Aylesbury ends its beer duck

The new Aylesbury Brewhouse is on a smaller scale. It’s based in the Hop Pole pub in Bicester Road and can produce eight barrels per brew.

On that scale, it’s unlikely to suffer the same fate as ABC, which was taken over and closed down by Ind Coope of Burton and Romford.

With a neat touch of irony, the Victorian-era Hop Pole is a former ABC pub. There were a lot of them in the county, all sporting the company logo of the Aylesbury Duck.

By the time I came across the name, Ind Coope, along with its Burton neighbour Allsopps, had been subsumed into Allied Breweries, which brewed a beer for Buckinghamshire pubs called ABC Bitter.

When I visited Allied in Burton I discovered the company produced beer that carried the names of a number of breweries taken over and closed by Allsopps and Ind Coope, including Benskins, Friary Meux and Taylor Walker as well as ABC.

The beer was the same liquid, a 3.7% bitter, to which a different drop of hop oil was added to give some slight difference in taste from one brand to the next. That was not only insulting to drinkers but also to the history and heritage of the closed breweries.
There’s a different attitude at the Hop Pole and the Aylesbury Brewhouse, where there’s a palpable air of excitement and commitment to brewing and selling top-quality beer.

The entire operation is owned and run by Vale Brewery at Brill, Bucks, but owners Mark and Phil Stevens, along with general manager Ian Mackey, give the Hop Pole brewers a free hand to design their own beers for the pub.

On the brewhouse opening night last month, where I was delighted to say a few words and cut the ribbon, Phil Stevens told me the pub had been closed for nine months.

“It had a function room where bands played for several years but it never really worked,” he says. “We took it over eight years ago and closed it while we discussed the best way forward. The function room was big enough for a micro-brewery and so we installed the original kit from Vale.”

The Aylesbury Brewhouse is run by brewers David Renton and Simon Smith. They produce limited edition beers served from polypins at the bar. To date they have created three beers, Alpha, a 3.8% ABV golden ale, Red Right Hand, a 4.2% ABV amber ale, and Electric Soup at 4.6% ABV.

The last named is based on the Scottish 80 Shilling style: Renton is from Edinburgh and says electric soup is the Scots’ nickname for the style.
The Hop Pole, with 10 handpumps, can best be described as a permanent beer festival specialising in cask ale. As well as Vale

beers and the house ales, it serves between 400 and 500 guest beers a year and also has festivals at Easter and in October.

The Stevens brothers — who had worked for Allied Breweries and Morrells of Oxford — have a great love of traditional beer and opened Vale in 1995 in the rural setting of Haddenham.

In 2007 they relocated a few miles away to Brill. Both villages are part of an area that features as Middle Earth in the Tolkien saga, the Lord of the Rings, where Brill appears as Bree.

In common with Tolkien, the Stevens look back to a rustic time when agriculture was free from chemicals. Their beers are brewed without additives and use the best quality malts and hops supplied by Warminster Maltings and Charles Farham, the hop merchants.

The 20-barrel plant at Brill produces eight regular cask beers, a Christmas ale, and several bottle-conditioned beers.

To coincide with the opening of the Aylesbury Brewhouse, Vale manager Ian Mackey launched a beer club that links the two breweries and the group’s three pubs: as well as the Hop Pole, the group owns the Victoria Inn in Northampton and the Chequers in Fenny Stratford.

In return for £15 a year, members get a T-shirt, tours of the breweries and a membership card loaded with £5-worth of points. Five points are added to the card for every pound spent.

In the brewhouse, Renton and Smith are keen to recreate old beer styles and they asked me to come up with an idea for a brew. I’m working on a plan for an India Pale Ale with the logo of a duck and the title Sink or Swim. I hope the ghost of Allied Breweries won’t be offended.