If you were to take a trip to the county of Borsetshire, just south of Birmingham, and find your way to the quaint country village of Ambridge, you’d find a warm and welcoming country pub called The Bull.

It’s famous for being the only pub in the country that serves Stourhampton Brewery's flagship beer, Shires Ale. It also has a lowly 3.5 rating on TripAdvisor, but this is brought down by a lot of low ratings complaining they found the pub difficult to find. This is somewhat unfair, however, considering the pub only exists in the fictional BBC radio soap The Archers. The Bull has featured in the show since its first episode in 1951; a convenient place where characters can meet for a pint as they drive the plot forward.

“I imagine the pub as an old building,” Paula Cook, who has listened to the show for 61 years, tells me. “It has black painted half timbers and the plaster is white. It is two-storied, has a hipped roof with slate tiles and a chimney with a red terracotta pot. The windows are diamond leaded and each windowsill has a flower box on it.”

My own image of the pub is one of old wooden benches and tables, swollen with years of getting drenched with rain and drying out in the hot sun. A rough gravelled car park with that one clapped out banger that’s always there, seemingly abandoned. A faded old hanging sign with the eponymous brown and white bull, a chalkboard outside proudly proclaiming it a free house since 1959, “hot food” and “real ale” on the menu.

The Bull was said to be inspired by the real-world pub: The Old Bull in Inkberrow, Worcestershire. Which matches a lot of how Paula sees its fictional counterpart. The Old Bull is quite proud of its Archers connection and has memorabilia displayed throughout the pub.

“There’s a fire lit within a range in the winter, and lots of brightly coloured petunias in hanging baskets in the summer framing a view of the countryside,” Hannah Davidson, in charge of procurement at distributor Jolly Good Beer and another keen listener, says. “Perhaps a couple of elderly but highly prized leather wingtip armchairs near the range, and a drinkers’ nook off to one side.”

Head brewer at London’s Coalition Brewing Charlotte Cook (and Paula’s daughter) imagines a bar of “dark wood with 3 hand pulls and fonts, but they're all tastefully done with the branding in keeping with the historical nature of the pub.”

“It recently had a gastropub makeover, with lots of grey and exposed brick,” Queer Brewing’s head of sales Amber Dernulc tells me. “But before it would have been the usual dark red and dark stained wood with comfy sofas, and bar stools along the bar. Brasses on the walls and old watercolours of country scenes”

Amber refers to a storyline last year that saw the Bull renamed as “The B at Ambridge.” This was during the first Coronavirus lockdown, at which point the Bull was the only pub still open in the country so this change had an emotional charge to it. Characters in the show started a campaign group—called the ReBulls—to restore the pub to its original name, and in real life, a change.org petition (started by another long-time listener, Keith Flett) with the same aim attracted hundreds of signatures. The pub was duly returned to its original name on 13th April 2020.

““It’s largely assumed that Shires is a bitter, and has been served in The Bull since the show launched.””

The interior as it is now is probably a mishmash of old and new. Some of the minimalism of the gastropub makeover but retaining some of its old charms.

Turning her thoughts to the pub’s food offering, Charlotte imagines a menu of “Lots of heavy and brown food, steak pie and chips, lamb shanks and fish and chips. All locally produced and of good quality.”

“I'd have a Sunday roast if I was there on the right day, with a giant Yorkshire pudding and lots of gravy,” she tells me.

But what to wash this down with? Being a free house you’d expect a smorgasbord of local real ales. But upon approaching the bar you’d find all three brass handpulls feature the same pump clip design: an old fashioned horse and cart with a background of rolling fields. Curved around the top is the Stourhampton brewery name, and in bold red lettering across a soft yellow banner cutting across the centre the name of the beer itself: Shires. There is a pump for a guest ale at the end of the bar, covered in dust with a pint glass over the top, indicating its dormancy.

The regulars would be unphased, all ordering Shires without complaint. You could perhaps ask the current owner, Jolene Archer, why they only serve one brewery's beer, and if they’ve ever thought about diversifying. However, I suspect you would get a confused look and perhaps an offer of the local ‘Scruff’ gin with tonic instead.

It’s largely assumed that Shires is a bitter, and has been served in The Bull since the show launched making it, to my knowledge, the very first fictional beer brand. It’s the only beer name ever spoken aloud, as the advertisement-free BBC has strict rules when it comes to promoting brands.

Amber imagines Shires with a “coppery hue” and tasting of “biscuity malts and Fuggle [hops].” For Hannah, it’s like “Marble’s Manchester Bitter, glossy chestnut in colour, sweet toffee and apricot in the malts, a dry bitter finish and pleasant depth of flavour.” Charlotte similarly imagines “a dark amber colour, well fined and clear with a billowy head.”

Unfortunately, you can’t really go to this magical pub that has been part of the national consciousness for seventy years, you can’t sit in its beer garden and gaze at its old timber and flower baskets, you can’t sit and eat a Sunday Lunch cooked by chef Wayne Tucson. But! You can enjoy a pint of Shires through the magic of homebrew...

Shires Best Bitter

I didn’t want to do anything too crazy or out of style for this beer. Shires has been drunk at the Bull since 1951 so I wanted this to be as traditional a recipe as possible.

Bitter predominantly uses pale malt but needs a good portion of crystal malt to give it body and sweet caramel flavours. My Archers listeners imagined a copper, chestnut or dark amber colour which is in the darker range for a bitter, so I added a small amount of roasted barley to give it a deeper hue.

The world of hops was a lot more limited in 1951 than today so I had to be careful to be historically accurate. Fuggle was released in 1875 and is considered quintessential in British traditional ales for its earthy bitterness. When it came to the aroma hop, it seemed fateful that as well as The Archers celebrating its 70th birthday this year, one of my favourite British hops does too: Bramling Cross. It imparts a delicate blackcurrant flavour to beer, tame perhaps in comparison to modern big hitters like Citra or Mosaic, but would have been mind-blowing in the 50s. I like the idea that at its release Shires was this trendy new beer, using a fancy new hop.

Yeast-wise for a best bitter you want a traditional British strain that’s going to impart some fruity esters to the beer and has a low attenuation (meaning the beer will leave some residual sugars after fermentation, giving the beer more body and mouthfeel) so I went with the White Labs London Ale strain.

However you carbonate your beer, a best bitter should traditionally be on the lower side. To achieve this I used about half the amount of priming sugar I normally do when bottling.

This recipe will produce a chestnut-coloured, full-bodied beer. There’s blackcurrant on the nose and a sweet caramel flavour as it hits your tongue before giving way to a lasting earthy bitterness. Here’s my recipe so you can give it a go yourself. And if you decide to have a go at brewing this yourself let us know how you get on!

Recipe

Target Original Gravity (OG) — 1.042
Target Final Gravity (FG) — 1.010
Target Alcohol by Volume (ABV) — 4.3%
Target International Bittering Units (IBU) — 36
Batch Size — 20 litres

Ingredients

3Kg Pale Malt
550g Crystal Malt (60°L)
30g Roasted Barley

35g Fuggles added at the start of a 1 hour boil
100g Bramling Cross added 5 minutes towards the end of the boil

One Packet of White Labs WLP013 — London Ale Yeast

28.3L water total (9.3L for mash, 19L for sparge)

Method

Mash Duration — 1 Hour
Mash Liquor Volume — 9.3 Litres
Total Grist Weight — 3.58Kg
Liquor to Grist Ratio — 2.6 L/Kg
Mash Temperature — 65°C
Sparge Liquor Volume — 19 Litres
Sparge Liquor Temperature — 75°C
Boil Duration — 1 Hour
Fermentation Temperature — 18°C