When Nick Bramwell reopened the Griffin Inn in May 1999, he would get visits from various Frome gents more interested in reels rather than real ale. ‘There used to be a porn cinema at the back,’ explains Bramwell, who is also a qualified robotics engineer, ‘I would get old boys turning up and asking if we were showing any movies. I had to say no.’ However, the pub does run a film club, though showing movies with more of an art-like persuasion than Debbie Does Dallas.
Nick also doubled up as brewer until his old school friend Rik Lyall, who had landed at Cotleigh Brewery in January 1999, and was responsible for developing their range of beers using American, Australian and New Zealand hops, joined him. ‘I was living out here,’ says Rik, whose CV also includes Bunces (now Stonehenge) and Hop Back, ‘and found the travelling to Wiveliscombe at the other end of the county too much. My girlfriend couldn’t get a job in Taunton either so I joined Nick after he made me an offer.’
In the pub, above the bar, you will find Nick’s ‘shelf of shame’, which in his words is ‘full of all sorts of crap and stuff which has a story. One chap came in with a bottle of Weston’s cider and said that he loved the pub but hated beer, and would pay £2 a time if he was served with Weston’s Organic cider. I told him where to go and confiscated the bottle.’
The pub is also unique in that there is no draught cider or Guinness for sale, though flip-top bottles of Grolsch brewed at source are available. Nick stocked Guinness for a while, but it didn’t sell. For the first couple of years he used to get people coming in and asking for Forster’s. ‘I was bet a fiver,’ says Nick, ’by someone who said that Forster’s would be on the bar in three months. That was four years ago and there’s still no sign of it.’
With the age of the pub, it’s not surprising that a ghost has been noted. According to Nick, a half pint exploded in someone’s hand and after he started investigating a blocked up tunnel in the cellar strange things started happening.
This wasn’t the first time the two of them had joined forces to make beer. Theirs is a brewing history and friendship that goes back to teenage years, when both attended the same Guildford school. ‘One of the first beers that we perfected,’ recalls Rik, ‘was the golden beer of Guildford. Using only pale ale malt from the home brew shop and flavoured with Goldings we created one of the first summer time beers. This was in 1983.’ This was several years before Exmoor Gold kicked off the whole golden ales boom. ‘We were very influenced by what we were drinking from Oddbins at the time, beers such as Pilsner Urquell and the French bière de garde Jenlain. We took these influences and combined them with our knowledge of Gales HSB and bottles of the same brewery’s Prize Old Ale (the trick was to drink the first half-pint of HSB and then top it up with Prize Old Ale) and invented the golden beer of Guildford.’
From there onwards the two of them turned to the classic, if clumsily entitled, book Brewing Beers Like Those You Buy. ‘We also played around with ingenious ingredients,’ continues Rik, ‘as my then girlfriend had a granny who was quite knowledgeable in this area. We made a green-tinged nettle beer and also a spruce beer using spruce essence. I would love to recreate this. It was more of an old-fashioned ale with quite a low hopping rate and a delicious resinous note to it.’ The brewing continued alongside a foray into wine-making, using the likes of damsons, elderberries and rice and raisins. This was not always successful as Rik remembers.
‘While still at school, one day I was awoken with the most terrific of explosions. The day before I had started making a gallon of rice and raisin wine. During the night a raisin had swelled, due to the carbon-dioxide from the yeast working, risen up and become lodged in the air lock thus preventing the gas escaping. The explosion saw all of the raisins deposited all over the ceiling of my bedroom. After this my father, who was always quite supportive of my efforts despite coming home from work to find the floor sticky with malt and the bath full of bottles being sterilised, became more hesitant over my wine making.’
As well as being responsible for the golden ale of Guildford, Rik also claims to be the originator of a black beer specific to the town. ‘In 1985,’ he says, ‘I developed a recipe for a stout that literally came out pitch black. At the time it weighed in at 6% and tasted delicious. My father recently moved and reminded me that I still had some bottles of wine up in the loft. Amongst the bottles of elderflower wine was one last bottle of my black beer, Chateau Artington Walk 1985. After settling it for a few days back in Frome, I chilled it, knocked off the top and was amazed that even 22 years later it was still magnificent. The bottle had been in the loft, where the temperature had been going up and down throughout the year, but there was no spoilage or off-flavours present. There was just a lovely smooth well-conditioned stout with the flavour of the roasted malt coming through, as well as hints of licorice and burnt chocolate. I really thought it was going to be a bottle of Sarsons. Shame there was only the one, but it shows that I was doing something right even then.’
The eight-barrel brewery is based at the back of the Griffin, which is a showpiece for Milk Street’s carefully crafted beers such as Beer, Nick’s and Zigzag Stout; ‘we want the beers to stand on their own merits,’ says Rik, ‘so no fancy names. I do like to experiment, though, that is something that comes from working at Bunces, Hop Back and Cotleigh, as well as my past history as a home-brewer.’ He is proud of Elderbeer, a unfiltered and unpasteurised wheat beer that contains honey and elderflower. Brewing takes place three times a week, with malt from Warminster, hops from Charles Faram and their own yeast. ‘A very versatile one and a similar strain to Young’s,’ says Rik. Click on Our Beers (above) for more on our gorgeous beers.
Just another night in Frome and the local constable is going round the pubs to check how everyone is behaving. Chucking out time is approaching and a few folk are causing a fuss. Is this the usual 21st century high street trouble with binge drinking? No, this is 1813 and High Constable Isaac Gregory’s diary records that ‘one or two broke their things with rage but was immediately made to pay for them. Others declared it was scandalous to hurry them so when they were so comfortable and quiet, but they all submitted much better than I expected. The greatest part of them was females.’
Maybe it was the strong ale that Frome was famous for in the 19th century that caused all the problems. Or maybe it was just the times they were all living in, with the stress of what seemed an endless war with Napoleon. Whatever the reason, one beery thing that Frome can be proud of is its long-established brewing tradition that was cemented with the foundation of the Lamb Brewery in 1853 by brothers John and Thomas Baily.
The Lamb was a thriving company, which owned over 70 pubs at one stage, including Victoria Inn and Lamb Hotel at Christchurch Street East and the Angel & Crown Inn at Vallis Way. Newspaper adverts proclaimed the fame of their XX Burton, Invalid Porter (Double Stout) and Pale Ale, the latter a beer that was promoted as a ‘family beer’. This was the time when beer was the universal drink of both working and middle classes, with the latter showing a love for sparkling pale ales and turning their backs on what they perceived where the murky, muddy waters of the worker’s porters and strong milds. The age of the so-called running beers, or bitter, was about to dawn.
The late 19th century also saw the amalgamation of Bath Arms Brewery, Castle Brewery, and Badcox Brewery to form Frome United Breweries, with brewing taking place at the now demolished Badcox site. In 1955, the company merged with the Lamb Brewery to from Frome & Lamb. Sadly, Ushers and the Stroud Brewery gobbled it up and the premises demolished in 1959. Brewing stopped in the town until 1999 when the Milk Street Brewery set up its mash tun at the Griffin Inn (built 1590 and once an Ushers pub), just off the historic St Catherine Hill. Now, there is locally brewed beer once more.
A maltings, or malthouse, is where barley is malted in preparation for its eventual conversion into a pint of beer. In the 19th century malthouses were common sights in the towns of the West Country, and Frome was no exception. It is thought that the Willow Vale Maltings had a history going back to the 18th century and in 1860 Bath Arms brewer Edmond Baily became its owner. In 1881, he died and ownership of the maltings passed onto his son Alfred, who had a new and much larger malt house built next to Frome station, and Willow Vale went into decline. Unsurprisingly, this new venture was called the Station Maltings. It continued to malt barley and provide work for many locals until it was shut and demolished in the late 1960s. Ironically enough, the maltings it replaced, Willow Vale, is still standing and been converted into local homes.
Thanks to Frome Museum for the use of their material.