Cloudwater Brew Co., Murk Into Gold

A big old black barrel barbecue, smoke billowing up through Paul Jones’s bushy ginger beard whilst he skewers lumps of chargrilled flesh across the coals, that mouth-watering meaty smell wafting across Piccadilly Trading Estate. It’s opening day at Cloudwater’s brand spanking new taproom! I make my way to the bar through the forest of bellies and beards and order my inaugural measure, a third of BA Sourdough Pale, Cloudwater made this in collaboration with locals Pollen Bakery using their sourdough starter culture to inoculate a pale ale that had been sitting in red a red wine barrel for the past year. Needless to say, it was bloody delicious. Most people, however flock to Cloudwater to sample their world famous DIPAs and this is also how I was first introduced to the range.

Back in the summer of 2016, sat in a trendy place in Hackney Wick, I spotted two funky looking bottles in the fridge. Not one to take half measures, I ordered both. They were Cloudwater’s DIPA v2 and DIPA v3 clocking in respectively at 9.6% and
9% abv. I was amazed! Still fairly new to the craft beer thing, I had never tried anything like them, thick juicy fruity hoppy murky beers. My tiny naïve mind was blown. Thus a double IPA love affair was born.

Little did I know at the time, that Cloudwater had already been going a couple of years. Paul Jones set up camp all the way back in 2014 with help from James Campbell who had recently relinquished his brewing position at Marble Brewery. Together they ambitiously set out to make excellent beers based on seasonally available ingredients (respecting the regional hop seasons) brewed into a constantly evolving range with no core products or repeats, and the mission was to grow… fast. And that they did!

After bringing global attention to themselves with the DIPA v. series (2 and 3 of which enchanted me so much), Cloudwater hit RateBeer.com’s top ten breweries in the world of 2017, then soared all the way to being the second best brewery on the planet in 2018, beaten only by the ever elusive (in the UK anyway) Hill Farmstead, finishing ahead of US double IPA titans such as Other Half, Trillium and Monkish.

Having found their feet with the DIPA style, a majority of Cloudwater’s beers are double IPAs made by beard wielding beer nerds for list ticking beer geeks. The brew names all proudly announce the main aroma hops used, some of them only differing by one hop variety or a slight tweak to the process. Take for example the recent DIPA Citra T90 Amarillo and DIPA Citra Cryo Amarillo, two beers released at the same time made with an identical process and ingredients save for the type of Citra hop pellets used… That’s right, same hop, different types of pellet. I’ll pop an asterisk here for those interested in how they differ*… I’ve now waxed lyrical for five hundred odd words about Cloudwater’s DIPAs which are by all accounts amazing. I would however like to draw attention to the other, less mainstream beers they brew.

The first non-DIPA I tried was the Fazenda Ouro Verde Porter (Autumn Winter 2016). I briefly touched on Cloudwater’s lack of core range earlier, unlike a majority of breweries, they don’t have one. From the get-go, Paul and James decided to keep a rotational range, only new beers divided into four distinct seasons (a bit like fashion I think…). This landmark Porter was part of the Autumn/Winter 2016 range. Much like Vogue’s obsession with military dress that season, this Porter is a modern take on a classic, thus far side-lined but always very smart style. It is cold infused with Brazilian Fazenda Ouro coffee prepared by local roasters Ancoats. This beer opened my eyes to Cloudwater as general high grade brewers as opposed to one style wonders. It was soft and smooth with a creamy mouth feel and surprisingly round body for a Porter. The coffee adds a lovely toasty bitterness to the equation.

In August 2017, Cloudwater signed the lees on a railway arch not far from the brewery, this was to host their taproom and their expanding barrel ageing program. Whilst only a small part of their production, their barrel aged beers are excellent. A lot of wine barrels are to be found from various origins (including Champagne) as well as the odd bourbon and Rum, but the beer I’d like to talk about here is the Ardbeg BA Imperial Stout. This beer is made of fresh non-barrel aged Stout blended with a rich American style Stout aged for twelve months in Ardbeg Whisky barrels. The result is a beautifully balanced beer with delicious sweetness from the Whisky and a very gentle and subtle peat induced smoky undertone. The addition of fresh Stout makes the beer very approachable and smooth considering its hefty 11.5% ABV!

The last non-DIPA I’d like to talk about is Let There Be Love. This was not very highly rated in the beer community, but it charmed me. For this one, Cloudwater teamed up with Dry & Bitter Brewery as part of the Hops not Hate charity initiative to make a lightly smoked Lager. It was gentle, thirst quenching, and mouth wateringly smoky. Let There Be Love is an excellent example of how Cloudwater can take a simple (and often sniffed at) style like a Lager and do it brilliantly. This beer holds no pretences but does its job very well indeed.

After my Sourdough Pale, I went in for a second round with a third of white wine barrel aged Winberry Saison Brut, a delicious winberry sour ale fermented with Champagne yeast. The new taproom takes the form of a mezzanine hovering over the brewery, if you peer over the edge, you can see the tanks and barrels where all the magic happens. There are huge prints of various can and bottle art from Cloudwater’s vast back catalogue of always very carefully curated label designs. A number of windows in the high ceiling flood the space with plenty of natural light but there’s still a very cosy warm feeling, everyone is buzzing to be trying such exciting world class beers only meters away from where they were brewed. The twitter and rumble of high spirited chat is loud, punters are laughing, sipping and meeting new friends, there is literally a guy ticking a list on the next table, the bar staff are joyously repeating their well-rehearsed patter whilst joking around with each other, everybody is having an excellent time, myself included. The taproom has only been open a few hours but it already is, and will continue to be a destination for craft beer drinkers not only in the UK but from around the world. As one of only a tiny handful of British breweries to have gained respect and interest in the far more advanced American craft beer scene, Cloudwater has earned its place as one of the very best and most revered breweries in the world today.

* Hey, welcome to the nerd den, just the two of us here for now, leave your sandals at the door please… So hop pellets come in two numbers T90 and T45, T90 Pellets are milled into a fine powder before being chucked (tightly) through a pellet shaping die. They retain all of the vegetative matter that came in the original hop cones and can be used as a full replacement for hop cones but are basically way more intense. Now, Cryo hop pellets are made by cryogenically freezing the hop cones and separating the leaves from the lupulin. Lupulin is the bit that contains the oils and resins that provide the beer with its flavours and aromas. That’s of course used in the pellet, so you only need to use about half as much because it’s about twice as intense. The DIPA Citra T90 Amarillo uses 16 grams of pellets per liter whereas the DIPA Citra Cryo Amarillo only uses 8 grams per liter.