Tamar Creek, the story of a Cornish Belgian!

Pair a Head Brewer with a passion for Belgian beers with tasty Cornish cherries, add a pinch of marketing and what do you get -  Tamar Creek, a wonderful Belgian style Kriek brewed in Cornwall in a traditional method using Cornish ingredients, sourced from the Tamar Valley.

When St Austell Brewery Head Brewer Roger first began to experiment with Belgian style beers he brewed some amazing beers, these included Cardinal Syn, a Dubbel and Bad Habit, a Tripel but none was quite so unique as Tamar Creek, a sour beer flavoured with cherries. Sadly, Roger passed away early in 2020 and is much missed, however with the launch of the latest batch of Tamar Creek it seems appropriate to remember one of his more eclectic brewing creations.

I worked in marketing at St Austell Brewery for many years and was amazed by Rogers brewing skills and his prowess to brew great Belgian beers. In 2013 I had just passed my Beer Sommelier qualifications so was very interested in the different beer styles. I can't recall who first prompted the idea, I suspect Roger, but he and I hatched a plan to brew a Belgian Kriek. I then began doing some research.....

St Austell Brewery Head Brewer, Roger Ryman

Kriek, is a traditional Belgian beer style, sour to taste but flavoured with cherries, the effect is a tart ruby red beer offset with a subtle sweetness from the cherries. However, we wanted to make a very Cornish version of this beer. My research quickly pin pointed that the Tamar Valley area in South East Cornwall had been famous for its market gardens, specialising in daffodils and strawberries, with plentiful apple and cherry orchards. This reached its height in the 1950s' but decline set in with the 1960's railway Beaching cuts and sadly by the mid 1970's the industry was in deep decline. 

I set abut trying to locate some of the old cherry orchards which proved a lot harder than I imagined. Approaching some of the local fruit suppliers it seems the traditional cherry orchards had all but disappeared. However I got lucky and was told to contact Jessica and Will from Bohetherick Farm, St Dominick, near Saltash. As luck would have it, I asked in the early summer, the traditional time for harvesting cherries is in July so the timing was right. Furthermore, 2013 was a good year for cherries, I was to find out in later years that often harvests were poor.

Jessica and Will had a cherry orchard with over 50 Burcombe Cherry Trees, some of which were over 125 years old. Come July, I recall on a rather dubious rainy day being despatched to the Bohetherick for a photo shoot and to pick some cherries. Luckily Jessica and Will had already harvested the required amount we needed so my photo shoot was just for show!

With Jessica of Bohetherick Farm picking cherries in July 2013

I returned to St Austell Brewery with the cherries and these were put aside in the cool room ready for use. Roger brewed the beer on St Austell's micro brewery, a small 2 barrel plant where he developed new beers - well known favourites such as Tribute and Proper Job initially began their life in this small brewing plant.

Roger and colleagues mashed the cherries by foot, crushing them to create a red morass of delicious cherry coloured juices and fruit fibre. The beer, based on St Austell's famous Smugglers Ale had already begun its brewing cycle in large oak wooden barrels and the cherries and a wild yeast were added. These were hidden away at the rear of the Brewery warehouse to slumber on through the autumn period, slowly conditioning allowing the wild yeasts to do their worst.

A wild yeast strain can be a dangerous thing to have in a brewery. The risk is contamination with the brewers existing yeast strain which could cause huge quality issues with core brands. Roger was very aware of this and likened it to planting a hay meadow in your pristine bowling green! Therefore the wooden barrels were kept as far away from normal production as possible.

Shortly before Christmas 2013 the beer was first tried at the St Austell Celtic Beer Festival. Proving to be a hit, 1000 bottles were produced in the spring of 2014. Roger was not only a great brewer, but also a gifted marketing man and he was keen for the beer to be called Tamar Creek, linking it to the area of origin and packaged in 750ml bottles, wrapped in wax paper as the bottle label, much like its Belgium contemporaries.

The original 750ml bottles

The original Tamar Creek was a very traditional Kriek, at 7.3% abv it was plenty funky enough, a vinous tartness with a faint background sweetness from the cherries, its was a beer for the aficionados. For me as a Beer Sommelier it quickly became one of my favourite beers to use at beer tastings and I'd often match it with a creamy Cornish Brie.

As I alluded to earlier, successful cherry harvests are few and far between. There was to be no  repeat brew of Tamar Creek until 2019. Unfortunately no Cornish cherries could be sourced for the new brew and slightly weaker at 5.1% abv, but none-the-less the resulting beer is still a fine drop and great example of a Kriek. You can buy this from the St Austell Brewery shop, either in person or online. Its a lovely beer to enjoy with food or as an aperitif. Roger sadly passed away in March 2020, but he would I'm sure be very pleased with the latest batch of Tamar Creek and thrilled his passion for Belgian style beers lives on. Cheers Roger or as they say in Belgium, Sante!

Brewers & Brands from yesteryear - Kaltenberg Braumeister Lager

Kaltenberg Braumeister was a lager from the late 1980's that Regional Brewers hoped would help them compete on the top table with the big lager players of the time, namely the likes of Heineken, Carling, Skol etc. However for Braumeister, although a quality lager and launched with all the precision and detail you would expect from a German brand, it was to prove a short lived disappointment and end in failure.

Competing with the big national brands in the standard lager category has always been tough for regional businesses, they simply don't have the marketing muscle, but that's where the idea behind Kaltenberg Braumeister was a little different. The thought was that a number of Regional Brewers would brew Braumeister under license and pay into a national marketing pot, thus getting more bang for their marketing buck enabling them to challenge some of their much larger peer group brands. Amazingly this did start to work for a while and there was even a TV advert featuring Freddie Star dressed as a German U Boat Commander.

Other Regional Brewers who joined the Kaltenberg train included Higsons of Liverpool, who soon became part of Boddingtons with a combined estate of over some 800 pubs.

My connection with Kaltenberg Braumeister was as a young man who had just joined Thames Valley Regional Brewer, Morland Brewery. In 1988 Morland had a solid pub estate of over 200 pubs but their main beer was the cask ale Morland Bitter, it had a strong heartland following but that's where it ended. Old Speckled Hen was merely a commemorative beer served in nips and the brewers foray into keg beers had been a disaster - their beer was called Artist Keg and all the name associations that it conjured up! 

So, looking back the decision to invest in a new lager brewing facility and take on the brewing of an unknown German lager was a huge step for a hardly cutting edge Regional brewer. At the time I did not appreciate what a commercial risk this must have been, for a brewer to make that same decision now would be ambitious to say the least.

In June 1988 Morlands lager brewery was officially opened and Kaltenberg Braumeister was welcomed aboard. It came with an illustrious pedigree, Kaltenbergs beers being Royal Bavarian which has a special meaning in the history of lager. Prince Luitpold, Kaltenberg's Managing Director is a member of the Royal Family, which apart from ruling Bavaria for over eight centuries was responsible for one of the most important beer regulations - the Rheinheitsgebot - the 1516 purity law which stated only the purest natural ingredients of barley, malt, hops and water where permitted in the brewing of all Bavarian beers. Kaltenberg Braumeister was brewed to the Rheinheitsgebot and much of its marketing focused on this.

Prince Luitpold of Kaltenberg at the time of the launch

I recall Morland launching Kaltenberg with a couple of large outdoor garden parties with Prince Luitpold in attendance, complete with traditional Bavarian fayre of drink, food and the musical kind. Sales of Kaltenberg initially boomed, the launch had gone well and many pubs were keen to take the new brand. With its iconic stein style bar font and good marketing to back it up what could possibly go wrong, but wrong it certainly went! The lager itself was distinctive with plenty of flavour and at 3.8% abv it compared well with some of its weaker abv competitors. However, the flavour was to the be the first of Kaltenbergs undoings......

A photo taken from the launch

At a time when most standard lagers were easy to drink tasteless affairs, the more authentic tasting Kaltenberg was something very different and some of the key target market found this too challenging. It was also said that Kaltenberg would give you a headache. Remember at the time people were used to drinking in quantity and not quality so this was unwelcome side affect. The Rheinheitsgebot was a mark of quality and should have been a positive but to the UK market at the time it meant very little. However Morland saved up the the biggest torpedo that sank the good ship Kaltenberg Braumeister for a couple of years later.

Kaltenberg used a traditional Bavarian lager yeast and this was shipped every eight weeks from Munich. However, sadly after 18 months Kaltenberg suffered serious quality issues to the point where pubs took the lager off the bar - it was cloudy and tasted bad. The culprit turned out to be a cross yeast contamination caused by Morlands own ale yeast. Kaltenberg sales never recovered with Morland customers as licensees were reluctant to try it again and with its reputation sunk, by the mid 1990's it was gone. A disaster you might say, BUT NO, on the horizon was a knight in shining armour, or in Morlands case, speckled armour! 

1990 saw the new Beer Orders come into force and Morland were lucky enough to have a very creative Marketing Manager at the helm (not me, I hasten to add, I was his number two). I recall he took the allocated marketing money for Kaltenberg and realising that it would be money wasted, he spent it all on the launch of Old Speckled Hen without telling the Chief Executive!  However his gamble worked and very soon Morland had one of the biggest ale brands of the 1990's on their hands.

So back to Kaltenberg Braumeister. In my view, it was a lager aimed at the wrong market for its time. It also met with some bad luck that would ultimately be its undoing. It had a lot going for it in terms of provenance and quality and were it to be launched today, it might be a different story. The Kaltenberg beers would resurface again, the Diat Pils version is well known and the brewery continues to thrive in its Bavarian homeland.