It was the last trip to the pub before Christmas break, and the dispersal of our group of friends across the country, back to our home towns. Most of us were drinking red wine, a few were smoking roll-ups, and I was the only one—as I remember—bothering to check the beer boards.

It was 2006 and we were in Headingley, undergraduates at Leeds University, and unbeknown to us enjoying one of our last gatherings in this pub when smoking was permitted, it being made illegal in the UK that following summer, July 2007. The ban on smoking in British pubs has been a good thing in the long run, but I still look back on that period fondly and wonder whether an intrinsic part of pubs was lost. Thin white ribbons of smoke rising from ashtrays on a busy bar, dotted with pints and short wine glasses, a gentle haze across the room as shafts of light hit the fog in the air.

It was early evening, just dark, and freezing cold outside. We had stopped in at our favourite, hidden-away neighbourhood pub, with its brilliantly kept range of local cask ales—its large, full front windows bursting with chatter and condensation. Groups of English lit students from the nearby Devonshire Halls happily mixed with cask-drinking locals, sharing tables throughout the busy, compact space.

The setting of our meeting—one last beer before what felt like an unnecessarily long hibernation away from this newfound family—moved me to look towards the darker, stronger end of the beer list, finally settling on a pint of Elland Brewery’s 1872 Porter. I was only meant to be staying for one, but even before the intensely smoky, port-decanter aroma hit me, I knew I was in for something special.

Perfectly black and white in the dimness of the room, but a deep intense ruby-brown had I held it to the light (which I didn’t) the beer looked better than any cask beer I had ever seen, with a densely sparkled head which laced the glass like a macchiato’s collar of foam. It’s a beautiful thing, a perfect, cask-conditioned porter; bouncy white foam softening the roughness of the roasted malt, carrying the flavour along rather than diluting it. The flavours bursting, then replacing one another.

Looking back, it’s curious how we remember beers that become favourites and how that memory ages. How our enjoyment of the beer unfurls over time as you discover something new. With every visit, a background detail that seemingly wasn’t there before comes into focus, like rewatching a favourite movie or listening to a treasured record.

My lasting memory of that first taste of Elland’s near-perfect porter was of smoke. Intense, rich, sweet tobacco smoke and a late, post-gulp dryness that seemed at odds with the fullness of the beer which slipped down so easily. Then as your palate adjusts the smoke seems to sit back—with the balance of bittersweet chocolate, aniseed-like black treacle and redcurrant coming to the fore, and a suggestion of the dark-cherry acidity you get with really good, fresh coffee.

Drinking 1872 on cask really adds to that complexity, the flavours having been allowed to mature during that secondary fermentation in the pub cellar, the lower carbonation and cool, cellar-temperature serve letting the more subtle elements really sing. When drinking in the North of England the beer being drawn through a sparkler gives the beer extra body and a tight, creamy white head—a visual and textural enhancer.

***

Elland Brewery in West Yorkshire is mainly known for its traditional cask-conditioned beers and, perhaps unusually, it was a porter, rather than a pale ale or bitter, that became its flagship. Elland’s then head brewer Dave Sanders developed 1872 Porter from a 19th Century recipe given to him by beer historian Dr. John Harrison, who gave a presentation in Leeds from a paper he was writing on old beers. It was a fortuitous meeting, with Dr. Harrison writing to Sanders in 1997 to share the recipe, which he then adapted for a modern brewhouse and perfected at Elland in 2002, having brewed it briefly a year before at the now-defunct West Yorkshire Brewery.

““The beer being drawn through a sparkler gives the beer extra body and a tight, creamy white head—a visual and textural enhancer.””

When Dave talks about the beer he does so with the air of a proud parent. “It’s one of the few beers I’ve brewed which as soon as I tasted it it’s given me goosebumps,” he tells me. “I thought: this really isn’t bad.” A typically understated Yorkshireman, the cask version of this beer has perhaps won more awards than any other beer in recent memory.

1872 is a porter that not only harks back to history but continues to impress over a decade since Dave brought it to life. In 2013 it became the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA) Champion Beer of Britain, and despite the fact Dave had already moved on to Kirkstall Brewery in Leeds, the owners of Elland insisted on getting him on stage to accept the award with them.

“It’s not a stout, but it’s a very robust beer, with a mild chocolate, almost liquorice note to it, and the key to it is brown malt, which gives it that smokey note, as well as the brewing sugar,” Dave continues. “When I first read Dr. Harrison’s recipe I was reluctant to use [sugar], but I thought I’ll try to be authentic and use what is now seen as quite an old-fashioned ingredient. And it really did make a difference—it was fabulous.”

Using Maris Otter pale malt, as well as brown, amber, and chocolate malts along with an addition of invert sugar, 1872 is a masterclass in building a balance of body and flavour. While you’d be forgiven for thinking that the sugar was there to add sweetness, it is actually more about delivering the desired ABV—in this case, a hefty 6.5%—without creating a beer that’s overpowering or cloying.

My lasting impression of 1872 has always been of a big beer with incredible balance, the scales steadied by a hefty addition of Northdown and Target hops, which add hints of dry white pepper and lemon pith bitterness to the finish. It’s a beer that takes you on a walk through the maltings as the various barleys are roasting, before sweeping them away, leaving just a wisp of smoke and an impression of dryness. It’s no mean feat balancing a beer as full of flavour as 1872 but it manages it without effort—another glass disappears as I wonder how they get this elephant of a beer to walk a tight-rope.

***

It’s almost last orders and the crowd has thinned, tables are being wiped down and ashtrays are being emptied. Cigarettes are burning down in strutted out hands as people meander towards the end of their various stories, the points of which are largely forgotten by the storytellers and fall like ash to the floor. Every time the door opens the smoke shifts in the air in front of us.

The ring of the bell for last orders hasn’t yet rung, so I look over to the bar and decide that one for the road can’t hurt, and this time I’m joined by a friend who has finally decided “it’s delicious,” around an hour after he’d tentatively tried a half. We take our time finishing our beers, enjoying but ignoring them, the pub is almost empty as we leave.