The Mighty World Of Marble

To Cask Pub & Kitchen for their latest Meet The Brewer event, featuring James Campbell and Dominic Driscoll from Manchester's highly-regarded Marble Brewery.

I'd identified Marble as one of the 'Coming Wave' of new innovative British brewers in my GBBF piece, but they're no new kids on the block. The brewpub has been established for over a decade, and they've recently augmented their original 4.5bbl plant with a new 12bbl kit. Word is out and the rest of the country are keen to sample their beers. Mark Dredge fingered them as one to watch with his last post of 2009.

Leading up to the event, I was able to uncover some information about Phil Lowry's nascent London Brewers Alliance. This is a new umbrella group for all London brewers, from the smallest (Southwark's Kernel Brewery) to the largest, Fuller's, and Phil has made room for amateur brewers as well. It was interesting to me that, in the week that Roger Protz in 'What's Brewing' recounted the apparent antipathy of 'family' and regional brewers to their smaller colleagues during this year's GBBF, that Phil should have successfully been able to establish a collective that can accommodate brewers large and small. I'm sure I'm not the only observer of the UK scene who has looked at the US Brewers Association with some envy at the way they can leverage their influence into successful programmes promoting craft beer. Somehow we need to stop the confusing babble of different voices which dog British brewing's attempts to send positive messages about good beer. I'm hoping to report more fully on LBA in the near future...

Back to Cask and Marble, and while the gathering waited for the arrival of the Marble boys and girls, I chatted with Martin Hayes of Cask. Some year and half back, this pub was the notorious Pimlico Tram. If Ofsted did pubs, it would have been failing and in special measures. In less than 14 months, Martin and Peter have turned the place around, creating one of the most impressive destination pubs in London. As well as a commitment to offering well-kept cask ales, they, like other visionary operators, don't view keg as some ghetto at the end of the bar for crap lager and Guinness. A range of German and Belgian beers sit happily alongside the beer engines, and the recently-installed fridges offer a huge (but pricey) range of bottled beers from European classics all the way up to hard-to-get American spooge.

Visit The Rake at Borough Market, The Evening Star in Brighton, North Bar in Leeds. All of them are committed to offering the best beer they can, regardless of dispense, and they're all successful. In there somewhere is one of the challenges for CAMRA's 'fitness for purpose' review. Cask isn't the only way, 'craft' is in there, too.

Peter smiles nervously while waiting for Environmental Health to start asking awkward questions; Mark Dredge looking like he'd rather be in a bath of beer; are you sure Dobber is a big marble?; Dominic with his cupcakes; a cupcake

So, after a comedic interlude where BrewDog stoat-crashed the bar following their own launch of AB:03 at The Rake the previous night, it was Marble's show...

The Unusual Suspects

Ten casks on offer, punters four-deep at the bar, and Dominic Driscoll's cupcakes. I'd tried a couple of the beers previously, so this was a chance to have a proper look. As well as their regular offerings (the magnificent Pint being a standout), they brought some of their newer beers. They explained the odd numbering/coding of the beers. Prefix 'W' is from the new brewhouse, while four-digit numbers are from the old. The 1732 was fruity and refreshing, the W90 (a sister beer with different hopping) was drier with grapefruit bitterness, the Dobber (a big marble, says James Campbell) full and rounded with a long, slightly warming finish.
















James Campbell and Dominic Driscoll do their routine. Take That are from Manchester, you know...

My evening ended with scrounging one of Dominic's cupcakes. He was a bit down about them, as it seems Phil Lowry's were better in a taste-off earlier in the afternoon, but I thought it was pretty good. He shouldn't give up the day job, though...

Several of the attendees are regular visitors to the Marble Arch in Manchester, and after last night, I mean to rectify that omission from my own pub experience.

GBBF: The Evolutionary Spirit*

*With apologies to legendary scouse combo, The Wild Swans

My one day out to GBBF 2010 was the Trade Day. It's changed a lot since I first went in 2000. Then, you had a lot more trade attendees - crisp and snack sellers, hospitality trade businesses - who would check in for the Tuesday afternoon to schmooze with decision-makers then disappear like Wills o'the Wisp before Joe Cask turned up. Brewers and brewery bigwigs showed their faces, bought one another a beer, maybe collected a gong off Roger Protz, and were gone.

A few years back, Trade Day changed. I think it changed as Bieres Sans Frontieres, the GBBF foreign beer bar, changed. The word was out about US craft beer, and canny drinkers and their sutlers, the RB and BA types, knew they could find beer that wasn't coming to Britain outside of the fest. Scandinavia and Japan, The Netherlands, all got in on the act, making BSF the most interesting place to drink. The upshot was that, from opening time on Day One, there were punters in.

These days, you don't see any hospitality tradespeople, and the brewers are the faces of their breweries to increasing numbers of regular drinkers. I think that's a good thing, generally. Shepherd Neame have evolved their space into a brewery 'experience' with brewers on hand to chat about using new hops. There were also plenty of London-area Sheps managers in attendance. Wells & Youngs shared the Boggle 'best tee shirt' prize for their Eagle IPA shirt, along with the striking Moor Brewing shirts. Skinners sent the Falmouth Marine Band to accompany their singers, and the irrepressible John Keeling was generous with his time and the Fullers expense account. He also launched Brewers' Reserve No. 2 and all proceeds from this week's cask sales will go to charity.

Zak Avery and Glyn Roberts have offered their own views. Glyn's is telling, to me. He notes the number of events timed to coincide with GBBF. I've commented before about the effectiveness of Cask Week, which doesn't have a focal point. I suppose if you could take GBBF on the road and give other UK cities the chance to make a week-long festival of it, then we'd be on to something.

CAMRA's GBBF organising team have tinkered with the layout of the bars, but Earls Court is a very defined and constraining space which hampers any significant layout changes. I personally found the new 'alphabetized by region' bars confusing, though I do like the theming. The big change is that BSF now has a whole bar 'island' more or less to itself (it's sharing with glasses this year). The US/RoW bar appears to be the single longest bar in the place, and this year they have 80 casks of beer and fridges full of bottles, some of which are recent arrivals to our shores.

This growth is supported by the US Brewers' Association Export Development Program under the stewardship of Bob Pease. Remarkably, the UK is currently their second biggest market after Sweden, but they are seeing room for big growth, and they are able to smooth the path for subscribing members who want to export, to take advantage of US government and logistical help. Bob says that plenty of brewers are interested, and that he is taking back requests to US brewers like Russian River. When I see what an umbrella body like the BA can deliver for their members, it does prompt a rueful smile. Interests in UK brewing are so splintered and sometimes opposed, that developing something like this seems a long way off. Having said that, a representative from UK Trade & Investment was there. Hopefully he can push at some open doors...

From Left: Doug Odell & Steve Holt; Bob Pease & Martin Hayes from Cask; Don Burgess;
Matthew Waldron, UK Trade & Investment

The CBoB announcement was a bit of an anti-climax, but there was a first gold medal for Thornbridge Jaipur in the Strong Ale category. Once again, no love for Dark Star Hophead, which has never even medalled here. I can't believe there are three better Golden Ales on the day, but it happens most years. What do I know? Castle Rock's delicious (but not as delicious as Hophead) Harvest Pale won CBoB for the second time.

I leave you with this. A snap of the coming wave in British brewing. In shot you have two CBoB gold-medal winning brewers in Mark Tranter from Dark Star and Kelly Ryan of Thornbridge, while standing to my right was Evin O'Riordain of SIBA-winning Kernel Brewing in London. Justin Hawke of Moor Brewing won silver in the Bitter category for Revival, David Bailey of Hardknott (site under construction) and Dominic Driscoll from Marble Brewing are brewing interesting and desirable beers while Phil Lowry attracted my attention here with his efforts at Brew Wharf. These brewers are seeing increased demand, two of them have seen their breweries triple in size, and they are innovating and doing all the things that UK brewers aren't supposed to be capable of. Seek out their beers!

David Bailey (Hardknott), Dominic Driscoll (Marble), Mark Tranter (Dark Star), Kelly Ryan (Thornbridge), Phil Lowry (brewing at Brew Wharf), Justin Hawke (Moor Brewing)
Edit: Thanks to Kelly Ryan for putting names to faces!