The Time Is Now – reinventing the English IPA (a documentary)

[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] makes a difference to filming in breweries every day yeah I thought you might like a change why have you brought me to this location but do you know where you are I saw a sign over there East india.basin or rail red yeah yeah we are in the East India dock Basin but I want you to forget you know it's lost Glory it's like a nature reserve back there pretty much yeah I want you to cast your mind back about 250 years ago because here was the epicenter of the biggest corporation on Earth okay and every day ships will be leaving through this little Gateway quite a big Gateway yes quite a big Gateway Laden with hundreds of barrels of locally brewed beer go on I'm interested you've got me I've got you right well they turn left yeah yeah and then they they turn right right I'm not going to give you all the directions but they were headed pretty much to the other side of the world okay so I'll ask you again do you know where you are Bradley mate I think I might this might be the starting point in the Journey of IPA exactly and just over there is a brewer that wants to work with us to reinvent it cool is that all right wasn't too hammy or I think that was nice [Music] thank you [Music] in the 10 years we've been making films about beer we've made a lot about IPA we've drunk West Coast IPA on the west coast reveling in its bitterness Pine Forest Aroma and citrus we've made a documentary about New England IPA in New England swimming in its heady juicy dankness we've sipped at spicy floral Belgian ipas in Brussels we've drunk home brewed IPA in the Arctic Circle and even Jasmine IPA in Beijing in fact at this point it looks like we'd do anything to not drink it in its Homeland hell our homeland despite inspiring all of these Styles making arguably the Genesis of craft beer English IPA has been left behind by us by Brewers and probably by you One Brewery that's never quite left it behind though is meantime as one of the original British craft breweries they built their reputation on it and throughout the 2000s the iconic bottles of meantime India parallel were found in pretty much all London's bottle shops even they've struggled to maintain drinkers interest in it though today it's a tiny percentage of what they brew and almost all of it is sent overseas increasingly the lack of love for our own signature beer style as well as the ingredients that make it has begun to frustrate me so in meantime Kento was asking if we wanted to brew a beer together there was only one style I wanted to make and I wanted to go big with it I was acutely aware that it would take some persuasion to get the brewery to agree but the first job was to convince Brad fantastic so we're going to be making an IPA Johnny this is very very exciting mate um are you thinking West Coast Piney citrusy bitter big zingy we're thinking like East Coast New England IPA Citra Mosaic or hazy actually I was thinking goldings gold eggs okay English IPA yeah wow yeah we're going back to the roots of IPA is my thinking it's going to be a big batch of English IPA which is a risk but I thought you know we talk a lot about classic British Brewing on this channel we love you know best bitters Porters Imperial Stouts but we don't really talk about our most iconic beer you know the one that inspired the American Revolution the one that changed the world which is English IPA nobody really talks about it nobody really drinks it it literally changed everything yeah this is the Genesis of IPA the sort of dominant beer style worldwide the thing that all the hype boys and girls get excited about but but we've forgotten the original right we've forgotten the OG okay and I thought this could be a wonderful opportunity with mean time yeah who brought IPA Brewing pretty much back to London other Brewers were doing it but they based their whole business model with this beautiful thing yeah if we go to them and we create an English IPA but not just any English IPA I'm thinking we could try and make it relevant again oh okay because the UK increasingly has you know incredible modern hop varieties we've got a vast Heritage of English East already being used in modern ipas and even some Heritage malts are available that we use back in the 1800s that could potentially still be great for modern India parallels so what you're saying is we sort of go we look backwards to head forwards into the future exactly that where do we start from here if we're going to make an IPA that excites modern Drinkers and pays homage to the star's 19th century Roots then we need to learn exactly what those beers would have looked like and tasted like because I'm fairly certain it won't be anything like a New England Dipper now the history of the IPA told all over the Internet is fraught with cliches inaccuracies and exaggerations and to cut through it all there's only one person we trust venerable beer historian Martin Cornell otherwise known as zitherfile we headed up to the beautiful coastal town of chroma where after a bit of other important research we met him at his brother's Brewery poppyland I'm going to start with what sounds like a very simple question but probably has a very complicated answer which is what is IPA how long have we got the IPA uh let's start at the very beginning IPA was the name eventually given to the beers that were being exported from Britain to India they were specially prepared to last the journey which meant that they were more heavily hooked than than beers that remained at home they were not necessarily that much stronger so but it was the hopping there was the The Secret of the success of these beers because the the Hops kept spoilage organisms at Bay but what they didn't do was affect the uh the most important yeast in these beers which was uh britainomyces and Brittany was Bretton Almighty yeast that bought these beers into condition on the four-month journey from Britain to India where were these beers typically being brewed where did the sort of pale ale as prepared for India or IPA really originate or do we not know well yeah they started off there was a guy uh called Hodson and he uh was the major supplier to the captains of what were called the East India men which were the ships um that were owned operated by the East India Company which had become certainly by the beginning of the 19th century a major political player not just a trading company which is what it started off as but it became a major political player in India and he had its own army or armies um it had a huge uh setup of civil servants uh the expression civil servant actually comes from the East India Company they had their civil servants and their military servants they had conquered large parts of India they were raking in huge sums of money in tax and so on and so forth and they had a large setup of people helping them to run this this Empire and they were all homesick so the East India Company ships captains used to take out on their own because the ships were largely going out empty and coming back with all the uh the goods from India I used to carry out trading on their own and take out all sorts of stuff to sell to the expats in India who were running the East India Company and this included Furniture Willow clothes guns Foods cheese wine and beer so this chat Hodson he had a brewery on the river lead just up from blackwall in London on the Thames which is where the East India ships docked so he um almost by default became the major supplier of pale ale for India and this started you start seeing his name mentioned in newspapers in India in the 1780s and this carried on until the 1820s so it's a long time when this guy was pretty much the sole supplier of pale ale to India and then he got greedy or his son got greedy and they decided that rather than sell to the ship's captains they would ship it out directly on their own bat and uh you know get all the money and get all the profits well the East India Company obviously got very grumpy at this because it was taking away the money to their shoes cartoons were earning yeah they've got an army yeah yeah but not in this country they don't uh but anyway so they uh they then went famously to Samuel alsop who was a big Brewer in Burton on Trend and the thing that nobody knew at that time was that Burton brood pale ales are going to be much better than London brood pale ales because of the Brewing water that they're using uh chalky water in London great for dark beers um not really that great for very hoppy pale beers gypsum calcium sulfate water in Burton on Trent Wells terrific for pale beers and for beers that you want that lovely sparkly look through as you as you stare at the glass and really hoppy beers so allsop and his big rival Mr Bass rapidly uh drove Hudson out of the market and started to dominate the market so that was the Original IPA can we Circle back to the special preparation what was what was that process they were just adding adding more hops that was about it and also probably a more certainly dry hopping we have evidence um that they were dry hopping the beer as well uh from a shipwreck when there's a report that they survived by first of all they drank all the beer and then they were sucking on the on the Hops left in the in the casks so obviously we know therefore that they must have been dry hopping these boots from all of the research that you've done how clear a picture do we have of well of how clear the beer is what color the beer is what flavors we might expect other than the the britannomyces character I think we can be fairly certain uh it's pale was a description that meant not looking like Porter really so uh we could be talking anything from dark Amber all the way down to Golden they would certainly be very bitter and a lot of people didn't like that bitterness you know you have complaints of people saying no he's far too bitter these beers we hate them give us a give us our traditional sweets that goes down the ages as well doesn't it absolutely so in terms of what they were using when it was the Prime ingredients ingredients they wanted do we know anything about malt varieties hop varieties or if not use varieties because they might not have even known exactly what yeast was but he's characteristics they didn't really think about varieties it was very much sauce terroir and so they knew that East Kent goldings East Kent hops they didn't they didn't even necessarily call them golden so they knew East Kent hops were the very best you could get and also Farnham hops had a very high reputation at that time and in terms of malt again they would tend to use the best sorts of malt varieties so they would look at something like Chevalier which was the most popular books from the 18 late 1820s when it was first discovered in Suffolk uh rapidly became the premium uh molting Variety in this country so it sounds like luck and ambition uh LED perhaps the Burton well firstly the London and then the Burton Brewers to success and I think that luck and ambition might have quite a lot to do with how good this beer also turns out um we've now got some information about what we could actually put into this beer about this recipe that we could form so it sounds like we need to go visit some hot Fields sounds like we need to go visit it some moltings and go drink some water in in Burton [Music] so that was a fascinating chat about the history of IPA never get bored of listening to Martin no a fascinating guy and actually lots of recipe inspiration there from talking to him and looking through those books um so the first place I want to take is the first ingredient I want to look at yes is going to be the Hops oh there's no real great reason we should start with the Hops but it is an IPA and obviously modern in modern times it's all about the hopper up forward certainly yeah the other reason is that although British green is loved all over the world already British hops are not necessarily loved around the world and even in the UK they're not celebrating the way I think they should be they're not old and stuffy are they Johnny there's an incredible amount of exciting stuff going on right well yeah exactly I mean we've got this wonderful traditional hops that were grown over centuries and bred over centuries to be good for these British Styles but now we have really exciting super aromatic American inspired kind of hops that can give us these modern Aromas that we're looking for so we're gonna head to a farm in herefordshire uh just outside of Worcester actually um to visit a farm that's been cross breeding um and growing these new varieties of hop uh ready for these more modern styles that are being made by British breweries and we're going to talk to them about how these new hops are being created uh what they're like to farm and indeed I think a little bit of the state of British farming hot farming because it's not in the best health right now for the for the very reasons we've talked about the fact that they're not well loved in these in these modern beers that farm was called the farm which didn't really help when Googling it for directions but eventually we did find it as well as owner Sarah and will the technical director at Charles Farrell one of the UK's leading hop readers and Distributors so Sarah tell me about the farm how long have you been farming here and growing hops uh this the farm bosper has always been a hot farm for over 100 years um and I've become involved for the last 15 years or so and and how much is what you've been growing changed in that time still have got some traditional varieties such as goldings um and progress but we are moving over to the fair and Charles Farren breeding varieties so the traditional varieties are goldens and foggles the acreage has been steadily decreasing pandemic hasn't helped that with generally traditional British shops work very well in in Cask beer and sales of cast beer over the last couple of years have been really zero for several months yeah absolutely so the traditional hops have really suffered because of that so if I'm right there's only about 57 is it 57 British hop Farms that's less than that now 53 53 so we've lost some since I last did the reading um what was the Heyday of British hops like how far has it fallen and how do we get it back to where it was so in the late 19th century 1860s approximately um those 72 000 Acres of hops grown in this country we now have less than two thousand wow to the decline has been collapsed isn't it yeah massive and it it hasn't really slowed it's still declining fairly quickly and and that craft beer revolution in the UK hasn't I guess really helped because it's been mostly using American hop so it's not been helpful here and you were saying that around here it used to be that every Farm had hops around here and there was hops all in the freon Valley as well so there was hops all Farms had hop Kilns and a hot yard and they've just they've been torn up yeah and replaced with more profitable hops or easier as a more profitable crops or anything products right yeah have you ever sat down after a bad Harvest and been like let's let's just grow rice well probably not rice but but a question of what we do yes yes absolutely it's growing hops heart position to make yeah because it's it's in our blood and most Growers would would scale but we need to give they need the market to indicate that they the Hops are wanted yeah so in this beer that we're working we're definitely going to be using some some traditional varieties as part of that link to the 19th century but what I'm really excited about is trying to get some new exciting I guess American inspired Aromas into these beers and that's what hops like this can start to offer us right absolutely yeah those those big citrusy fruit notes that don't come from traditional British hops so what what variety are we studying at the moment we're still in Anaconda Hobbes of dioces so there's a male and a female plant and we took Cascade as the the mother we crossed it with a Hedgerow male that was aphid resistant and showed some really good disease resistance characteristics and we came up with thousands of seeds which we planted something like two thousand of and from those we actually got Jester and olicana from that same cross so they're true sisters so from that cross we got some really big Citrus notes but also in the in Jester we had some lovely blackcurrant and rhubarb you know other fruit notes and I'm very traditional British kind of flavors as well absolutely there's still a foot in the in the traditional Camp yeah which sort of adds an element of Terror to this it's not just we're going to make hops like America it's like we're gonna have these classic British flavors in there as as well yeah no this we have a unique climate nowhere else is trying to commercially grow hops in a climate that is similar to ours most other hop growing Nations have a similar climate to each other but we're the only ones with a maritime climate that are trying to trying to grow hops even New Zealand has a different climate to us uh and and it's it gives us a very unique uh Aroma and flavor profile so we're going to be doing a hop rubbing in a bit and learning about the flavors of volcano but there's also another hop here that I'm interested in which is Harlequin so what's the history of of that hop so we took Jester crossed it with some males from that same original cross and we came up with Godiva and from Godiva we bred Harlequin and Harlequin has an alpha of 10 to 12 and a much higher oil content and that allows those Aromas and flavors to really punch through in the beer because the Alpha and the oil which gives us those citrusy notes in the oil are what we're looking for [Music] untangling ourselves in the binds we then headed with Will to Charles faram's HQ where he laid out five modern UK hotsters to analyze and see if they would fit into our modern IPA or as Brad put it so it's almost like having a tea bag and having a good sniff of it before you put the water in yeah maybe yeah you've got to know it's a good one right you might be a stale tea bag we don't want no steal tea bags no we want the freshest most delicious hops hops hops yes so well we've seen them in the fields they've now been processed tell me about what we've got in front of us so we've got a little progression of of what's happening in our breeding program so we're going to start at olicana what should we be looking for give it a really good rub warm up those oils but with olicana in particular we should be looking for mango passion fruit tropical fruits I mean I can smell it already yeah yeah and there's some really nice floral characteristics as well in there yeah lovely soft fleshy tropically notes and yeah floral as well like like uh uh raspberry tea like I'm trying to think of a herbal tea That's reminding me of but it's got a definite twinings Edge [Laughter] so what's this next hop so this is Jester so same cross these are both doors of cascade and the same father so that that is pungent right it's got this kind of orange peel Citrus kick to it it's more Punchy but doesn't have the width of oil profile at all the corner has yeah less kind of rounded Aroma it's it's orange peel and and kind of some kind of juiciness but it is definitely yeah got a kick to it so what's this one then so this is Mystic which is in fact a daughter of Jester so there's a bit of a theme Here Jester's a very good parent this one smells uh a bit like walking past a lush on a High Street it's lovely and floral and soft yeah yeah there's a I get a like a fresh peppery kind of Bang from it and then there's a blackcurrant milkshake characteristic yeah and then behind that those tropical fruit coming so what's this one this one's Godiva okay again daughter jester Jess has been busy Jester got very busy it's a really fresh sort of sharp fresh and clean it works very well in dry hot lagers where it's it it is clean so you can dry hop in a significant quantity and you're not getting off notes you're getting those Tangerine qualities maybe a little bit of those Nelson and so on white grapey fruit notes as well okay so this is this is one I've heard a lot about because of its to use a cliche a kind of Juicy quality is something that there's interest in using it for New England ipas and stuff like that is that right absolutely we're increasing that juiciness with every generation we're increasing the oil content and the alpha and its ability to punch out of the beer it really is that Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum kind of thing um you compared earlier to Mosaic and I think that that's pretty close it's like that almost overripe fruit thing yeah yeah I think I think in the commercial hot world that's probably the closest hop to it yeah there's Peach and passion fruit and all sorts of yeah it's a really soft fleshy you know where where um where Jester was kind of Punchy and citrus peel this is all about the juice like the flesh that's inside of these these fruits if you were if you were coming up with with a recipe a pairing of these where would you start and what sort of quantities would you want to lead with I would probably look at either under the table and you know the the modern rules are anywhere between 3 and 30 grams per hour so going big but staying home I like it [Music] Johnny for once in my life I feel like I know what I'm doing I feel like we've got the Hops down I feel like that was amazingly informative where do we go from there yeah so now we know roughly the varieties are going to be using these amazing modern British varieties yes we need to think about you know The Malt we're gonna we're gonna have underneath so we're gonna create this layer of flavor to put those hops on top of so we need to go I think find out about the malts that were being used back in the 19th century so I suggest we head up to crisp maltings a wonderful wonderful malt it's a world renowned for their beautiful molds but also uh super involved in the sort of the the bringing back of Heritage varieties right so these varieties that have historic uh importance in in the history of British and Global brewing and we can learn exactly what molds were being used way back then that meant another trip into the middle of nowhere but this time to meet an old friend of the channel Dr Dave Griggs we first met him on the hunt for the original Pils them all and once again found him lurking by his car parked suspiciously down a Country Lane on the other side of the Hedgerow though was an incredible sight [Music] so here we are in a field of Bali I've been emailing you guys and chatting about the possible recipe for this beer for a while and we said we wanted to use a Heritage Grain we said we wanted it to be an IPA with a 19th century lilts and you've brought us here so what is this place and what are we stood in well last year we went and saw Hannah yep which was our pilsner Heritage barley this year I brought you to Chevalier so this is the IPI and the porter Heritage bowling I said what can you tell me about Chevalier so we know it's a Heritage green what does that even mean where does it come from okay so Chevalier dates back to the early 1820s it was a selected barley by the Reverend Dr Chevalier who was quite an eminent individual back in the day in Suffolk so he was a Justice of the Peace he was a reverend he was the sort typical you know did everything kind of Lord of The Manor going he just he found this barley plant growing in the golden of one of his laborers thought it was a very fine specimen took it away sewed it and over successive Generations Chevalier really became the dominant Barney variety growing in the UK but also in California in South Africa in Australia so Chevalier pursuited all through the Victorian era into the early 1900s and it was succeeded by the first deliberately bred variety so taking two parents to produce Offspring I mean that was a variety of plumage Archer so we sort of we kind of always imagined the higher they are the better they are because we kind of it's a romantic thing I'm swaying in the wind sting has something yeah but that's not the case that's not the case the target of breeding these days is to treat is to reduce the height of the crop stiffen the straw so it stands stronger the product that we do have with these modern these older varieties or the Heritage varieties is too much wind too much rain and the crop will fall down which makes it more difficult it's risky to be a farmer of these it is it is it is but it would have been the same that our forebears would have experienced back in the 1800s you know they'd have had good years they'd have had less good years because of the climate and the changes that they would have themselves would have seen so and so we've got this barley that is is tricky to grow tends to fall over uh has had many other varieties come come since that have been perhaps more efficient healed snowboarding's not great yeah um why are you bringing it back why did we do it it's a question we've asked because I've been on numerous occasions so no reason we've run it for a it's an interesting experiment you know going back it goes back to where we started them in our we started in uh in great rivalry in 1870. we've been to a value that was being malted at that time we've still got the floor moltings from 1870 so we can put a Heritage variety onto a Heritage moltings and produce a heritage heritage malt from it but what we were what we did find out in those very first early Brews there was some research work done uh up at the University of Sunderland at Brew lab they were seeing distinct flavor differences coming through from Chevalier and that's been seen through most of the beers which have been produced from from Chevalier malt so what kind of flavors sort of differ from the I guess you're using this to make sort of pale pale malt in in very broad yeah how would it differ from say you know the more commercially grown varieties it's like multi on turbo turbocharged turbocharged multiness is what seems to come through is that because it's almost like an earlier Wilder form that hasn't been sort of bred the flavor hasn't been bred out I think that's exactly the point Brad I think where we're seeing there with modern varieties they've got quite a narrow genetic basis to them you know sons of second cousins of you know there's quite a lot of inbreeding in uh in in modern varieties whereas I don't think Chevalier has certainly not recently been used as a parent within that within that breeding programs so I guess as you breed and you're looking for resistances to diseases and different things the flavor's not secondary but you end up with similar varieties this is exactly and there's a there's a lot of interest now I mean can we breed for flavor well we've learned about the variety that I think we're probably going to be using in this recipe but obviously you don't just use the stuff straight from the field so I think we should go have a look at the maltings and see the traditional methods and processes that also add to the unique flavors that are going into these amazing varieties it's good to buy a lorry carrying perhaps the first loads of grain from this year's Harvest we head into crisps main multi things to meet Dan Clark the production manager and just the man to tell us about the company's historic floor moltings where they've used the same historic techniques since 1870. so we've seen the beautiful fields of Chevalier and now we're at Chris malting's before we dig into this can you tell us more generally than how is Bali turned into malt that the the Brewers use yeah so all Barley's made into more in a three-step process so it's steeping germination and kilning so steeping is we're trying to hydrate the grain from around about 12 13 moisture up to around about 44 to 46 so it's ready for the germination stage and that germination stage that's what it would go through in nature to start creating yeah it's it's basically the release of enzymes to for the plant to grow and that's what we're trying to do here germination is controlled conditions so we're germinating throughout control conditions to get to set point that we then pass it onto the kilnin to lock in those those starch that the Brewers need for for Brewing right so that drawing is locking in and also creating the different varieties of mold that we're talking about creates a different flavor profiles etc etc yeah yeah so we're in front of this this field of of malts how is this process different to the sort of the bigger plan that you you have Okay so this process up on the floors is very different in terms of uh the time it takes to to process The Malt so um the steeping is for the Heritage grains is over three days which is more in line with the traditional steeping methods that were used uh more modern is is two days 48 Hours germination depending on the season and the ambient conditions can be anywhere up to seven or eight days and the killing itself can be three days as well so very very different to the standard two days four day germination and two-day kilning this process cannot be learned it can't be learned it's it's an ongoing process we're always developing the skills and the techniques that we that we're using it's very much Hands-On a modern plant you can learn to run that in six months so you say like it's so you know there's a manual for how you make these big commercial batches absolutely yes it's written down it's do this do that it's a step by step as this you actually have to you have to work with it and you have to you know be led by the product essentially you can't just say right tomorrow do this do that because it's it all depends on what the grain wants you to do so I've got to ask I mean obviously this seems incredibly labor incentive like you're turning over this grain by by hand it's taking significantly longer why why are you doing that with these Heritage grains yeah so I think the Heritage range will just give it will give you Bolder depths of flavor and color as well it's it's a much softer it's a much gentler process in terms of the Steep the germination and the kilning and that all attributes to the flavor and that's one of the the key things that customers and Brewers tell us is that the floor molds offer a very different flavor profile to the more modern [Music] so we have the Hops we have the Hops in the bag we have the malts you know somewhere marisota something around there something Chevalier being the key one that would be used back then love it so obviously that sort of undertalked about element of here has always been the yeast but many of the yeasts that we use in these beers were key parts of the flavor you know like Martin mentioned the protanomyces yeast we're probably not going to put that into a beer there's a lot of challenges involved with using that but you know the the classic Brewing yeasts we can still get hold of all of these years I'm pleased to say have been rescued from Oblivion and we can literally dive back into history an amazing place in Norwich called the national collection of yeast cultures wow I want to go there Johnny so yeah I've got no idea what to expect from this place but it holds over 600 varieties of British yeast in like cold storage Frozen storage wow and we should be able to dig into all the flavors and all the kind of attributes that these years have um with with a scientist with a real life science real life one wow we're going Weird Science Johnny we're going we're getting Weird Science um so yeah from there hopefully we'll be able to pick a yeast that was also used back in the 19th century but is hopefully going to have some flavors that will really work with the Hops and the malts that we're slowly narrowing down I love that and so we arrived at a business park in Norwich an unlikely location for a place that quite literally holds some of the most important microbes in history we were welcomed by the wonderful Carmen who started by giving Brad in all his boy-like Wonder a tour of the Frozen yeast Library contained within these very ordinary looking filing cabinets you have the history of British Brewing essentially yeah wow if we open you can see like for each strain they are existing different wires and I just want to get one a bit closer so we can look at it so can you see here is the freeze dry pellet so these ampull for example that one is from 1987. they undergo a primary drying and with all the water is evaporated and it's removed and the secondary drying you have to think that inside the inside and pool is vacuum also so between the drying process and the vacuum process allows to preserve restraints for a very long term so we're opening a pool sometimes from their 70s and you feel that responsibility yeah so this is this is really safeguarding this for the future yes future generations and this as a sort of vessel is totally kind of in uh there's nothing in there that's incredible that's nearly 40 years old that vial yeah exactly um and they're all kind of hand sealed every this is a very yeah craft cross process because you can see the glass yeah exactly needs to be sealed and their flame in the lab yeah it is all by one is there a sort of there isn't an expiry date on this right this sort of way of keeping it's a way of keeping yeah although the our Master stock and the gold standard for a storage is what I'm gonna show you next yes and that is the liquid nitrogen but each way of preserving has the advantage and it's very important when you are thinking of a storing a strange for such a long periods you have to always have a backup so wow this is a serious duel this is the liquid nitrogen tank where the whole collection is as you see so it's even smaller than the yeah and you can see the temperature the temperature at the moment is minus 180 so at the moment you cannot see much because it's all there all the vapor but if we do a little bit like like that you will see there are different different columns so it's a way of cataloging the strings and Maria is going to take a column now for for us so you can see in one in one column they are 13 different rows every string and will have like six different straws so again like the vials before upstairs uh this every straw is one one replica of the of the strain as long as it stays cold this is good forever yes [Music] we managed to drag Brad away before he decided to cry oh Han Solo himself to the Future and headed to the laboratory that isolates freezes and eventually propagates these strains for use by modern Brewers there I got to grill Carmen on the yeast she looks after and pick a few that might work for our beer so the ncyc started originally British Brewers realized about the potential of the Brewing stones and around the 40s 50s it was a economic crisis in the in the UK where many breweries closed down but we were very lucky that the Brewers decided to deposit all these strains uh so this is our business and going we need to save these yes you need to say that yes because you never know you know in years to come 70 years later when two YouTubers might go ahead in the collection at the moment and they are aware four thousand four hundred strengths and from those States uh over 600 their Brewing strains this is a small subset of of strains and you can see the different geographic location origin these are the streams that we were mentioning before that were deposited around the 4050s and all you know the condition was for the stress to be anonymized but we can help if someone comes for example from the Georgetown area or it's called and we can pinpoint some of the strains that originated in in that area so yeah I'm happy to have open conversations with with Brewers in the past decade it's been a lot of emphasis in and you know like super hot videos and different multi Styles but I think sometimes Brewery have forgotten the importance of choosing the right strain because the strain every is a completely different flavor profile it feels crazy that so many modern Brewers are all using very similar strains and Brewing very similar Styles when there's a laboratory near Norwich that has 600 and over 600 different strains that all have completely different characteristics that they could be using feels like they could be in there in those 600 years some Treasure Trove that hasn't been used for a long time that we could dig out and and bring back to life yes yes yeah so we spoke over email before we came about some potential strains uh that might have the flavor profiles that we're looking for to go with these wonderful British Hops and yeah English molds what were the two that you you suggested so we have um basically because you were focused on the London area as we we discussed before that you can do some kind of selection from depending on the geographic origin so when you mentioned that you were interested in Brewing something um from the London area the two do I mentioned to you was 1026x 1026 is probably one of the is is quite well used by in British Brewers and the other one is ncyc 1318 and they are both they were both the possibility around the as we said before like 40 50s and where they both use those hours of the 18 19 so they were yeah they were breweries that originated later on so we're looking for that kind of mix of modernity and of History so these are used to carry lots of flavor with them when they ferment and present in the beer quite strongly yeah yeah I think you will get a British a you know profile with with strong flavors I mean just because you were interested in the London area but from the smallest study that we did on flavor profile we saw some we some of the strains with a higher Ebola volatiles and higher flavor profile interesting you know where the Scottish one could be because they in the past they have been sharing with whiskey production and whiskey strains which prevent very hot and fast and so I mean it's just an hypothesis yeah but you can see all these are escodies and Northern North North East strange and they they provide a much higher volatile compounds and than others under those Scottish strains popular as a result of that or is it not something that's being used the thing is this is something that Brewers start to exploit just now this is not being you know those States exist and they win as we just discuss them in the position with us now for over 70 years I'm mentioning the Scottish strange because it's quite interesting to see the the different my interest now I was thinking in London and suddenly I'm like Scottish [Laughter] once I've been taken aside a tall type of changing the whole project into Reinventing we heavy we got back in the car and pointed it West once again with one final location in mind the true home of IPA Burton on Trent there was a time when this small Midland town was the world capital of brewing a model at the national Brewery Center shows how much of the town was dedicated to breweries and the incredible infrastructure that built up around them when the British Brewing industry went into decline after the second world war so did Burton but those who know beer history still Marvel at its influence much of that influence is still tasted in the water we used to brew hoppy beer as Martin Cornell explained earlier the water drawn from the wells beneath Burton is heavy with gypsum which accentuates the character and bitterness of hops as well as helping the beard drop clear we were there to learn all about it as well as how it played out in one of Burton's Classic beers back so Des I think we should start with a bit of a general overview of the the history of of brewing in Burton because it seems to go back a hell of a long way and it's been so significant yeah one of the reasons why we became the burnt top of the world it's initially down to an Irish null by the name of modern it's not what I expected you to stay on the seventh century she was making a pilgrimage to her own to see the pope but for some unknown reason she stopped off here in Burton on Trent and she was the first one to notice the magical quality of the water as she performed miracles what kind of Miracles it's actually curious bigger than skin disease right or not uh when she died the bill to Shrine and the strength of that in the year 1007 the banded 18 months came to Birch long train to Belton Abbey and they started brewing beer and then when pale ale came along which was obviously discovered in London but his notice from about the 1820s omelets out pale ale was more Superior because the water here seemed to enhance the quality of the Hops uh we started Brewing parallels and when the railways arrived in 1839 a lot of the brewery Zone from the south moved into burton-on-trent to make pale ale and because of the rail only transport links because we're in the middle of the commentary then you became worldwide birth right so the so the water was was that good for these these new styles to sort of Highly hopped pale beers that breweries were literally moving from London to Burton to have that water source it was like a kind of not a gold rush but you know like oil towns when someone discovers oil and they everyone starts drilling Wells could you say it was almost like that in Burton as well exactly I mean by the turn of the century one in every four pints of beer brewed in Great Britain is brewed in Burton on Trent he's fantastic It's a Small Town yeah later on burtonization there Michigan you could Brew where we wanted to brew really right so there's people recreating the water to the north campus yeah uh so it's basically down to the quality of the water and our central location for transport what is it that this water gives to these beers that's so special okay we sit on a bed of gypsum which makes the water quite a lot softer in there yeah and was discovered from the 1820s I think it was all sorts of Brewery the use of our water enhanced the flame of the hob actually brought them all brown favorite so she's bringing out the bitterness the spiciness the floral character of things that's better than like London water which I mean that that so that is believe it or not the first time I've ever had bass on Cask I've only ever drunk the should be ashamed but I should I am ashamed of myself yeah um what's remarkable about it is is a how crisp and light it is but also the lingering bitterness is is pretty strong isn't it pronounced so the water that's that's gone into this beer this this isn't coming from the trends or or it's not something we could turn the Taps on in Burton and drink or or no he's got to come from a well right and stop access to the Wells um only the Brewers have access to these Wells nobody else are very protected and and those whales what are they digging into where what is it groundwater that has filtered through something yeah I mean basically we sit in about Egyptian and the water I was told a number of years ago probably the the Brewing that we're using today to make the beer probably feathers rain in North Derbyshire and Winston Churchill was a child and it's passed away from a lovely uh elements of North derpshire into our wells in Burton on Trump so it really feels like if we're going to brew a classic British IPA if we're not using that Burton water profile then we're not quite telling the story and paying homage to those original beers so we're definitely going to do some burtonization of our water and get that character in there along with of course the amazing hearts that we're going to be using [Music] so with the snap of a burtonized IPA our research road trip was over it was time to sit down take stock and start to formulate our vision of what Modern English IPA could be obviously the best place to do that was in a brewery and after a bit of walking in birmingham's Trendy digbeth District we happened to stumble across one that makes great IPA with English hops what are we doing King Johnny this is quite fantastic yeah so we came here because they make fantastic ipas uh here at dig but amazingly on are in the tank still just finishing up carbonation was a beer made with all Akana it's almost as if we planned it Serendipity it's fate it is fate um so yeah we've got this super fresh expression of volcana along with uh Mosaic and U.S Cascade nice so we can see what we think is the olicana in here well we try to work out hey whether we want to use alakana yes and B what other hops we want to use what molds we might want to use but cheers man cheers mate um so I mean that's blueberry blackberry lemon rind some kind of really tropical fruit in the background really complex Aroma really good really fresh um and we think that I mean like from what we sort of learned with the with the the sniffing earlier and hob sniffing like the other kind of brings a lot of that complexity right yeah it brings a huge amount of that kind of I think that's the the background tropical notes yeah I think it's also possibly that lemon rind Citrus kind of character because I think the Mosaic and the Cascade you know Cascade is is definitely putting that Berry character in mosaics definitely bringing that Berry barricade so I think that Citrus is coming from the olukana and I think that's going to be a really nice thing to get in our beer it's gonna you know if we could think of something that is as far removed from the cliche of of dull English hops you know that's lemon rind orange rind tropical fruits punch in the face man so olicon has got to be in there gotta be I think I want a little bit of Jester in there not a huge amount but that beer it was that sorry that hot was super pungent yeah like nothing else on that table At the Hop the oils in it were like just like really immediate weren't they seriously it was kind of dank and like it actually reminded me a little bit of like Amarillo or Chinook there's really like sticky pithy kind of hops that you get in America so I think a little bit of Jester yeah should be in there and then I think if we we want to bring some juice that's the modern take on IPA now exactly so I think harlequin's the one for that like a big juicy round texture kind of hop so that's the Hops in terms in terms of malt I mean I think there's only really two options if we want to nod to the to the 19th century we've got to push evalier in that has to go in and we'll get loads of rich flavors from the process but also from from that malt which was you know so perfect for the porters at the time and so perfect for the ipas but also I think it's going to be quite a modern feel that Chevalier is going to be an unusual flavor to people yeah certainly out of the Wheelhouse of normality exactly and then of course we're going to use the Burton water profile we're going to enhance the hoppiness the bitterness creative complexity with those kind of sulfur compounds that will add a little yeah yes so the next stop is the CBC Studio where we're going to process all this and design this recipe from scratch with everything that we've learned over the last couple of incredible days and we're going to Crown off that day with a couple more olekhana ipas Cheers Cheers man [Music] thank you foreign foreign [Music] so we've talked a lot about what a historic English IPA is but what's a modern one going to be because it has to be more than just the ingredients that are going in we've had an incredible Adventure seeing the absolute best ingredients that Britain has and we sat down and dig and picked which of those we want to use but this bit has to be more than the sum of its parts we have to come up with a concept which is going to lead to a ballpark recipe that others can follow if they want to start making a more modern exciting representative kind of beer of the UK and The Time Is Now for us to decide what that's going to be so let's run over what we already know so we know that this beer is going to have to be all British ingredients for it to be a modern British IPA that goes almost without saying and within that we have to include like an expressive English or well British ale strain we have to include all British Hops and I think that within our definition of whatever this is going to be it could be you know old school English hops it could be modern British hops with their big juicy aromatic compounds or it could be a mix of both something else I'm really Keen for this beer to have to be representative of the UK is for it to be paintable so we were told that these beers were probably pretty strong back then and we certainly know that strong sorry modern ipas are definitely very strong but I want this to be paintable the paint is almost like our national dish right at this point so I think it should be good in the Pint format and I also think it should work on cask and for that reason I'd say that these beers need to be no more I think than about 5.5 so that's the vessel we're going to deliver those are the kinds of ingredients we're going to use what are the flavors we're going to try and get out what are the characteristics of this beer going to be so I think with that British Air strain we should be looking for the beer to be really dry that would be you know pretty much in keeping with classic ipas of the 1800s I think it should be nice and bitter as well maybe not as bitter as say a big old west coaster because we want to retain that plantability and maybe not as bitter as it would have been in the in the 19th century but certainly assertive 40 to 50 kind of ibus so lots and lots of boy hops which can create structure as well something I don't think I should have is Brett um while that was a defining part of the 19th century IPA I think it will make this beer you know less less interesting or in fact almost divisive to most big eats and also put off some new people to it I think that we can have a really clean ferment that can still present loads and loads of that British ale character so I think that's about it really we're talking about a beer that's going to be pintable it's going to be aromatic it's going to be bittersweet it's got to have lots of maltiness I think we also need to include this idea that yes it's all going to be British malt but even if it's not a Heritage straight A Heritage Grain it should be the classic kind of British ale uh British Air grain so no no wheat no oats uh plenty of you know potential caramel biscuit um or kind of like uh honeyed kind of character stuff like that stuff that we'd expect in traditional British brewing with those modern hops layered on top that's what I want that kind of dichotomy in there and it's going to be a bit of a challenge making that work as a recipe so pointable aromatic Bittersweet malt forward with big harp aromatics on top that I mean I'm not really sure if it's a style I'm not sure if it's if it's a sub style I'm not even sure if it's basically just liquid wishful thinking but we've created the blueprint for Modern English modern British IPA and where it should be headed I guess we should probably Brew some pilot batches and check that all of this isn't just impossible to do and so a plan was hatched for me and the Brewers at meantime to take everything we learned from the road trip and each brew a small batch that we'd taste together before settling on a final recipe as if trying to reinvent IPA wasn't daunting enough I was now going head to head in the tasting with some professional Brewers so I done my best Brewing jacket and snuck some surprises into mine including a 30-minute hop stand inspired by New England IPA some delicious traditional golden tops into the boil and the juiciest yeast that I knew of but for now we've done a lot of talking let's get Brewing [Music] thank you in goes the Chevalier Moats which tasted sweet fruity almost right so the mash is done smash my numbers right there and I'm going to Splash that back to close to the original gravity that I need which I'm aiming for about 10 56. um yeah and then we'll get the the 90 minute boil on uh these are my East Kent goldings they smell like spicy honey lemon Bramble they smell delicious basically and quintessentially British like British spring which is absolutely what I'm going for here so we've got an early edition for bitterness flavor structure and a later boiled Edition which hopefully give us some Aroma but also keep building on that complexity like a rounded bitterness not just like a big spike or need nothing at all and then we'll get onto the aroma hop so I've got my olukana I've got my Harlequin and I've got my jester foreign is coming to an end which means I've just started my Whirlpool down to 80 degrees and here is 120 grams of modern British and goddamn aromatic hop so these are about to go in for a 30 minute hop stand and then I'll be transferring over to my fermenter and adding the yeast and that's about it we'll find out in a couple of weeks what the first iteration is I'll get to try the version that they made on their grandfather over at meantime as well and from those two beers we'll be picking the final recipe and doing the full Brew Over a meantime ready for you all to try [Music] foreign [Music] so here we are at the meantime tap room and we are here for the first of many many pivotal moments in this documentary as we tried the first batches of this beer these trial batches so I was bringing my bluedio and Sven over here who is designing the recipe with us at meantime you did a pilot batch on your break exactly yep yeah so we've got yours on the left Yes mine on the right we're going to taste through them there were some subtle differences you guys used we used opas yep and along with other corner and and Jester like we did we put Chevalier in ours yeah marisota and then you use London L3 yep which is closer we think to the east we reckon we're going to end up with whereas I use Vernon ale yeast because it's Juicy and Delicious so should we start with yours yeah just go ahead which is this side right yep the left lane quite a bit of orange zester on there a bit of Tangerine Aromas as well yeah yeah really lovely pithy orange kind of character yeah maybe a bit of stone fruit as well yeah so do you think that's the London L3 yeah so and I think the the jester hops has quite a lot to do with that as well maybe the op is quite similar to that gives it orange feels yeah it's kind of marmalade I think Opus and maybe that's slightly overdone maybe it's too kind of boozy orange yep wow that's bitter it's quite better yeah um I like it I think I'll probably Dart it slightly back a bit more and focus but more on the the hot flavor then um probably bring up the dry hop a bit more probably maybe reduce a bit of the gesture up a bit of the other hops to bring a bit more round take some of the orange sort of notes down yeah take that down and bring up some floral or some juicy kind of character well let's see let's see what we think about this one because obviously we've got Chevalier which will give us a different mold character yeah uh and then we've got Harlequin which is a really uh juicy hop yeah quite fruity isn't it almost like a mosaic of the of the UK so let's see if that helps with that aroma okay so mine is even more better than yours um so definitely I think we need to bring that back and a little bit earthy as well which I when I was rubbing those hops I thought that was coming from the jester right um but there is a really nice juicy character to it as well it seems a bit overpowering yeah yeah just as yeah it does the master flavors of other hops as well so it's quite a bit of empowering one we need to maybe just dial it back a bit what about do we want Harlequin or Opus I feel like Opus and Jester are going to bring similar things they're quite yeah they're quite similar to each other I think maybe the Harlequin like you say it's quite fruity nose I noticed some the throne notes might come through here quite nicely it'd be nice to give a bit of a tropical feel to a English IPA yeah yeah definitely okay or agreed yeah right well I hope somebody was taking notes of that I thought we'll watch it back and we'll be coming up with the final recipe uh to go to seven and a half thousand bloody liters uh Cheers Cheers interesting we all take the meantime thankfully someone was taking notes and off the back of that conversation we went away and came up with a recipe that dropped the bitterness amped up the olecana and Harlequin involves a 19th century East that presents suspiciously closely to London L3 and combined our Chevalier mole with some Scottish golden promise to make for a truly British IPA that recipe was then tweaked and scaled up to seven and a half thousand liters by Sven Who currently invited us down to do all the dirty work on the Brew Day so Bradley it's been months of planning weeks and weeks of research it was an epic road trip through the swaying Fields of Gold of Norfolk the Luscious green of the Hop fields in herefordshire beautiful and and a business park in Norwich for the East mate you know what it was an amazing road trip and it's all leads right here right now to the Brew Day yeah this is the moment where we can bring to we can bring the British hop industry into the 21st century while still using amazing Heritage yeasts and valleys it's celebrating the future it's looking back at the past with some reverence and bringing it all together mate well let's hope we can do it justice as we Brew at meantime [Music] so this is the location this is where the magic is gonna happen yeah yeah so this is the biggest Brew we've ever done certainly dwarfs to 20 liters we usually make behind us we have where the grain is going to be going in in a short while and then through here is the Brew House [Music] so this is the mash term this is where we'll combine the Grain and the water once we've got the chewy liquor and we're looking for it will go into the louder turn just the liquid comes across then um and then from there it's transferred here into the boil this is where we'll be adding the Hops and it's something we've never done before we'll be adding them into the doses here so that's hot so we're gonna hook those tops in uh and they'll go in at certain different times if you follow me down here [Music] we could just about see through this Maze of pipe work just there that metal there that's the whirlpool that's where we're going to be adding all of the amazing hops that we were getting sensory analysis on with will back up in herefordshire and had that incredible aroma so Opie as we're throwing those in we'll get to rock some of those hops as well and check they're up to spec smell delicious and are really going to make this beer pop but before then we've got to get those grains in the beautiful Chevalier that we selected from crisps so let's give you that foreign [Music] exciting moment this is the first indication we're going to have of what this beer is going to taste and look like yeah right this is the work yeah so this is like the unfermented sugary liquid that we produce in the mash and it's the first runnings of it so it's about as sweet as it's going to be it's going to be loaded with sugar it's very delicious they call it the Brewers breakfast other people might add whiskey to it we're not doing that today um so yeah so this is roughly the color it's going to be liking the color mate yeah it's a nice pale gold when we add hops you're overly adding some of the screen you can change the color of it depending on how much you add um but yeah nice nice light golden color I can smell it from here and it smells really biscuity and sweet like a lot of pale beers wouldn't at this point but lovely honey and biscuits feels a bit richer than you know a lot of the beers that we Brew in the studio that are pale because we're trying to go for lots of malt character here big time Big Time yeah so this is the East that's come from the ncyc feels like not a lot of years for an entirely huge batch of beer yes uh is it inflating as we talk uh so this is now going to be pitched into like a propagator like a starter but to build it up get it ready get it ready and rearing okay ready to go ready to go so yeah this is going to be such a key part of the flavor and a key part like that historical link we've been looking for and it comes in a beautifully historical plastic joke brilliant pretty close to blowing foreign [Music] foreign [Music] could have been so smooth [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] what a hot day hmm I think I was doing stuff I took a gravity reading what if I took it wrong well do you know what we've got to wait some time now Johnny oh yeah and we'll find out oh yeah yeah so yeah so it's going to be about four weeks until this beer is ready and then I've planned a very special place for us to release this beer go on no I'm not gonna take it yet what I was going to say is if it hits the mark right so we need this beer you know those test Brews that we had a couple of weeks ago they were pretty good you know I'd call mine like a six out of ten maybe theirs was a seven out of ten yeah um move on this to you know we need this to be at least a nine right this has got to change the mind about British hops it's got to excite people about Heritage malt it's got to make people want to go to Norwich you know so there's a lot that this beer has to convey so we need that juiciness we need that rich body we need that kind of stone fruit thing from the East and we need it all to sing so it feels modern but then you can go out but you know the grains used in this were first bred in the 1800s that's a big ask so basically you want all of that shared experience we had over our road trip the amazing people that we met the knowledge that we've gained the smells the flavors that we've tried along the way we want to condense that down into that Brew day that we've just done there yeah it's not much of an ask is it do you know what mate I think we just might do it well forever The Optimist Bradley let's see [Music] okay so our beer is literally fermenting in tank as we speak Johnny but still you're dragging me all over town I am because we need to find a place to actually launch this beer so I've got in contact with the amazing David Jesse Dyson he's a great writer he's a historian and he's an expert on beer and racism right and so he's got a great idea of a place that we could launch this beer where we could have conversations about the ingredients and the processes we've learned about and the controversial history of IPA exactly yeah so we've spoken to Martin about you know how IPA came about but what we haven't talked about is the impact of all of that what looks like trade but actually has a much more controversial pass so we're going to be talking to David at the wonderful Gladstone Pub which is a Desi Pub and we'll learn all about that as we head tomorrow [Music] so David thanks for inviting us down to the Gladstone um I guess I should start with the most important question which is what what is a Desi Pub okay so I I think the most important part of the meaning of a Desi pup is it has to have uh South Indian landlord and they have to have put their personal imprint onto the pub whether that be through food drink or events which can be things like Bangor nights or Diwali celebrations the word Desi um is quite interesting because it is a British Indian word and it means people who are of the South Asian diaspora so it's not a word you'd use to describe someone who lives in India so I guess as a result of a diaspora you know those people have ended up in lots of different spaces so decibels must have quite a lot of diversity within them in in what they look like what they do it's it's really like saying how how do all pubs differ they offer all very different things so the traditional Desi pubs um offer very interesting foods that kind of thing and then you have things like sports bars which uh off big it's a big important part of Desi culture is like watching football going to the pub and then you have places which have like Bangor nights that kind of thing and then here in the Gladstone you've got what I would call this the greatest example of a modern Desi Pub and this is a pub that's um really good at having excellent beers um has excellent food which is very different food very sort they call it anglo-indian here and also is welcoming uh I'm very good at bringing all different types of people to the pub but sort of celebrating British Indian culture the Desi pubs are really a story of struggle um British Indians particularly in areas of London and Birmingham would go to a pub and not be allowed to drink and there was a thing called the color bar and this particularly was prominent in smedic and all the pubs were segregated so you'd go into a pub you were allowed in the lounge bar but you weren't allowed in the smoking room and what happened was there was a big protest about this um this legendary guy still alive called after Johor Singh he um worked with a lot of fellow dezis with in part of the Indian workers Association and what they did was they protested against a color bar by going in with white people the white person would order to drink and when the landlord saw who they were they would get barred so when the person when that happened that would be noted down and when the magistrates licensing review came up for the landlord they'll give evidence and the landlord would lose his license and then it would be taken over by a British Indian landlord and that landlord would then make it a safe place for engines and but also would welcome in white people and so it wasn't like it was there in ours Pub it was really the first place of a group taking Collective action to ensure diversity in pubs what I find quite interesting is that when we're in the Gladstone here we've got like a very good crafts selection craft lineup and I mean in a day and it's established so like sales reps will come in and of all the brands that we know and it's like if we're sat in the Southampton arms or the The Ivy house but if I'm sat in a like traditional Desi Pub those people aren't coming in to sell their beers and I think that that's a big shame because they really sort of breweries and craft companies that have engaged with the engine community have real have have seen real loyalty like um thornbridge and kirkstall Brewery they start they put their beers in where Indians Indian people British Indians drink and they really stale autism even visiting the breweries that kind of thing so I think it's a real missed opportunity so so we came to you because I wanted to talk about the the the difficulty of the controversies in the marketing of ipas like both modern and historic um again our IPA is being served here are the deci landlords are they aware of the controversies that might be around it I mean Indian drinkers British Indian drinkers they engage with the beers on the same level as any normal Drinker would they just it's it's an IPA something on here they they would drink and it's not something they would question whereas I'm sort of embedded in the beer industry being a writer I like to hold things up to the to the light and have a look at it and I do think the way that that a lot of products not just beer we can look at gin Bombay Sapphire that kind of thing are marketed and they're marketed in a way that shows Empire in terms which are just deeply wrong you know like historically inaccurate and it's really just about this idea of colonial Splendor and luxury which wasn't the experience for for engines at the time in the 1600s India accounted for a quarter of all Global manufacturing and this country was only three percent and so the real change in Britain's fortunes and I and in a literal sense was when they went over to India and what happened was is they they pushed all those Artisans out and they drew the wealth out of the country so by the 1760s um they were taxing a yearly Revenue in Bengal of 315 million pounds in today's money right so it's just exploitation of all of the wealth that was there they're just removing and taking wealth treasure everything so buildings were pulled apart people possessions were taken and anyone who got in the way was murdered so we spoken to Martin Cornell and we understand you know these beers were taken taken over never given to the Indian people it was all for the soldiers and for the uh the the officer classes that were drinking these beers but how do we connect that with the modern ipas that we have today because obviously we know it's a very different drink um but is it is it being marketed as if it it has some great beautiful cultural story which it definitely doesn't the the problem is exclusively with the marketing um the the idea of uh colonial times being of luxury being of decadence was only really experienced by a few select members of the East India Company and collect colonized colonizing people and that sort of luxury that we're always given is is sort of early 20th century pre-injure Independence we're also guilty of tastically accepting this Marketing in a lot of products it's not just ipas gin tonic water it all does this thing that that colonial times were this great time of decadence and my problem with it is that it wasn't decadent for a lot of people and that decadence was paid for by all the atrocities committed by the East India Company so what would you love to see you know with this project that we're doing so we're trying to release an IPA and we would hate for us to be seen to be uh progressing that that issue with this complete you know disregard for the actual history of this this style how how do we address those I think it's pretty impossible to decolonize the IPA um with with the terms that we're using because I'm and the process of doing a beer with villagers Brewery um called a decolonized pale ale and even that is re is really difficult because people are so used to what an IPA should or shouldn't taste like that if you were to call it something else it's very difficult but what we should be really careful about is the way that we Market it and the way that we portray India I mean a lot of craft Brewers don't have British Indian workers there and they're using uh they're they're using a sort of version of India which never really existed and they often will use lettering and and symbols which are quite sort of important to Indian people but I think most of all we need to not cancel ipas because they're here to stay and they're one of my favorite drinks but we need to educate people as the history behind them and the blood and toil that went towards the Empire it's a real chance we don't teach this in schools we need to teach in schools but us as drinkers can be aware of this we should be looking to have a situation where British Indians have products and are welcome in pubs and and ever and communities and their histories are celebrated and there is although the acts the committed were really really shameful um it doesn't make me feel less proud to be British it makes me feel really really quite empowered to know that this happened and we're willing to have this narrative and dialogue and my friends and people I drink beer with um share that and they understand my history [Music] off the back of our conversation with David it made so much sense to launch our IPA at a Desi Pub not just to encourage conversations about these important topics but to ensure that the beer was being served where British Asian people were more likely to drink it welcoming Britain's diverse communities into craft beer is great but as David said it's better for everyone if we seek them out too most of the beer went into keg but meantime also canned a few thousand beers each wrapped in a design that tells the story of our road trip and everything we learned about the history of IPA the decline of British Hops and the reintroduction of archived malts and yeasts the cans also bear the name we've chosen now IPA why now well partly because British Farmers need our support sooner rather than later but also because we think this beer is a symbol of where British Brewing is right now caught between its past and its future so what does the now taste like well a few weeks later it was time to find out that we invited our friends and beer writing colleagues down to try it it was also the first time that we were gonna try it Johnny we've reached the Zenith moment in the film we've been on this incredible journey together up and down the country all across this great nation tracking down the best ingredients we possibly can and it's all gone in for this liquid right here yeah I don't want to drink I'm too nervous shooter should we get the aroma let's do it I mean it smells juicy it's pretty juicy how does it smell this juicy Johnny I mean there's there's the the olekana kind of Floral floral sweetness like like literally like a bouquet and there's juiciness there's Juicy Fruit it's way juicy than I thought it was gonna be I thought we'd be getting Chevalier maybe they're some of the yeast characters there which we know can we know that can bring some of that just yeah smells super modern I'm very happy with that Aroma dude very happy come on man it's been it's been wild it's been amazing to English IPA to British IPA to British IPA ah pretty bang to brief really isn't it that is that is beautiful it's dry there's loads of maltiness like a lovely yeah biscuity grassy grainy character there's definitely like Hedgerow stuff like for the big goldings that we threw in for that link to history it works really well with the Chevalier and then yeah just you're left with kind of caramel and tropical fruits on the Finish it's kind of an amazing balance right and and also it wouldn't be a British IPA without that Hedgerow component yeah I think so I think yeah it's got an earthiness but I think we wanted it there that's why we put the goldings in so it is definitely different to like say a New England sort of pale ale or a West Coast pale ale it's got that classic English Hedgerow fresh grass kind of thing beautiful but before we we open the doors and let people in to try this beer yeah if you tasted that would you consider this a new style a different style a Twist on the IPA have we reinvented anything or have we just made a really nice all-english IPA I think we've made the case that we should be celebrating English or APA we it's not it's not fussy it's not old hat we make some of the best products in the world that go into beer and this is a perfect showcase for the Hops yeah for the for the barley for everything so you've heard it from us but let's hear I guess what other beer luminaries think and to deal with the public think and what our patreons think um about yeah the first modern British IPA ever brood I'll Drink To That cheers [Music] so Pete thanks for coming down I'm gonna before you dig in I'm gonna ask you a question how often do you drink English IPA well not as often as I'd like to I've got a very specific idea of what a traditional British IPA is which is rooted somewhere in the mid 19th century right and I think you can count on fewer than the fingers of one hand the amount of beers I think would kind of hit that definition at the moment well I think you're gonna like half of this beer then so this is our our reinterpretation of English IPA which are calling modern British IPA so it's got Scottish malt English malt it's got Heritage malt in Chevalier so literally used in the 19th century and then alakana Jester Harlequin hops hopefully bringing some juice and modernity yep that's everything I was talking about so I get the Hops that's the first thing I get and then instead of it just being kind of a one note through the palette to the back of the throat The Malt that then kicks in there's some nice sweetness from The Malt uh we talked about how Chevalier has a slight fruitiness yeah to it which with these hops it just kind of works with that and I think sometimes we get too stuck up too hung up on well this is The Malt character this is a hop character the reason there's both in there sometimes is that when they work together you get something that isn't molten isn't hops but is the result of their Union yeah and that's definitely in there amazing and the other nice thing about Jake he's got he's got some bit he's got some bitterness at the end and that bitterness isn't aggressive it's not assertive but it's just you know it's there and it dries the palette out and then it says good I want another sip of that I don't know if you can tell in my face while people are speaking but I have so much respect for you as a beerwriter and as a Discerning Drinker and um it's very exciting the relief is palpable yeah very much so yeah so David it's lovely to have you back um what do you think of the beer it's uh it's an incredible product um but um flavor flavor and taste wise it's uh not really to my palette I'd have to say it's a bit too a bit too bitter what it does is it challenges my view of what tradition is so for me like a Trad beer is like a best bitter but you know you're like going beyond that and for me I don't think my palette is quite really cool I mean so back as we discussed with Martin garnell right at the start of this like back then making these kind of beers they were too hoppy too bitter for a lot of people as well so it's something sort of Echoes down the ages um and you know all palettes are very different as well well David thanks so much for being part of the documentary thank you so much for your honest views uh on on the beer you did say at one point that it went really well with the samosas though right yeah I did say that okay he did say that so that that's confirmed and I mean and doing the interview here thank you goodbye so what do you expect from an English IPA when you're uh when you're poured one what I expect and what I want are sometimes two different things um and to be honest I can't really remember the last time I had one um so there you go that's what I'm saying certainly not you know um on draft in a pub probably you expect fairly standard British hop character from all the old traditional hops so yeah I'm really interested to see how these these new ones from Charles Farrell are going to gonna play out first off well done mate I am impressed um it has got on it's got a lovely kind of fruitiness on the nose yep um we like modern are we like yeah Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum or are we yeah yeah well there's a bit of Hedgerow there but there's definite kind of tropical fruit going on um I'm not gonna try and pick out individual ones but there's definitely a kind of a modern fruity character but it's got um especially on the palette that that kind of earthy spice you get from English hop is coming through really nicely and giving it a nice robust bitterness um you know it's definitely tipped towards The Bitter End of it which is what you expect from an IPA but it still feels balanced there's there's a nice robust malt as well you get a kind of grainy grassy malt character edging into biscuity all in all that's an easy drinking beer you could easily get through a few pints of that over an evening [Music] thank you [Music] now IPA in our humble and slightly biased opinion is a Triumph an utterly a historical Riot of flavor that still in its ingredients rooted way back in the 19th century so it'll be really easy for us to finish this film as we started it some slow-mo some ethereal music and some claim that we've reignited drinker's passion for British styles of beer opened up conversations about Beer's role in the Empire and reinvigorated the British hop industry the truth though is that even with meantime's help we barely begun those things and if we want a sustainable Equitable and diverse beer industry the time to act is now drinkers still aren't half as interested in their malts as they are their Hops and even so British hot fields are still shrinking and desperately need our support and our passion the same week we wrapped filming the national Brewing Center in Burton was told it would have to close its current site and its relocation is still up in the air we all need to make commitments to back our breweries our farmers and our heritage and to have Frank conversations about how we can atone for the past and build a better future ideally we'll be doing that over a few pints of modern British IPA [Music] foreign foreign

Channel: The Craft Beer Channel

Views: 111,442

Keywords: craft beer, beer review, real ale, homebrew, homebrewing, beer documentary, cooking, recipes, documentary, english IPA, British IPA, Meantime IPA, Meantime brewery, meantime brewing, history of ipa, india pale ale, history of india pale ale, hops, british hops, hop farming

Id: 9BwO7gbhdns

Length: 92min 40sec (5560 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2022