Beermat of the Week

Kitchen Brewery

You think adding fruit (and other stuff) to beers here in the UK was a product of the craft beer movement over the last decade or so? Think again because this is the story of Kitchen Brewery.

Of course, the Belgians have been adding fruit, essentially cherries and raspberries, to their lambics for at least 150 years (the first explicit reference comes from an 1878 document produced by a tenant farmer in Schepdaal). The producers of more commercial, sweetened lambics started adding other fruity things in the 1990s - beer writer Tim Webb has recounted the fortunate coincidence that saw him at the gates of one of the more commercial producers when a tanker of alcoholic cherry syrup arrived....

Here in the fruit-growing areas of the UK there seem to have been similar traditions existing alongside the more prevalent cider and perry making. In her seminal book Food in England (published 1954), Dorothy Hartley records drinking "Kentish Cherry Ale" at "a very small inn near Molash", adding "the recipe was the finest old ale and unlimited freshly plucked cherries".

This however remained a historic curiosity until the late 1990s. Enter Kitchen Brewery, founded by former chef Rob Johnson in 1996 (he started brewing on April Fool's Day so this post is rather timely).  

The steam-fired five-barrel (later 10-barrel) kit, which Rob built himself, was based in a former pickling shed at the Shaw Park Industrial Complex which is in Apsley, near Huddersfield.

At first the beers were what you might expect from a mid-1990s microbrewery - the 1998 Good Beer Guide records a range of bitters in the 3.6% to 5% range with various catering-themed names. A typical example was Waitress (4.2%) "A smooth and aromatic beer with a slightly citrus beginning and a fruity flavour, ending with dry bitterness. Very pale in colour".  I recall them as being perfectly decent.

Then it all went a bit strange.  The 1998 Good Beer Guide records that the range had expanded considerably over the previous 12 months. By the time we get to the 2000 GBG (by which point Kitchen was apparently supplying some 400 outlets) all manner of fruity and vegetable concoctions are mentioned.  The Beermad website records no fewer than 94 beers and you can view them here

I actually tried some of these and can record that the Raisin Stout was rather good. Some of the others were, err, well..... a friend who tried the Orrible Onion assured me that it indeed was 'Orrible'.  You'll note that one beer used mango - many years before it became a favourite addition for more than a few craft brewers.

Apart from being a former chef, Rob Johnson had also worked as a technician in the food industry, which may have accounted for the rather excessive secrecy that surrounded his beers. On a CAMRA visit to the brewery he was particularly insistent that we didn't see what hops he was using, which was odd, even for then. 

However you can't really sustain a brewery on gimmicks alone (well, you couldn't then...) and the brewery went into receivership in March 2001. Word on the streets was that Kitchen's demise wasn't entirely unmourned by the other local brewers due to the brewery's allegedly aggressive pricing policy. That I don't know. - if true perhaps that played a part in its demise.

The brewing kit, by the way, resurfaced a few years later at Oldham's (now defunct) Owl Brewery.  Apart from that, Kitchen and its remarkable beers have slipped into history.

The Dorothey Hartley book is a mine if useful information. Inconveniently for cider purists she also records "The use of cherry in ale was much considered by the cider makers of the west, and boats were sent around to Bristol with trees of cherries to grow and mix with the cider apples."