Bristol’s burgeoning taste for beer

Breweries continue to open across Bristol. New shops sell beers brewed in the city and across the world in cans, bottles and on tap; and one new shop on the Gloucester Road even matches beers to comics:

Bottles & Books is certainly unique in its business model, specialising in craft beer, real cider and graphic novels.

Their shelves are stocked with many beers brewed in Bristol, with beer fans never before having so much choice if they want to drink ales made on their doorstep.

Down the Gloucester Road from Bottles & Books, Riccardo Pettrini, known to most as Pedro, lifts the lid on one of the tanks of beer slowly fermenting in Croft Ales.

He prefers not to be called head brewer, but to all intents and purposes that is his role, while also managing the Hare on the Hill a few hundred yards from here on the slopes of Kingsdown.

Riccardo Pettrini hard at work at Croft Ales

Croft Ales beers can now be bought in the Hare on the Hill, with both businesses owned by Brendan O’Reilly, who not simply content with fulfilling one dream by co-owning his own pub has now fulfilled another by founding his own brewery.

“I want to make good beer that people like,” Brendan said in the brewery on Upper York Street, surrounded by second-hand kit that arrived in Stokes Croft with no instruction manule, having been bought from a brewery in Pembrokeshire and kept for three months in a lock-up in Avonmouth.

“I started off drinking beer. Now I’m making it in the heart of where I want to be.”

Croft Ales’ current range comprises of a best bitter, an English IPA, red IPA and an English pale, that will all be available from kegs and casks at the opening party for the brewery and its tap room on Saturday, October 7.

The Croft Ales team

Never before have so many breweries been based in Bristol. Croft Ales can be found behind a small red door almost opposite Lakota – a nightclub which itself was once a brewery. Draw a circle with less than a mile circumference and you will also find the likes of Left Handed Giant, Moor and Good Chemistry.

In nearby St Werburgh’s, home to the now well-established Wiper & True, another brewery has also just opened for business. With its bright red and blue colour scheme painted on the side of its brewery and tap room on Mina Road, Fierce & Noble is most definitely not subtle.

Fierce & Noble is owned by estate agent Tobie Holbrook, also the owner of the Grounded chain of cafes where the brewery’s four different pale ales will start off being exclusively sold.

Fierce & Noble head brewer Ollie Dent (left) with owner Tobie Holbrook (right)

“I’ve always been completely passionate about beer,” Tobie told Bristol24/7 at the brewery’s official launch on a recent evening. “We are beer warriors. But we respect what’s happening before.”

They have not been welcomed with open arms by many of their neighbours in St Werburgh’s, however, having had one application rejected to grant the tap room a license to open seven days a week.

Fierce & Noble’s marketing strategy has also come under pressure from some people, with special disgust reserved for the description of the Black IPA:

Fierce & Noble’s Black IPA: “this beer will attempt to clumsily seduce you by complimenting your hair whilst attempting to slip you the tongue”

“This beer wants to be the creepy guy that won’t leave you alone on a night out,” wrote @CharlieEsq_ on Twitter, while @laylasquare said: “Gross! I’ll never drink one of their beers.”

In response to criticism, Fierce & Noble’s marketing manager Katie Taylor said that “it’s a lighthearted way of giving the beer a bit of personality”.

Serving adventurous beers from Bristol and further afield is another new beer shop, Beer Necessities, found in a single converted shipping container in Cargo 2’s recent extension at Wapping Wharf.

This shop doesn’t sell comic books, but it does have a mighty fine collection of beers including some never before seen in Bristol – which you can be asked to be paired to enjoy with a burger from Squeezed next door.

There are also three rotating kegs from which you can fill up a container to take home, further satisfying the thirst for all things beer in Bristol.

Some of the selection within Beer Necessities (also pictured top)