Burton should be the capital of beer once more

By Phil Mellows

The moment you step out of Burton-upon-Trent railway station, you know you’re in a brewing town. Punctuating the skyline, those nests of tall steel towers gleaming in the sunlight are full of beer, and they belong to global giant Molson Coors. Marston’s Brewery, now merged with Carlsberg, is further out, and there is a sprinkling of small independents.

Yet that’s nothing compared with Burton in the 19th Century, when more than 30 breweries clustered together here to make it the brewing capital of the world.

I used to visit the Staffordshire town at least once a month in the 1990s when I worked on the in-house newspaper for Bass, then Britain’s biggest brewer. It was broken up between Coors and another multinational, Interbrew (now AB-Inbev), at the turn of this century.

Now, when I go back, as I did Easter weekend for National Bass Day, something always niggles me. Why doesn’t Burton make more of all this beer?

The town doesn’t leap out as a tourist destination, of course. Victorian industrial centres are not exactly pretty. Though they’ve done a good job on the meadows alongside the River Trent, now a nice place to stroll and relax. If it’s not raining. There was even a wedding on when I visited.

When it comes to celebrating the history, Molson Coors’ decision last year to close the National Brewing Museum, which it inherited from Bass, and turn it into offices, was a serious setback. Burtonians took to the streets in protest, and East Staffordshire County Council stepped in. It’s now working with the National Brewery Heritage Trust, a charity set up to protect the invaluable archives housed at the museum, to plan a new home for them at the Town House in the High Street, where William Bass began brewing in the 18th Century.

This is a big project, promising all kinds of interactive experiences in the way of modern museums, and won’t open until 2025 – even if it’s on schedule. Until then, an experienced collections officer, funded by Molson Coors and appointed only this week, will look after this precious history.

Hopefully, the new centre will provide a strong attraction for visitors. But there should be more. Burton’s streets can provide living exhibits in the form of pubs and bars and brewery taps that celebrate beer today, not just the past.

As I reported in an earlier post, IPA was first commercially produced here 200 years ago – and IPA is the beer style that has dominated and driven the craft beer revolution that has swept the world in the 21st Century. It’s a very different kind of IPA, of course, but there must be millions of drinkers on the planet who would want to visit the origin of their favourite brew and find out more.

Burton has some great traditional pubs. Cooper’s Tavern is a shrine to Draught Bass, serving pints straight from the barrel. Burton Bridge Inn is another of my favourite places to drink, a brewpub that has revived Burton Ale, first brewed by Ind Coope before being dropped by its global successor – and I see another local firm, Gates, is making its own version.

And Burton can tell a story that binds its heritage to a vibrant modern beer culture. There’s now a bar called Beeropolis that at least sounds like it’s rising to the challenge. The live, online beer board suggests it is testing the boundaries with a Mikkeller pale, a Wiper & True plum pudding porter, and a cherry cola sour from Vault on the taps alongside a couple of cask ales from brewers I don’t know.

The town could, and should, be bristling with this kind of thing. It could, and should, become a capital of beer once more.