A couple of weeks ago I was down in Cardiff doing a collaboration brew with Brains Brewery. I won’t shamelessly plug my own beer here (though it is bloody wonderful and you should fight to get hold of it, obviously) but the day I spent brewing prompted some broader happy thoughts about some of the directions British craft brewing is going in.
Collaboration brews are nothing new — both Roger Protz and I have written before in this column about the times brewers have invited us to come and have a go, helping formulate the recipe and getting our hands dirty on brew day. But it’s usually microbreweries that issue the invites — and that’s one way in which this was different.
The Brains brewery is a massive old plant, a former Bass brewery in the heart of the city, full of old brickwork and mazy staircases. The equipment is a charming mix of old and new, with vessels that were built to last either added to or replaced as needs be.
In the heart of this building is a new ‘test plant’, a 15-barrel brewery many micros would be happy to call their main kit. Head brewer Bill Dobson installed it in 2012 to start creating a series of craft beers, each one brewed in collaboration with a beer writer, sommelier or other aficionado.
Brains is not the only large regional brewery to have experimented with a smaller craft project, but it’s gone at it with particular enthusiasm. Brains Craft Brewery is a separate sub-brand from the main brewery, with its own website. The design is quirky, stylish and engaging. In marketing terms, it doesn’t really interact much with the main Brains brand at all. Each brand gets to do what it’s best at.
There’s a new beer every month, every single one with a guest brewer, making this the most expansive collaboration brewing project in the UK.
The 2012 series of beers was a look at India pale ale (IPA) with writers such as Martyn Cornell, Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham each giving their own take on the style that inspired the modern craft beer movement. These have been so successful that at least two have achieved national supermarket listings.
In 2013 the focus moves to European beer styles, with saisons, Pilsners and Belgian dubbels all in the pipeline. Each time, the guest wannabe brewer not only has input on the recipe but on the name, design and labelling. They’re all definitely part of the same family, but each one has a tiny cartoon version of the guest brewer waving from the label.
The whole thing is a brilliant combination of the best of large and small-scale brewing. The recipes for the beers have no limitations, and can be as experimental as the wildest craft brewer. But there’s the skill and infrastructure of a large regional to fall back on.
The project is clearly of interest to brewery operatives who spend their days and weeks brewing the same well-established main Brains range — throughout the day people are continually popping in to see how the brew is going, talking about which recent beers they’ve enjoyed, and which new ones they’re looking forward to.
The Brains estate of pubs forms a ready-made market for the craft beers. Not all pubs take it — not every beer is right for every pub’s clientele — but other pubs consider the craft beers to be the star attractions on the bar. One licensee has even been given the opportunity to brew an IPA of his own.
There will, of course, be beer bloggers out there who will claim this is not ‘proper’ craft beer — whatever that might be — on the grounds that Brains is a large regional rather than a hot young start-up. But despite the size of the brewery overall, the craft beers are hand-made, just as they would be in any other 15-barrel plant.
And if ‘craft’ is to have any notion of quality around it, rather than just style and context, then the set-up and expertise here is in the front line of craft.
Like Fuller’s with its Past Masters and Brewer’s Reserve series, Marston’s with its continuing single-hop series success, and Thwaites with its exciting Signature Ale range, Brains is demonstrating that when brewers are open-minded and embrace new ideas, any established, century-old regional brewer can enjoy the excitement of the new wave of craft.