ce as long as they normally do, 4½
hours, cleaning the unions used for stout brewing, to ensure no contamination
of the next batch of Pedigree.)
To make up for the possibly unsuitable mineral profile, Pat
has used malted oats in the brew, to help round out the mouthfeel: the other
grains are pale ale malt, roasted barley, chocolate malt (Charles Howard Tripp
was keen on chocolate malt, which had only just been invented in his time, saying:
malt [gives] a capital rich and full flavour to the porter in which it is used”)
and malted wheat, while the hops are Challenger. The beer, which will, I
believe, be exclusive to Waitrose, was only two weeks old when we sampled it, unfiltered
and heavy on the roasty flavours, and it still had to be filtered, partially
carbonated and sent to the bottling plant, where each bottle will be seeded
with the same union yeast the beer was originally fermented with (the union
yeast apparently happily drops to the bottom of the bottle). It will then be
held on to for 14 days before being sent out for sale in stores, though Pat
McGinty suggests keeping the bottles for six to eight months to be “nicely
As well as a look at the union room we were also given the chance
to meet Marston’s last remaining cooper, Mark Newton, who spends most of his
time maintaining and repairing the union casks. That was fascinating, too, and
rather sad: Mark has trained up an apprentice, who now works elsewhere in the
brewery, but he is currently the last man in the town doing a job that once was
carried out by hundreds. Here’s a little photo-essay.
I’ve been going on holiday with my family to the Mani, in the middle “finger” of the Peloponnese, pretty regularly since 2006: it’s a beautiful, almost entirely unspoilt place, the beaches are broad and sandy, the sun almost continuous, the people are friendly, the food is excellent, locally sourced and cheap. The beer, until now, has generally not been up to much, but when it’s 32ºC almost anything cold and wet will do. All the same, I was thrilled to discover this year that a local entrepreneur, Takis Kapetanéas, has opened a craft brewery on the edge of the small fishing village of Agios Nikolaos, in the Western Mani, just five minutes down the road from the seaside village of Stoupa, where we always stay.
Greece now has 45 breweries, up from 35 two years ago, 13 in 2009 and a mere five at the start of the century. Most are still tiny, however (indeed, the Mani Brewery, despite being one of the newest is the second-largest “craft” beer brewery in the country), some have struggled and closed, such as the Messinian brewery, near Kalamata, opened in 2009, which made beer under the similar-sounding Neda brand, but which closed a couple of years or so back; and beer remains down the list of priorities for Greek drinkers: for comparison, the country is said to have some 500 different brands of ouzo, and 3,500 wines.
The brewery’s founder, Takis (short for Panagiotis) is in his early 40s and proudly Maniot born and bred: the “-éas” at the end of his family name is the universal ending for surnames in the Messinian Mani, and the brand name of his beers Nema, is a Maniot dialect word meaning “gesture” or “nod”, while the brewery logo features the tower houses found in almost every Maniot village, where, in the past, families would retreat to defend themselves against their enemies – generally rival families from the same village.
Takis, who worked in the property business before he became a full-time brewery
owner, says he “fell in love” with beer on his travels abroad, and became
a “long-time” home brewer, always with the ambition to open his own
brewery. The brews currently being made at the Mani Brewery, a 16 IBU 4.6 per
cent abv blonde ale and a 20 IBU, 4.6 per cent abv summer ale, are
“pragmatic” beers, Takis says: not the beers he would like to make
which would be well-hopped IPAs and stouts, but the ones he knows will sell in
the Greek market, where 99.5 per cent of the beer on sale is pale euro-lager.
The blonde is
an excellent, refreshing, unfiltered, unpasteurised easy-