Beer in a cold climate

You have to be a bit of a beer nut to sell your house in order to buy a brewery.

But Jon Pilling did just that in 2005 when he took the plunge of owning the 10-barrel plant at the North Cotswold Brewery at Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire. His mission is not only to brew tasty cask ales for the local pub trade, but also to recreate some of the old styles that put Britain on the beer map in the 18th and 19th centuries.

I first met Pilling when he was running the Cox's Yard micro plant in Stratford-upon-Avon. He supplied a Charles Wells pub, the Jester, in the same complex alongside the River Avon. Pilling bubbled over with enthusiasm for beer and beer styles and I have followed his career with interest ever since.

He looks 17 going on 20, but turns out to be 35 years of age. He has packed a vast amount of experience into his short career. As well as Cox's Yard, he has brewed at a Firkin brew-pub in Loughborough and such micros as Alcazar, Wicked Hathern, Grain Store and Exe Valley. But he always wanted to be his own master and jumped at the chance to buy North Cotswold when it came on the market in 2005.

I met him again a few weeks ago at the Cheltenham Food & Drink Festival. As I had to conduct a beer tasting, I declined his offer to sample his latest special brew, Global Arctic Warmer. I felt a beer that registers 15% on the Richter Scale might render me speechless. But I took a couple of bottles home with me and locked the car away before settling down to sample one.

You may think it slightly odd to write about a dauntingly strong Arctic beer in the middle of the summer. But it tastes wonderful and, despite its dark colour and strength, is also remarkably refreshing.

A number of brewers produced this style in the 19th and early 20th centuries and sent supplies of the beer on explorations to the snowy wastes of the North and South Poles. Allsopps, of Burton-on-Trent, brewed a famous Arctic Ale and Pilling's version is based on an old Bass recipe, which he has tweaked a bit.

He brews it with Maris Otter pale malt from Warminster Maltings in Wiltshire, which supplies the craft brewing industry with England's finest variety of malting barley. He blends in crystal, wheat and chocolate malts and some roast barley. The hops are two English varieties, Bramling Cross and Northdown, which add a fruity and peppery note.

The yeast is, he says, a secret culture. I suspect he is finishing the beer with a wine or champagne yeast, as conventional brewer's yeast stops working at around 12% alcohol. Pilling says he has to rouse the yeast twice during fermentation to stop it going to sleep as a result of the high level of alcohol it has created. You will know the feeling.

Strong ales​

The reason that such strong ales were sent on Arctic expeditions was that they kept the explorers healthy as well as happy. The beers were rich in B vitamins and alcohol, hops and proteins meant that scurvy and similar diseases were kept at bay.

Pilling's first foray into what he calls "extreme beers" was Hung, Drawn 'n' Portered, a 5.8% abv recreation of porter, the style that created the modern brewing industry in England in the 18th century. As well as pale and dark malts, Bramling Cross and Fuggles hops, he adds black treacle to the brew to give it a molasses-type aroma and flavour.

The beer has won several prizes at beer festivals. But Pilling, despite selling his house, has to keep the roof over his head, and brews more conventional cask ales for the pub trade. These include Pig Brook Bitter (3.8% abv), Mayfair, a 4.1% abv Midlands traditional mild, Genesis (4% abv), a golden best bitter, and two seasonals, Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice (both 4.5% abv), one refreshing and one warming.

Pilling loves the flexibility of his 10-barrel plant. He now plans what he calls a "proper India pale ale" — not one of the many modern under-nourished versions of the Victorian style, but a muscular 10 percenter, the type of beer that kept the Raj happy in Bombay and Calcutta. He has experimented with a version of his porter that used maple syrup and he is designing a recipe for a milk stout that will use milk sugar.

His work is typical of the passion and commitment of the new breed of craft brewers. They are restless people, never content with knocking out some mild and bitter, but eager to experiment and intrigue and please consumers looking to go the extra mile.

It's an extra mile that can even take you to the North Pole. A bottle of Global Arctic Warmer — misspelt "Artic" on the label — will set you back £7 or you can order a case: www.northcotswoldbrewery.co.uk​ or 01608 663947.

Summon the huskies and lay some down for winter.