It's time for tea at Manchester's Marble
Added: Monday, January 26th 2015
Making and mashing a brew take on a new significance at the Marble Brewery in Manchester. The brewery, tucked under a railway arch in the Ancoats area, produces a large number of beers but the one that’s on drinkers’ lips is Earl Grey IPA, made with the addition of bergamot that gives the tea its distinctive taste and aroma.
Matthew Howgate takes me to the hop store and opens a bag of Earl Grey tea leaves. Bergamot comes from a citrus fruit grown mainly in the Calabria region of Italy. Matt and I agree that while neither of us is partial to Earl Grey tea, the addition of bergamot to the IPA makes for a sensational beer.
The 6.8% beer presses all the right buttons for today’s beers drinkers. For a start, with that strength, it’s close to a genuine 19th-century India Pale Ale. But with Citra and Columbus American hops added to English Goldings, it has a massive charge of citrus on nose and palate.
Matt, who runs the brewery with a staff of six(five seen above with Matthew on the far left), says that to give the beer its distinctive flavour they make a brew of Earl Grey tea, chill it and strain it, and place it in a muslin bag in the fermenting vessel. With Citra pellet hops added to the finished beer, it has a distinctive orange and bergamot character. Five kilos of tea are needed for each brew.
They believe in pushing the boundaries at Marble. As well as the IPA, Matt and his team make a beer with dry ginger and on the day of my visit they were starting work on their interpretation of a strong Belgian-style Triple. In the Belgian fashion, they’re adding white candy sugar in the copper along with hops. The sugar comes in a rock-hard block and hacking into chips is laborious work.
Matt solves the problem by dissolving the sugar with boiling hot wort from the mash tun but he’s worried it may not be the correct Belgian method. I promise to ask my contacts in Belgium for advice. The beer will be fermented with a special Belgian yeast culture supplied by the Chouffe brewery.
The Marble Brewery started life in 1997 at the back of the Marble Arch pub on Rochdale Road, a few hundred yards from the present site. Its major claim at the time was that the beers were all organic. But the strict demands and costs of the Soil Association, which gives permits to organic food and drink producers, meant that promise had to be abandoned.
But today Marble says all its beers are suitable for vegans and vegetarians. This is achieved by refusing to use isinglass as a clearing agent for cask beers. Isinglass is made from fish bladders and the main source is the sturgeon. As the sturgeon is being hunted to extinction in the quest for caviar eggs, it would seem sensible to use alternative sources.
Marble uses silica gel and carrageen. The latter is better known as Irish Moss and grows in abundance on the shores of the British Isles. Matt worked for AB InBev before joining Marble and studied yeast management. He says cask beer will drop bright in the pub cellar as fast as conventional casks if brewers have a good yeast strain and handle it properly. Marble’s yeast originated in the now-closed Gale’s Brewery at Horndean in Hampshire and I can vouch for the fact that the beers in the Marble Arch are in sparkling form.
The brewery outgrew the pub and moved to the spacious buildings under the railway arch in 2009. The new 12-barrel plant was designed and built by Vincent Johnson in Manchester and is based on the traditional method of mash tun, copper and fermenters. Such is the demand for the beers that two additional fermenters are due to be added the current five.
Maris Otter barley malt is supplied by Warminster Maltings in Wiltshire and milled on site. More than a dozen hop varieties, drawn from England, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Slovenia, are supplied by leading hop merchant Charles Faram. Matt says Manchester way, sourced from the Lake District, is extremely soft and is “Burtonised” with sulphates for pale ales and bitters but left in its natural state for stouts, wheat beers and specials such as the Belgian Triple.
The regular beers include Draft and Pint, both 3.9%, and Manchester Bitter, a straw-coloured 4.2% ale that is unashamedly reminiscent of the much-missed Manchester classic, Boddingtons. As well as Earl Grey, there are two further IPAs – Lagonda and Dobber – and two dark beers, Stouter Stout and Chocolate Marble.
Three-quarters of production is in cask form but Marble supplies around 15% of its beers in bottle-conditioned form and is developing a good trade with one-way kegs for outlets that can’t handle cask beer.
Marble runs three pubs: as well as the Marble Arch, there’s the Beer House in Chorlton and 57 Thomas Street in Manchester, which is the name as well as the address. The brewery also some 70 free trade accounts, all within the Greater Manchester area: concern for the environment means it doesn’t want to take beer long distances.
The Marble Arch is a peach of a pub (above). It dates from 1888 and is Grade II-listed. It’s built from red granite and the striking interior has cast-iron beams, ceramic tiled walls, a glazed ceiling, large mirrors and a blazing fire. It’s famous for a sloping floor: it was visited by Laurel and Hardy when they were touring British music halls and I can picture Stan Laurel removing his bowler and scratching his head as he slithered from door to bar. To commemorate the visit, the Laurel & Hardy Appreciation Society meets regularly in the pub.
The rear of the pub, which used to house the brewery, now has a large kitchen where excellent food is cooked. In keeping with the beers, there’s a good choice of dishes suitable for vegans and vegetarians.
The Belgian-style beer being produced nearby marked the 900th Marble brew. The brewery has become a stalwart of the Manchester drinking scene and the success of Earl Grey IPA gives drinkers every excuse for popping out for an afternoon bevvy.
