Savouring - and saving - a Chiswick moment
I had an "Ah! Bisto" moment last week. I met an old beer-writing chum and we repaired to the Portland Arms, a Fuller's house in St Albans, Herts, where we discovered not only London Pride and ESB at the pumps but also - to our joy - Chiswick Bitter.
On previous visits the brewery's newish Discovery had been available. It's a fine beer, but it was good last week to see the 3.5% Chiswick had returned.
Last week I profiled Heineken and the success it has experienced with the 5% export-strength version it is selling in Britain. But that's a premium lager - the ale sector is different. It would be a pity if we were to lose low-strength but characterful beers such as Chiswick.
Not, I hasten to add, that Fuller's has plans to drop the beer. But it's one of a dying breed - what used to be known in the West Country as "boy's bitter".
Many years ago, Whitbread's Cheltenham brewery produced a beer called West Country Pale Ale which, at just 3%, scarcely registered on the Richter scale. But it was full of flavour, with great hop character. Dorset's Hall & Woodhouse had a bitter of about 3.4%, while Eldridge Pope in the same county had Dorchester Bitter at 3.2%.
Beers of this strength were designed for refreshment when millions of people worked in heavy industrial or agricultural jobs. They could replace lost energy by downing several pints of low-gravity beer without running the risk of driving a tractor while a trifle inebriated.
The head brewer at Grolsch in the Netherlands once told me that you can't get flavour into a lager beer under 5% - old and new Heineken prove that point.
But ale is different. Warm fermentation and robust English hops can produce beers with modest amounts of alcohol that positively zing with juicy malt and peppery hop character.
I mourn the loss of West Country Pale Ale, one of the most delicious beers I have ever tasted. But we live in a world where marketing and image are all- important and the word "premium" is master of all it surveys.
Last week, attending a schools' concert in which number-one son was tootling his clarinet, I was pleasantly surprised to find Wells' Bombardier on sale at St Albans civic centre bar - it must be the influence of the local Camra beer festival held there every autumn.
I'm a big Bombardier fan, and it was in fine nick. But it's a "premium" brand at 4.3%. I also enjoy Wells' Eagle, which weighs in at a more modest 3.6%, reserved almost exclusively for the brewery's tied estate. It would be good to see it more widely available.
Bombardier is one of the country's biggest-selling premium ales. Adnams, whose 3.7% Bitter is one of the great delights of the beer world, is now better known on the national stage for its premium 4.7% Broadside. Hall & Woodhouse's boy's bitter quietly shuffled off years ago. Its two regular cask beers are the 4% First Gold and the "super premium" Tanglefoot (4.9%).
Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter (4%) is a superb beer - one of the best of the breed - but its Pale Ale at 3.5% is hard, if not impossible, to find outside its own trading estate.
Marston's Pedigree is a classic Burton pale ale that deserves all the plaudits and success it has earned, but it does overshadow the equally fine-tasting 3.8% Burton Bitter. The beer was threatened with extinction a few years ago, but protests from both publicans and drinkers saved it from that fate.
Back in 1989, Fuller's Chiswick won the Champion Beer of Britain award at the Great British Beer Festival. When I phoned the Fuller's press office to tell them the news, it was clear from the reception I received that the brewery would have been happier if London Pride or ESB had walked away with the prize.
Eighteen years later, Chiswick Bitter is still being brewed and enjoyed. The axe has not been sharpened. Keep it going, Fuller's: allow me to wrinkle my nose and exclaim: "Ah! Chiswick."
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