P
L E N T Y
Meet Your Maker
Palmers Brewery
Very little has changed at Palmers Brewery since it opened for
business 200 years ago – and they still produce some of the finest
ales in the country. We take a look behind Britain’s oldest pint...
R
eal ale doesn’t get more real
than Palmers. Made in the same
Bridport brewery for 221 years
with kit that’s over a century old, this is
traditional beer made with old English raw
materials such as Maris Otter malted barley
and East Kent Goldings hops. That doesn’t
mean they’re stuck in the past. Inspired by
the microbrewery explosion, Palmers are
creating their own versions of blonde, hoppy
beers, too. From the award-winning 30-year
old 200 to the modern Colmers, you can try
these ales in one of Palmers’ 55 pubs in
Dorset, and, as head brewer Darren Batten
tells us, they’re pretty good with food, too.
Palmers fermenting room
200 recently won
the South West’s
best bottled beer.
Not bad for an old,
traditional ale.
Palmers brew five
main beers –
Copper Ale, Best
Bitter, Tally Ho!,
Dorset Gold and
200 – as well as
seasonals.
What makes your beers distinctive?
We brew with raw materials – we buy the
best we can. We use Maris Otter malted
barley which is one of the old traditional
brewing varieties – it’s the best you can buy.
The hops are 98% English hops, which gives
that distinctive bitterness to our beers.
What beer do you think we should be
drinking at the moment?
The first ever seasonal beer we brewed was
one called Colmers, named after a famous
hill in Bridport with three trees on the top.
We brewed it at Easter last year, and we sold
9,000 pints in three days. We’ve brought
that one back and it’s on sale throughout
July and August. It uses an American hop
called Citra so it’s deliciously hoppy, it’s
blonde so it’s very pale, and it’s got a citrusy
grapefruit aroma.
Golden ales are also popular these
days. Why do you think this is?
It’s about image and perception, because
if you’re a lager drinker, which is a drink
that’s light and gold, and you see a golden
ale which is light and golden in a pub, you
feel more comfortable switching to that.
We launched Dorset Gold eight or nine
years ago and it’s been our biggest growing
beer for the last three or four years. We
get so many people who say: ‘I’m not an ale
drinker.’ Then they try Dorset Gold and
they say: ‘Oh wow, that’s much better than
I was expecting it to be’. As it’s golden, it’s
much less hoppy.
You also produce bottled beers. How
should you store them?
Ideally, I would say you want to store those
beers at 10-12 degrees. That’s what you
would drink them at. You can put them in
the fridge but if you keep them too cold, you
don’t get the flavours that you would when
they’re warmer.
Any tips for home brewers?
My big tip to home brewers is: once you’ve
put that yeast in, don’t fiddle with it. Most
of them cannot resist having a poke around
to see what’s happening. Initially that yeast
goes through an aerobic growth stage, so it
uses the oxygen and it grows and it increases
in volume. Once that oxygen is used up,
it changes to an aerobic fermentation and
that’s when the alcohol’s being made. So if
you shake that beer or interrupt it,
www.menu-dorset.co.uk
Darren Batten
brew ing some beer.
He was once joine d
at the brew ery by
Prince Edw ard,
who brew ed some
Dors et Gold .
(