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Breweries — it’s beer and it’s brewed here
Down the green lanes and far away lies the Hook Norton Brewery…
The Rollright Stones are close, three miles along the road, a legend of haughty knights turned to stone, bewitched and bewildered, by a witch’s spells; a magical ring of gnarled, arthritic stone that still attracts those who feel close (or want to feel close) to some version of the land that they have spent their life looking for. Not far away, down the deep country lanes, down the deep country lanes that all who love the green must travel, hidden away in one final lane in the village of Hook Norton, honey-coloured stone, trees and hedge in green, lies the Hook Norton Brewery.
Hook Horton Brewery: a late Victorian architectural vision of another age
A sight to see: the last time a brewery and its landscape took my breath away was when I rounded a bend in the flatlands of Essex and saw the Victorian edifice of Ridley’s. The heart skipped a beat when Ridley’s brewery rolled into sight. Round a bend on a lonely country road (down those country lanes once more), descent of a dip, and there it was, alongside the River Chelmer – a heart-stopping beautiful relic of Victorian brewing with a brick chimney, tower and huddle of roofs and buildings in the middle of rural contentment. Now Ridley’s is long gone, sold to fund a way of life for an absentee landlord. So I thought that feeling of bewildered joy was long gone, a diminution in one’s life of that sense of jaw-dropping amazement that a brewery could rouse the imagination, tempt a tired traveller, wet the lips of the studious lover of beer — but when I glimpsed Hook Norton at the end of the lane, the heart skipped a beat, the eyes focused more keenly, a word escaped, exclaimed, not the sort of word that comes to mind on the usual receipt of a brewing landscape. This Gormenghast of a building, this towering old stone tower brewery, a place of hidden corners and aged stone folds and wrinkles, this hymn to the sustaining joys of making beer is a sudden stopper of conversation. Brigadoon springs to mind, will this magical place, this architectural vision from the late Victorian age, still be there next time I come, does it disappear at night, vanish in a snowstorm and reappear when the sun comes out? In the brewery centre, which used to be the old maltings, a pint of Double Stout — as dark as the night just before the new moon, chocolate-coated coffee beans and a sensuous, luscious, creamy body — helps restore some sense of earthy reality; Old Hooky is a further steps on the road of enlightenment. Then it’s time for a trawl around the brewery.
Hook Horton’s open fermenters
Steps, wooden floors, metal girders, low ceilings, open fermenters (a slow seven day process of fermentation that gives the beers a riper and more restorative edge), Maris Otter Pale ale barley, whole flower hops (fragrant and pungent, citrus and sensual) and even the brewery’s own horses all help to embed a sense of timelessness in this treasure of a brewing site. If brewing has its pantheon, its hallowed antiquities, its Stonehenge, its Grecian urns containing the ashes of heroes, then this is the brewing equivalent. Old and modern, traditional and — I suspect — as tough an operator as any business has to be in these straitened days, Hook Norton is a shrewd negotiator along the highways and byways of contemporary brewing without losing its soul. This is Brigadoon, not Toytown, and I wonder if the next time I take a visit out here Hook Norton can be found and I will be allowed to find it.
From summer 2007 when Old Hooky caught me unaware and an afternoon’s contemplation was in order.
“I have always liked beer, but I also drink artisanal cider (no ice cubes thank you) and the occasional vigorous glass of red wine from the southwest of France, but beer is best (as an old Brewers’ Society poster on my office wall says). That said, it’s always wonderful when an extraordinary moment of beer catches you out and turns your day around. This happened to me on Saturday in the New Inn in Gloucester, when I greedily devoured a pint of a stunningly fresh Old Hooky from Hook Norton. The beer left a delicate trace of lacework down the glass as I emptied it; the maltiness was silky and mocha coffee, bossed about by a rich and bold citrus fruitiness and ended with a biscuity, cracker-like dryness. It was sunny outside but I sat within the bar and concentrated on the beer as it held my attention. If there is ever a moment when I feel like throwing in the towel as a beer writer (and there are plenty), then it’s moments like this I should remember, beers like this that remind me of why beer has such a hold on me, such a source of great passion. Thanks Hook Norton.”
June 2009
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