Can beer have anything to do with the meaning of life?
Well I suppose that really depends on the beer. If you’re talking about the mass-produced lagers, keg bitters and famous black stouts then I think the answer is probably ‘no’ unless the meaning of life is to go out and get wasted on a Friday night. Now I may not be able to tell you exactly what the meaning of life is but I think I can tell you a few things that it’s not and that’s one of them.
So you’ve probably worked out that I’m talking about Real Ale – but what is it that singles out Real Ale from mass-produced beers. In its simplest form I would have to say it’s really only one thing; that the ale is delivered from the keg to your glass but pulling on a hand pump rather than being brought up from the cellar by pressure from artificially introduced gas (Carbon Dioxide or CO2). So let me narrow this category of ale down a bit further. There are many beers out there that are produced in the Real Ale style but that still use certain production methods that, in my opinion make them less ‘real’.
Burtonisation is a word that many people have probably never heard of. Unless you’re connected with or very interested in the UK brewing industry you’ve almost certainly never come across it. In its simplest form it consists of adding sulphate (usually in the form of gypsum) to the water used for brewing beer to bring out the flavour of hops in pale beers. Historically it was believed that beers brewed in Burton upon Trent were superior to beers brewed in other parts of England and so it became common practice to try to reproduce the mineral content of Burton water in other parts of the country and this became known as Burtonisation. In many of the larger real ale breweries, however, this is taken to the extreme. Shepherd Neame in Kent, for example, will strip out all the naturally occurring minerals from the local water and replace them with the minerals found in the water used in Burton upon Trent thus removing any local characteristic from the water used. Personally I just can’t see this unnatural act as a good thing and so I’m going to eliminate any beers produced in this way from my personal list of real Real Ales.
Now I can’t keep using the term “real Real Ale” because it sounds a bit silly so I’m going to have to come up with a new term to describe what I’m talking about – so how about Natural Ale?
Having come up with this name, what does a brewer need to do (or not do) to fit my categorisation of Natural Ale? Let’s start with the ingredients:
Water – We’ve already partly covered this, the water has to be local and not Burtonised. I think tap water, due to chlorination, would also have to be eliminated as a suitable source so the water must come from a local river, stream, spring or well and not be chemically interfered with.
Malted Barley – I don’t expect small local breweries to malt their own barley but I think it makes sense that the barley used has at least come from the same county or within a 50-mile radius because we want this to be a local product exhibiting local characteristics. Whether the brewery uses malted barley or a concentrate it is important that the maltster is not adding in any artificial preservative or other additives. The same would go for any other grains that might be used (for example in wheat beers).
Hops – This may surprise you but I’m not going to be draconian and insist that all hops are grown locally to meet my Natural Ale standard. I think breweries should offer beers with locally grown hops and that they have little choice but to use local hops if they wish to produce a Green Hop Ale (because of the short time between picking and using) but there are now many hop varieties with a wide range of flavours so I’m going to accept that breweries may wish to get a particular hop flavour for their beer and that the hop may have to come from a little further afield. There’s also the topic of whole hops versus pelletised hops; the purist in me would love to dictate that only whole hop flowers are used to make Natural Beer but again I have to accept the practicalities of the situation – not to mention the fact that I would be eliminating at least 95% of even small local breweries if I banned pellets. Let’s just say I’d favour beers that use whole hops especially in the dry-hop stage.
I’m not going to make any dictates on the Yeast used, though anyone with an interest in wild yeast might like to read my article on Sacred Ale. As for other ingredients such as herbs – well I think that if you’re going to the trouble to make a herb beer then the herbs used should be local and fresh or freshly dried (rather than something imported that has been dried for goodness knows how long).
But there is one more ingredient that I do think is essential if you want to make really great Natural Ale and that is Love. I’m not talking about the soppy, sentimental variety but I think that any brewer who doesn’t love making beer; who isn’t putting something of himself into every step of the process of the production of beer can only ever make good beer – never great beer.
Where does this Natural Ale fit in with the meaning of life? When beer (or any other product for that matter) is made with love from natural local ingredients then that love will come out in the final product. When you take a mouthful of beer that has been made in this way you should be able to tell the difference – you should be able to hear the clear running water, see the fields of golden barley, smell the hop flowers on the vine, feel the love that has gone into the brewing process and know in the taste that this really is what life is all about.
Natural Understanding 