Beer and Food - A hit on the side
Mustards and chutneys were just the start when a tiny Buckinghamshire brewery began creating products using beer. Sue Nowak reports.
Adding a drop of ale to your cooking is creative - but there's another way of using beer to bring a bit of pzazz to a pub menu that involves no cooking at all. Wouldn't a perfect ploughman's be even nicer if the dollop of chutney was enriched by a malty ale? Or what about ham, egg and chips enhanced by hops in the mustard? Several beer pickles and mustards are now available, but one couple have taken beer preserves to new heights of creativity. Richard and Lesley Jenkinson, owners of the tiny Chiltern Brewery in the Buckinghamshire countryside, now supply pubs not just with their real ales, but also with more than a dozen beer products, from awardwinning cheese to hop-pickled onions.
Their amazing beer selection includes Chiltern Ale Mustard, Mash Tun Marmalade, old ale chutney, beer sausages and barley wine fruitcake - not forgetting "gentlemen's hop cologne". "As far as I know, we've found more ways of using beer in food products than any other brewery," says Richard. "It entails a lot of fiddling about - you have to do it properly; you can't just play at it." "Doing it properly" has entailed huge amounts of research and commitment. The pair come up with an idea for a new product flavoured with one of their beers, then seek out a small specialist producer to make it exclusively for Chiltern. The pay-off has been a steadily-expanding centre with its own shop, where sales of food equal those of bottled and draught beer, and trade customers include pubs and delicatessens.
It all began in 1980 when Richard and Lesley bought a house on agricultural land near Wendover and gained planning consent for a micro-brewery in one of its barns. Their first beer was Chiltern Ale, the second, Beechwood Bitter. Sales to the trade were encouraging, but the couple were overjoyed when they were granted an off-licence to sell beer direct to the public. However, a condition prohibited the sale of anything not connected with beer. "We racked our brains and started thinking in terms of food you might put beer into - mustard and chutney seemed the obvious choices," says Lesley.
First came Chiltern Ale Mustard, their original bitter blended with mild, coarselyground mustard seed, then Beechwood Hopleaf Mustard containing the stronger bitter and Fuggles hop leaves for extra bite. By now the pair were brewing a strong Three Hundreds Old Ale with plenty of roast malt character and they used this in a rich apple chutney - and that made them think of a ploughman's. Cheese is one of Chiltern's greatest triumphs. After weeks of searching, Richard and Lesley drove down to a recommended cheesemaker in Devon with a gallon of Beechwood in the boot and the result is black-rinded Chiltern Beer Cheese. Its companion Terrick Truckle, in glowing emerald wax, mixed with their wholegrain beer mustard, is a worthy past winner at the Bath and West show.
Richard and Lesley don't just use beer, but the raw materials of brewing. Mash Tun Marmalade contains dark malt extract, there are raw hops in the jars of pickled onions, and chocolate fudge is sweetened with crystal malt. Today their product range includes pork sausages with Three Hundreds Old Ale, Terrick sausages flavoured with the mustard cheese and powerful Chiltern sausages of beef and their 8.5% Bodgers Barley Wine. Their live ale adds yeast to a beer bread from a local baker, barrel-shaped chocolates with Old Ale in the cream truffle centre are handmade by a confectioner, while Richard says their beer shampoo containing the old ale "beats aromatherapy hands down!"
They have just doubled capacity with a stateof-the-art new brewing plant, and their sons George and Tom have joined the business. For more information and orders phone 01296 613647email vasb@puvygreaoerjrel.pb.hx or visit www.chilternbrewery.co.uk
Young's in London also has an excellent collection of beer products including wholegrain mustard with its Special Bitter, apple sauce with Old Nick Barley wine, English mustard flavoured with draught bitter and Ramrod Strong Ale mint sauce. Wiltshire Tracklements produces both chutney and mustard with beer, and I have also come across Lakeshore Mustard with Guinness from Tipperary. Y Fenni cheese from Wales contains wholegrain beer mustard and a touch of garlic, and black-rinded Swaledale, made in Richmond, North Yorkshire, contains Theakston Old Peculier.
