Press

The fire still burns bright for Russell
What's Brewing - September 2005

RUSSELL Sharp should be putting his feet up. Following a career in whisky distilling and brewing, it is surely time for him, as he enters his 60s, to pour a contemplative dram and look back on a long and sometimes turbulent career.

But the fires still burn bright. The former boss of the Caledonian Brewery, who helped save the company from closure in 1985, is back in business with a beer called Edinburgh Pale Ale.

And EPA has got off to a flying start, winning the Beer of the Festival award on its first outing in June at CAMRA's major Scottish celebration of ale in Edinburgh.

Sales are rocketing: a frantic search of Edinburgh pubs following my meeting with Russell failed to deliver a single pint. It was the same story in every outlet: "We had it on last week but we sold the lot."

Encouraged by this immediate success, Russell says he aims to make EPA the leading cask beer in Scotland. That means overhauling the phenomenally successful Deuchar's IPA, a beer he himself fashioned when he was at Caledonian. You may draw the conclusion that Russell's departure from "the Caley" was not altogether amicable, but he is tight-lipped on the subject.

Russell does not yet have a brewery, despite the imposing title of his new company, the Edinburgh Brewing Company which he runs with Alastair Mowat, who was an advisor at Caledonian and was previously with Scottish & Newcastle. EPA is brewed for them by Belhaven of Dunbar. Belhaven uses its considerable clout to distribute the beer to some 100 pubs and bars in Ayrshire, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Spurred by the immediate clamour for the beer, Russell and Alastair are looking at sites in the Scottish capital with a view to creating a brewery. If successful, they will also invite Russell's son Dougal to brew - but not mature -his Innis & Gunn Oak Aged Beer with them.

Russell says the style of EPA predates the India Pale Ales of the 19th century. The motif for his beer shows the Salisbury Crags, the ancient rock formation that includes Arthur's Seat and is the remains of an ancient volcano. The area around Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags contains such superb hard water, ideal for brewing, that it is known as the "Charmed Circle". Red sandstone lies on the impermeable volcanic rock and brewers, especially in the Canongate area of the city, sank wells to make use of the water trapped there.

In 1821 Robert Disher bought a brewer in the Canongate and created the Edinburgh & Leith Brewing Company. Disher, says Russell, recognised that the water, high in calcium and sulphate and low in chloride and sodium, was better suited to brewing sparkling pale ale than traditional dark, sweet Scotch Ales. He produced a beer he called Edinburgh Pale Ale that was so successful that other brewers, including such celebrated names as Campbell, Drybrough, and Younger, hurried to copy him.

The style was sold on the domestic market but, in common with India Pale Ale from Burton-on-Trent, was exported widely and became known as "the lifeblood of the empire". The pale ales of Edinburgh differed from the IPAs and pale ales of England as they were brewed with higher mashing temperatures and had longer fermentations at lower temperatures. Either by accident or design, the Scottish brewers were using similar production techniques to those of the first lager brewers in Munich and Pilsen.

Russell's interpretation of EPA has a modest strength of 3.4 per cent ABV - levels of alcohol would have been considerably higher in the 19th century - and is brewed with Optic barley malt and crystal malt from East Lothian. The hops are English Fuggles and Styrian Goldings.

The received wisdom is that "India Ale" was first brewed by Hodgson in East London at the end of the 18th century and was taken up with greater success by the Burton brewers early in the 19th, with Edinburgh following their lead.

Did Scottish pale ales predate the English versions? It's a fascinating debate. It would help if I could tell you what Russell Sharp's EPA tastes like but the consumers of Edinburgh had drunk the pubs dry.
I shall return, telling my family that popping out for a pint and, like Captain Oates of the Antarctic, "may be gone some time".

Edinburgh Brewing, Co: 0131662 8331

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