High alcohol, massive hop content, lemongrass, blackberries... in the world of brewing, anything is possible, and nothing is sacred. Welcome to the brave new world, says Nigel Huddleston

The Rover’s Return must be about the only place left in Britain where customers can order a ‘pint’ at the bar without the need for any sort of elaboration on what sort of pint they mean.

Thankfully, for the rest of us, the beer choice on offer has matured far beyond a standard pot of warm bitter to embrace wheat, fruit and lambic beers in addition to lagers with strength levels ranging from unleaded to weapons grade.

But a new breed of creative brewers are moving things on to the next level.

GO FOR A SPIN...

Just as bartenders have spent the last decade reinventing classics ‘with a twist’, custodians of the hops and barley have been playing with the trusted beer formats to come up with fascinating beers that are nearly, but not quite, what we’ve become used to.

The use of oak – particularly ex-malt whisky barrels – to mature beer has become increasingly de rigeur, with the likes of Innis & Gunn, Harviestoun and Fuller’s leading the way.

But the inventiveness of others in using different ingredients to twist classic beer styles has had a lower profile.

Take wheat beer, a largely continental affair with two classic styles: the German, characterised by bananas, cloves and medicinal TCP-like notes; and the Dutch/Belgian, which heads into more citrus fruit and coriander spice, the very ingredients used in the brewing process.

But British brewers have begun to put their own spin on these styles. For example Sharp’s in Cornwall is adding honey, and conditioning its beer for six months with spices including cinnamon, to produce a fresher, sweeter style in its Honey Spiced Wheat.

Most Scottish microbrewers

are just a bit too traditional

and dull – James Watt

Such creations are stretching the art of the brewer who traditionally has to balance just four ingredients: water, hops, malted barley and yeast – with maybe the odd variation in cereal content along the way.

Phrases such as ‘molecular brewing’ have been bandied about and more than one brewer has been unhelpfully saddled with the burden of being the brewing industry’s Heston Blumenthal.

Certainly the fact that so many ‘modern twist’ beers rely on fruit, herbs and spices that are normally found in the kitchen has been a factor – and more exponents of culinary forms of brewing are emerging all the time.

Derbyshire’s Thornbridge has won acclaim for its Jaipur IPA, which skilfully balances bitter hops with honeyed sweetness, and it has gone on to produce Juno, a spiced ale matured on cinnamon sticks, and Winster, a blond beer infused with lemongrass and the peppery spice grains of paradise.

The culinary influence is apparent too in Taiphoon, a golden ale laced with lemongrass and coriander, and brewed by Hop Back of Salisbury, as an accompaniment to oriental food.

Hall & Woodhouse is another brewer that’s taken a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall approach to brewing,
using ginger for its Blandford Fly, raspberry leaves in its summery Long Days, and damsons and liquorice in Poacher’s Choice, each a tweak on a traditional base English ale. The brewer even drafted in the River Cottage chef himself to collaborate on the nettle-infused Stinger ale. Rick Stein has also had his own brew, in the form of the fennel-tinged Chalky’s Bite, made by Sharp’s Brewery.

SWEET UP AND SPICE

Chucking extra stuff into a brew is, in itself, nothing new. Belgium has a rich heritage in fruit beer, normally produced by steeping the whole fruit in a sour lambic style beer. While in the British-style fruit and spice beers, the extra ingredients tend to balance bitterness rather than sourness, creating a distinct, as yet uncategorised style all of their own.

But the Scottish brewer Williams Brothers has fashioned a point-of-difference in recreating ancient beer recipes. Its Fraoch ale has its roots in a 16th-century Scots-Gaelic recipe, made with sweet gale and heather flowers, while the sweet-sour Grozet has gooseberries, bogmyrtle and meadowsweet.

Pine, spruce, seaweed and elderberries are all on the annual Williams Brothers foraging list. Its most recent creation, the summery Golden Days, is a more modern variant containing elderflower for floral sweetness and adapting the brewing process to extract more hop flavour.

It’s made by mixing lemon juice into a ‘hop tea’ to raise the pH level of the brew. This makes the hops more solvent, allowing extra flavour to be released.

More exponents of culinary

styles of brewing are

emerging all the time

‘Our philosophy has always been to use local ingredients to make historic ales, and now we’re doing it with a contemporary take,’ says owner Bruce Williams. ‘The aim is always to get as much hop flavour into the beer as we can.’

STATESIDE

Modern takes on classic styles aren’t confined to UK brewers either. The growth of the US micro-brewer has been largely built on the most straightforward twist of all – steadily turning up the hop quotient to produce increasingly more extreme versions of the classic English India Pale Ale style, or, arguably, returning the style towards the way it used to be when it was first created as a travel-hardy export to the British Empire’s Asian outposts.

Goose Island remains the most widely available example in the UK, but others, such as Titan from Denver’s Great Divide, have arrived on the market and are worth seeking out (see box below).

Even more extreme have been US takes on the traditional barley wine style of beer, such as Samuel Adams Utopias, which ratchets up the already high abv levels to a world record 25% abv, delivers on taste like the most luxuriously gloopy sweet sherry, and comes expensively-packaged in a miniature copper kettle.

TWIST AND STOUT

Alaskan Brewing Co’s Smoked Porter is a more sensible affair, taking inspiration both from the English style of its name and the German smoked rauchbier style.

The Americans have taken inspiration from Belgium, with Coors’ Blue Moon based on an abbey beer style, and now being pushed in the UK with an orange wedge garnish serve.

Goose Island’s Pere Jacques is made with ‘loads of malt and Belgian yeast’ and is a US take on a strong Belgian ale style that was inspired by a trip around a Trappist brewery.

Sometimes new twists are hit onby accident. Oregon brewer Widmer Brothers has been credited with creating a distinct US style of wheat beer, which it first made because it couldn’t accommodate another yeast strain at its plant, so used a German altbier yeast from a beer it already produced, rather than ship in a wheat beer yeast strain.

‘Some people gave us heat for it,’ says co-founder Rob Widmer, ‘but it’s our own interpretation of a wheat beer.’ The beer is served with a slice of lemon on the lip of the glass. ‘Lemon’s a good flavour enhancer – you use it in food and beer is food,’ explains Widmer.

The US thirst for experimentation has been the inspiration for many of the twists in style that are now being expounded by British brewers.

Scottish micro-brewer Brewdog has been among those heading down the whisky barrel-ageing route, including Paradox stout matured in Smokehead and Bowmore butts, with batches of Caol Ila, Invergordon and Ardbeg-aged beers in the pipeline.

Managing director James Watt explains: ‘We take a lot from the US craft brewers who are much more adventurous in their beer styles and seem to be much more open-minded towards brewing.

‘Most Scottish microbrewers are just a bit too traditional and dull, and they are only appealing to middle-aged men with beer bellies and sandals.’

Even those people might not be able to get away with ordering just ‘a pint’ for too much longer.