Early on October 1st the Anglian Craft Brewers set off from across the region to visit the historic family brewery of Hook Norton.

The 2-day visit was aimed at a brewery tour of the Hook Norton brewery and a clone challenge of their beer, “Old Hooky”.

Old Hooky is multi award-winning, setting the tone for the breweries range of traditional beers. This nut brown, malt workhorse uses Challenger, Goldings and Fuggles to add the assertive hop bitterness and flavours to the beer. Old Hooky is a beautifully balanced beer, with a rou d body and fruity flavour derived from a mix of yeast esters, hops and crystal malts. The complex layered flavours of malt include, white bread crusts, toast, and caramels. Traditional hop flavours come through with the orange marmalade flavours of Goldings with background green cob nuts to add to the enjoyment. The water is the standout aspect of the finish. The seemingly Burtonised water profile, lasting assertive hop bitterness and lingering minerality.

On arrival, the ACB brewers gathered in the Peartree Inn, located at the base of Brewery Lane. This wonderful pub, was a single long room. Snug with a log burner roaring away at one end of the room helping to dry wet coats, after a 15-minute walk in heavy rain. Well worth the effort as we found the best pints in Hook Norton on the day. As the weather was wet and frankly miserable, it was the perfect day to sit in the pub and chew the cud over pints. The Hook Norton beer “Hooky” was the pick of the bar, being mostly ordered. We returned to our digs, the Sun Inn hotel at 16:30 to check in, order more pints, and order dinner.

Day 2 – Hook Norton Brewery Tour

The second day, we all gathered at the Brewery tap room at 08:30 for a much needed full-English breakfast before the tour.

The tour started at 10am, and we started with the history of the brewery and the family background. Later we moved through the layers of the brewery, starting in the literal engine room, where the steam powered engine lived.

Being a Victorian Tower Brewery, it uses gravity to feed the brewing processes, starting at the top of the building where more modern breweries use pumps. The top of the building housed the grain mill, where grain was fed upwards via a conveyor belt. The grain mill used a sorting device to sort the grains into larger and smaller sizes, so the rollers can be uniformly crushed to help maintain consistency and efficiency. From here, the grist is fed to a mixing unit that wets and mixes the grist with brewing liquor into a slop to go to the mash tun. Once mashed in, the wort is drained to the waiting kettle where it’s boiled for 90 mins and hops added before being cooled, and going to the open fermentation vessels and yeast being added.

The traditional open fermenters were interesting to see, with different levels of active fermentation and flocculation. If nothing else, the aroma was amazing, with fruity esters dancing on the breeze.

The tour touched on many points, but rather than cover it all, I’ll take this opportunity to suggest you visit and take the tour yourself. The Hook Norton website covers most of what we learned on the day and is well worth a visit: https://www.hooky.co.uk/our-story/a-family-history/.

After the 2-hour tour, we broke for lunch, back in the tap room, which gave the perfect opportunity to enjoy the beers on offer. Again, Hooky was the beer most taken onboard.

Falco Feildhoff

While taking the tour, we were introduced to Falco Feildhoff, a filmmaker that was filming at the brewery to create new video content to back up his 1999 film of the brewery: https://vimeo.com/787869028. Falco is also a home brewer and was keen to show us pictures of his home brewery, chat with us about all things beer and join us for a few. Falco was quite a character.

Old Hooky Clone Beer Challenge Tasting

After lunch, the highlight of the day, as brewers, came with the Old Hooky clone challenge. Six brewers took clone beers, and we were honoured to have the Hook Norton MD, James Clarke, sitting on the panel, with 3 Hook Norton brewers, and head brewer.

The 2x outstanding clones were singled out and put up for a vote, with the beers from Tony T and James P too close to separate. The vote came out in James P’s favour, and he gratefully took the plaudits for his excellent beer.

After the clone tasting, we chatted with the head brewer, and had a look around the pilot brewery kit and barrel store before continuing on with taking advantage of the visitor centre bar. We retired back to the Peartree pub and did our best to empty a cask or two, before a raucous dinner back at the Sun Inn hotel, where a lot of us stayed.

All in all, this was a great trip with lots of great memories made with superb people. Thanks to the hospitality of Hook Norton brewery and MD, James Clarke, for his feedback on the clone beers. Well done to James P on winning the clone challenge and thanks to everyone attending for making this a trip to remember. The pictures really do tell a story, especially of the ones taken later in the evening.