Something simpler: the Best Bitter born in one of London's top restaurants
I had an enjoyable chat with Matt Burns, creative director of Thirst, a drinks branding and packaging design company in Glasgow, a few years’ back. Thirst are at the top of their game at the moment, having done work for everyone from Fuller’s to Northern Monk; they’re undeniably amongst the best in the business. One of the things he said was this:
“Packaging design is a constantly moving and evolving beast, just like beer styles,” he told me. “When a trend develops, it opens up an opportunity somewhere else. We did a supermarket day with a brewery recently, and we visited all the supermarkets in an area to see what was happening. If you go into Tesco now and look at the craft-beer shelves, there’s a lot of noise. It’s very busy.
“That opens up an opportunity to do something more refined, something simpler. When a lot of the brands start doing that, then there’ll be an opportunity [again] for noise.”
In a sense that’s obvious - if you want to stand out, be different - but the message doesn’t always get through. In the last six or seven years, too many breweries have followed first Beavertown (cartoon spacemen) and then Cloudwater (440ml cans, design-led, long names), assuming, perhaps, that a bit of their success would rub off if they packaged their beer the same way.
Of course, it doesn’t necessarily work like this; you just end up with shelves full of cans that look much the same. The flipside of that is that anything more ‘refined, simple’ stands out - like the label on Macintosh Ales’ Best Bitter, which I spotted for the first time the other week. It’s a throwback, an elegant swan on a red background, with just two strips of text, outlining the most basic information: Macintosh Ales, and Best Bitter. It’s uncluttered and elegant, and refreshing.
The label, it turns out, reflects the thinking behind it. Brewed by West Londoner Charlie Macintosh - who asked his brother, Oliver (a very well-known tattooist) to design the swan - it appears to have been at least partly inspired by Macintosh’s former job, front of house at Lyle’s, one of London’s most respected modern British restaurants.
Everything about it - from the label to the classic ingredients (malt from Norfolk, hops from Hukins in Kent) - expresses a philosophy focused on simplicity and honesty, says Macintosh.
“The chefs at Lyle's talk about this common sense ideology towards food,” he says. “That's really ingrained in me. It just makes sense. I'm making a beer in London, hops should come from Kent. You see how the wine team at Lyle's work: this part of Italy or this part of France got a hail storm in April, so their harvest was halved and the wine isn't as good, but we're buying it from them this year to support them for next year. I love that.”
Macintosh, 31, has been making this beer in his dad’s garage in Hammersmith for a few years; initially for himself, then for the team at Lyle’s to drink at the end of service, and finally to go on the Lyle’s menu. It’s now being sold through Biercraft and made in a larger brewery, which, presumably, will mean it’ll be far more widely available, and beyond the restaurant world too. He anticipates more volume but not necessarily different beers.
“The chefs at Lyle’s talk about this common sense ideology towards food. That’s really ingrained in me. It just makes sense. I’m making a beer in London, hops should come from Kent”
“I love German lagers, I love drinking saisons,” he says. “The Kernel to me is the most amazing brewery in the way they operate, but I don't need to try and make that because I can just go and buy The Kernel when I want to drink that.
“I don't think every brewery needs to make every single thing. I love cask beer, I haven't made any casks since March, and I probably won't for a long time just because I don't really want to be trying to get rid of casks for 50 quid, but I can't wait to have this beer back in cask. There's so many things I want to tweak about it. It'll just keep evolving. I don't think there needs to be a big range of anything.”
Macintosh Ales clearly fits into the growing trad revival in British beer; call it fogeyism or pragmatic localism, but more and more craft brewers are turning to British styles (even Lost & Grounded). Perhaps it’s inevitable that in a time of uncertainty, people better appreciate the relative stability of what went before.
“My dad has had a shop in West London that has made furniture for 30 years, and every single day at 6pm he goes to the pub over the road, has two pints of London Pride and reads the Evening Standard in the same seat, at the same time,” says Macintosh. “Every single day. When we were growing up we thought there was something quite depressing about that, but I think as I've got older I kind of wish that was part of maybe my generation's life.”
And the beer? Macintosh told me this was made in that mad 35-degree week in August, and there are plenty of fruity esters to back that up. Some might say that’s not ideal, but there’s a restaurant philosophy at play here that doesn’t necessarily coincide with how things are done in the beer world. “There's always an element of difference [in how the beer turns out], and this particular one was brewed over a really warm period, so it's way more ester-y than I've ever made a beer, but I've grown to love that,” he says. “But through the winter, the beer will be very different.” Like the menu at Lyle’s, perhaps.