Walter Hicks Special Draught - a real blast from the past

Two or three weeks ago, a beer which many local drinkers thought had actually been discontinued, received some unexpected publicity, on the social media pages of a well-known Tonbridge pub. Its appearance on the Nelson Arms’ website, and subsequent sampling by a number of local drinkers, including me, sparked a debate amongst members of our local WhatsApp group. The beer in question was Walter Hicks Special Draught – HSD for short, and it is described by the brewery as a “truly classic ale of considerable depth and complexity.” Some admirers go further by claiming that this 5% strong, cask ale is a suitable alternative to a well-rounded premium red wine and an obvious match with steaks and other red meat dishes.

Named after Cornishman Walter Hicks, who founded the St Austell Brewery in 1851, Hicks Special Draught is brewed with plenty of malt and large quantities of English Progress and Golding hops, Hicks is today, the oldest and most traditional of St Austell Brewery’s core beer range. So why did some of us think the beer had been discontinued?

The prime reason is that HSD is rarely seen outside of its Cornish heartland, unlike relative newcomers, Tribute and Proper Job. I first heard of the beer as student, when a friend and I spent a week’s holiday in Cornwall, at a caravan site on the edge of Perranporth. We were aware that St Austell were one of the few remaining independent brewers in the county, and on a previous visit my friend had come across an extra strong beer called Walter Hicks Special.

We didn’t realise initially that the latter was a St Austell beer, until we came across it at a local pub. There weren’t that many St Austell pubs in that part of northern Cornwall, as regional brewery Devenish, along with national brewers such as Courage and Whitbread controlled many of the local pubs. But after trying a few pints of HSD, we declared this full-bodied beer with its of hints of esters and fruity biscuit malt flavours, was one well worth seeking out.

That task wasn’t easily undertaken in the Greater Manchester area, where we were living and studying, and neither was it feasible in our respective home counties of Staffordshire and Kent. For this reason, HSD specifically and St Austell ales generally, fell totally off my radar. When Eileen and I opened our Off-Licence in 2001 and started serving real ale to take away by the pint, beers from St Austell occasionally featured on our list. This was primarily due to a beer distributor, known as the Beer Seller. One particular customer had lived in Cornwall for several years, and whilst discussing local beers, as we sometimes did, St Austell was one of the breweries whose name cropped up. Interestingly, my customer friend told me the beer used o be known in Cornwall, as “St Awful!”

Things of course changed with the arrival of Roger Ryman, as St Austell’s head brewer, in 1999. Until his untimely passing in 2020, following a brave battle with cancer, Roger oversaw significant modernisation and investment in the brewery which successfully combined the company’s pride in traditional values, with modern and efficient brewing methods. He left behind a legacy that continues at the company to this day. Over the two decades that followed his appointment, Roger and his brewing team played a leading role in the company’s growth and success. He was responsible for transforming St Austell Brewery’s portfolio of brands – including its three flagship beers: Tribute Pale Ale, Proper Job IPA, and Korev Cornish Lager, but little mention was made of the company’s most legendary ale, HSD, which was eclipsed by Tribute and Proper Job.

So, like several of my drinking friends, I was surprised to see its appearance on the Nelson Arms’ website. Of course, I had to pop along to the pub and give it a try, which I did on a rather wet and windy Easter Monday, where during a relaxing afternoon session, I enjoyed a couple of pints of this legendary beer. The first thing that struck me was its traditional brown colour, especially after becoming used to the pale coloured Tribute and Proper Job. Regardless of appearance, I enjoyed this strong and full-bodied Cornish ale, brimming with rich malt flavours, and bittered with plenty of traditional English Fuggles and Golding hops. I made mention of this on the WhatsApp group, which was where a comment came back from a friend that he found the beer a bit underwhelming and rather thin to what he’s remembered.

Various comments passed back and forth until one made by a local CAMRA member, who works in the hop industry explained that he’d heard Roger Ryman describe at a conference that, over the years, he had gradually updated all of the older St Austell recipes, by making them more hop-forward, in order to give then a more modern feel.  This would make sense, as well as accounting for the change in flavour and make up of HSD, that our other friend had noticed.

Nelson landlord Matt, had acquired several casks of HSD, and the beer is still shown as “on sale” on the Real Ale Finder App. Given the transport logistics between Cornwall and Kent, it made perfect sense for Matt to order a number of casks, and judging by the subsequent, and very positive feedback, it was a gamble well worth taking. Finally, for those of us who might not have tasted HSD for a long period of time, it afforded the perfect excuse of renewing our acquaintance with this, perhaps, slightly older style of cask beer, albeit with a more modern twist.

 

Giesinger Bräu - former new kid on the block, but now a serious player on the Munich beer scene

Sometimes just cracking open a particular bottle of beer can bring back memories, transporting the drinker back to a place, or a time that constituted a significant moment in the life of that person. More often than not though, the pleasant memories associated with a particular beer, are just that, happy thoughts of a special moment, lost in time. Quite often, opening that bottle can lead a person off in a totally different direction, as happened to me, the other evening, when I opened up a bottle that had been lurking for a while, at the back of the fridge.

The beer in question was Giesinger Märzen, a beer I acquired following a visit to Fuggles Bottle Shop, a month, or possibly more, ago, and whilst the beer itself didn’t conjure up, too many memories at first, the label on the bottle certainly did. In the end, it set me off on a trail of exploration that saw me delving into the founding, and subsequent expansion of a brewery that, for many local drinkers, is a very welcome addition to the beer scene in its home city of Munich.

Giesinger Bräu  began production in 2007, starting out in a converted double-garage, in a residential area at Untergiesing, in the south of Munich, producing around 300 hectoliters of beer. By 2009, that figure had increased to an impressive 750 hectoliters of beer, and just two years later, after hitting the magic figure of 1,000 hectoliters, the small garage brewery had reached its limit. There was no room for further expansion of the plant, and space at the cramped backyard site was completely exhausted. A new location was needed, and plans for an ambitious expansion were put in place.

None of this was known to Matthew and me, when we called in at the brewery, during a visit to Munich in the summer of 2014. We’d stopped by to pick up a few bottles, after I’d seen a few ads, plus an article informing drinkers about this welcome new addition to the Munich beer scene. We hadn’t realised at the time that Geisinger had ran out of space and were just a few months away from moving to a new site, with a greatly increased capacity. The demand for the brewery’s carefully crafted beers had become too great, and space at the garage site was simply too tight.

A few months after returning home, I read about the opening of the new brewery, with its 20 fermentation and storage tanks, compared to just four at the garage. Almost overnight, Giesinger became the second largest private brewery in Munich, with the capability of producing up to 12,000 hectoliters of beer per year - more than ten times as much as the previous site!

Inspired by what I had read, I was determined to take a closer look, so when our next visit to Munich came about, in February 2017, it was the perfect opportunity to experience what Giesinger had created in their new home. An obvious improvement on the garage site, was the provision of a combined Bräustüberl and restaurant, which would enabled us to sample some of the beers and have a bite to eat. After taking the U2 U Bahn line to Silberhorn Straße, in the south of the city, it didn’t take long to find the Giesinger Bräu complex, which occupied two levels of a building, overlooking a yard.

Virtually opposite the brewery, is the impressive Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche – the red-brick church which acts as the Giesinger Brewery logo. We sat in the bright and modern upstairs restaurant, despite having decided not to eat. This was because we would be meeting up for an evening meal, with Matthew’s friend Will, who would be flying out to Munich later that day. The food looked good, and tempting too, and this combined with the excellent beer, meant it didn’t take long for the place to start filling up.

There were around a dozen beers advertised on the board behind us, although as we discovered, not all of them were available. This included the Smoky Fox, which was a shame, as I am a big fan of smoked beers. Instead, I started with that rarest of German beer styles a Märzen which was both amber in colour and malt driven. With hindsight, memories of this beer, especially its strong malt character, did come flooding back the other night, when I cracked open that bottle. 

Back at Giesinger, Matthew went for the Feines Pilschen - an authentic Pilsner-style beer, that is unfiltered, as are virtually all of Giesinger’s beers. Next up, I went for the Dunkles and, had it been later in the day, I would probably have tried the bottled Baltic Rye Porter as well. We had a quick look at the brewery on the way out. This is housed on the ground floor, where there is also a facility for the sale of brewery merchandise, and beer for home consumption.

This could be where the story ends, but there is another, larger and even more intriguing chapter to Giesinger’s quest to become a major player on the Munich beer scene. As demand for their beers continued to increase, the company looked around for a further site that would enable them to grow further, but in a more environmentally friendly and sustainable way. This led to the construction of a much larger brewery, occupying a 4,700 square metre site in Munich’s northern suburb of Lerchenau. This opened in the summer of 2020, but with the new location compromising the Giesinger name, the previous location in Obergiesing was retained as the company headquarters.

As part of the new brewery, the company also sank a well plunging 152 metres into the ground, and costing €1m (£840,000). The well is used to extract pure Munich water, which allows Giesinger to produce Münchener Bier, a term protected under EU Law since 1998, and one which requires the use of real Munich water, rather than stuff that comes out of the tap. This expensive gesture is the first in a series of steps designed to allow Giesinger Münchener Bier to be served at Munich’s world-famous Oktoberfest, thereby breaking the 100-year-old monopoly held by the city’s big six breweries - Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbrau, Lowenbrau, Paulaner and Spaten. who have operated the event as a rather cosy cartel.

Like I said, the brewery well is just the first step in a whole series of moves necessary to achieve Giesinger’s founder, and Managing Director, Steffen Marx’s dream of pouring his own beer at Oktoberfest.  You can learn more about the obstacles he faces, the opposition to his plans, and more about the man and his brewery, by clicking on the link to this article by Will Hawkes, which appeared in the well-researched and informative, Pellicle Magazine.