Turner took over Hampshire brewer Gale’s a year ago. Fuller’s head brewer John Keeling said: “There is no doubt that if you take a beer out of one brewery and start brewing it somewhere else, it will affect the flavour of the beer.” But he added that Fuller’s had worked hard to minimise these changes as the brewing of beers such as Gale’s HSB moved to Chiswick. Senior brewing staff advised Keeling and his team as they began brewing Gale’s beers. Advice was taken from the Brewing Research Institute.
Keeling says Gale’s HSB was a beer of character and flavour, but lacking in consistency of quality. “That made it impossible for us to please everyone,” he said. “Drinkers would get a different taste in say, every 10th pint of HSB they drank. A lot of them liked that different taste, but not all of them did. “We have removed that inconsistency, improved the overall quality, and we’ve now got an HSB which resembles the old HSB at its best, as closely as possible.”
Ale drinkers worry about water - and quite rightly. If a beer is brewed in another part of the country, different water will be used and this will affect the taste (just ask any Irishman about English Guinness!).
Fuller’s made changes to the water it uses in brewing so that it would match that formerly used by Gale’s as closely as possible. Sixteen trials were carried out before the new HSB was released for public sale. A total of 2,560 barrels of beer were thrown away during these trials. Whatever the results, therefore, Fuller’s can claim to have done its best on behalf of Gale’s drinkers, and 75 per cent of them, when polled, say they believed the beer has improved. And had it not bought the brewery in the first place, it might not have survived at all.
Perhaps a more emotive takeover was that of Young’s brewing arm by Bedford-based Charles Wells. Broadly speaking, Wells took the same approach as Fuller’s did towards Gale’s. “We were immediately made aware of the sensitivities involved when I got an email within 12 hours of announcing the takeover saying we had ruined the taste of Young’s,” said Wells spokesperson Sarah McGhie. “We hadn’t even started brewing it.” She added: “We have worked very closely with the Campaign for Real Ale and Young’s head brewer Ken Don during the flavour-matching process.”
Mr Don told Wells he would not put his name to a beer which was at least as good as the ones he’d been making at Wandsworth, which include Bitter - known as Ordinary - and Special. Apparently he is now proud of the new beer.
Wells have also taken on the contract brewing of Courage Best. Once again, close and detailed work is in progress to match the flavour previously achieved in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire. The new beer will be released shortly.
Reactions to Fuller’s and Wells’ efforts have been mixed, but generally positive. Other brewers - like Greene King - have been slated for the way they have treated beers they have bought. Interbrew in particular fell foul of adverse drinker-reaction when it bought Staropramen, the legendary Czech beer. So strong was the condemnation that it had to reverse a decision to brew the beer in the UK. It is now brewed, once again, in the Czech Republic.
A more worrying issue, however, might be the problems small brewers have in gaining access to pubs owned by the big pubcos. Time and again craft brewers complain that they can’t get a look in because the likes of Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns force licensees to buy ales from a set list. Further, they often restrict the number of ales licensees are allowed to sell to a maximum of two.
There are a great number of small and craft brewers in the UK today - and that’s a fact tobe celebrated. But so many of us are denied the chance to drink their produce. One exception is the pub company J D Wetherspoon, which does allow its managers to pick their own beers and in whose pubs as many as ten real ales can often be found on sale. The company also holds regular nationwide beer festivals which brings different ales to new parts of the country.
They do this because they know the demand is there. The taste of beer does change because of shenanigans in the City. But they have to listen to drinkers, too.
