Londoners demand real ale — and local breweries never had it so good

Press, 5 December 1979, Page 25

Londoners demand real ale — and local breweries never had it so good

The growing need to slake the thirst of Britons demanding real ale has given new life to local breweries; the New Zealand counterparts have long since died. Youngs’ brewery, in Wandsworth, London is a prime example. It has been in the Young family since 1831. There has been a brewery on the company’s site beside the river Wandle, which flows into the Thames, since about 1650. The economics of real ale and the very nature of the stuff means that small is not only beautiful . . . it makes sound, commercial sense. Youngs supply 137 of its own public houses and a number of “free houses” (that is pubs not breweryowned) within a radius of a few miles of the brewery. The local nature of the business in real ale, which usually comes in 36-gallon barrels, is crucial because real ale has a limited life and is a bad traveller. Youngs has always been a favourite London brewery, but a few years ago it looked a likely victim of a take-over by one of the Big Six brewers. But its total turnover has rocketed from just under S2OM in 1974 to more than S42M last year. The firm has become famous for its draught beer; it produces a million pints a week, and has extensions at its plant under way that will give it an increase in production of 20 per cent.

The Young family’s philosophy of using the traditional ingredients of malt, hops, sugar, yeast, and water (it’s always called liquor in breweries because of the fear someone might think the beer is being watered matches the aims of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA).

Real beer is delivered, without it being carbonated, in casks that allow it to keep “working” in the pub cellar. CAMRA is now accepted as one of Britain’s leading consumer organisations — for and of beer. Its annual “Good Beer Guide” lists the best real ale pubs throughout Britain — there are 243 listed in London alone. The organisation objects

to what it terms “fizzy, over-priced keg beers and weak imitation lagers.’’ It says that six national brewing conglomerates produce nearly three-quar-ters of all Britain’s beers, and own nearly two-thirds of the pubs. Large areas of the country suffer monopoly control, the organisations says, and drinkers have no chance to buv traditional beer. And perhaps worst of all, many pubs of character, with centuries-old beams and open fireplaces, are made to look like cinema foyers or station buffet rooms through ghastly “modernisation”

projects when brewery chains take over. Youngs, like other smaller breweries, continues to cash in on the real ale boom. It does supply bottled beer and filtered, pasteurised, and carbonated keg beer, but explains that this is necessary when the product has to travel long distances and is not drunk for some time after brewing. The Ram Brewery — a name derived from former

rural days in Wandsworth when there was a ram field nearby — is a curious mixture of the old and the new. The large domed copper vessels in which the “wort” — malt sugar extract — is boiled with hops, dates back to 1869. And that was also the year in which Mrs Caroline Young, mother of the company’s present chairman, Mr John Young, was born. “The old lady is still very much alive and alert,” he says. “As one of the oldest women in the British Isles, she was interviewed by the 8.8. C. on her 110th birthday.” It

might sound like an advertising plug, too good to be true, but company men swear the old lady still takes a glass of Youngs’ real ale regularly. Still used in the brewery, alongside modern automatic bottling machines, are two beam engines, made by a firm of Wandsworth engineers, Wentworth and Sens, in 1835 — in the reign of William IV.

Although little more than museum pieces today, they are used to operate pumps. Being driven by steam, they are retained because of the wide use of steam in the brewery

Engineers say they operate on surprisingly low steam pressure and are “about the nearest thing to perpetual motion” they can imagine. They are not kept for sentiment, but for efficiency. Twenty-five great Shire horses, each weighing about a ton. are very much part of the brewery work force. They daily haul heavily laden waggons around central

London, coping with the traffic with ease. “The only real problem we had was when we got a Welsh driver who couldn’t make the hor.-es understand him," says the head horse-keeper. Mr Harry’ Ranson. The horses deliver 10.000 tons of beer annually to the 47 Young’s pubs within three miles of the brewery. Trucks are used for longer hauls. The life-span of a “Smiler,” “George,” or “Tinker” is from 15 to 16 years, although “Toiler" went on until he was a venerable 25. They are descendants of the huge horses used by armoured knights of old who weighed anything up to 30 stone when they lumbered into battle. Youngs are proud of the team of Shire champions they keep for exhibition at the principle shows each summer, and have won countless prizes. With a ration of 10 buckets of feed a day, each horse gets a quart of mild ale in his daily mash. Each brewery employee is entitled to fo tr pints of beer. The latest brew from Youngs is called “Ram Rod,” which is also the name of a famous Shire

horse which was champion of all England Beer brewing abounds with ancient terms that are lost on the mere drinker. For example, some types of hops are “higgles’’ and “goldrings” and are used to give the hitter flavour to beer and to act as a preservative. The strength of beer, depends basically on the quantity of malt used per finished barrel. From start to finish, a brew takes seven days. Tradition has it that a brew that takes less than seven days is an "ungodly beer” for it has not been blessed by the Sabbath. For the record, a butt contains 108 gallons; a hogshead. 54 gallons; a barrel. 36 gallons; a kilderkin, 18 gallons: a firkin, nine gallons; and a pin, 4 gallons and a half. It is essential that just before the casks of real beer are delivered, finings are added. These are made from isinglass, which in turn is made from the swimming bladders of certain fish. They separate the yeast and the hops from the beer so it can be pulled up bright and cleat at the bar. Real beer is certainly here to stay — In Britain, at least.

From

KEN COATES,

in London