Britain's prophet and loss
He's one of the trade's most visionary brewers, but his products are never seen in the nation's pubs. Andrew Jefford reports on the shadowy presence of Alastair Hook
Perhaps he should change his name to Isaiah or Ezekiel. Perhaps he should grow a long beard. Perhaps he should dress in rags and wander the streets of Charlton crying in the wilderness, instead of wrapping himself in a red and white scarf and spending Saturday afternoon with 20,000 others crying at the Valley.
Who, though, ever said that prophets shouldn't update their image a little? So long as they fulfil the fundamental requirement of conveying unpopular messages and being ignored in their own country, all will be well. And that's exactly what Alastair Hook has done for the past decade or more.
The biggest letdown of his life
I can think of few other brewers in Britain with the range and depth of experience of Hook. He initially trained, like many British brewers, at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh though he describes this as 'the biggest letdown of my life. By that stage, you see, he already had a vision, just like any self-respecting prophet. Not only had he been on the Camra (Campaign for Real Ale) trail from a slightly earlier age than the law would have liked, but he'd also drunk Red Tail Ale at the pioneer Hopland microbrewery on California's Highway 101.
He loved great beer and was full of enthusiasm for it an enthusiasm that Heriot-Watt did its best to iron out of him. The university authorities even attempted to expel him for writing disparaging remarks about keg ale in the programme for the Beer Festival that Hook first established there.
From there he went on to Germany's Weihen-stephan, the Oxbridge of European brewing schools, and followed that with work for Prince Luitpold's Kaltenberg brewery outside Munich. By that stage, he was the complete brewer in embryo form, fully exposed to the very best of what was going on in Britain, in the US and in Germany.
The vision took form: he dreamed of creating a range of highly flavourful beers that would be both filtered and chilled (because that was what most drinkers wanted), but that would simultaneously explore all of the world's great brewing traditions, creating respectful and memorable latter-day versions of the great achievements of the past. Is that not, after all, what British drinkers would most appreciate, if only they were exposed to it by the big brewers?
Anyone who seriously believes that we have the best of all brewing worlds in this country at present deserves an earful from a hop-crazed seer with intercontinental perspectives.
Not yet ready for his message
Britain, naturally, wasn't ready for his message though it was ready for some decent lager, which was what Hook created at first for Freedom in Fulham, and later for Oliver Peyton's Mash brew-restaurants in Manchester and London.
But it's really only over the past five years that he had begun to do what the gigantic finger pointing down from the sky tells him to do... with his Greenwich Meantime Brewery. It's there that he's created a light and airy Cologne-style lager; a glowing and burnished Vienna-style lager; a complex and silky Munich-style Oktoberfest bier; a vivacious and refreshing Bavarian-style wheat beer; and a vivid and quenching late-hopped blonde ale. All wonderful stuff. And all, needless to say, entirely missing from pubs up and down the country. They are, indeed, only available in bottles, at Sainsbury's, for its 'Taste the Difference range.
I asked Alastair if some of our brighter pubcos had dialled his number from time to time. There was a short laugh. Zero interest, he said. 'They prefer big-barrel deals with ailing conglomerates.
His latest range of beers which include a stunningly hoppy India pale ale and a complex, multi-layered London porter is aimed at the American market, where our home-grown prophet has more of a reputation. He flies out to Colorado each September to have his invisible beard tweaked by others of the same ilk at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.
Actually I've misled you a bit: there is one pub where you can indulge yourself in the Meantime range the company's own Greenwich Union at 56 Royal Hill SE10. It is, of course, a drop in the ocean, the rule-proving exception in a land of Foster's fonts, keg ennui and brand blandness.
The British brewing scene remains, Hook claims, a wilderness for the 'great beer without compromise, which is his aim. 'That's why I have to turn to the US market; that's where all our efforts are going right now. If you brew without compromise in the UK, you go out of business.
And with that, the prophet Alastair stalks out into the darkness of the Charlton night.
