First published in BEER April 2008 as part of a piece on beer in Sainsbury’s.
ABV: 4.7, 6.5 and 7.5 per cent
Origin: Charlton, London, England
Website www.meantimebrewing.com
Meantime Pale Ale
When Heriot-Watt and Weihenstephan-trained brewer Alastair Hook set up on his own in an industrial unit a stone’s throw from the Thames Barrier in 2000, he chose to follow what for a British microbrewer was a pretty much unprecedented business plan. Rather than touting cask ale around the free trade and festivals, Alastair initially set about using his Bavarian experience to brew quality lager – a beer style unfairly and excessively devalued by big UK brewers’ weak and insipid interpretations of international brands – in bottles or continental-style bright kegs.
Ales and wheat beers have since joined the portfolio, including a good number of bottle conditioned brews, but cask remains absent. It’s an approach that hasn’t always endeared him to real ale purists, but it’s certainly yielded some magnificent, near-world class beers as well as being a living demonstration that there is always another way.
Meantime, named for its location in the borough of Greenwich, originally focused on contract brewing and targeting those pioneering restaurateurs that were starting to recognise fine beer has its place on the menu alongside fine wine. The brewery started to establish its own identity through a partnership with supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. In 2002 the giant multiple retailer was busy establishing its Taste the Difference range of upmarket own-brand products, and worked with Meantime to create several European style beers for the range, including a rare example of a red Vienna lager.
The Sainsbury’s link, continuing interest from the restaurant trade and overtures from a US importer built the brewery’s confidence and it expanded, rebranded and relaunched in 2005, investing heavily in a new filling machine to ensure absolute hygiene, as well as the only corking machine at a British brewery capable of filling, corking and wiring 75cl champagne-style bottles.
This machine is particularly significant: if, as most informed commentators suggest, the key to establishing bottled beer’s gourmet credentials with a wider audience is through promoting it as an accompaniment to food, then there’s a need to present it in ways that won’t look out of place on the most sophisticated dining table.
And the beer that goes into those nice big bottles is well deserving of such VIP treatment. Currently two Meantime lines are presented this way, both of them Real Ales in a Bottle based on ancient British styles – a porter and an India Pale Ale. Both styles, interestingly, were somewhat neglected and forgotten in their native land but have enjoyed a new lease of life among US craft brewers and drinkers, so it’s not surprising Meantime’s pair were originally commissioned for export.
Meantime London Porter
London Porter is based on a 1750 recipe and contains seven malts including brown, black and chocolate malts, alongside Fuggles hops. The result is a deep ruby-brown beer with a rich creamy fawn head that yields a spicy, leathery, coffeeish aroma with a hint of roast chestnut. A full bodied but refined palate has a creamy texture, chocolate hints and emerging sappy, roasty, peppery hop and lightly acidic flavours. A long finish has an intriguingly sour coffee character, with roast rather than hops giving an ashy dryness, and late salt and blackcurrant hints.
- Meantime India Pale Ale
Meantime’s IPA is arguably the most reliable of a precious handful of authentic British-brewed bottle conditioned interpretations of this historic style. Brewed from pure pale malt with Fuggles and Goldings hops, this strong but refreshing beer is a deep gold, almost copper, with a fine off-white head. A barley sugar aroma has gentle pineapple and earthy notes, leading to a firmly malty palate that unfolds in several layers: fruity and slightly brambly at first, then syrupy with a hint of aromatic peaches, with bitterish but not overpowering grapefruity hops finally emerging. There’s more peppery hops in a long finish over a pineapple cube and barley sugar backdrop.
The brewery also offers a range of intriguing beers in more modest gravities and sizes, most of them in distinctive skittle-shaped 33cl bottles, for example a beautifully fresh-tasting unfiltered Pale Ale dry hopped with Cascade and Willamette. This has a chaffy vanilla and pineapple aroma and a tasty cereal palate with a little fruit, pollen and grassy citric hops. Firm, earthy and peppery but well-controlled hops emerge in the drying, bitterish finish.
Quality and consistency are the watchwords: “We don’t skimp on maturation times,” says Alastair, “and we never pasteurise – why take care over making a beer only to cook it?” The results speak from themselves.
More Sainsbury’s beers in next post.
Read more about these beers at ratebeer.com:
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/meantime-pale-ale/51741/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/meantime-london-porter/48499/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/meantime-india-pale-ale/48498/
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