🍻🍌Southampton’s Craft Beer Scene is Lit for Spring 🌞
An Immediate Journey into biotransformation, Bitter Virtue, and an IPA that tastes like banana...
Howdy Immediate Beer heads!! In our latest Immediate Journey Dimitris Stoidis and I get back to where it all started — the brewing scene in Southampton…
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A series of winter storms had passed. The sun was out at last. The air was crisp and clean. And superb beer was waiting. As was Dimitris Stoidis.
Dimitris was standing outside a brewpub in Southampton having just delivered a box of beer on his bicycle to some customers. A couple of years ago he founded Immediate Beer just a few blocks away in his student accommodation, and ever since then he’s followed a path so many beer-loving entrepreneurs have taken in this ancient but ever changing business. It was good to see him again. The last time we had met in real life was at a Christmas tasting of seasonal ales, stouts, and sours. Our task on this February afternoon was to take the pulse of the burgeoning craft beer scene in Southampton as it emerged from a long winter. With all the troubles in the world, this was a welcome respite, if only for a little while.
🍺 Wild Night
Our first stop was the Brewhouse & Kitchen, a redoubt of handcrafted beer located a stone’s throw from the University of Southampton. Inside we smelled the toasted aroma of malt and saw the shining copper tanks and fermenters that were transforming grain and water into beer.
This was the place where Dimitris, a 24-year-old Greek who emigrated to England to study aerospace engineering, learned how to brew. His debut in January 2020, he told me, had been a wild night as fellow students drained pint after pint of his homemade ale at a campus pub. Dimitris and his mates raced back here, to the Brewhouse, to retrieve four more stored kegs of his beer, and hoisted them into an Uber for the quick ride back to campus. The driver was amused. “We offered him a pint, but he had more driving to do that night,” Dimitris recalls.
A lot has happened to Dimitris since then… coping with the pandemic, completing a degree at university, and launching Immediate Beer, an enterprise that embraces sustainable practices such as using discarded bread as a base and local ingredients to minimise its carbon footprint. Dimitris believes we all have a responsibility to address climate change in every aspect of our daily lives, even drinking a beer or two with friends.
It was nice to be back where it all started and Connor Higgins, the head brewer at this Brewhouse & Kitchen location, gave his former pupil a hearty welcome. In an instant we were standing at the bar admiring Connor’s latest handiwork. There were wheat beers and tropical ales and creamy stouts. There were also four cask ales, including a coffee-laced porter.
😋 Complex Flavours
Connor had shown Dimitris the ropes as part of the Brewhouse’s master class program. And he picked up right where he left off by waxing lyrical about his latest experiments in “biotransformation.” The idea, Connor said, is to let yeasts metabolise compounds in the hops during fermentation to create and amplify more complex flavours and aromas like guava and passion fruit.
Connor steered us toward an IPA called Walk the Line with a 5% ABV. As he poured us a couple of pints, Connor said he’d waited until the fermentation was about 80% completed before introducing daily doses of Mosaic and Simcoe hops into the brew. Sure enough, the beverage struck a fine balance between splashy citrus notes and firm structure, and it was amber in colour and hazy. But Connor was sceptical.
“I’m not sure biotransformation happened,” he says. “Not all yeasts perform biotransformation, and not all hops do, as well. But I do prefer the taste of the beer when I add hops during fermentation so I’m going to carry on doing that.”
He’s got his eye on the house yeast produced by Verdant, the Falmouth-based brewer that’s done wonders with biotransformation in its heady lineup of sophisticated beers. Its yeast, which is pricier than many others, has developed a cult following in home brew circles. “It’s pretty darn good,” Connor says.
We resisted the temptation to have another round and said farewell to Connor. Strolling down Portswood Road through the heart of Southampton’s university district, we passed pubs and gelaterias and curry shops and chippies and then turned into a neighbourhood of tidy terrace houses. At the intersection of Cambridge and Alma roads we arrived at a corner that’s become a destination for beer lovers near and far. It’s the site of Bitter Virtue, a beer shop with the vibe of a museum and the eclectic inventory of proprietors with a passion for their trade.
🔥 Secret Flame
The walls are decorated with vintage beer signs and the shelves are piled high with a kaleidoscope of cans. There’s a brewing library and empty bottles of prized beer drunk long ago line a high shelf that rings the sales floor. Chris Brown and Ann Binns opened Bitter Virtue 25 years ago after they fell in love with Belgian beer and wanted to share their finds kindred spirits. For a long time, they felt like they were keepers of a secret flame. Maybe too secret.
“It was quiet for eight years,” Chris says with a laugh.
But they remained devoted and when the craft beer revolution struck in earnest about a decade ago the shop became a mecca for those in the know. Today shelves heaving with cans from local breweries Vibrant Forest and Unity are showcased in a place of honour at the front of the shop.
👹 Stout Monsters
The place is teeming with rarities. There are bottles of beer that have been aged in whiskey barrels — Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Ops and Sierra Nevada’s Vintage Bigfoot look awfully intriguing. There’s some “pastry stout monsters” from Moersleutel in the Netherlands that are truly zany. The Muscovado Pecan Pie Finisher and Cinnamon Churros Chugger weigh in at a hefty 11% ABV each. Whoa.
True to their roots, Chris and Ann have a superior selection of Belgian beauties. There’s a lineup of Chimay offerings, and some Fantome Saison bottles share company with 3 Monts Biere de Flandre, which is actually a farmhouse golden ale from northern France. Chris picks up a bottle of De Dolle Arabier, a Belgian blonde sporting a racy 8% ABV. “I like this one a lot,” he says, so I buy a couple of them. I grab a can of the Pecan Pie Finisher, too, because well… why not?
Ann says one of the funny things about Belgian beers is their deceptive strength. She and Chris were in Bruges one year and watched a group of rookies down glass after glass of the smooth, elegant and refined beer on offer. Little did they realise it was 14%. “After four or five of them their legs didn’t quite work,” Ann says. “It was ever so entertaining.”
Less amusing has been the toll Brexit has taken on their small business. Like so many companies dependent on imports from the Continent, Bitter Virtue has struggled to cope with the hassle and costs of navigating the many duties and delays that sprang back to life after the U.K. quit the European Union’s free trade bloc. “It’s so frustrating,” she says.
🏝 Dank & Tropical
Thankfully, the Covid-19 pandemic appears to be ebbing and as spring dawns Bitter Virtue is poised to stock and sell even more of the locally made brews that are winning converts. We say our good-byes to Chris and Ann and beat a path to Unity Brewing, which runs a tap room in Northam, a district that hugs a bend in the River Itchen east of the city centre. The five-year-old brewery has used crowdfunding to build out its capacity and is now 55% community-owned.
As we squeeze onto one of the long tables next to the mammoth brew tanks in the warehouse, there’s a buzz in the air — Southampton’s Premier League football club has a match this evening and the ground is a short walk away.
There’s a lot of red-scarfed fans hoisting glasses of amber beer and munching on burgers and chips served up by a food truck. We both sip pints of Collision, a 6.2% IPA made with Mosaic and Columbus hops. It’s a juicy brew with a nice balance of dankness and tropical flavours — I even detect banana on the finish.
Dimitris looks sceptical. “Banana? Seriously? Hmmm… I’m not picking that up.”
I take another sip. “Definitely banana.”
Dimitris does me one better by rounding out the evening with Unity’s Little Gods, a scarlet-coloured sour with a profile of white grapes and raspberries. It has more body than your typical sour. We like it. I stick with my citrussy bent and drink a pint of Floresce, another hazy IPA finished with Talus and Vic Secret, two hops I’m not familiar with. It has more backbone than the Collision. I’ll say this for Unity’s brewers — they’re not shy about making bold, bracing beer.
You could say that about the entire brewing community in Southampton. There are some talented brewmasters here taking chances. Connor, who’s been working in the city for three years, says Southampton reminds him of Bristol’s vibrant craft beer scene. “For me that’s the pinnacle, and this isn’t far off, with all sorts of tap rooms and small brewers who want to produce new things, to experiment. That’s the vibe.”
Dimitris certainly feels it, and he’s just getting started on his own brewing journey.
Eddie Robinson is an editor, writer, and content chemist at Immediate Beer.