Thomas Hardy’S Ale is regarded by many as the epitome of aged English beer and one of the world’s finest barley wines.
Often equated to a beer version of an Oloroso sherry, it was first brewed in 1968 by the now defunct Eldridge Pope Brewery, based in Dorchester. Having stumbled across 2,000 empty Victorian bottles some years earlier, Eldridge Pope’s brewers decided to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the novelist Thomas Hardy as part of a local festival celebrating his work.
Adorned with a distinctive gold medallion, it was the liquid embodiment of a passage taken from Hardy’s book Trumpet Major: “It was of the most beautiful colour than the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body yet brisk as a volcano; piquant, yet without a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset; free from streakiness of taste but, finally, rather heady.”
At the time, Thomas Hardy’s Ale was one of only a handful of British bottle-conditioned beers and, at 11.7% alcohol by volume, was very much an ale-making anomaly and its drinkers were urged to lie it down for up to 25 years. The original bottlings from 1968 drink magnificently to this day and are likely to have decades of life left to them.
As well as a quartet of a quintessential hop varieties (Challenger, Golding, Northdown, and Styrian Golding), Thomas Hardy’s Ale was brewed using pale malt, a soupçon of crystal malt, and maltose syrup, yet the beer attained much of its honey- amber hue from a boil lasting longer than 3 hours. Fermented for 3 months, it was hopped for a second time and then matured in oak casks for up to 6 months. As such, it was very similar to the original barley wines devised for the cellars of English aristocratic houses in the late 1700s.
Initially brewed as a one-off, Thomas Hardy’s Ale was brewed again in 1974 and then brewed every year (until 1976) until 1997 when Eldridge Pope Brewery closed. Life, however, was breathed back into the beer in 2003 when the brewing rights were bought by a US importer called, rather aptly, Phoenix Imports of Maryland.
Phoenix commissioned O’Hanlon’s in Devon to brew the beer for an eager American market, yet in 2009 and despite cult status and critical acclaim, brewing capacity issues—and the fact that the beer took so long to brew—brought production to a halt once again. As of early 2011, a search was on to find a brewery that could restore this legendary beer to the shelves of devotees around the world. As of 2011, well-kept bottles from early “vintages” were worth hundreds of dollars to avid collectors.