I can recall interviewing Bill Sharp, the founder of Sharp’s Brewery, in the late 1990s, when I was assistant editor of Cornwall Today magazine. Two things remain with me from that day. Firstly, I was only just getting into beer and he seemed quite impatient with me when talking about the process, me struggling to keep up with my ever-rusty shorthand. (Still not as humiliating, though, as the day I interviewed, or tried to interview, former prime minister Edward Heath, which made Parkinson and Meg Ryan seem like an old pals’ reunion.)
The second thing was the map on the wall. It listed all Bill’s customers and he talked me through several saying how each liked their Doom Bar delivered. Some liked it straight from the brewery where it would sit and condition in their own cellar, some liked it conditioned in the brewery and delivered almost ready to tap. And there were various other landlord foibles to which Bill and his team would gladly cater.
Of course, Sharp’s then was little more than a single industrial unit. Now it has its own postcode and is visible from space.
I was reminded of the old days at Sharp’s when watching a new video on the brewery’s YouTube channel, with former head brewer and now Coors’ head of craft brewing and innovation, Stuart Howe, beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones and Sharp’s retail and hospitality manager, Ed Hughes.
Now, let us take a corporate pinch of salt here. The video has been put up on Sharp’s own channel so the trio are unlikely to peer in the glass, take a sip and ask for something more interesting. Far to say, even, they’re all in love, Stuart saying his first pint in 2001 by the Camel estuary, with Bill Sharp, helped him make up his mind to come to Cornwall, Adrian praising the beer’s bittersweet, berry qualities and calling it a “spritely” beer.
While I’m not sure I could generate quite this romantic fondness for a pint of Doom, I do get a little tired with so many people telling me it’s a crap beer. It’s patently not. It’s the UK’s biggest selling cask ale from Cornwall to the top of Scotland and even, I gather, on the islands beyond, and you don’t get to that position by brewing a crap beer. And it’s not like it’s made with dull ingredients. There’s a fairly complex malt bill of pale ale, crystal, roasted barley and caramalt, balanced with Aurora and Northern Brewer hops.
We live in a world where young hipsters are challenging British IBU convention and posing a threat to tooth enamel everywhere when they’re not trying to see how much hop flavour they can get into a black beer or coaxing wild yeast into creating British sours.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a still a big – and when I say big I mean huge – market for proper, well made old fashioned brown bitter. And long may it continue, although I fear the need to, at some point, establish a Campaign for Brown Beer as it lurches toward endangered species status.
I appreciate that the push-button, seven-day-a-week brewing operation at Sharp’s probably falls some way outside the definition of artisan, but current head brewer Carl Heron tends to the Doom Bar legacy with as much care Stuart did when it was his baby. And, of course, there’s the rest of the Sharp’s range for those who think Doom is not their thing. Highly recommended, if you haven’t tried them, are the 330ml Connoisseurs Choice beers.
When Molson Coors bought Sharp’s in 2011, there were fears the brewery in Cornwall would be closed and Doom Bar and its stablemates would become Burton-on-Trent beers. So far, this has not come to pass, and the amount of investment the global concern has put into the brewery at Rock suggests it’s not moving anytime soon.
Doom Bar, of course, is only as good as the cellarmanship of the pub it is served in. Worth while, though, giving it a try if you haven’t for a while and seeing if you can pick out those flavours Messrs Howe, Hughes and Tierney-Jones found.
You can watch the video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWG_TNxzQhE
