UK Edition
The Great British Brew Off: how we became a nation of home beer makers
I've had an idea for a new TV show. Every week, a group of amateur beer brewers pit themselves against one another to see who makes the best pint. Under the protective canopy of a big, white marquee, they're set specific challenges - brew a hoppy IPA at exactly 5.6 per cent, say - and the results are marked by a treasured but formidable duo of judges (I'm thinking Esther Rantzen and Gordon Ramsay. If their agents are reading this, you know where to find me).
At the end of each week, the person who has most disappointed the judges is sent home - but not before they've been invited to sink a few pints around the back of the tent and tell the television cameras what they really think of the other contestants and Gordon's hairline. Expect thrills, spills, and plenty of refills.
If it ever gets made, The Great British Brew Off (working title) should find a receptive audience. Having been something of a niche hobby during the latter half of the 20th century, home-brewing has boomed over the past eight years, with specialist brew shop Muntons reporting a threefold increase in sales of kits between 2009 and 2015. The original spark for this sudden growth is widely held to be the credit crunch, which encouraged us to save pennies by making our own glug; it's helped that during the following years, the rise of craft beer has served a reminder that hop juice doesn't have to taste of fermented urinal (no leading brand names mentioned).
"People are drinking wild and wacky brews in pubs and they want to recreate them, or try something similar," says Andy Parker, who started home-brewing in 2012 and opened Elusive Brewing four years later. "Craft beer has really fuelled our imagination. We've realised how good beer can be."
One of the brewers who has quietly led that revolution is Chris Bingham, the owner of Binghams Brewery in Twyford, Berkshire. Bingham started home-brewing at the age of 18; 25 years later, he's known as the palate behind Binghams Vanilla Stout, which is the current owner of the prestigious CAMRA Supreme Champion Beer of Britain award. To avoid any confusion, that means the Vanilla Stout is considered the best beer of all the beers in Britain.
Today, Chris's task is to walk me through a home-brew of one of his signature stouts from start to finish. I arrive at his brewery at 8am to find he's already been pottering around for an hour, readying two large plastic tubs and a panoply of assorted equipment (including a coat hanger).
And that's to say nothing of the preparation he did last night.
"It took me about three hours to find all this and clean it up," says Chris cheerfully. "There's a saying in the industry: 'brewing is 95 per cent cleaning, five per cent other stuff'." I make a mental note to hire an army of professional cleaners for Brew Off.
The reason behind this fastidious cleanliness is simple: beer is delicate stuff, especially before the yeast has been added. It's easy to contaminate the 'wort' (pre-fermented liquid) with sugar-destroying bacteria or the acrid taste of cleaning agents.
"You'd struggle to find a home-brewer who hasn't poured a batch down the drain," says Andy. "I remember using a chlorine-based sanitiser and not rinsing it properly. The beer tasted like TCP - it was awful, but you learn by your mistakes."
Chris agrees: "Anyone can brew, but a brewer can brew the same beer twice. You learn to follow a process, write everything down, and sterilise anything that comes into contact with the wort. It becomes a habit."
We begin by measuring out different types of roasted barleys, as per a 'brew sheet' - the beer-maker's equivalent of a recipe in a cookbook. Maris Otter barley is the base malt for our stout, upon which Chris adds around eight others, each of which has been roasted at different temperatures to accentuate certain flavours. To taste, they range from the stringently bitter to the light and poppy.
From here, the brewing process is essentially a series of transfers and transformations: the barley is seeped (or 'mashed') in warm water in one tub, and then the liquid is funnelled to a second tub, where it gets vigorously boiled with a bag of hops. After that, the wort is cooled rapidly via an ice bath or copper coil and then transferred to yet another pot, where yeast is added and the wonder of alcohol is born. It's a labour-intensive process: Chris is on the go throughout the brew, sterilising the next stage's equipment, mentally working out how he can use gravity to get the liquid from one tub to another, and at one stage using that coat hanger to bodge a 'sparge arm' that rinses the barley of its remaining sugars.
"It's a lot to take in," he says towards the end of the day. "When you start out, it's worth getting a kit where you just have to add hot water to syrup, wait for it to cool down, and add yeast. It makes small amounts and it doesn't take long. Then you can move on to the full mash method, which is what we've done today. To start at full mash is a bit like inviting 20 people around to your house and trying to create a meal for them from scratch having never made it before. You need practice first."
Chris says the rewards for progressing to full mash are substantial. "The beauty is that you're completely in control of the ingredients. It also helps to train your palate. If you change one thing between brews, you learn what that ingredient brings, and you start to get a feel for what you like."
I tell him that I'm quite keen to get a feel for whether I like the beer we've brewed today. There's a snag. It's going to take three weeks for the stout to ferment. I guess that signals the end of my great TV idea - but at least Chris can offer a pint of freshly poured Vanilla Stout as consolation. Good things do indeed come to those who wait.
Andy Parker is the UK author of CAMRA's Home Brewing Problem Solver, published on July 13