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Breweries — it’s beer and it’s brewed here
Cain and able, a tale of two brothers… Shabby warehouses provide homes to down-at-heel car-repair businesses. I pass a corner pub that is opening for the day, a few doors down another is permanently shut. A fast road bisects the area. Change is coming though, to the dismay of some locals. When I ask an elderly man the way to Cains Brewery he grumbles about the fact that a nearby abandoned warehouse is destined for flats. ‘All oak floors and expensive kitchens,’ he says with a dismissive wave of the hand.
Cains Brewery would make a nice bit of real estate if you wanted a unique block of flats. After all, something similar happened at Brakspears’ old Henley home and Courage’s riverside site in Bristol. Thankfully, this Victorian-era red-brick terracotta palace remains wedded to its original use: brewing. On the day I visit, the sight of steam escaping from vents at the side is a robust confirmation of its purpose. First of all though, it pays to have a taster of a Cains beer and there is no better place than the Brewery Tap, an old Victorian boozer that adjoins the entrance. Here there are engraved windows and the sort of rich, complex and plush interior that has pub specialists foaming at the mouth. Inside, there is ornate tiling, polished and varnished wood, old framed posters of the brewery, moulded plasterwork, chandeliers, padded leather upholstery — everything that tells the visitor ‘this is a real pub’. On the bar an array of handpumps stand like ships of the line, the business end of a good pint. IPA, Triple Hop, FA. I order the Cains Dark Mild, it seems an appropriate beer to wake up the palate. It is the colour of Guinness, topped with a creamy, foamy collar. Dundee cake, Demarara sugar, evaporated milk, fruit, grainy maltiness and chocolate all vie for attention on the palate, alongside a hint of resiny hop before the dry finish. A slightly lactic sourness (not a bad thing, very quenching) briefly makes a pass in the centre.
For a 3.2% beer style long thought of being just for old men in flat caps, this is a remarkably complex beer; if I were eating something at the moment, a few slithers of smoked salmon would do the trick. A glass of it alone is the perfect pick-me-up prior to a visit to the its makers. The story of Cains in the 21st century is one of vision, taking a chance, perseverance and good business sense, closely allied with personal passion and energy. The brewery on this site spans three centuries, starting off with Liverpool-Irish entrepreneur Robert Cain who built the impressive structure in 1887 on the site of a brewery he had bought back in 1858. The Robert Cain Brewery also owned an estate of 200 pubs, which included those still surviving Victorian treasures, the Vines, the Philharmonic and the Central. Throughout the 20th century the brewery had a rocky history, with a variety of owners, including Higsons (whose brewery livery can still be seen on the odd pub in the city) and Boddingtons. By 2002 Cains was in receivership and looked destined to be a desirable piece of real estate. This was not to be. Along came brothers Sudarghara and Ajmail Dusanj, whose family had emigrated from the Punjab in the 1960s and ended up in Kent. The two of them were astute businessmen whose previous ventures had included a chain of high-class fish and chip shops plus a soft drinks company. With the brewery not in the best of health, it was clear that they obviously fancied a challenge. Unsurprisingly, Ajmail now admits that when they were handed the keys on the first day he wondered if he and his brother were doing the right thing. Four years on, events suggest that the brothers’ gamble is paying off. With the Boston Brewing Company, home of Sam Adams, as their business model, Cains are becoming known for a variety of intriguing beers. Their Finest Lager, which is ‘lagered’ for three months, was commended by suave mens’ mag GQ and is a regular beer festival winner. The rich and bittersweet strong ale FA got a similar bouquet from an equally glossy chaps mag, Arena. Meanwhile the awards have also come in for the vinous Raisin beer. Cains have just also released a creamy stout of the sort my Liverpool-Irish grandmother would have loved, while there are plans to produce a strong bock plus wheat and fruit beers. Liverpool in a pint is the slogan. The brewery itself is a mixture of heritage and traditional co-existing alongside modern brewing techniques. A canning line, put in during the 1990s, exerts an almost insane fascination as you watch regiments of cans trundling around on a conveyor belt before being marshalled into packs. Even though the romantics amongst us prefer to see the likes of Cains and other family breweries produce just cask beer, canning and brewing contracts help pay for the more interesting beers — customers for the canning line include Refresh UK, Adnams and Greene King, while an own label lager is produced for Somerfield.
Then there’s the spacious German-style brewhouse, including its lauter tun, put in by Boddingtons to brew Kaltenberg in the 1980s. Head brewer Mark Leedham, who has done time at Ringwood, the now closed Guinness Park Royal plant and Thomas Hardy amongst others, says it is good kit to brew both lager and ale on. The interior has the look of an archetypal lager brewhouse: gleaming steel vessels with long thin chimneys emerging to vanish through the ceiling surrounded by smartly tiled walls. Beneath the brewhouse, a fully computerised control room enables brewery staff to keep watch. There are even portholes in the copper for surveillance during the boil. Very Beam-Me-Up-Scotty. As for raw materials, Maris Otter malt is used alongside a variety of specialist malts. Hops include Target for bitterness, joined by a whole range of aroma hops such as Fuggles, Styrian Goldings and Saaz (a classic hop for lager). Some of the cask beers are dry-hopped with Northdown, which would help to produce a fresh tangy hoppiness. The water used to come from Wales, but is now supplied by an onsite borehole. Steel fermenting vessels perch high on two floors in the brewery. One for lagers, one for ales. Close by, there is a magnificent old hop store, a reminder and testimony to the history and heritage of the building. All this might suggest that Cains are all about harkening back to the days of massive tuns of porter being trundled down to the docks and brewery staff in Derby hats going off to the North Wales coastal resorts on an awayday. Not so. While the brothers’ entrepreneurial drive and energy have a mirror in Victorian purpose and ambition, the beers they make and the branding they employ are very much of the 21st century. Cains Finest Lager has been one of the brewery’s most notable success stories of the last year. ‘We decided to do it because by 2007 73% of beers drunk in this country will be lager,’ says Ajmail, ‘we wanted to do it properly and decided to mature it for three months. That’s one of its USPs.’ I play Devil’s Advocate and ask if the long maturation time really matters. Quick as a shot comes Mark Leedham’s reply: ‘Yes. You taste it every week and see how the smoothness develops.’ Tried at the Brewery Tap, this is a bolshy Merseyside lager with hints of vanilla on the aroma and a spicy and resiny hop character on the palate followed by a bitter finish and a suggestion of toffee and caramel. It is stupendously refreshing and its crispness marks it out as a wonderful match with the spice and richness of a chicken curry, as served in one of their pubs. It is available in bottle and both cask- and keg-conditioned form. There are currently 11 Cains pubs, including the Brewery Tap, but you can find their beer throughout Liverpool and further afield. Sadly, the architectural treasures that Robert Cain had built are no longer in the family, but talk to Ajmail and you can hear the appetite for a lot more pubs. I visited Doctor Duncan’s in the centre of the city (the pub famously ran dry when Liverpool won the European Championship). This is yet another Victorian survivor with lots of ceramic tilework and big open windows, reminiscent of a Dublin pub.
Cains is definitely a brewery with regional plans, but everything they’ve done so far shows that they also want to keep their heart and soul in Liverpool. This is something that is well appreciated in this passionate city…especially if it means one less trendy block of flats. © beeralewhatever.com
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