There’s a scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian in which the eponymous hero becomes confused by the aims and identities of the many organisations claiming to be trying to free Palestine from the yoke of the Romans. Real Ale’s a bit like that. You think you’ve pinned down who brews what where and then you find that actually they don’t or maybe they did but they don’t any more, or it could just be that they’ve moved and not told anyone.
And it’s only going to get worse. More and more real ale microbreweries are coming on stream every year. Beer’s not just becoming regional-local or town-local, it’s down-your-street local.
The website quaffale.com at www.quaffale.org.uk reckons 56 new small breweries have started up so far this year, although not all of them come into the real ale classification as defined by the Campaign for Real Ale and explained in full in the Frequently Asked Questions area of their website at www.camra.org.uk.
Briefly, however, Camra define the real deal as: “a beer brewed from traditional ingredients (malted barley, hops, water and yeast), matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide”.
That rules out my favourite Old Belgian Blonde Wifebeater with added bubbles, then.
You would think it would be reletively easy then, to work out if there were any newbies on the local brewing scene. Not so. I tried tracking down Backyard Bob’s micro brewery in Wednesbury, which was listed on the quaffale site as due to start up last year.
A Google search does unearth something called Backyard Bob’s Hillbilly Bitter, which is as yet unrated on www.ratebeer.com. Unfortunately, the only web link to the elusive Bob goes back to quaffale, which is a bit frustrating.
I had a similar experience with the BBC. No, not them. The Bridgnorth Brewing Company which, the website beermad.co.uk suggests was due to start brewing this summer.
So far I’ve had no luck in tracking them down. I did try phoning a number on the Pubsurvey UK site at www.btinternet.com/~rmoj/welcome.htm, but I may have been too early to catch the brewer in.
Quaffing
Beermad does list a couple of West Midlands beers that it thinks are new, but with a doubt over their parentage . . . Are you Banks’s in disguise? and all that jazz.
The great thing is, if you’re a real ale afficianado, or whether you’re a heathen like me whose quaffing extends no further than some multinational chemical concoction, there are hundreds of places on the web that will give you a push in the right direction.
Take the local Camra sites, for instance, including: www.wolverhamptoncamra.org.uk, www.kidderminstercamra.org.uk, www.stourbridge-camra.co.uk, www.dudleycamra.org.uk and http://uk.geocities.com/lstcamra/ serving Lichfield, Tamworth and Sutton Coldfield.
Many others at www.camra.org. uk/page.aspx?o=branches.
There are dozens of microbreweries around the region, and while most appear to have an email address, not all have websites.
Among those that do - and in no particular order - are The Shugborough Brewery at www.titanicbrewery.co.uk/shug/shug.htm; the Bricktop Brewery at The Gate Hangs Well, Bromsgrove, www.thegatehangswell.co.uk; the Kinver Brewery at www.shepworks.co. uk/kinverbrewery/; the George Inn at Eccleshall www.thegeorgeinn.freeserve.co.uk/; Enville Ales www.envilleales.com; Sadlers Ales at www.windsorcastlebrewery.com; and of course the probable grand-daddy of them all, Bathams in Brierley Hill, new since 1877, at www.bathams.co.uk. Still looking for a website for the grand-mummy, Ma Pardoe’s at the Olde Swan, Netherton, new since 1830.
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