Brewing it for themselves

Convivial is not alone. The Bull in Highgate, north London, brews on the premises and owner Dan Fox says his house beers draw customers to such an extent that he has had to drop guest ales to give the Bull’s brews more bar space.

Last year I wrote about a visit to the Cross Keys in Thame, where landlord Peter Lambert installed the most micro of micro-breweries, which can produce just one barrel at a time.

But he finds that beer-lovers from around Britain are making the trek to rural Oxfordshire to sample his Dark Mild. His kit came from a brewpub in Dorchester that had upgraded to bigger equipment.

Both Fox and Lambert consider that brewing your own beer gives a pub a point of interest and distinction. The house beers become a talking-point. Both landlords encourage customers to suggest beers they would like to see on the bar.

At the Bull, the interest is heightened by the fact that American chef Raoul Whittaker matches the house beers with food and uses beer in his recipes.

Dan Fox and his brewer Steve Grey worked at the White Horse in Parson’s Green, south London, for a number of years. The White Horse developed a national reputation for the quality and range of its cask ales and the food in its restaurant. A large upstairs room was the scene of regular beer dinners, talks and seminars and the pub became a magnet in London for beer-lovers from Britain and abroad.

Steve Grey worked as a cellarman at the White Horse and he brewed beer at home. He has moved up a notch in the Bull, brewing twice a week on a two-and-a-half-barrel plant bought from a micro-brewery in Oban, Scotland.

The warmth of the kitchen provides the required temperature for mixing grain and hot water in the Bull’s mash tun and then boiling with hops in its copper. Fermentation takes place in a cooler area of the pub.

Dan Fox moved from south to north London a year ago and is building on his experience at the White Horse. The Bull was a daunting prospect. The pub dates from 1770 and is a Grade II-listed building but it lost its way in recent years.

When Fox took over, it had been closed for 20 months. Previous owners had run the Bull as a restaurant but it had failed and Fox used all his well-honed skills to restore the pub to its historic role as an inn offering good beer as well as food.

It’s likely that beer was brewed at the Bull in earlier times. Until the 18th and 19th centuries, most beer was brewed on the premises by pub landlords. But as the population exploded during the industrial revolution, pubs struggled to cope with the demand for such new styles of beer as porter and pale ale and commercial brewers hurried to meet it.

Pub brewing went into rapid decline. By the early 1970s The Good Beer Guide, published by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), listed just six brew pubs in Britain. But today the guide records more than 135 pubs that have their own brewing kit — and that number is growing.

At the Bull in Highgate Dan Fox and Steve Grey make sure their beers chime with the needs of both the chef, Raoul Whittaker, and the customers. Last autumn Grey brewed a pumpkin ale that Whittaker used in a special Halloween dish. He also cooks beef with bitter and chicken with lager.

The regular house beers are Beer Street, an English bitter, and Nervous Energy, a hoppy American pale ale, backed by regular specials and seasonal ales.

A Beer School is held in the pub on Monday evenings, where regulars can listen to talks about the history of brewing and are taken through examples of the many styles of beer, ranging from mild to bitter, porter and stout, and different interpretations of lager. A special tapping ceremony takes place, when Steve Grey unveils a new beer.

Nothing comes cheap these days, but installing your own brewing equipment in your pub can be a comparatively small investment. As the Cross Keys in Thame and the Bull in Highgate prove, there is plenty of second-hand equipment available.

Specialist companies such as Lancashire-based Porter Brewing can build breweries with starting prices of around £3,000 and will provide training for landlords in the art of beer-making.

If the end result is more punters in the pub and greater interest in the beer being brewed, then three grand could be a small price to pay for success.