Good times at meantime

Alastair Hook was tempted to call his brewery The Home for Abused Beer Styles but settled instead for Meantime. It was the natural pun-in-cheek name for a brewery based in Greenwich and its Meridian in south London, close to 'the Dome' and Alastair's beloved Charlton Athletic football club. But the aim remains the same: to bring life back to dead or Bowdlerised beer styles. Alastair has India Pale Ale in his sights along with Vienna Red from Austria, Dortmunder from Germany and proper Czech Pilsner, not the nonsense called Pils brewed by global comedians. He brews 20 different styles, including Kolsch - a Cologne speciality - Dunkles and Helles, which are German dark and pale lagers, a true London Porter, Belgian-style fruit beers, Bavarian-inspired wheat beers and versions of Porter infused with chocolate and coffee.

There is also one cask-conditioned beer, Late Hopped Blonde Ale (5%). To those who criticise Meantime for not concentrating more on cask, Alastair replies that CAMRA was the inspiration that turned him into a brewer.

"It was the campaign that encouraged me to visit Manchester, the Black Country and other great brewing regions," he says. Suitably inspired, he trained at the Heriot Watt School of Brewing and Distilling in Edinburgh and then at the world-famous brewing faculty at Weihenstephan University near Munich.

The second spur came from the micro-brewing revolution in the United States. Alastair has judged many times at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado, and fell in love with beers from the likes of Anchor, Brooklyn and Hopland breweries.

"I was impressed by the diversity of beer styles in the States," he says. "And micro-brewed beers now account for 7 per cent of the beer market there - they are commercially successful. In Britain there are 500 micros making cask beer but I knew if I opened a brewery it had to do packaged beers as well as draught.

"But passion is the main thing. I want to help improve the choice and availability of great beers. Meantime shows what's possible with malt, hops, fruits and sugars and how beer works with food and mood." Alastair had a peripatetic existence before settling in Greenwich. His first venture - brewing superb German-style lagers at the Packhorse Brewery in Ashford, Kent - was, he freely admits, ahead of its time. He then brewed for Oliver Peyton at Mash & Air in Manchester and Mash in London, producing beers that matched good food, plus a spell with Freedom Brewery at Putney in south London. But he wanted his own brewery and eventually raised �� million from friends and family to launch Meantime, with modern equipment that gives flexibility to make both cold-fermented lagers and warm-fermented ales.

He turned a penny by bottling beers for Freedom, Mash and St Peter's while indulging his passion by creating a Vienna Red lager. While Munich brewed dark lagers in the 19th century and Pilsen made golden versions, the great Austrian brewer Anton Dreher produced a beer with a reddish/copper hue. The style was widely copied, as far away as Mexico, but has largely disappeared from its own country.

Today Meantime brews 13,000 hectolitres a year and packages a further 30,000 hectos. An additional �� million was raised from "willing shareholders" to invest in a modern packaging line.

"Quality is the key where bottled beers are concerned," Alastair says. He put Meantime on the map nationwide when he signed a deal to supply Sainsbury's supermarkets with beers under the top-of-the-range Taste the Difference food and drink label.

"Julian Harrington, a brewer with Shepherd Neame, joined us to help raise our game. When you're competing with big brewers, you can't mess with quality. For example, Bavarian wheat beer can easily become infected because of the low hop content, and we needed a modern, reliable, infection-free packaging line."

Meantime opened its first pub, the Greenwich Union, in 2001. "Beer sales are 70 per cent of the business - in most pubs it's around 35 per cent," Alastair points out. "Half the customers are women. They're drinking Helles, Kolsch and wheat beers. If we can grow those categories then we will also grow cask. Most people drink rubbish. If we can challenge that and get them to drink good lagers then we can also win them to cask." He has 35 accounts in London, including three or four beers on tap in the legendary Market Porter in Southwark and next door in the new brewpub and restaurant complex, Brew Wharf. Last year he added two magnificent bottled beers, London Porter and IPA. They come in large 750ml bottles with cradles and corks and are not cheap at around �3 a call. "You can't make beautiful things without charging for them," Alastair says. "IPA and Porter are now in Sainsbury's, and our bottled beers are in 300 UK outlets. People are drinking my beers and that will help win them to cask ale - the greatest and most complex form of specialist beer."