Hoppy days
The Sainsbury's beer buyer was in the car when you first tried to call me," grins Ken Brooker, the owner of Harviestoun Brewery in Dollar, Clackmannanshire. One of Brooker's beers, you see, has won Champion Beer of Britain at the Great British Beer Festival held in London two weeks ago, and his mobile hasn't stopped ringing since.
The winning beer, called Bitter & Twisted, is big on hop character - aromatic Hallertau Hersbrcher and spicy Challenger, finished by late hopping with Styrian Goldings, which adds a zesty, lemony twist.
Brooker produces four cask beers (which are also available in bottle), plus a monthly-changing cask, making 100 barrels a week in all. But from next month, production is set to rise to 100 barrels a day from his new brewery two villages along the road - not bad for someone who used to produce 20 gallons a week in his garage.
Brooker is a Dagenham boy born and bred, and until the brewing really kicked off he used to work for the Ford Motor Company. "It started out because I wanted to get pissed as cheaply as possible," he laughs. "But I began to get interested, so I bought recipe books and started playing around with different hops and malts." Then a mate (he had lots of mates) suggested that he should start doing it professionally, so he jumped at the chance of a job transfer to Scotland, bought a smaller house and found a space to lease and build his brewery.
"I spent a year putting it all together. I brewed every weekend and holiday, selling my beers to local pubs, restaurants and hotels, all the while working in the week for Ford. But after three years it all got too much, so I gave up the company car and the expense account and started brewing full-time," he says.
Then he won a gold medal at the Great British Beer Festival in 1996 for another of his brews, Shiehallion, which now boasts more gold medals than any other Scottish cask ale. And his first venture into bottled beer with his Liberation ale scooped the top prize in Tesco's Beer Challenge in 1999.
"Harviestoun is interesting, exciting and innovative, setting a fine example of what the bigger breweries should be doing," gushes the Campaign for Real Ale's Iain Loe. And Sainsbury's has just doubled distribution of Bitter & Twisted from 150 to 300 stores.
"I never thought it would be like this," gloats Brooker. For restaurant and hotel sales, call the brewery on 01279 742141.
Short
And some of the other great British beer festival winners are… Champion Beer of Britain runners-up: Crouch Vale Brewer's Gold (silver) and Lidstones Rowley Mild (bronze). Best Bitters: Crouch Vale Brewer's Gold (gold); West Berkshire Full Circle (silver); Slater's Supreme and Rooster's Hooligan (bronze). Speciality Beers: Cheriton Village Elder (gold); Daleside Morocco (silver); Oakham White Dwarf (bronze). Bottle-conditioned beers: O'Hanlon's Original Port Stout (gold); Fuller's 1845 (silver); RCH Old Slug Porter (bronze).
Oak-aged beer And while we're on the subject of Scottish-brewed beers, Edinburgh-based brewer Innis & Gunn, in conjunction with Scottish distiller William Grant & Sons, has launched an oak-aged bottled beer. Developed by brewer and Innis &Gunn managing director Dougal Sharp, the beer goes through a "unique" 77-day maturation process (10 times the national average for ales), which includes 30 days resting in lightly toasted American white oak barrels. With a 6.6% abv, it whiffs of vanilla and toffee with a dash of citrus on the lightly oaked malt palate. "The original idea came as William Grant & Sons were buying beer from a Scottish brewer to assist in the production of Grant's Ale Cask Reserve Scotch whisky," Sharp explains. "The beer was brewed to a special formula in order to age the casks and no one knew what it would taste like. As soon as I tried it, I realised that it had potential." Call 0131-337 4420 for details.
English wine wins
Scottish beers might be the talk of the town, but English wine is also causing a stir. The results of the 35th English & Welsh Wine Competition have been announced with the top trophy (the Gore-Browne) awarded to sparkling wine supremo Nyetimber Vineyard for its PremiŠre Cuv‚e Blanc de Blancs 1995. Its sparkling wines dominated the show, taking Best Sparkling Wine, Best Wine of any other year's vintage, and Best Wine in excess of 10,000 litres (Nyetimber Classic Cuv‚e 1996). Other award-winners are New Wave Wines for its Curious Grape Sch"nburger 2002 (Best Wine of the previous year's vintage) and Valley Vineyards Fum‚ 1998 (Best Oaked White Wine). Owen Elias of New Wave Wines won Winemaker of the Year for the second year running. Says Master of Wine David Wrigley: "The overall standard takes a step further forward every year… the top sparkling wines were easy to place with similar wines from around the globe."
