Wales has a prodigious thirst to quench. In popular imagination, it may be the land of castles and bards, and the home of Merlin and Arthur. But in the middle of the 19th century, the reality was rapid industrial development that made some men enormously wealthy and left the laboring man thirsty for beer.

he mountains in South Wales have been mined at least since medieval times. At the start of the Industrial Revolution, the steep valleys that fan out north of Cardiff and Swansea provided the coal and iron ore that fuelled explosive development.

Metal industries–tinplate production, ore smelting and steelworks–dominated the two rapidly growing cities along the coast. These industries, the transportation networks and the port system constructed to handle the trade brought great prosperity to some. The second Marquess of Bute transformed Cardiff through the mines, the railways and the port, all of which he owned, making him the richest man in Europe and probably the world. His son, the third Marquess, renovated centuries-old Cardiff Castle into a sentimental Victorian tribute to classical world cultures and languages, including the ancient Celtic culture of Wales.

But for the majority of people who worked the mines and factories, the sudden growth and change meant grinding poverty and social dislocation. Mining disfigured the valleys and factories grew uncontrolled near the ports. For the men who worked in these industries, the days were long, the work hot and dirty

These men drank beer that was restoring and low in alcohol. “My grandfather used to walk into the pub and down two pints one after the other,” said a former miner in a Rhondda valley village. Welsh beer remains to this day low gravity and sweetish, able to be consumed by the pint to quench a day-long thirst.

Today, Cardiff and Swansea are vibrant towns, each experiencing the purposeful redevelopment of older areas for new uses, in ambitious projects such as the four billion pound Cardiff Bay Development Project and the renovation of the Swansea docks area.

Welsh breweries and pubs are caught between producing traditional ales for working men in neighborhood and village pubs, and younger generations that seem inclined to abandon old styles in favor of lager and alcopops served in city-center theme bars. Can the best of the old survive the prosperity of today?

Iechyd da—Good Health

In a smoky upstairs room at the United Service Club down a side street in downtown Cardiff, members of the Cardiff and Vale branch of CAMRA met for a game of skittles. The teams took turns bowling at the nine pins. It was a “friendly match”æthere would be no winneræso there was time between turns to talk over the beer scene in Cardiff.

The conversation turned to the growth of nitrogen-dispensed beers, the “nitro-kegs.” The use of nitrogen rather than carbon dioxide to dispense and extend the life of beer was pioneered by Guinness and recently extended by Caffrey’s. The resulting pint is a muted, softer (some say less flavorful) version of the original, but nitro-keg has proved immensely popular. S.A.Brain, the classic brewery of Cardiff, now makes its entire line of beers available in two varieties: traditional cask ale and so-called “smooth” versions which are dispensed by nitrogen.

Kevin Travers, a tall, diffident man who is the chairman of the Cardiff and Vale branch of CAMRA, was reluctant to join the condemnation of all nitrogen dispensed beer.
“I’m ambivalent about nitro-kegs,” he said. “On the one hand, nitro ales like Caffrey’s take audiences away from real ales. But they also convince lager drinkers to try ales in the first place.”

The tension between old and new surfaced later in the Old Arcade on Church Street. Over pints of Brains Dark, a Welsh mild, Brian Francis, the secretary of the CAMRA group defended the novel additions that are showing up, even in the beers featured at CAMRA’s various real ale festivals. John Wake, a former detective who knows the coal mining valleys of the area intimately, was quietly indignant.

“Vanilla and cinnamon in a beer? Fruit in a beer?”

“What about the Belgians?” replied Francis. “They’ve put fruit in their beer for centuries.”

“With all respect, we’re not Belgian. We’re Welsh,” said Wake, “and I certainly can’t go up the Rhondda Valley and ask for a vanilla and cinnamon beer!”

The Oldest Brewery

S.A. Brain’s, once the second oldest Welsh brewery, has operated in a Victorian brewery in the center of Cardiff since 1882. Two years ago, Brain’s assumed the mantle of oldest–and largest–independent brewery in Wales, when it merged with the even older Crown Buckley brewery of Llanelli. The Llanelli brewery was closed, and the entire line of Buckley’s beers are being brewed at Brain’s in Cardiff. Depending on the speaker, Brain’s is now either the villain or the hero of the tale of beer in South Wales.

CAMRA protested the Buckley closure with its signature mock funerals. True to CAMRA’s predictions, one beer of the Buckley line has been retired, and members fear more may follow. “They’ve ruined Buckley’s beers here in Cardiff,” one lamented.

Brain’s counters that it has remained independent, family-controlled, and Welsh in ownership and character. This, at a time when mighty Bass has closed Welsh Brewers in Cardiff to consolidate production in England at Burton-upon-Trent.

At Brain’s Old Brewery on St. Mary Street, where the aroma of brewing can dominate that area of Cardiff, former Buckley’s brewer Tony Crossman explains the care taken to keep Buckley’s brews distinct from Brain’s. The central brewhouse is common to both, but recipes and yeast strains are separate.

Buckley’s beers–Buckley’s Dark, Buckley’s Best Bitter, and the stronger Reverend Jamesæhave their parallels in style and strength in the Brain’s range, with Brain’s Dark, Brain’s Bitter, and Brains S.A. (known affectionately as “Skull Attack”). Despite the similarities, Crossman is confident Buckley beers are secure in their new Cardiff home. He is also cautiously hopeful about the future of cask conditioned beer, despite the fact that both Brain’s and Buckley beers are selling best in the nitro versions. “People have written off draft traditional beers, but I don’t buy that.”

Facing Demographic Change

That confidence was echoed by Hannah Thomas, whose job in public relations keeps her focus on the consumer. “Brain’s made a fortune from quaffable beer for working men. Real ales remain the cornerstone of the company,” she said, even if, at the same time “IPAs, mild, stouts, all the dark beers are considered old men’s beers.”

Brain is managing the balancing act between old and new customers by adding glass facades to create a lighter atmosphere in some of the traditional pubs. “Community-based, old fashioned, spit and sawdust pubs have been the core of Brain’s. We don’t want to alienate those patrons,” said Hannah Thomas–although one older gentleman in a newly renovated Cardiff bar complained “I don’t like sitting where everyone walking by can watch me drink my beer.”

Brain’s needed another approach to attract a younger and more female clientele, and to compete with the proliferating theme bars–faux Irish and fake Australian spots, or modern pubs whose names (the Newt and Cucumber, the Orange and Kipper) make fun of traditional pubs.

Brain’s solution is the Bar Essentials café bar, a terra- and yellow-painted bistro that is still beer oriented, but aimed very much at young professionals who will also enjoy the Thai chicken on the menu. Open, modern and sunny, this may be the first of many Bar Essentials in Wales, Brain’s attempt to adjust to dramatic demographic change.

Ugly, Lovely City

“You wouldn’t be caught dead drinking Brain’s in Swansea,” said Sean Keir, director of the new Dylan Thomas Center there. Ironically, Dylan’s, a new Brain’s beer named for the Welsh poet may make Brain’s acceptable in Thomas’ “ugly, lovely Swansea.”

It may be odd to name a beer after the poet whose death in New York at a tragically young 39 in 1953 was attributed to alcohol. But his last words— “I’ve just drunk 18 straight whiskeys. I think that’s a record.” —suggest that beer might have been a more prudent drink for the talented writer.

Thomas wrote humorously and affectionately about intimate Welsh life, whether in the small fictional village of Llareggub (“Bugger all,” backwards), or the small communities within the city of Swansea. Pub life is part of Thomas’ Wales. In Under Milk Wood, his word play for radio, the happily married Mrs. Cherry Owen counts herself lucky that her husband drinks beer:

And Mr. Cherry Owen, sober as Sunday as he is every day of the week, goes off happy as Saturday to get drunk as a deacon as he does every night. “I always say she’s got two husbands,” says Cherry Owen, “one drunk and one sober.” And Mrs Cherry simply says “And aren’t I a lucky woman? Because I love them both.”

The Dylan Thomas Center, within walking distance of the Evening Post where the poet worked and the pubs he frequented, carries the new Dylan beer in the smooth version only, and even serves a lamb shank deliciously braised in it. Keir at first doubted there’d be enough turnover to justify carrying the cask version of Dylan’s, but on second thought said “I think we’re bound to carry it, here of all places.”

Old Family, New Brewery

On the western edge of Brecon Beacons National Park, in rolling countryside, lies Llandeilo village. The Castle Hotel houses Tomas Watkins Brewery, named for a west Wales maltster from the last century. Harry Vaughan Watkins, of the same family, was a Welsh rugby hero early in this century. The brewhouse behind the hotel is tiny—a former Guinness pilot brewery. Production is modest, and atmosphere is deceptively homey.

Yet the pedigree of this brewery is far from modest. Simon Buckley, whose family began brewing in Llanelli in 1767 and saw their brewery close 230 years later, is starting again here.

Buckley combines a devotion to Welsh tradition with distinctly modern marketing savvy. The Tomas Watkins beers are all cask conditioned. In the brewery’s second year, the OSB(Old Style Bitter) won Champion Ale of Wales at the Cardiff CAMRA Real Ale Festival. Yet Buckley keeps the beer styles from straying far from the mainstream. He said of another start-up brewery’s efforts “One brewer brewed huge beers, with all Cascade hops. It blew your mouth off. If these breweries don’t do their market research, if they brew very bitter beers, they’ll go bust.”

Toman Watkins will be both traditional and commercial, with an eye on what the public will drink. “Take a wonderful beer like [Shepherd Neame] Spitfire. I love one or two pints. But if I bring it in as a guest beer, it’ll sit for days. Its not a Welsh taste.”

Buckley has capitalized on Welshness in building his new line of beers. “Stop the flood of 700,000 pints of insipid English ale into Wales a day!” and “Save Welsh jobs. Drink real Welsh ale!” became the rallying cry. At a time when a revival of the Welsh Assembly and new attention to the Welsh language both indicate a greater interest in national identity, this has been a powerful draw.

Tomas Watkins beers have found a receptive audience, not least among the local patrons at the Castle Hotel bar. “Three years ago, these guys were drinking a national brand, and they knew nothing about brewing,” says Buckley. “Now we have 300 experts in town. If the water changes, the brewer can’t come into the pub for a week.”

Over a pint of Watkins Whoosh (a Welsh nickname for a pint of beer), a lightly hopped session bitter, a patron in the bar admitted why he was a convert to Watkins beers. “Who wouldn’t be? Its good and its from right here.”

Watkins’ other beers include Brewery Bitter, Cwrw Haf (Summer Ale), Canon’s Choice (named after a vicar of Llandeilo), Cwrw Santa Christmas Ale, and Merlin’s Double Stout. All feature Welsh themes—language, historical figures, or graphics—on their eye-catching labels.

Buckley’s plans include additional Watkins-owned pubs in Wales, bottled beer, and the possibility of franchising the beers for production overseas. If successful, it will be a triumph over contradiction: beers with a reputation built on fierce national and local identity, supported by patrons who even notice a change in the local water quality, brewed in Copenhagen or Boston. “Its foolish for us to ship water,” says Buckley. Yet it may be difficult to be a militantly Welsh brewer and yet assert that the same beer can be brewed outside of Wales.

Julie Johnson Bradford, managing editor of All About Beer Magazine, would have a hard time choosing between a Brain’s Dark and Merlin’s Choice.

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This story originally appeared in All About Beer Magazine in March 1999.