How's life treating the small family brewers?

In these days of turmoil in the world of beer and pubs, is there still room for small family brewers? Ground between big national groups on the one hand and a growing army of small craft producers on the other, are they destined to become a footnote to the history of British brewing?

On previous visits to Elgood’s in Wisbech, I was struck by an air of quiet desperation. Their bread and butter beers were traditional mild and bitter, styles that seemed destined for the scrapheap as golden ales took centre stage.

But the Cambridgeshire brewery’s fortunes have been turned round and now confidence has replaced pessimism. I met managing director Belinda Sutton in her spacious office overlooking the River Nene and found her in buoyant mood.

The previous day, Elgood’s had chalked up seven awards in a regional competition staged by SIBA, the Society of Independent Brewers. The awards included a gold medal for cherry wheat beer, which will now go forward to SIBA’s national competition.

Other awards went to mild, bitter — still their best-selling brands — and stout, but the fact that the brewery picked up a top gong for such an esoteric style as fruit beer indicates that Elgood’s has altered course and is reaping rewards as a result.

The brewery dates from 1795 and has retained its strikingly attractive Georgian facade. Inside there’s a traditional brewhouse with copper vessels and high-sided wooden fermenters. A smaller pilot brewery has been added to enable short-run beers to be made. Between the brewhouses there are two large copper trays that have proved crucial to Elgood’s change of fortune.

The company is run by three sisters, Sutton, Claire Simpson and Jennifer Everall. Those are their married names: they are all Elgood’s to their fingertips and represent the fifth  generation of the family to run the company. Simpson is marketing manager while Everall runs tours of four acres of gardens with ancient trees, a lake, herb garden and a maze.

The copper trays in the brewery are almost as old as some of the trees and bushes in the garden. They’re known as “cool ships” and they were once widely used in breweries before the arrival of refrigeration. Prior to fermentation, hopped wort — the result of mashing grain and then boiling with hops — was left to cool in the trays.

The trays are wide open to infection by wild yeasts. As a result, they were phased out when modern cooling was introduced. Today they are used almost exclusively by brewers in Belgium who make lambic beer in which wild yeasts are encouraged to take part in fermentation.

Sutton said that Bob Leggett, who runs Artisanal Imports in Austin, Texas, saw the cool ships when he visited the brewery and declared: “You should make lambic.”

Elgood’s head brewer, Alan Pateman, responded: “I’ve spent 25 years keeping wild yeasts out of the place and now we want them back again!” Nevertheless, he set to with gusto. As the term lambic is protected by Belgian law, the resulting beer was called Coolship.

It proved a big success, in the US in particular, and as a result such fruit lambics as black cherry and raspberry have been added. Encouraged by sales of Coolship, Simpson now has a vigorous export business. She has an agent in Italy, also sells beer to Finland and Spain and is taking a hard look at China.

For the home market, Elgood’s has a fashionable pale beer called Golden Newt and has added new brands such as Warrior premium bitter, along with regular monthly and seasonal brews.

Sutton was at pains to stress that, despite the success of Coolship and other export brands, Elgood’s remains committed to its pubs. The brewery owns 35, some in isolated Fenland villages and Sutton admits it’s a challenging area, with Adnams and Greene King on the doorstep and an ever-growing number of micros.

She says the pub trade has been hit by the smoking ban and drink-driv-ing regulations. “In the mid-1980s it was hard to make a profit from pubs and then we were hit by the recession. But now our pubs are doing well.”

She says food is essential and proved the point by buying the Reindeer in Norwich, which has established a good reputation for quality food and drink.

Only 20% of production now goes to the tied estate and Elgood’s sells beer to Carlsberg and Heineken and has a reciprocal deal with St Austell in Cornwall. The company also sells beer to Matthew Clark, Small Beer, Utobeer and the Wetherspoon pub chain, which has Plum Porter specially brewed for it.

The Elgood’s sisters are clearly enjoying life. “Brewing is a challenge — but it’s also fun,” Sutton stresses. To prove the point, the brewery has produced a Halloween beer with a pump clip showing the three in capes and tall hats with the title Which Witch is Which? Take your pick. Clearly they’re all good at driving evil spirits out of Wisbech.