Cornish Bock, a forgotten beer.

Cornish Bock, a forgotten but fabulous small batch bottled beer brewed by St Austell Brewery was a beer that helped inspire me into becoming a  Beer Academy Beer Sommelier. However, it was not so much the beer, but the story behind it that intrigued me most.  Just what was a Bock beer and how did it come by the name, that's what I found just as fascinating as to what it tasted like. 

The story of Cornish Bock goes back to the 2010, it was then that St Austell Head Brewer Roger Ryman first began talking about the relevance of beer styles.  The job of building Tribute into a national beer brand was well established and with the green shoots of the craft beer movement starting to take root in the UK, Roger was keen for beer styles to feature on the beer marketing agenda. For example, a subtle but important change was made to the Tribute pump clip beer descriptor, changing Premium Cornish Ale into Cornish Pale Ale, thus bringing Tributes beer style into play for the first time.

As a marketing team we began to take more interest in beer styles and recall taking a work trip to London where I enjoyed drinking a bottle of German Bock Lager, it was the first time I'd tried a Bock. I spoke to Roger about it and it was then the idea of producing a Bock brewed in Cornwall was conceived. In 2010 St Austell Brewery launched Korev, a fantastic premium lager and with this experience combined with a major investment in brewing equipment, the brewing team mastered the necessary skills required for brewing authentic lagers. Thus, a platform was now in place for brewing a Bock.

Korev Lager (original branding)

By 2012 Korev had become the brand of choice for many premium lager drinkers in Cornwall, the ball was rolling as they say and the Korev lager story was well on its way. So what next in St Austell's portfolio of lagers? The seeds conceived a year or so earlier were starting to germinate and Roger was keen to try brewing a Bock. My input was minimal bar suggesting the name, Cornish Bock, not perhaps the most novel name but it did very much describe what the beer was all about. 

So what exactly is a Bock? Normally a bottom fermented sweet, malt forward lager style beer with low bitterness, rich in colour with an abv of circa 6.3% to 7.2%. Like many good beer stories the origins of the Bock name are somewhat muddied but the one we chose to adopt in St Austell was that linked to the German town of Einbeck, The Bock style was later adopted by Munich brewers where Einbeck was pronounced Ein bock, which means a Billygoat in German and thus many Bock beers began to appear with the goat images on their labels.

Traditionally German Bocks were brewed in the springtime to be drunk throughout the summer, where the higher abv's acted as a natural preservative. However, in the Netherlands the Bock beer style has become very popular and their Bock beer season normally begins in October, where the beer is drunk in the wintertime and throughout the festive season. Finding a Bock in the UK is quite rare, you'll have to visit a specialist beer shop or online store, assuming we don't count the Portuguese imposter Super Bock beer. 

Rather like Cornish Bock, a traditional Bock has become somewhat forgotten and overlooked in the UK. Its not a fashionable taste, full, sweeter, lacking in bitterness with limited hop characters, its not really on the craft beer drinkers radar. However, it really should be be....its a very authentic beer style, tastes fantastic and is more often brewed by quality brewers with a rich history. What's not to like?

St Austell Brewery's Cornish Bock was partly based on the Korev brew but at 6.5% abv, with Perle, Hersbrucker and Saaz hops, it was a rich, deep marmalade colour, sweet with bold toffee caramel flavours topped off with a hint of burntness. I think it was brewed three times although by the third brew it had become overshadowed by other small batch beers that were more flavoursome in terms of hops, hence it never reappeared. It has become somewhat forgotten over time but I shall always have a fondness for it as it sparked my interest in beer styles and was one of the reasons I trained to become a Beer Sommelier, successfully passing my exams in early 2013.