Champion Beer Coniston Brewery's No. 9 Barley Wine sets the gold standard

When do barley wines win gold awards, especially in August? So certain was head brewer Ian Bradley that he wasn’t in with a chance that he went on holiday. Then came the call from David Smith, the designer of Coniston Brewery and a consultant to the company, who had the good fortune to be at Olympia: “We’ve won!”

Bradley should be used to surprises at GBBF. In 1998, when his brewery, behind the Black Bull coaching inn, was scarcely up and running he won the prestigious top prize at the festival with his Bluebird Bitter. His business — to use a contemporary expression — went viral. He couldn’t keep up with the nationwide clamour for the beer. For a while, Batemans in Lincolnshire brewed some of the beer for him and, eventually, a bottled version was also brewed off-site.

That couldn’t happen today. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), organisers of GBBF and the awards, has changed the rules and winning beers can come only from their breweries of origin: contract brewing is verboten.

Bradley has to temper his joy at winning the championship for the second time with the knowledge that he now has to keep up with demand. And demand there will be. At Olympia last week I saw, for the first time in the history of the festival, a day-long queue of drinkers waiting patiently for a small glass of the winning beer.

When supplies run out, there’s going to be a gap before the next batch is ready. For Coniston, No 9 is no ordinary beer that’s brewed and fermented in 10 days and ready for drinking a few days later. It’s matured for three months. I’ll say that again, quietly: it’s matured for three months.

The long conditioning is vital for a beer of such strength. Drunk young, it would be rough with all manner of raw alcohols that only ageing will remove. It’s a true barley wine, recalling the times of the Napoleonic Wars when it was the patriotic duty of English men and women to drink home-grown ale, not imported French claret. To make up for the alcohol deficit, beers were made as strong as the missing claret, hence the term barley wine.

Smith was waving the Union Flag last week. “No 9 fits well with 2012,” he said. “We’ve had the Jubilee and the Olympics, with many golds for British athletes. And now we have a beer that’s won gold and is 100% English, with home-grown malts and hops.”

The beer is brewed with pale and crystal malts and the hops are Challenger and Goldings. During fermentation, so much alcohol is produced that the yeast goes to sleep on the job. It has to be roused by adding some fresh young beer to the fermenting vessel — in this case it’s a shot of Coniston Bluebird. Smith joked: “With No 9, you’re getting two champion beers of Britain for the price of one.”

Like a good wine, drinkers will have to patiently wait for Bradley to load his brewing vessels and start work on a new batch of No 9. There are bottled versions of the current batch available, which will bring some relief.

The beer festival was more than usually remarkable this year. CAMRA had to vacate Earls Court, its home for seven years, and return to Olympia to make way for an Olympics event. Olympia is a beautiful site but it’s too small for GBBF and the campaign expected attendances to be down on previous years.

But despite a media blackout, the drinking hordes turned up in their thousands. It was heartening to see the numbers and, in particular, the substantial proportion of young people, women as well as men, savouring some 800 beers. Cask ale really is the new rock ’n’ roll.

A few words have to be said for the unsung heroes of the festival: CAMRA’s army of volunteers. They run everything, not just serving beer but keeping casks cool and the brews in tip-top condition. Volunteers run the family room, looking after children, while the parents enjoy a beer or two. Volunteers even act as security guards and, even though they are amateurs, they ensure there’s never any trouble at the festival.

CAMRA’s national chairman Colin Valentine praised his members, saying: “They’re on-site for a week, some of them for two weeks, erecting gantries so casks can be put up. They give up their summer holidays to work here. Their passion is remarkable.”

I agree and would raise a glass of Coniston Number 9 to salute them. But the beer’s run out.