Thomas Hardy: My Part in his Downfall

I was going to use Return of the Native for the title of this post but I'm so slow other people have got there before me. I don't know what the book's about anyway, it was Far From the Madding Crowd I was forced to study at school, in all its interminable tedium. It didn't leave me with a high opinion of Thomas Hardy. The man was clearly being paid by the word and milking it for all he could:

“That’s my fist.” Here he placed his fist, rather smaller in size than a common loaf, in the mathematical centre of the maltster’s little table, and with it gave a bump or two thereon, as if to ensure that their eyes all thoroughly took in the idea of fistiness before he went further.”

Dull, dull, dull. 

Thomas Hardy beers on the other hand are a different matter. I was quite partial to Hardy Country when Eldridge Pope still existed and their other beer that referenced the tedious twerp, Thomas Hardy's Ale, has a well deserved legendary status. One of the five bottle conditioned beers still in production when CAMRA were formed it's managed to survive the closure of Eldridge Pope, being contract brewed at O'Hanlon's, Meantime and now Hepworths. 

The last is of particular interest to me as I worked at Hepworths when production moved there. For this legendary beer another beer legend, Derek Prentice, is the brewing consultant employed by the brand owner and we worked with him to bring the beer back again.

Derek during mashing in of Thomas Hardy's Ale

I wasn't doing much actual brewing by that stage of my work at Hepworths but I made sure I brewed one of the batches of Thomas Hardy. Oh yes, I wasn't going to miss that opportunity. Unlike at Eldridge Pope it's brewed as a single gyle and it proved to be surprisingly problematic. At the Ridgeway brewery on the Hepworths site we already brewed a few barley wines so I have to say I wasn't expecting any problems with the fermentation. Sadly the yeast had other ideas.

Fermentation started well but it was a struggle to get to target gravity

We had to throw everything we could at it to get the beer down to target gravity and the ABV up to the strength we wanted. It spent a long, long time in tank. Some of the first batch, made of three brews, was bottled before I left Hepworths but I never saw it in the wild in the UK so I suspect it all went to Italy. After the beer stopped being brewed by O'Hanlons the brand was bought by the Italians of Interbrau who I guess don't distribute in Britain. And as far as I know the Armagnac barrel trial never got beyond the samples I hand bottled so it wasn't distributed to anyone at all. 

The barrel trial

Well, I did get some samples myself. Purely for professional purposes of course, those organoleptic properties needed to be assessed. It was absolutely gorgeous. 

Another batch of Thomas Hardy's Ale was brewed soon after I'd left the company. I did enquire how the fermentation had gone and you'll be glad to hear that lessons had been learned as this time it went fine. The beer's also now got a British distributor and some was even made available on cask:

This did get me doing some searching and I managed to get some thanks to a detour to The Rake on my way to see Alexei Sayle. 

Who is that fat bastard?

I've drunk it from all of the breweries it's been made at but I'd never had it on cask before so I'm delighted the timing worked out for me. It was a great start to the evening, strong and rich it certainly lives up to the name of barley wine. I hope that putting some in cask becomes a regular feature when it's brewed and that the brewing continues for many years to come.