Standing outside the front of Shepherd Neame you would probably never know it was a brewery. It’s only the tell-tale smell of steaming bready malts rising from behind the row of slanted houses that suggested beer was being brewed nearby.
Inside the brewery Shepherd Neame looks a little bit more like, well, a brewery.
I still clearly recall walking through the front door of Britain’s oldest brewer for the first time 15 years ago and thinking that if Willy Wonker was ever going to build a brewery it would surely look like this one.
The fiercely independent, family-owned brewery in Faversham set right in the heart of the hop region of Kent has been a work in progress for over 312 years.
It is a fascinating collection of extensions, fixes, building regulation comprises and ingenious work-arounds, from the odd collection of houses bought up over the decades that form the brewery’s façade to the numerous winding wooden staircases that I swear move on their own just like those at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
I recall there being an almost tangible sense of age and history about the place – an air of respect for tradition and craftsmanship. A feeling that here at least the years had been kept in check and that beer was being brewed the way it always had been.
Stepping back through the same front door last week I instantly knew that things had changed. The houses were still there and the delicious smells of warm malts from the Friday mashing-in of their Bishops Finger ale still wafted through the air like it does every Friday morning of every week.
The sparge arm sprinkles hot water over the grist in the antique mash tun as a new batch of Bishops Finger comes to life.
But the brewery now had a new sharper look about it. The swish visitors centre has a large screen multimedia presentation for visitors. In the past two years over three million pounds has been invested in the brewery’s state-of-the-art bottling line which can now spit out a staggering 26,000 500ml bottle an hour.
Bottles as far as the eye can see!
Machines automatically pack bottles into cases and stack them onto pallets and a robot (affectionately known as Frank) lends a mechanical hand to help clean the brewery’s endless flow of aluminium kegs.
Shepherd Neame have clearly realised that in order to continue the traditions of British ale brewing they needed to mix some new with the old. Their aggressive investment in modern technology is not only shrewd it’s essential to ensure they stay competitive in an evermore cutthroat beer market.
Where I think they’ve succeeded where others sometimes fail in the race to modernise is that they seem to have managed to strike a balance between the past and the future.
It may be old but the ancient grain mill still works!
The brewery’s Russian oak mash tun built in 1914 sits comfortably alongside a modern stainless steel version while the grain is still ground in a clunky metal and wood contraption that dates back to the 18th Century (and possibly much further than that) that is located only metres from a cutting-edge system that heats the copper boilers and that wouldn’t look out of place in the control room at NASA.
Perhaps there is nowhere in the brewery where the sense of doing things ‘the way they’ve always been done’ is stronger than in the ‘sacred’ sampling room.
A sample of all the beers brewed every week are kept in the sampling room.
Known as the inner sanctum of Shepherd Neame the sampling room is a quiet, cool refuge where the walls are lined with small casks in which samples all the current beers are kept and regularly tasted to ensure they meet with the brewery’s strict quality demands.
It’s also here that Head Brewer Stewart Main, one of the most infectiously enthusiastic beer men I have ever met, keeps casks of his latest experiments from the brewery’s own pilot brewery, a small 1,000 litre set up used as a ‘testing ground’ to find potential new full-scale brews.
Head Brewer Stewart Main. Ten minutes with this man and you will love beer. I guarantee it!
While I was there he was conditioning a couple of his latest batches, a fruity amber ale packed with US Cascade and Amarillo hops and a stunning Ginger Porter which had just the right balance of bitter chocolate and coffee and a refreshing ‘kick’ of ginger on the palate. At a ‘mere’ 4.8% it didn’t rely on alcohol to give it character. It didn’t need to. Wonderful stuff this – so good in fact I begged Stewart for a couple of samples of my own to take back with me to Sweden.
Shepherd Neame is clearly a forward-thinking brewery willing to embrace technology at the same time as remaining passionate about preserving its traditions of brewing classic British ales.
As Stewart Main himself put it: “Technology can help us improve a lot of things, but great beer still needs the touch of great brewers”.
Footnote:
The following Shepherd Neame beers are available all year round in Sweden:
Bishops Finger Kentish Strong Ale: Systembolaget Article Number 1677 (also available in cans)
Spitfire Premium Kentish Ale: Systembolaget Article Number 1668
Whitstable Bay Organic Ale: Systembolaget Article Number 11526
1698 Strong Ale: Systembolaget Article Number 1698
BeerSweden contacted Fuller’s to ask for their side of the story and the brewery’s Export Controller Michael Campbell-Lamerton issued the following statement:
