Destined to brew

With beer production in the family blood, it was almost inevitable that Robert Wicks would one day become a fully-fledged brewer. Roger Protz reports from Kent on the traditional beers produced at the Westerham Brewery

If you made beer at home from a Boots' kits at the age of eight, you were clearly destined to become a commercial brewer. Robert Wicks finally made it, but by a rather circuitous route: he's a bio-chemist who became a financial adviser in the City of London, with spells in Tokyo and the United States.

But in June 2004 he finally fired his mash tun and copper, and the Westerham Brewery in Kent was underway. Even if the City job had not, in his phrase, 'gone pear-shaped' and ended in redundancy, it was a racing certainty that one day he would brew beer on a commercial basis.

His godfather was Dick Theakston of the famous Yorkshire brewing family. Wicks also worked for a period for David Bruce, founder of the Firkin brewpubs, who is also related to the Theakstons. It's a small world and with brewing in the blood, Wicks - as well as admitting to that illicit home-brewing at the tender age of eight - had moved up to full-scale, full-mash brewing by the time he was in his early teens.

But the work as a financial adviser has not been wasted. Wicks brings to brewing not only the skills to turn grain, hops and water into beer but also to run the company along strict financial lines. There's a business model, computer spreadsheets, a tight control of income and expenditure, and a keen eye for sales opportunities in the most populous county in the country.

The water is ideal for brewing

Along the way, Wicks has restored the lost brewing traditions of Westerham, a small market town near Sevenoaks that once had two breweries, the Swan and the Black Eagle. Brewing had been going on in Westerham for centuries and the commercial producers set up shop there in the 19th century as a result of the superb water tapped from the Lower Greensand Ridge that is fed by the North Downs. The water is hard, ideal for brewing sparkling pale ales, and the Black Eagle Brewery in particular sold its beers throughout Kent and up into London.

It supplied beer to Winston Churchill at his Chartwell Manor estate just outside the town and also sent beer, in the auxiliary fuel tanks of Spitfires, to troops fighting in Normandy in the Second World War. Its beers were also popular with airmen based at nearby Biggin Hill. In the frenzied world of post-war brewing, Black Eagle was taken over by Friary Meux, which in turn became part of Ind Coope of Romford and Burton. The sorry saga ended with Ind Coope joining with Ansells and Tetley to form Allied Breweries.

The Black Eagle site closed in the fateful year of 1965, fateful because Churchill died in 1965 and Wicks was born. If he was destined to brew then he was clearly earmarked to restore brewing to Westerham.

The brewery is based in a former dairy on Grange Farm, a National Trust estate. The 11-barrel brewing kit is immaculate: this is not one of those familiar British micros using second-hand milking tanks. Robert imported the kit - using the Internet - from the Frankenmuth Brewery in Michigan in the United States. With his sharp business acumen, he worked out that it was cheaper to ship the equipment by sea from the US than by road and rail from Germany. To save on costs, Wicks and his brewer, Anthony Richardson, who hails from Canada, installed the equipment, laid the floors and piped in water, electricity and gas. He won't talk figures, but Wicks says he invested five times as much in the brewery than for the average micro.

He is meticulous in every aspect of the business. He not only uses the same hard brewing 'liquor' as Black Eagle but also traced its yeast strain, which had been deposited in the National Yeast Bank in Norwich. He uses Maris Otter, the most biscuity and sweet malting barley variety, and he sources his hops - of course - from Kent.

He is passionate about hops. He produced box after box of them. 'Smell those,' he says. 'What do you think of these - amazing spicy aroma! You can't be a micro in Kent without going nuts on hops.'

He uses Bramling Cross, East Kent Goldings, Northdown, Target and Whitbread Goldings Variety from two nearby estates, Little Scotney and Finchcocks, which straddle the local River Teise. They were once part of the biggest hop-growing region in the world but are now much diminished in an age when global brewers have turned their backs on aroma hops and import cheap 'high alpha' varieties - lots of aggressive bitterness but little aroma - from Europe and even China.

Wicks brews between 25 and 30 barrels a week and would like to reach 50 barrels. He has no desire to get too big and criticises big brewers for wasting 'food miles' by trunking beer all round the country.

Refuses to play discount game

He distributes within 25 miles of Grange Farm to around 100 outlets. His beers are regulars in more pubs than he expected at the outset. As well as the free trade, he also supplies Celtic Inns, Barracuda and Merlin Inns. He refuses to play the deep discount game. 'We make expensive beer and sell expensive beer,' he says. A pint of Bulldog, his main brand, costs around £2.40.

British Bulldog Best Bitter has an abv strength of 4.3% and was the first beer he brewed in 2004. With pale and crystal malts and all Kentish hops, it is aimed unashamedly at the Draught Bass sector. But it will come as something of a shock to Bass drinkers, with its massive aroma and palate of jammy fruit, biscuity malt and bitter hop resins. I called it 'good, old-fashioned beer', which pleased Wicks.

Sevenoaks Bitter, 4.8% abv, is made with pale, amber and crystal malts and is hopped with East Kent Goldings. The hop rate is high and the complex beer has a fresh tobacco and spicy and peppery hops aroma, with sultana fruit in the mouth, and a long hoppy and bitter finish. The two other regular beers are Black Eagle Special Pale Ale, 3.8% abv - golden in colour with a biscuity malt and tangy hop character - which pays homage to Westerham's much-loved old brewery, and a darker session beer, Grasshopper, also 3.8%, with colour from crystal and chocolate malts, and a deep, peppery hop character from East Kent Goldings and Target hops.

I was given a preview of a new beer. It's a 4.8% abv India Pale Ale that puts to shame some of the lacklustre beers of modest strength that masquerade as IPA. Wicks would like to have made it stronger in the true Victorian IPA style but knows it would be hard to sell.

Made in true IPA fashion

But he adds his hops as generously as any bewhiskered 19th-century brewer, using five kilos of Whitbread Goldings Variety and Bramling Cross in each brew. It is made, in true IPA fashion, with just pale malt. This sumptuous beer has a plum jam and blackcurrant aroma and palate from the Bramling Cross hops, balanced by sappy malt and a long, lingering bitter, fruity and quenching finish.

Wicks' plans are to brew and sell more beer, strictly in line with the business plan. He doesn't rule out buying some pubs but is concerned about getting the right managers, as he can't spare anyone from the brewery, which has a staff of four, including his wife, Liz.

His proudest moment to date was a visit from old, long-retired brewers and draymen from the Black Eagle Brewery, who supped and approved of his beers. And I suspect that, looking down from the Great Saloon Bar in the sky, someone in a bowler hat and chomping a fat cigar would give the Westerham beers a familiar V for Victory salute.