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FOOD & DRINK
For the love of brewing
From the Courage monopoly to rumours of revolution and a flourishing new brew culture, Andrew Swift charts Bristol’s beer history
O
ne of my earliest memories of Bristol is of walking along the harbourside, when it was undeveloped and still looked like a working port. What I remember being struck by most, though, was a rich, tangy aroma hanging in the air, which came, I discovered, from Courage’s brewery, rearing fortress-like above the river. When I was eventually able to satisfy my curiosity and sample Courage’s brews in the city’s pubs, I soon found that it was difficult to drink much else. Courage owned over 80% of Bristol’s pubs and stood on a site where a brewery had been established around 1730. In 1788, it was taken over by Philip George, and George’s it remained until it was swallowed up by Courage’s in 1961. By then, it was the largest brewery in the South West and the only one left in Bristol, having seen off or absorbed its competitors. Even if you found a Bristol pub that wasn’t owned by Courage’s, beer styles had, in most cases, been whittled down to one – bitter. It could have been worse, though. If the Campaign for Real Ale hadn’t taken up the cudgels for cask-conditioned beer back in 1971, carbonated keg beer would have been all that was on offer. As the demand for real ale grew, a new generation of small brewers sprang up. In Bristol, these included the Fleece & Firkin on Thomas Street, Hardington’s in Bedminster and Smiles in Colston Yard. Sadly, the only survivor from those times is Bath Ales, which has been brewing in South Gloucestershire since 1998. Courage was still the major player, though. It was hard to imagine a day when, like the docks, it would be part of history. Then, in May 1999, it was announced that production would be transferred to Tadcaster in Yorkshire, and the brewery closed. It was clear that the future of brewing in the city would be very different, but for the time being, things went on much as before. The first sign of things to come was in 2004, when Zerodegrees opened a brewpub in an old tramshed on Colston Street, brewing
Small Bar on King Street and, right, brewing at Bristol’s newest brewery Newtown Park
48 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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SEPTEMBER 2021
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such exotic offerings as black lager and mango beer. The conversion of the tramshed into a bar-cum-brewery was the work of the architect (and later mayor) George Ferguson, who was also planning to open his own brewery across the river in Bedminster. The Bristol Beer Factory (BBF), which he set up with Simon Bartlett, occupied part of the former Ashton Gate Brewery, which had been taken over by George’s and closed in 1933. Here the emphasis was on traditional beer styles – not just golden ales and bitters but those that had fallen out of favour, such as milk stouts and brown ales. The next brewery to open was in 2007, when Arbor Ales was established at the Old Tavern in Stapleton. Since then, it has moved three times, to larger premises, and since 2015 has occupied a halfacre site in Easton. The following year, Great Western Brewery was set up at Hambrook, where it still operates today, although it is shortly to move to a new Hop Union Brewery in Brislington. Then, in January 2010, Glen Dawkins, the owner of Dawkins Taverns – five traditional Bristol pubs with an emphasis on real ale – took over a brewery at Timsbury, which he later relocated to Easton. By now, with five breweries based in and around the city, prospects for Bristol’s beer drinkers had never been better. Rumours of a revolution that had long been brewing across the Atlantic, however, were growing ever more insistent. The term ‘craft beer’ had been coined in America to describe beer brewed by small, independent, innovative brewers. It soon assumed an international dimension, with brewers adopting, adapting and assimilating beer styles from around the world, using a seemingly endless array of new hop varieties, and adding the most unlikely ingredients to their brews. Very little of what they produced tasted much like a pint of Courage Best – even worse, for some real-ale aficionados, most of it was technically keg beer, even though its resemblance to old-style keg was even more distant.
