Hogs Back In Great Condition

The debate between the merits of bottle-conditioned beer and packaged beer that is filtered and pasteurised has taken an interesting turn with the discovery that Hogs Back Brewery in Surrey is now producing the bulk its bottled beers in brewery-conditioned form.

Most bottles, including the leading brand TEA (Traditional English Ale), carry a message on the back label that says: "Brewery conditioned for all the taste without the sediment". The only exceptions are three strong beers, A Over T, Brewster's Bundle and Wobble in a Bottle. A Over T (Aromas Over Tongham) won CAMRA's Champion Winter Beer competition in 2006 for the draught version and filtering and pasteurising that particular beer would not be politic.

Martin-Zilwood Hunt, one of the founders of Hogs Back, told me the decision had been forced on the company by supermarkets.

It seems supermarket beer buyers don't understand bottle conditioning. This is in spite of Hogs Back supplying them with information explaining that beers with a yeast sediment must be stored carefully and consumers should be told that such beers can be cloudy if not poured with a small degree of skill.

Zilwood-Hunt said Waitrose would return an entire batch of beer if just one bottle was found to be cloudy - which means a substantial loss for the brewery. He added that some dedicated drinkers of bottle-conditioned beers had complained to Hogs Back about the change in policy but the complainants were in a small minority.

That problem aside, Hogs Back is an impressive operation and is growing fast. It's not "a micro". This is a regional brewery by any other name. It produces 20,000 barrels a year in Surrey and there are four new cellar tanks on order to keep up with demand. It's yet a further example of the success of the craft brewery sector, driven by cask beer.

It's also one of the longest-running of the new breed of cask breweries, dating from 1992. The founders, Tony Stanton-Precious and Martin Zilwood-Hunt, met as a result of a shared love for good beer but from very different backgrounds.

Hunt had worked in the U.S. for a while before running a courier service back home and developing a passion for home brewing. Stanton worked as a surveyor in London's Canary Wharf but he could see his work there would eventually come to an end.

His interest in beer encouraged him to look at the possibility of starting a brewery. He found a book in the public library called How to Start Your Own Brewery. The first word in the book was "Don't". Brewing was a risky business, the book said, with a high divorce rate. Undeterred, Stanton phoned the small brewers' magazine The Grist, where the editor put him in touch with Hunt, who was looking for investment to move on from home-brewing to commercial production.

The result was a brewery based in 18th-century barns at Manor Farm in Tongham, Surrey, between Farnham and Guildford. Before they attempted to sell beer, Hunt would take samples of his first brews to pubs in the area and leave them for locals for drink and give their opinion. For this shocking crime against humanity, he was threatened with arrest by Customs & Excise until he convinced them he wasn't selling beer without a licence.

Hunt's benchmark was Hook Norton's strong bitter, Old Hooky. He wanted to brew a similar beer but with less malty sweetness and greater hop character. To help in this aim, he got a supply of yeast from Hook Norton and still uses that strain today.

As commercial production got underway, Hunt was joined in the brewery by his wife Maureen, known as Mo. They have since divorced but continue to work in harmony, even though Hunt's new wife also works at Hogs Back. If it sounds like a soap opera, be assured this is a sound and sensible operation that has achieved great success over the past 18 years. The brewery has grown and expanded into other barns on the farm, which stand in view of the famous Hogs Back Ridge across the South Downs and is the source for brewing water.

The site includes an attractive shop where visitors can take home both draught and bottled beers and where brewery tours are in great demand. Hogs Back has a staff of 30, with a sales team based both at Manor Farm and in London. 500 pubs take the beers on a regular basis while a further 500 are supplied with guest beers.

The beer that Hunt fashioned back in the early 1900s became a regular brew branded TEA or Traditional English Ale. It now accounts for 70% of annual production and is joined by other regular beers - Hogs Back Bitter, Hop Garden Gold and A Over T. A Over T a powerful 9% barley wine. The core portfolio is joined by four seasonal beers and many one-off brews.

Hogs Back sells beer in London, Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Wiltshire and supplies Wetherspoon's, some Greene King outlets, Enterprise and Punch. The pubcos are sharp on price, Stanton says, but they are important to help spread the name of the brewery. The beers are available as guests in some Young's pubs in London while Hogs Back enjoys cult status on draught in the Green Man pub in Harrod's. When the revamped Savoy Hotel in London re-opened, guests found Hogs Back bottles in their fridges.

All seems well as you stand with in the impressive, German-built brewhouse, based on a conventional mash tun and copper system that feeds eight fermenting vessels. But the founders have some tub-thumping to do. It concerns Progressive Beer Duty, introduced by the last Labour government. PBD means that craft brewers pay less duty, on a sliding scale, than bigger regionals and nationals.

"We knew at the outset that PBD would lead to a price war," Hunt says. "Pubs pay on price and some small brewers have started up in garages to undercut the likes of Hogs Back." He pays 45,000 a month in duty, an eye-watering amount of money, while smaller brewers pay a fraction of that amount. The Hogs Back team believes there's a strong case for a review of PBD, with a scale that benefits all brewers but doesn't penalise successful companies caught in the middle.

*By a twist of fate, when I returned home from my visit to Hogs Back, I found that Woodforde's in Norfolk had sent me samples of their bottled range, all bottle conditioned. I shall investigate...