Beer school: Dark Star

Initially, I have started by spending some time learning about beer and brewing from some of my favourite brewers. Then, I hope to start brewing myself. Albeit on a very small scale.

I began in the naïve fashion of calling a few beery mates and getting some advice. “Just do it,” they said. “Doing something yourself is the best way to learn.” So I have begun.

Dark Star Brewing Company​

I started with Dark Star. I just emailed them and suggested they take me on. “I don’t mind early starts,” I’ll do it all, I assured. They took me at my word – by dawn I was lifting hefty sacks of malt barley and emptying them into a huge funnel. I say ‘funnel’, but there’s probably a brewing term for it that someone will correct me on. (No, seriously, please do).

It was hard work, but it was less of a manual job than I had anticipated and this had a lot to do with the scale of the place and the kit for that matter. I helped brew over 30,000 pints of Hophead in one day. Andy Paterson, Dark Star’s head brewer, talked me through it all and while he explained things, I made lots of notes, understanding bits and pieces, but mainly checking ‘What? How? Why?’ with Paterson and his sidekick apprentice brewer Natasha Sole every five minutes. They were patient to say the least.

Paterson, a biochemistry graduate, had previously spent around eight months brewing for Scottish brewer Brewdog before joining Dark Star in 2012. In his time at Dark Star he had helped develop a microbiology lab and was gradually working towards a paper-free note system for recipes past and present so that everything was backed up on the computer.

His interest in brewing and his understanding of the process was faultless. But, I have to admit, despite many of his explanations about gravity and volume – some of the sums were an assault on my brain cells. I’m no mathematician. Nor am I scientist. Could I still be a brewer? I asked lots of questions.

For me, Dark Star seemed like the logical place to start to learn to brew. I mean, after all, its Brighton pub the Evening Star had been serving me great beers for years.

Dark Star began because Rob Jones started brewing in the cellar of the Evening Star – his beer brewed for Pitfield Brewery in London in 1987 was named after The Grateful Dead track of the same name. The beer went on to be Champion Beer of Britain and then later the 25 year Champion of Champions. 

By the time I began drinking at the Evening Star most of this was just beer knowledge passed over at the bar. Mark Tranter had since joined and, while things had clearly moved on a few stages since the brewing in the cellar days with Jones as a director and Tranter taking the seat as head brewer, the uncompromisingly great beers continued to flow. As such, the pub became a mecca for beer fans and I just kept going back for more of the beer that other pubs in the area were not making available.

The brewery grew from being a micro to a nationally-recognised name, largely on the back of many of Tranter’s fantastic beers which always seemed to stay interesting as well as incredibly well-balanced however different they were in style.

Dark Star’s oxymoronic name fitted well with the craft beer movement that was developing across the UK. The beers were moreish and memorable, but there was nothing mainstream or dull about them and Dark Star had that edge. ‘Tranter’ became the name that only the beer nerds knew. While ‘Dark Star’ was the socially credible bar cry, just like ‘craft beer’ has become now.

Dark Star still has some phenomenal beers and has developed and grown. Jones has since taken on the Duke of Wellington pub in Shoreham independently and has big plans to open the Wellington Brew House at the back of the pub, an exciting prospect for beer fans in the area. Tranter has also since left Dark Star and started up on his own by forging a path in creative brewing.

Dark Star also has a few plans in the pipeline. Now its micro-kit is hooked up, Paterson has the opportunity to experiment but without the bind of needing to brew a phenomenal quantity for each new recipe being trialled. This is crucially helping the brewery keep its experimental edge alive. Last December’s Coconut Porter was a stand-out seasonal that was both warming and refreshing in equal measure and there’s more to come.

Paterson, as well as being a Brewdog fan is also interested in what Camden Town Brewery has been up to over the past few years and he talks me through the development of the beer scene across the UK. “It’s all pretty cool,” he enthused. “There are so many beers I love and so many really decent people actually making them now and mixing things up.”

My learnings from Dark Star are in note form and a sketchy outline of how to do things on a large scale and so, although I learned rather a lot more than I had started out knowing, I knew I had to take a few steps back and consider homebrewing and reading more about brewing before leaping in again.

In the meantime, I started a tour and began to visit brewers who simply brewed some great beer to see if I could get a bit more insight into learning to brew myself.

Dark Star was just the start.

Pubs to visit:​ The Evening Star, Brighton, The Partridge, Partridge Green