So they do make beer like they used to? Swinging!
By Phil Mellows
In a tidy piece of beer and music matching, a swing band played at the launch last month of Unbarred Brewery’s 1940s-style IPA, Morale. It was a gentle, lilting accompaniment to a relatively gentle beer for Brighton-based Unbarred, which tends to specialise in boldly flavoured, edgier brews, as its name suggests.
I was reminded of the time I was into swing, and considered very odd, in the 1980s, retro ahead of my time, perhaps. Now there are loads of young swing bands around and an interest in old music is now cool – as is the current fashion for retro-style beers.
Of course, traditional family brewers never stopped brewing these beers, but there is a distinct trend among modern, hipster brewers to add a bitter and, most recently, a mild to their portfolio.
Unbarred is taking this a step further by basing Morale, available on cask in selected pubs around the South East and available can-conditioned online, on an actual recipe from the 1940s, unearthed by beer historian Ron Pattinson. In fact, it’s a recipe for an ale that was to become Whitbread Trophy, which older readers might remember (or have even drunk while listening to swing).
Even with a recipe, determining exactly what finished up in the glass in those days is difficult. Pattinson’s blog, Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, adds up to a fascinating study of the frequently surprising things we can dig out of old brewing records, and the many more questions they raise.
Among the challenges for modern brewers are sourcing matching ingredients and then tinkering with the brewing process to achieve the ‘best’ result. Whether that matches the beer they were drinking back then, we can’t really know.
Unbarred’s head brewer Jordan Mower used Chevallier barley, popular in the 19th Century, for the malt backbone of Morale; a traditional yeast strain called London III and, following the recipe, invert sugar.
Interestingly, he decided not to use the original Fuggles hops but, with the help of Jon Stringer of hop merchant Charles Faram, chose a pair of modern British hops that ultimately derive from Fuggles: Olicana and Harlequin. Significantly, both are from the Cascade branch of the Fuggles family, Cascade being the hop that kicked off the US-style IPA profiles that now dominate craft beer.
According to Stringer, using straight Fuggles would have disappointed drinkers whose palates have adapted to punchier, fruity flavours. The result is a British IPA with a twist – and certainly not what they drank in the 1940s.
Mower’s thinking reveals something of what’s behind the retro trend among craft brewers. Not quite reproducing what’s gone before but looking to the past to find something new to intrigue and relieve the hop-blasted craft palate.
He cites his mentor as Iain Masson, a former Greene King brewer with roots in traditional ales who has since acted as consultant to a number of new breweries. “It has always been about heritage styles for me, even while we are pushing the boundaries,” says Mower.
“Recently, we’ve found people are looking for weaker beers, there’s a need in the market for more sessionable strengths. With Morale it was a question of getting the balance right, creating a beer you want to go back to and have another pint, rather than getting a big hit from two-thirds.”
At 3.9% abv, Morale might be the weakest beer Unbarred has yet produced, and that does somehow suit the lazy, laid-back mood of swing music… one more time.
Watch Unbarred’s video of the story behind its Morale IPA here.
Photo: Everett Collection/Shutterstock