Friday Flick: John Bexon and Greene King's Five-X Vats

In Britain, "head brewer" is the term used for the master brewer, and in the larger ale breweries that usually means a man in loafers, not rubber boots. They oversee operations, head new product development, buy raw ingredients and so on--they don't haul grain sacks. The head brewer at Greene King over the past decade has been John Bexon, the man who took me on a tour of the brewery when I was there last month.

Despite some scorn locals heap on Greene King (too big, to acquisitive), it is one of the most traditional breweries in England, and to my American eyes, a real treasure of brewing history. The brewery recently spent 3 million pounds to replace old equipment, but unlike Adnams, decided to stick with old, quirky coppers. "We could have gone mash-filter, we could have gone lauter, but no, we said we’re staying with what we know. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Okay, we could have gotten a bit more efficiency by doing it, but I think you lose the authenticity." At a certain point in the last thirty years, every old brewery in Britain had to make a decision about whether and how to modernize, and they all answered the question a little differently.

Greene King went with tradition: an old tower brewery that does literally tower above the beautiful town of Bury St. Edmunds (see pictures below), beer is made much the same here as it has been for decades. One of the signature products--and one of the most important beers brewed in England--is Strong Suffolk Ale, sold in the US as Olde Suffolk. The beer is a part of living history, made by blending a young (mild) ale with vintage, 12% strong ale vatted two years on oak. This is a tradition that goes back centuries, but what makes Strong Suffolk important is that the vatted ale, called XXXXX, takes on the character of the wild yeasts that are resident in the wood of those old vats. Thankfully, more breweries are experimenting with wood-aged beer, but since Gale's has moved up to Fuller's, none from England have the continuity of using original oak vats like Greene King.

It's a remarkable product, one actually designated by the government by covenant--like Stilton cheese, which must be brewed in one of four counties--that can only be produced in Suffolk. Blended with between 10-17% old ale, Strong Suffolk has a malty base leavened with a vinous balsamic character. It's rich, warming, creamy, and elegant, like a Burgundy. If you can locate a bottle, you'll have a perfect winter ale to enjoy next to a roaring fire.

When we arrived at the vats, I asked John to stop and speak for a moment about them on video.



Some photos:

The view from atop Greene King over Bury St. Edmunds.

At Greene King, this counts as "push-button" brewing.

The mash tun.

Greene King has a campus of 44 acres, and subterranean pipes connect the brewery underneath Crown Street.

Square fermenters are common in British ale breweries--and are the norm at Greene King.

The tasting cellar.

Greene King

It is difficult to understand the biases and preferences of a country without first understanding the larger context. In the US, if you want to brew and sell a beer in most states, all you have to do is file the paperwork. With third-party distribution, small breweries have a decent route to entering the market. When beer drinkers walk into a pub, they'll find beers the publican has learned his customers like--no matter which brewery made the beer.

Right. In Britain, the waters are muddied by a system that puts small breweries at a grave disadvantage. The majority of pubs are owned by breweries. In these you will find guest taps, but you'll also find a lot of the host's beers. A pretty small minority (perhaps readers know the figure) are "freehouses"--independent, and able to serve any beers the like. The big breweries and pub companies own hundreds or thousands of pubs, and tend to dominate regions. (For the visitor, that last part is pretty cool; you find yourself in different "catchment areas"--Fuller's in London, Green King in Suffolk, Marston's around Burton, and so on. Thornbridge even has four.) Very often, these pubs are the picture of the quintessential English pub--lots of wood, a cozy fire, cask engines, and opinionated punters sitting at the bar. I am molecularly drawn to these places and can, like a hound, detect one even around corners and down the road. It will gnaw at me to lose these when I return.

A secondary problem is grocery sales. There are a few companies that control most of the grocery trade, and these outlets want beer at rock-bottom prices. While they do pass these along to the consumer, it means breweries make next to nothing per unit. Only extremely high-volume breweries can afford to make money this way. The little guys can actually lose money.

Which brings us to Greene King. The brewery now operates over 2000 pubs and has acquired several brands--Morland, Hardys and Hansons, and Ruddles. It owns Belhaven--which we're visiting tomorrow--though the latter is still independent. Their size and ubiquity, the prevalence of a few brands like Old Speckled Hen and Abbot Ale, and their own flagship, a 3.5% bitter called "IPA" are things that rankle certain folks. On my way to Bury St Edmunds from London, I kept hearing quite harsh criticism. I expected to find one of those uncomfortable corporate environment where everyone's used mandated jargon so long they don't realize it sounds creepy to outsiders. I expected focus-grouped, insipid beers and a sterile, lifeless brewery.

Instead, I found quite the opposite: Greene King is a hodgepodge of facilities and eras, and it feels like a small town unto itself. A traditional tower brewery, it features old coppers and the least interference by technology of any facility we've seen. They vat a 12% strong ale in ancient wooden vessels that slowly sour the beer over the course of two years--the only extant use of this practice I know about. It links their current operation to a lineage that dates back hundreds of years--worthy of historical recognition and protection. Strong Suffolk Ale is a gem in beer's treasure chest, and to my mind puts the brewery rarefied company. Even the despised IPA is a fabulous beer, a tour de force of flavor and balance for such a small beer. (The name is, obviously, unfortunate.)

The irony is that Greene King is hated for being a kind of destructive force--ruining beers and breweries on its way to world dominance--rather than the preserver of tradition and craft. It's a very strange paradox for the visitor--Americans in particular are suckers for tradition. (Our country was 23 years old when Graham Greene's great grandfather founded the brewery.) Yet I understand that there are other concerns, and whenever any one brewery begins to dominate a market, it has a distorting effect. Still, there seems to be little of that--Greene King brews about half as much beer as Sierra Nevada and has a tiny slice of the British beer market. I don't know the particulars of their various buy-outs, but it appears that in some cases, they were picking up breweries in the process of collapse (not uncommon in England, sadly).

From the outside, it looks like this. The British beer market is in the midst of serious churn. On the one side are producers of light lager that sell for nothing in the grocery stores. This is a direct challenge to pubs, which support ale brewers. Whatever a person's opinion of Greene King (and CAMRA's position seems absurd), it's impossible to think of them as the foe of small ale breweries. The real foe makes cheap beer without concern for taste, tradition, or culture. Small craft breweries and traditional ale breweries are on the same team. Know your enemies indeed, and that means knowing who's not.

Who Wants to Try Some Beer From 1936?

Really? I don't believe it:

However, like Highlander, there can be only one, and that one is Jeff Alworth. Jeff's entry was posted after the deadline, and so his win is sure to upset a few people, not least Matt Lovatt who submitted his entry 4 minutes before the competition deadline. To add further insult to injury, Jeff didn't even email me to tell me about his contribution, it just popped up in a Google alert (come on, we all have Google alerts on our names don't we?).

That's Zak Avery, who recently held a contest to see who would take home a 1936 bottle of Coronation Ale from Greene King. The idea was to get folks to wax poetic about beer and time and then select a winner. I didn't manage to get my post done on time, but liked the topic enough to write about it anyway. And miracle of miracles, I was apparently granted an extension on the assignment, and was rewarded with this beauty:


The back-story is fascinating. Back in January 1936, Edward VIII became the King of England, following the death of his father, George V. Apparently it was customary for breweries to offer special beers celebrating the event, and so Greene King whipped up Coronation Ale. However, scandal burned through Buckingham Palace as it emerged that the new king planned to marry--prepare yourselves--an American divorcée. Such were the politics of the time that this threatened to bring down the government.

Yes, amazing as it may seem to our American minds, the mostly-ceremonial position of hereditary monarch does actually have some swing in Britain--and had more so then. The Prime Minister would have resigned and sent the country into a crisis. Edward had a decision to make: the lady or the throne. He rather admirably chose the lady (though he apparently harbored less-admirable pro-Nazi sympathies, so maybe this was all for the best). He ruled only 325 days and was never formally coronated, and so Green King's cellar of special beers sat, unlabeled, for 74 years.

If, somehow, Zak thinks he can get me this beer, and if he does, I plan to do something big. As I mentioned in my winning post, beer is a product of time and place, and stands as a historical document. This isn't just any 74-year-old beer, it's one wrapped up in political intrigue and international politics.

In any case, thanks to Zak for spreading the wealth, and thanks to all the entrants who got their submissions in on time. Please don't kill me if ever we should cross paths. I'll buy the first round--