2008 saw new dawn for beer

Rock 'n' roll in 1956/57, the summer of love in 1967/68, punk and new wave in 1976/77, acid house and the dawn of rave culture in 1987/88…

These revolutions used to happen in music at roughly 10-year intervals. There hasn't been one this decade - but maybe it happened in beer instead.

Is it a good idea to call beer the new rock and roll? Probably not. But we may come to look back on 2008 as British beer's year zero, when brewers finally stopped drawing all their inspiration from the past and began looking further afield and becoming genuinely creative.

Every musical movement starts with one or two bands catching similar ideas and creating a new sound, encouraging others to join in. A couple of British breweries have been ploughing a niche 'extreme beer' furrow for a few years now. But 2008 was the tipping point when their ideas began crossing over into the mainstream.

British brewing is embracing American hops, Belgian styles and a range of adjuncts and processes that are packing beer full of flavour more than ever before. And the speed with which it's spreading is staggering.

There's nothing wrong with traditional British beer, of course. But if there's one problem with the microbrewery explosion of the last few years, it is predictability.

"A lot of British micros seem scared to do anything different. They see the popularity of Greene King or Deuchars IPA and think that's what everyone wants," says Richard Dinwoodie of specialist beer retailer Utobeer. "We had one brewer send us a range of 20 different beers, all between 3.8 per cent and five per cent, all mid-brown. What's the point in that?"

This attitude of 'safety first' is part-driven by what licensees think the market will bear. Everards brewer Mark Tetlow runs a Gold Cask Ale Champion course where licensees with an excellent reputation for keeping cask ale are invited to develop and brew one for sale in the brewery's estate. "Almost every time, the group has decided to brew a 4.5 per cent mid-brown session bitter. It's what they think will sell," he says.

But now, everything is changing.

The nucleus of this revolution can be traced back to the birth of Thornbridge in 2006. Young brewers Stefano Cossi and Martin Dickie had a new brewery to play with, no heritage, and no senior brewer telling them what to make.

"We both had a passion for brewing," says Stefano, "and we had the freedom to experiment."

The early result was Jaipur, Thornbridge's flagship brand, a 5.9 per cent IPA that is, in Stefano's words, "a tribute to hops", using several pungent North American varieties. In three years Jaipur has won more than 40 awards.

But Martin didn't stay around to pick up very many of them, returning to his native Scotland to set up BrewDog in 2007. Starting with a small range of beers that were reminiscent of what he brewed with Stefano (the pair remain good friends) Martin seems to have developed an allergy to brewing anything he or his drinkers have grown familiar with.

In just two years, the range has grown to around 15 beers that between them sell up to 200,000 bottles every month, including highly hopped, wood-aged and experimental beers that make him the beer world's Heston Blumenthal.

New World hops​

Hops seem to be the point of entry for any brewer feeling inventive, and Martin credits hop merchants Charles Faram with fuelling the revolution. Only five years ago it was almost impossible to find a beer in Britain containing North American hops. Now they're commonplace in blonde ales and IPAs around the country.

"There's definitely been a shift away from traditional varieties to North American hops," says Faram's Will Rogers. "Every time a beer wins big in awards, people phone us and ask what hops are in it.

"Then when those beers win, you see a snowball effect."

"The shift to golden ales with American hops is like the shift in the 19th century from porters to pale ales," says Tetlow. "Beer's getting into Chardonnay territory now with these peach, melon and pineapple flavours, and their appeal to women can't be underestimated."

Aging in the modern world​

The second major component of Beer 2.0 is wood aging. Inspired by the success of Innis & Gunn, Harviestoun and Fuller's, as well as BrewDog and Thornbridge, have explored aging beer in whisky casks, creating beers that have become collector's editions. Orkney Brewery's Dark Island Reserve takes beer into new premium territory with a stunningly designed 750ml bottle and a beer that trades licks with brandy or port.

"We wanted to create a super-premium, unique and special beer," says brewer Norman Sinclair. Retailing at £10 a bottle, the limited stock is pre-sold as fast as it can be brewed, redefining beer for a new audience.

Dark Island Reserve is as much about presentation as delivery. Another brewer that understands this is Otley in Pontypridd, Wales. A core range of pale, fruity, hoppy beers is complemented by O8, a heady eight per cent ale, and O Garden, a spicy wheat beer.

The monochrome design approach to fonts and bottles ensures this smartly dressed band of beers turn heads wherever they go.

"We love beer but we felt all we were getting in terms of branding was your granddad's woolly jumper," says owner and brewer Nick Otley. "Everything looked deliberately old-fashioned." Cool design is complemented by beers that pack in as much flavour as possible. Otley won two golds at last year's Great British Beer Festival, and has so far turned down three major supermarket chains to avoid growing too quickly.

Sharp's brewer Stuart Howe is also passionate about Belgian styles. While Doom Bar may be a classic session bitter, whenever he can Stuart personally brews small runs including Honey Spice wheat beer, St Enodoc, a Cornish/Belgian Dubbel that's cellar-conditioned for nine months, and of course Chalky's Bite, brewed with Fennel.

They sell quickly from the brewery shop, and Stuart believes they actually help market Sharp's core range of beers as well.

Brewers such as Meantime, Dark Star and Hall & Woodhouse have long been producing wide ranges of beer that are big on variety and flavour. They now find themselves part of a broader movement that stretches from session beers with an interesting adjunct such as ginger or elderflower, through strong but deceptively easy-drinking real IPAs and traditional heavy porters and stouts, to beers like BrewDog's imminent wood-aged 13 per cent IPA conditioned with strawberries, a beer that thinks it's a Sauternes.

These beers cost more, because they have more in them and are more difficult to produce. But the young, still-even-now affluent drinkers who have been boosting the imported and speciality beer market for the past decade are used to paying a premium. In the middle of a horrific recession, most of the above brewers are taking on extra staff to cope with demand.

It's been suggested that some 'wacky' beers are simply attention-seeking stunts, designed more for column inches than curious drinkers. Not all extreme beers will be to everyone's taste - that's the point - and perhaps some of the publicity surrounding some brands has been ill-advised.

But the beers themselves are a breath of fresh air in a market where 'innovation' for the very biggest brewers means dropping the temperature by a couple of degrees or tinkering with the widget in a can. It's dispiriting that fellow brewers can see inventive craft beers as something negative rather than another string to beer's bow.

And anyway, an industry that's haemhorraging volume surely needs all the column inches it can get.