These Wooden Ideas — The Incomparable Theakstons’ Old Peculier
At the Craven Arms in Appletreewick, Theakstons’ Old Peculier is served from the wood. They sell so many other good things too, but this is what I came for, and to tell the truth, it’s what you came for too. In this perfect ivy-and-stone farmhouse of a pub nothing else makes sense. I order two and am congratulated on my choice by not one, not two, but three separate drinkers at the bar.
The peat-dark waters of the North Yorkshire Moors are described by my pint. In its sparkling clear, deep ruby depths, I can see glints of bronze—I’ve moved the glass so it perfectly catches the light from a small window on the other side of the room. It’s funny, even the head has a touch of that earthy colour about it, like the foam under a waterfall, or in the deadly swirling of the Bolton Strid.
The wood gives the beer a sweetness—or so everybody says. In my experience, OP from the wood has a broader palette of warm, yeast-ester flavours. Sometimes I can put my finger on raspberries, sometimes banana. Within its ruby depths there are folds of complexity only proper cellar conditioning and the porosity of wooden vessels can produce.
I’ve loved Old Peculier since before I could even drink, compelled by the intriguing design in a Mediaeval etching style on the bottle showing a man kneeling—or was it praying?—between two towers. It reminds me still of a tarot card, of a symbolic portrait to both study and interpret. The man is, in fact, a cardinal—you can tell from his hat. In the 12th century, the lands of Masham, where Old Peculier is made, were donated to York Minster. The cardinal we see is working for the York diocese, and he is kneeling at his post within Masham.
The religious and county-taxation symbolism doesn’t stop there. Masham, because of its wealthy wool industry (brought to the town by the Vikings) became known as “The Golden Prebend of York.” This is why, in my interpretation at least, the pump clip for Old Peculier is never card or plastic, but metal. It is always shining and golden, a mark of Masham’s former heights of commercial glory.
In the 14th century, the Church decided that reaching Masham was too far to travel for a bishop, and it was given the title of “Peculier”—a parish exempt from the jurisdiction of the diocese. Essentially, Masham wasn’t going to be micromanaged by York anymore. Yes, this is why Peculier is spelled this way.
I find it satisfying to know that deep within Old Peculier’s origin story there is land and taxation drama. These are usually the best parts of any Mediaeval historical fiction novel. I can see this one now: Lots of tense discussions held while walking through vaulted corridors. Sour looks glanced over the pews. Bishops and cardinals arguing bitterly over the importance of a small market town with a booming trade in Masham and Swaledale yows.
Illustrations by Molly Bland
This, to me, is a lot better than the alternative—the word Peculier spelled in an olde worlde way, denoting a beer that’s uncommon and strange. A marketing ploy to shift a beer simply because it’s been around for a long time. Because while Old Peculier is unabashedly unique, a lot of the time we use the word to describe odd, uncanny things, it is not peculiar. Nor is it kept alive for history’s sake. It is beautiful. One of the best beers that England makes.
***
The tower brewery of Theakstons in Masham was built, like many during the 1800s, to use gravity throughout the brewing process, and this is still how this small museum brewery operates. Just like at the Hook Norton Brewery in Chipping Norton, or at Sarah Hughes’ brewery in Sedgley, water is pumped from the Theakston borehole to the very top of the square-gabled Victorian warehouse, and from then on is moved by gravity through the brewery as it travels from floor to floor. On the next floor down a modern grist mill, installed in the 1920s, mills the malt ready for the next floor—the mash tun, via a Steel’s Masher.
The Steel’s Masher at Theakstons is a real museum piece. A Scottish invention from 1853, this ingenious device negates the need for manual mashing-in, giving the grist adequate hydration without having to reach paddles in amongst the tight confines of the space. It was a revelation in its day. “One can imagine a brewer post-1853 weeping with joy at the astonishing effectiveness of this machine,” Gareth Young of Epochal Brewing says in his excellent blog post on the machine. “It remains, in my view, the best method of grist hydration 170 years later, which is rather incredible,” he adds.
““Theakstons don’t give just anyone a wooden cask.””
If it wasn’t for the Steel’s Masher, Old Peculier would not be the beer it is today. The way that the malt is hydrated and mashed by the machine is incredibly efficient, releasing enzymes and raking through the grist before it can form dry-centred clumps. This machine makes short work of stiff mashes.
It was invented in Scotland by James Steel, a brewer who, like many of his peers in industry, was making a lot of Scotch Strong and Wee Heavy beers—high malt content, low water content mashes. Getting the paddles around a mash like that is like stirring six tons of day-old porridge, in intense steam heat, in cramped conditions.
Old Peculier is made in a curiously similar way to the Scotch Ales that James Steel was engineering for—the brewers at Theakstons get that deep ruby colour and intensity of flavour by using malt in hefty quantities. The Steel’s Masher must have been welcomed with open, aching arms when it was installed in Masham.
Visiting a brewery like Theakstons can feel like touring a museum; it’s certainly easy to see the building and its Victorian mash tun and copper as such. But when faced with something as unassumingly groundbreaking as the Steel’s Masher, time flips on its head. There is no better piece of equipment for the job here, even 170 years later. Suddenly, 125 years of Theakstons brewing history becomes contemporary.
***
Drinking OP from the wood feels like the ultimate prize, but in Whitby, I found its opposing force. Old Peculier on draft, chiller-cooled, and creamily poured via nitrogen dispense. At The Black Horse, one of Whitby’s oldest pubs, it’s a bestseller, and not because of the tourism trade. Sat on the cobbles of Church Street in the old town, just below the crumbling abbey, The Black Horse is the cask drinker’s idyll—the kind of trad pub you don’t want to leave in case you imagined it. And yet, it’s serving Old Peculier from a keg.
A stag do is turned away from the tiny space as I sit with my pint, the men all in sailor’s hats led by their captain trudge back into the sun-drenched street. Inside, it is cool and dimly lit, the bar gleaming in brass and cut glass, the ceiling bright with 1970s beer mats and light streaming in through the high windows, mostly overgrown by bountiful, midsummer window boxes. Everyone inside on this late Friday afternoon, except for us, is a local.
“Oh, it’s very popular,” says Sue Paling, who owns the pub after working under two landlords there before she took it over. “We’ve had that tap in since before Covid, and it flies out.”
In the glass, it’s just as dark and inviting, but the shape is different—Theakstons have gone for rounded chalice glassware, and perhaps because of that nod to Belgian beer, my attention turns to the fruity esters of the yeast. They’re not wrong. There’s something a little bit Dubbel about this beer now they come to mention it.
““Suddenly, 125 years of Theakstons brewing history becomes contemporary.””
Yes, it’s cold. But on a sunny day like today I’m grateful for it, and two gulps in I start to marvel at the beer’s famous treacle toffee and date character bursting through despite the temperature, spiked with a rustic Challenger and Target hop herbaceousness. It’s smooth, like a nitro stout (obviously), but it’s just so much more interesting. It’s easy to drink. It’s delicious. People should be drinking this as often as they drink Guinness. What more is there to say?
“We like to choose beers that are a bit different, alongside our cask offering,” Sue says, pointing to the board where Rudgate Ruby Mild stares me dead in the face. This pub has good taste. “Before the OP on draft, we had Leffe on, and people really got to love it, but Star stopped selling it.”
Star Pubs and Bars—a subsidiary of Heineken— is the PubCo that owns The Black Horse, and from whom Sue leases her pub. She says that she’d rather have more choice, but that she manages to find beers that are a little left-field—the only problem is, once people get to know them, they get dropped for something newer, or cheaper. At least with Old Peculier, there’s more chance of her customers’ favourite dark beer sticking around.
Back in The Craven Arms, there’s no fear of Old Peculier ever being whipped from their line-up. For one thing, they’ve got their own wooden casks.
Theakstons don’t give just anyone a wooden cask. They’re easy to ruin and rot, so only the most trustworthy pubs get to keep a regular line of OP running through their bar. As a form of commendation—as though being able to sell OP from the wood isn’t commendation enough—each chosen pub has their name branded into their barrels.
The Craven Arms proudly hoists their wooden barrel up behind the bar for all to see, their name alongside that of Theakstons’. In The Black Horse, Theakstons shines as a tall chrome font set apart from all the other beers. In both pubs, just ask for a pint of OP. It’s a secret code. It means you’re alreyt, and that’s the highest compliment someone from Yorkshire could give you.
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