Homebrewed beer has a poor reputation in the UK. It probably has an equally bad press in other countries for that matter. Cans of slimy gloop poured into plastic buckets, sprinkled with granules of yeast and then left for a week or so produces a liquid which, whilst being alcoholic, is pretty far removed from the bright sparkling beverage many of us know and love. Not much different in fact from the rice-based drinks produced by some of the industrial conglomerates masquerading as breweries.
Whilst this reputation is well earned, through armies of impoverished students buying cheap kits and equipment from local supermarkets in order to produce cheap party booze, in fact there has been a long history of small artisan brewers trying to replicate, preserve and advance the craft of brewing through the use of small quantities of the same raw ingredients that true breweries use – malted barley and hops. These stovetop brewers in the UK and the US in particular kept the practice of ‘all grain’ homebrewing alive as industrial brewers took over in the 1960s-1970s and all but destroyed the heterogeneous brewing sector in the UK. In the US, small scale brewing had already been wiped out by prohibition in the 1920s and homebrewers did their thing under threat of prosecution.
The consolidation of beer production has continued apace and the ubiquity of pale ‘lager’ beers worldwide has been established. Most English beer drinkers would associate Germany only with this style of beer, despite the fact that the Germans have been brewing a vast array of beers from pale Pilsners to dark Dunkels using many different techniques and recipes for centuries. And they still do, not that you would know it from the gallons and gallons of alcoholic flavoured water peddled by our friends in the brewing industry.
Thankfully, some of these all grain homebrewers loved their hobby so much that they began to think a little bigger than the 25 litre capacity batches they were used to cooking up. Pubs began to install small micro-breweries in their cellars. In the UK a highly successful consumer advocacy organisation, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) fought often successfully to preserve both the regional diversity of beer brewing and the living breathing liquid that is cask conditioned (i.e. non-pasteurised) ‘real ale’.
But it was in the US where things really took a dramatic turn. With almost no small regional breweries to preserve and no tradition of cask conditioned ale, US enthusiasts created a movement from scratch – Craft Ale. And it was enthusiastic homebrewing artisans that led the charge.
For discerning beer drinkers such as Wandering Man and Rose it would be impossible to overstate the impact of this movement. Whilst the British fought for tradition, the Americans embraced technology. Rather in the way that Australian winemakers revolutionised wine production and quality in the old world as well as in theirs, the US craft beer brewers have exported their ideas, their techniques and their recipe diversity throughout the world. They have even bred and grown new fresh varieties of fruity flavoured hops in contrast to the earthy English varieties, giving vent to a vast new array of beer styles and flavours. Whilst the British were intent on keeping things as they were, the Americans threw away the brewing rulebook and went to town.
France too has a brewing tradition. Although enormous numbers of hectares, particularly in the Languedoc, are covered with grape vines, in the north east and west of France there is a significant brewing industry. But here we were, Wandering Man and Rose, in the south of France where wine is king. The previous year, Wandering Man had tried unsuccessfully to find an alternative to mass produced industrial beer in the region. But things had changed. The Brasserie du Quercorb in the small village of Puivert just outside Quillan had sprung up over the previous 12 months. We had to take a look.
It had been Rose who spotted it. Shortly after his email with the flight details had popped up in Wandering Man’s inbox, there arrived another one with a link to the Brasserie’s website. The poor man, he had obviously been desperate after a year of drinking Tuborg (and you really do not want to know what goes into that) in India and had spent many hollowed eyed nights searching forlornly for something worth drinking. The curious thing about his discovery was that it was based in Puivert, our first overnight stop after day one of the wander. That we now found it on our route from Mirapoix to Quillan was an even more auspicious event.
We drove through the village and pulled up at a petrol station forecourt, opposite an old garage building. Email contact over the last week had established that whilst the owner would be away, an androgynous sounding person by the name of Mitzi would be holding the fort and able to entertain us. We walked across the road.
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Mitzi, it turned out, was a hirsute Celtish chap busily serving customers in the outsales office. We took the opportunity to sneak under the propped open delivery door, squeezed past sacks of grain and into the brewery, the one room converted workshop of the old garage at the far end of which was a lovely old style French bar, sitting incongruously alongside five shining stainless steel tanks which lined the back wall. Very shortly, Mitzi finished his grocery duties and made his entrance.
Having established that we shared a couple of languages but that we would probably get along better in English, we began a lively conversation about beer, brewing and all things malty, grainy and hoppy. We made friends, tasted some beers (in Rose’s case drinking rather than tasting – he being of the car passenger persuasion) and got down to the fine detail of brewing beer. Our car boot actually resembled a travelling salesman’s suitcase and at one point we produced a bottle of Wandering Man’s own all grain homebrewed stout to compare with the brewery’s own, provoking much discussion about the relative merits of Carafa malt and Black Barley.
Sensing a definite shared affinity, we resolved to hold Mitzi to his promise of keeping the tap room open the next day until such time as we arrived in the village after our first day’s walk. He duly promised to do so, even if the shock and strain of our first day was to delay us. We headed happily off with a mixed crate of fine craft ales and the promise of a session.
We arrived in Quillan, via a spectacularly vertiginous switchback road down into the valley within which the town was situated, a circumstance that we would ordinarily have enjoyed but was tempered by the realisation that this was precisely the same valley side we would have to climb back up the next day. True to form on arrival in Quillan we promptly got lost but after a couple of circles of the town eventually found the hotel and negotiated a secure parking spot for the week.
Quillan was almost as lovely as Mirapoix – all French towns and villages in these regions seem to be – and we wandered around, buying provisions for the walk the next day (saucisson, onion, apples, cheese), located a boulangerie to buy bread the next morning, and settled with an early pizza tea rather than a repeat of the three/four course French meal of the previous evening (and that day’s lunch as well). Already we were putting on weight, a sensible girding of our loins in preparation for the exertions to come. A final beer/calvados in a bar overlooking the ancient bridge over the river and the start of our walk and we headed off for an early night. A compulsive ‘read before you sleep’ person, Rose devoured a few pages of his book for the last time; on subsequent nights proving that exhaustion and reading are literally incompatible bedfellows. As we drifted off to sleep a huge storm came over the mountains and soaked the little town and hills. We heard nothing.