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Breweries — it’s beer and it’s brewed here
Westerham is run by Wicks, a fortysomething who gave up a lucrative life in the city to follow his dream. After stretches in Tokyo and New York, he had been working at HSBC’s equity sales desk, bringing home fat cheques but barely seeing his family. Like many another city slicker he wanted to kiss goodbye to the rat-race, make his living with an honest, true, wholesome product and get home in time to hug his kids. While many feel called to farm or run b&bs, Wicks wanted to follow a childhood dream and produce real ale, craft beer, cask ale, call it what you will; the kinds of beer our grandfathers and great-grandfathers drank. Special pale ales, real bitters, stout stouts, honest-to-goodness products with heart and soul.
From the outside, the barn looks very farmyard and you’d expect the inside to boast cobwebs and sawdust. Not so. Step inside the brewery and you’re met with a gleaming set of stainless steel vessels, being scrupulously scrubbed and prepared for the day’s brewing by Canadian brewmaster Anthony Richardson. Steam wisps out from the top of the mash tun, where milled and malted barley is being steeped in hot ‘liquor’ (the brewing term for water). Think of tea brewing in the pot. The scent is divine, a rich and pungent aroma that inexorably reminds me of childhood – standing with my nose pressed against the frosted window of a pub, banished outside with a bottle of pop and a packet of Smiths crisps. After 90 minutes or so, the Ovaltine-coloured liquid, or ‘wort’, is transferred to another gleaming vessel, the copper, where hops are added throughout several stages of the boil. After this, the liquid is cooled, and transferred to fermenting vessels where added yeast will coax out natural alcohol and carbon dioxide before it is racked into casks. It’s pure alchemy – simple, pure ingredients (hops, malt, yeast, water) carefully chosen and then lovingly nurtured into a divine elixir. The process hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years. The magic comes in knowing which hops and malt to mix. Hops, which are related to the cannabis plant, are to beer what grapes are to wine. They give off rich and fruity aromas, while dispensing that trademark bitterness of English beer. Kent is prime hops country (witness all the old oasthouses now turned into dwellings) and local varieties include the splendidly named Fuggles, which gives a muscular bitterness to beer, and Goldings, whose party trick is to produce deep rich citrusy aromas and flavours. Some say even the water used can affect the taste of a brew. Even more esoterically, some talk of ‘terroir’ – that indefinable sense of place that can affect the best vintage wines (and, indeed, beer as well). This hands-on process is a far cry from what happens in the large breweries that produce keg beer (brewery-conditioned beer to give it its proper name). Real beer is natural, alive and bursting with flavour and a quiet sparkle – produced by natural CO2 released in the brewing process. Its keg cousin however, is fundamentally ‘dead’ having undergone stringent pasteurising and filtering onsite. Extra carbon dioxide is pushed in to give this beer its sparkle. It’s an easier option for landlords as it requires little attention. Real beer, on the other hand, is left to mature in the cask – a residue of yeast remains allowing it to ferment a second time, deepening the flavour. Think of a grand cru bottle of wine maturing with age and developing more depth and complexity. Yes, it’s more demanding both for the brewer and the landlord – but the difference is quite incredible. If you have never tried a pint of real, naturally brewed ale, you have never really drunk beer. Lift a good pint of real ale to the light and you’ll notice a depth and clarity of colour. Put it to your nose (swill it round in the glass as you would a good wine) and a vast array of scents will hit your nose. Truly beer-tasting is as complex (and often more so) than wine-tasting. Darker malts in stouts, mild and porter produce coffee, chocolate and roasted notes, while some hops suggest grapefruit, lychees, Seville orange and even spice. Further complexity comes from the yeast, length of maturation and even temperature. Real beer is a complex living thing. No wonder Wicks was taken in by its spell. It has been a lifelong obsession. He started out, precociously under-age at eight, with a Boots’ home-brew kit. Home-brew is a good place to start but the results can be unsatisfactory. You’re using malt and hop extract from a can rather than individual ingredients: think of the difference between ready-meal curry sauce and your own blended spices. By the time he hit his teens, Wicks had moved on and had a fully-functioning mini-brewery at home. Next stop Oxford and a degree in biochemistry, where the promise of free alcohol made him immensely popular. On leaving Oxford, however, he followed the more lucrative route to the City, but brewing never strayed far from his mind. While based in Tokyo during the mid-nineties he thought of setting up over there. It came to nothing, but as the years rolled on Wicks didn’t have his heart in the Square Mile anymore. He asked for redundancy: it was refused. He soldiered on, increasingly unhappy and then, on 13th January 2004 he was finally released. Two days later he was out of his suit and busy converting the barn and preparing the brewing equipment he had bought over from the US. ‘It cost in the region of six figures but it’s good kit,’ he says with the aplomb of someone for whom six figures was probably small change. He also got some lucky breaks, in particular from the National Trust, which introduced him to one of their tenant farmers who needed to sublet a barn. The Trust has also helped by taking large orders of his bottled ale to sell in their shops. Wicks kept firmly to his original vision, shopping local, using just three nearby farms for his hops. Kent has always been famous for its hops, and even though it is not the all-pervading industry it used to be, Kentish hops are still renowned for their quality and taste. It may have seemed like a dangerous venture (after all, hundreds of small breweries have vanished without trace over the last thirty years) but Wicks realised that the timing was right. We are all thirsty for ‘real’ products, desperate for good true food and drink produced honestly by people who care. For years real ale has floundered under an image of woolly jumpers and barrel-bellied men but now it’s shaking that off and becoming almost alarmingly hip. After all microbrewers, both here and, notably in the US, produce the likes of coffee wheat beers, fruit beers the colour of a sunset, beers aged in whisky casks and even some gorgeous ‘real’ lagers. ‘Too many people are stuck in this rut that beer is an old-fashioned idea,’ says Wicks, ‘but if you go to your local beer festival then you will see that the average age is 35 and it’s not just men, but women who are going there to enjoy the beer.’ If you possess a discerning palate, you will appreciate real beer. Order a pint of one of the big brands and you’ll see the difference immediately. It appears in the glass at the flip of a tap — no exertion at the handpumps here — and is so cold that you half expect to see icebergs floating in the glass. If it’s a bitter there’s also an inch of shaving foam on the top. Even though hops and malt are used to make the beer, they are conspicuous by their absence on the palate. Then try a pint of real beer instead. It’s cool rather than cold and a rich and tempting aroma of hops and malt lead you in to a complex and satisfying palette of flavours. As I watch over 400 gallons of Finchcock’s Ale being produced on this small Kentish farm, it’s impossible not to recall that literally thousands of gallons of John Smith or Tetley’s will be brewed every day on sprawling industrial sites which would swallow up Grange Farm many times over. With the brew complete, it’s that welcome moment – time to go down the pub and taste the evidence. Sitting in the pleasing surroundings of the Old Eden at nearby Edenbridge, I watch that ritual moment when the landlord slowly, so slowly, pulls a pint of golden zesty Finchcock’s. I smell fresh tangy citrus on the nose. Then the real moment of truth. I put it to my lips, sip carefully and my tongue explodes with flavour - it’s magnificent. You simply can’t fault Wicks’ beers. They are not particularly strong but they positively sing with fresh aromas and flavours. He really has kept to the dream: these are beers my grandfather would have loved, but given a clever modern twist. Westerham produces bitters, stouts, a Christmas beer and IPAs (India Pale Ales – a particularly hoppy brew). Wicks is clearly delighted with my response. He even stops talking (usually his mouth moves at a mile a minute) to taste his own wares. Then he soberly reflects on his success. ‘You have to love what you do,’ he insists. ‘If you want to be an entrepreneur you have to have a passion. In fact, if you’re going to do anything in life then do it with passion, and to the best of your ability – even if you’re just cleaning the loo. It’s all about excellence.’ Westerham beers are available in cask and bottle from various pubs in Kent and south London. See their website www.westerham.co.uk for details.
Tasting notes March 2006
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