UK Brewery Recommendations

Kernel, Harvey's. .then there's the ones I read aboot. ..like Buxton..check the site out for more UK gems.

 

Cantillon? Pfft. Im afraid when it comes to beer I have an ugly predisposition to jingoism. Believe me though when I say little gems are omnipresent throughout the UK and I could write a very long list but I'll just mention a couple of locals.

Oakham make fantastic cask ale. They're a new wave brewery specialising in exotically hopped bitters. While the ale is hop heavy it's full flavoured and satisfying. I fell out of love with them recently because their ale doesn't taste too good outside of their (extremely noisy) brewpub, but I spent Friday night in there and was blown away by everything. You can probably find their offerings in Canada but it'll be a pale immitation of their cask stuff.

Milton of Cambridge make thoroughly traditionally English ale and lots of. While their bitters tend to be indiscernible from one another it's all delicious and their oatmeal stout is something else.

There is so much more to this new wave British scene than the oft credited upstarts and I think The Kernel are appaulingly over-hyped anyway.

 

Kernel? over-hyped?

Heresy!!

Oh balls how do I turn off the underscore and bold?

 

I think the reason that people (myself included) jock Kernel so much is that they were the first brewery to take on the big boys (US Brewers of that paragon of all beers, very hoppy pale ale) and beat them at they're own game. To have a reliable source of fresh AIPA was what many peeps had been longing for. Sadly I don't see anything but Table Beer and stout in my local gold plated customer gouging specialist bottle shop these days.

Oakham. We visit the other half's mate near Peterborough quite often but haven hit up the Brewery Tap. We normally end up at the pub her friend's son works at and is run by my father in law's friends. Those considerations outweigh my desire to drink my fill of fresh Oakham ales apparently.

Gems?

Almasty

 

Yeah, I see what you mean. I just get knee-jerky when I see them lauded as the paragon of British brewing. I like the crafty ethos behind the brewery and they do interesting things with hops but I just don't think the beer is all that good.

 

Bathams for an old traditional one. I think they make a bitter, a mild and then maybe a christmas beer and that's it at the moment. And the bitter and mild are about as good of their type as can be. Never tried the christmas beer. You need to go to the black country to sample though

Other modern breweries like Dark Star, Bristol Beer Factory, Ikley, Salopian , Highland

Big fan of plenty of Kernel beers myself, and Oakham too

There's a lot of small breweries producing some very good beers

 

holding to that thought about traditional British beer I'd say most of the breweries mentioned so far would fall under the guise of Contemporary British beer.
So it becomes a more difficult question to answer as so many breweries have headed down the Contemporary path. Here are a few small, and not so small, Traditional brewers; Batham, Banks & Taylor, Elgoods, Old Mill, Naylors, McMulllens, Moorhouses...

 

I like Kernel but in my view their porters and stouts are way better than their pale ales, so I'm a bit puzzled by the ubiquitous raving about the latter. The dark beers are what they should really get lavish praise for.

 

I would agree to an extent actually but for a different reason. While the hoppy pale ales are done better than any other brewery I've sampled, they just don't do as interesting stuff as some of the newer ones like Siren, Wild Beer Co, Buxton to name a few.

 

Fullers are great but there are hundreds of similarly great brewers here. Are you mainly interested in stuff you're likely to find in Canada or stuff in Britain you're not likely to hear about anywhere else?

 

Yeah, I can imagine, having recently returned from five years of travels and having not seen anything much more than Old Peculier and Newkie. Well, I'm preparing a beer package for an American friend and I don't know whether to go full on English or new wave. The thoroughly English beers I had in mind were St Peters Cream Stout (which I've seen overseas) and Brakspear Tripple, which I think containers two British hops and one American. It's also not as good as it was a couple of years ago. Have you had Fuller's 1845? It's insane.

 

Tell him to look out for Windsor and Eton

 

Pilot
Tempest
Buxton
Wild Beer
Siren
Magic Rock
Old Chimneys
6 Degrees North
Traquair
Luckie Ales
Redchurch
Beavertown
Bad Seed

 

The OP particularly asked for traditional British breweries of which there are tons. Oakham, good as some of its beers are, hardly falls into this category.
As someone who early on embraced West Coast hops but later tired of them (hops should be hoppy not grapefruity) I do tend to seek out traditional beer. Not that I don't enjoy the odd glass of say JHB but I'm bored with it after three quarters of a pint and don't buy a second.
St Austell is a fine brewery making easy drinking generally available brews.Same goes for Timothy Taylor's and Moorhouses.Smaller breweries to look out for include Mighty Oak , Potbelly,Castle Rock, Coniston..............

 

The OP asked for traditional brews but he also sited Thornbridge and I think Oakham fall into the same category as them – British cask ale with new age hops – which is also the category I'd put St Austells in. Oakham just lean slightly more towards US style flavouring. At least all these guys have cask versions of their bottled stuff.

Yeah, I used to love JHB but I find it a bit astringent. It's certainly not their best offering but miles better than their keg IPA.

 

Admittedly I haven't tried any of their dark beers but that'll all change this afternoon. I'm quite looking forward to it. I much prefer new world stouts to new world pales.