First, There Was The Clone Beer. Now...?

...the UK may have its first clone brewery! Yes, folks, say hullo to Kent Brewery, a new start-up in the Garden of England. I say start-up, as the business is caught up in a planning dispute which has delayed their setting up in a permanent home. While they work with their prospective neighbours and the local authority, they are keeping their hands in with the help of a neighbouring brewer, said to be Larkins, to produce some test brews.

They do have a website, which has a wonderfully evocative theme about Kent's place in our brewing tradition, lofty ambitions in the area of provenance and the exciting possibilities of the New Hops. However, these are forward-looking brewers, as they explain,

[we] will not be recreating old recipes (although we may take guidance from the best), or keeping only to traditional hop varieties, because we are looking to the future rather than to the past for our inspiration.

Ah, guidance from the best. Who's the best? Might be the former employer of Paul Herbert (our Kentish Man), judging by the couple of unfined gyles of beer which have made their way to his old place of work. My source (we'll call him/her, "Deep Pint") takes up the tale.

Numbered Gyle 1, the first contained a 5.5% Porter, while the other cask is described as a "pale hoppy beer". Both might be described as 'signature beers' of the former employer. One has been a Champion Beer Of Britain. Recent sampling of Gyle 1 caused raised eyebrows, as the beer appeared to be exactly to the recipe of his old employers' Porter. A little side-by-side sampling took place outside the brewery, which confirmed the suspicions. According to Deep Pint, his erstwhile colleagues are "fuming" about what they see as ripping off their recipes.

Now, it's possible that Herbert is just using these recipes until his own brewery is up and running. Or perhaps "guidance" means copying lock stock and hopsack. Just to make sure, I expect his old mates will be in touch to wish him well and ask for their recipe book back.

Clone Beers

A local spoogebeerian recently sidled up to me and asked if I'd been to Brew Wharf lately. Brew Wharf is/was a joint venture beer-themed restaurant near Vinopolis in Borough which opened in 2005 with its own 5-barrel plant inside the premises.

I hadn't, though I was aware that the brewing plant, which had suffered several false dawns since test brewing commenced in the Autumn of 2005, was now turning out some drinkable and well-regarded beers. The spoogebeerian told me that the current brewer, Phil Lowry, had brewed a clone of RRBC's Blind Pig IPA.

Spot the clone...

I chewed this over. Cloning of craft beer isn't unusual. The large number of homebrewing clubs in the USA are a vast repository of recipes belonging to commercial brewers, which they use to attempt their own versions. However, I believe it's rare for anybody to commercially brew clones. In the end I didn't make the trip, but Matt Wickham from the Evening Star did, pronouncing the beer as very good, and he would know since he spends a week a year drinking the real thing locally around SF and Sonoma County.

For me, I'm curious and a bit split down the middle. Not too many drinkers here would know Blind Pig, so they'll be judging Brew Wharf's on its own merits. But, is it right to use another commercial brewer's recipe in this way? The name of the beer, Hopfather, is also, I believe the name of a different RRBC beer. I'm pleased that somebody is at last making a go of the Brew Wharf plant. I can remember when they were test-brewing and sold (bloody SOLD!) some very sub-par batches. But part of me thinks that using the recipe in this way might be encroaching onto thin ice. Or is there no harm when the original Blind Pig isn't available outside the US?