A Cask Ale Week Story: From Grain To Glass With Butcombe Brewing Co

Transcription 

I’m James Marinos from French & Jupps maltings, and today we’re going to be taking a closer look into a grain to glass journey with our farming partners and brewing partners at Butcombe Brewing Co and find out a little bit more about how they been crafting some of the finest award-winning bears since 1978. We will be meeting some of the people who’s passion and experience fuels that journey, as well as some of the secrets behind their famed Butcombe Original in addition to what their vision of the future of cask ale looks like.

My name is Martin Firth, im a trading Director at North Herts Farmers Grain Ltd, North Herts Farmers was founded in 1991 with view to joining up local farmers, grain marketing and local consumers requirements and we’ve been a long-term supplier to French & Jupps since that time.

We’re at Great Munden Farm near Ware in North Hertfordshire, we’re just down the road from French & Jupps road miles to the maltings are very low.

Im Ben Pledger im the farm manager at Great Munden Farm in North Hertfordshire we grow combinable crops over about 2000 acres, Winter Barley, Winter Wheat and we have a range of environmental crops under SFI and countryside stewardship as well.

Barley is one of our lower carbon footprints crops on the farm. Less inputs compared to winter wheat and usually cultivated and drilled at a decent time of year, so we’re not over cultivating .

So we are we’re planting areas of wild bird mixes wildflower margins, pollen and nectar margins to link wildlife across the farm. Also take poorly producing arable land out of production so that we’re not spending a lot of money producing lower yields on bad performing areas, where is much better to put that down for wildlife habitats.

My name is Paul King, I’m the managing director of French & Jupps. We are great Britain’s oldest Maltster. I have a deep love of all things beer, beer has been my life from being a brewer in my younger years, and moving on to become brewmaster for Anheuser-Busch and then chief Brewer for SABMiller. I’m very grateful now to be able to continue that journey with French and Jupps and to make some of the finest roasted malts, for some of the most wonderful brewers out there.

So here at French & Jupps we make 14 fine roasted malts from the very lightest delicate cara malts, that impact some wonderful sweetness sugars caramel and also a lovely array of dried fruits all through to our rich very intense patent malts such as darkest chocolates and into  black malts and roasted barley.

We treat out patent malts in a slightly different way to our crystal malts with our patent malts  we go through the stages of steeping and the early phases of germination, but then swiftly move onto onto our kiln, and we kiln dry that malt and take the moisture out before we move it onto the roasting drum, and its in the roasting drum that we elevate the temperature of a number of hours up to around 250°C and gradually pick up that lovely rich dark colour.

But it’s not just about colour. It’s also about flavour, we look at flavour in a deep complex way typically maltsters will look at around eight characteristics for flavour typically homing in on maltiness, sweetness, nuttiness. We’ve taken it to another level and look at around 50 components of the malts flavour and call out some very unique aspects.

Sustainability is a key part of our journey, and we pay great attention to it. We’re all about local sourcing for all our materials and barley is typically source within 30 miles of our maltings here in Stanstead Abbotts. Equally we look at the electricity we buy and we buy electricity produced through 70% renewables.

We’ve been working with the fabulous team at Butcombe Brewing for a little over two years now it’s been a fantastic journey, the team at Butcombe, but also at Liberation Group and it’s just been an absolute delight to see the awards they’ve been winning both at a beer level, but also at a pub level. They are one of the greatest partners you could possibly hope for.

Mike Jordan, Group Head Brewer for Liberation Group. I stay inspired by travelling the world tasting beers from many different countries, different continents, looking at how different types of alcohol are manufactured. We also visit other breweries, maltings, hop farms. Specifically to French and Jupps we use the black malt to give the nice dark amber colour to the to the original beer.

We use the specialist malt to give us more interesting flavours and colours that we cant get from the base malt. This is a pint of Butcombe Original so we use the French and Jupps black malt to give us this unique dark amber colour that we wouldn’t be able to get from just using the regular Maris Otter. The consistency of the French and Jupps malt means that we can keep the colour the same from batch to batch.

Im Barry, I’m one of the brewers up at Butcombe Brewery. I actually grew up in the village next to to Butcombe and at the time I was working in a craft bakers in Weston-super-Mare, I got wind of a brewery starting up in Butcombe. So, I had a stronger passion for beer than I did bread at the time so I thought id go and have a look there, had an interview and got the job.

The actual original started as the name of Butcombe Bitter, Simon was the founder of the brewery and he was a manager director of Courage Western at the time. He had friends in the industry, brewers who one of them John Wilmot, helped him with the recipe for Butcombe bitter.

They first trial brewed it, and after the third brew they got it right. It was the only beer we brewed for 20 years so, Butcombe bitter as it was known, we concentrated on the consistency and the quality of it. I feel that’s why it’s still the iconic beer it is today.

With the original, we’ve always used the what is regarded as the Rolls-Royce of malts for English style beers which is Maris Otter. We’ve started using French & Jupps five years ago and we felt they were the right fit for the company, they had the same passion and desire for quality that we do, so that blends well with us using their specialist malts in our Original bitter.

I’m Simon. I’m a Brewer at Butcombe Brewery. I’ve been working at Butcombe for about 8 1/2 years. This is our main beer, the beer that started it all and we’ve been brewing it since 1978. It is the same ingredients and the same recipe that’s been carried all the way through. It’s more of a traditional style beer, but it’s stood the test of time it keeps the tradition going through, even though there’s a changing of styles of once what people want in beers, this one keeps its staple all the way through and keeps that Base quality right there.

With cask ale its all attention to quality all through the process taking real care into the product so particularly at the end of the process when we’re packaging it its about getting the findings correct we take a lot of care into getting the findings just right so getting the clarity just right and the yeast content, we have to look at that under a microscope make sure it’s packaged just right so you get that right conditioning in the cask and then pass it off to the pubs and hopefully they can look after it easily. It’s still not an easy beer to look after in the cellar to take care of and then pass on the best product to their customers. 

Cask beer the way it’s evolving among the whole craft beer scene that we’ve had for a number of years now is perhaps slowing down but us we are actually in growth and so I see the quality of cask ale becoming more of a premium product. Cask you’ve really got to care for it. It’s conditioned within the cask itself. It’s a live product and you’ve got to know what you’re doing. With beer requiring that passion and care we see the customers and also craft Brewers are turning back to cask and that’s where we see that our beer is a real favourite within the South West 

We are now the eighth best selling cask ale in the country. The best and the biggest in the South West.

Original has grown to be the number one in the South West and is also in the top 10 nationally.

Cheers to our suppliers French and Jupps, all our customers that drink Butcombe in the pubs all the supermarkets that supply it and here’s to cask week!

Cheers!