Putting the fizz into lager

Cotswold is a microbrewery with a difference – it makes lager. Nigel Huddlestone reports

Richard Keene takes a call from a pub in the Oxfordshire village of Churchill. It has run out of the beer he brews as a cottage industry microbrewer in a rented barn.

Keene bundles a barrel into the back of his Volvo and drives it round to the pub himself.

It’s a scene that will be recognisable to many in Britain’s craft brewing industry, where the managing director is frequently the brewer, drayperson and cellar services operative.

The difference in Keene’s case is that his Cotswold Brewing Company isn’t in the business of fine real ale, but in a continental-style keg lager.

“When you travel abroad to Germany and Belgium there are a lot more interesting lagers than in Britain.

“Whenever we have a party more people seem to drink lager, so it seemed to be an opportunity, but an opportunity to produce a better-tasting lager.”

Keene’s passion for beer was formed at a relatively young age because his father used to make home-brew.

“To make it more palatable he and his friends sometimes laced it with Ribena, creating possibly the world’s first alcopop,” he says.

His Cotswold Lager is a far cry from those first rudimentary experiments in concocting drinks. It’s a fresh, fruity and clean beer that has more in common with some of the more subtle wheat beers.

But Keene wasn’t persuaded to turn his back on bubbles in beer.

“I think lager really does need a bit of fizz to it,” he says, “and it’s important to have the sort of container which can keep the fizz, which is a keg.”.....

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By Nigel Huddleston

Section : Spotlight

Page number : 51