For the past few months I have been considering a very specific subgenre of British beer, its place in the wider culture of British beer, and my own enjoyment of it. You might call the beverages within this category by the name saison, sour, barrel-aged, or even mixed-fermentation. None of these terms, however, feel like they do this category, how exciting it is, or what it actually means to people justice.
The reasons why they don’t are multifaceted—not to mention complicated—but the reason why it’s important that we do find the terminology to describe them is because of the vast range of quality and deliciousness producers of these sorts of beers are making. Some of the most stunning things I have drunk over the last 12 months have so often been left to mature in barrels or foeders, typically with a variety of yeasts and bacteria, and sometimes other ingredients ranging from foraged herbs to harvested fruits. I estimate that there are at least 50 producers of these beers within the UK at the moment (and as part of this project I hope to catalogue them).
Some of these producers, like Balance in Manchester and Mills in Gloucestershire, are making these kinds of beers outright. Others, like Burning Sky in Sussex and The Kernel in London are making them alongside an existing range of “clean” beers. Now there’s a word that easily defines a pale ale, lager or IPA. For some reason, though, I don’t think “dirty” is going to work for the beers we’re trying to talk about here. But what about “wild?” Sure, it’s not not perfect, and I don't think there's a one size fits all solution here, but it works for me. (And how the hell do you present a beer like this to someone who doesn’t know anything about them and call them “mixed-fermentation?” Honestly, it's an overly technical term that does nothing to describe how a beer actually tastes, and we need to move on from it.)
There’s a lot of work to do to unpack the excitement occurring in British Wild Beer, and that’s a project I have assigned myself this year. This podcast, recorded in June 2024 at FyneFest, was pretty much the starting point for that thinking. It features an all-star cast, including The Kernel’s Evin O’Riordain, Burning Sky’s Mark Tranter, Will Harris from Balance Brewing and Blending, plus Dan Wye, who spearheads Fyne Ales own wild beer project: Origins.
For a long time I have been asking “who are these beers for,” and you will hear me ask it as part of this panel discussion. Perhaps the biggest lesson this chat taught me is that this doesn’t matter, but the beers that are being made definitely do. It's time we found the language that helps place them into the wider culture of British Beer.
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