London 2012: Pale Fire was born into a pre-haze world where your choices were rather limited if you were trying to capture the relative excitement of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Magic Rock, Brewdog, Summer Wine and Kernel Pale Ales were about the only shows in town at that point. The London craft beer scene was poised to explode into 2013, where in London at least one new brewery opened up every week.

As amateur brewers, with more than an eye on the burgeoning scene, we knew we needed to nail an American hopped pale and, and along with everyone else started by trying to clone the famous Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from a homebrew book. Our first attempts on our 50L brew-kit were pretty bad,  we were learning fast about hygiene and water treatment, the huge variation in hop quality and how delicate the balance of specialty malts in a grist can be.

After more than a few failed attempts we took our best beer at the time, Wu Gang herb hefeweizen and reconfigured that grist as a starting point, indeed for a long time Pale Fire had a very high proportion of wheat for that reason, we loved the crisp sharp flavour and foamy head that the wheat provided. We tried different hop combinations, including some trial hops grown at the Wye Farm by Peter Darby. As we scaled up production to our 800 litre kit in the railway arches of Hackney we had to decide on a hop combination, this was also a tricky time to get hold of hops. Everyone wanted Mosaic, Citra and Simcoe and we had to convince the hop merchants to provide us what we needed, forward contracting was critical for everyone trying to establish themselves in the industry and hop merchants in the UK were struggling to keep up with demand. We liked the orangey flavours of Amarillo and the blueberry and strawberry dank of Mosaic so we plumbed for those two, with a touch of Columbus or Chinook to add a bit of resin.

It was a hit, soon most of our tanks were fermenting Pale Fire and shops and bars were queuing up to stock it. Their customers wanted that fresh version of the beers from the US and we were flat out making it for them. We were still making mistakes, we were now learning harsh lessons about oxygen and packaging techniques, how to correctly prime a beer and warm condition without cooking it. We filled those weird spherical early key-kegs and delivered beers around Hackney on a trolley. We often finished early and would spend a few hours in the Cock Tavern seeing what our contemporaries were cooking up. Early Five Points and Beavertown beers were emerging – it was a great time to share in the burgeoning London beer scene.

Pale Fire had firmly become our flagship beer, people started turning up at the brewery and telling us about the first time they had it. Family and friends would proudly send us photos of pump clips and bottles on sale in the local pubs and shops. We kept adding more tanks to the little arch and soon we couldn’t fit anything else in. We decided it was time to expand. We borrowed for the first time. Savings, bank loans and help from Haringey Council allowed us to join Beavertown in Tottenham in 2017, installing what felt like a proper brew kit with all the shiny equipment we needed.

The market was growing too, Mother Kellys, Craft Beer Co and Brewdog bars were all regular stockists of Pale Fire. Oddbins would buy whole batches of our beers and send them throughout the UK. Even the local corner shops and convenience stores in Clapton and Bethnal Green were on board, buying cases of Pale Fire and loading it in the back of their vans direct from the brewery. Special shout-out to Chesham Arms, Clapton Craft, Hop Burns and Black- these places have been stocking Pale Fire for over 10 years at this point and we are immensely proud of that and grateful to them for the long standing support.

With the obvious exception of the Kernel, there are not many of those early UK breakthrough beers that still bear any resemblance in my opinion, many breweries got pretty big pretty fast and with everything that brings, their products were changed or sold or simply discontinued. We always wanted to stay in control of our business and we knew that meant we wouldn’t be able to keep up in the arms race. There is a certain feeling of achievement in longevity and legacy and we like to think Pale Fire is a big part of our story and who we are and what Pressure Drop stands for. Its very existence and celebration after 12 years is proud moment for us.

Of course, we are never happy with any of our beers and Pale Fire is no exception. We continually tweak our recipes. It’s why we do it and to my mind it’s one of many traits that stand “craft” brewers apart from big globals and volume specialists.

Over the last few years our wonderful brewers, Sam, Craig, Rita and Steve have each spent hours meticulously measuring pH, IBU and EBC’s, pouring over books, sensory logging each bag of hops opened, tweaking the proportions adjusting for changing alpha acids and early pick windows. As a team, we still regularly meet at the table after brewing to blind taste the last few Pale Fires,  we have long conversations about what defines Pale Fire, how we want people to feel when the drink it. 

We continually try and balance what Pale Fire should be in our minds with the undoubted changing of consumer tastes. American Pale Ale was once in the vanguard of British craft brewing and considered to be amongst the most exciting beer styles. Now, 10 years on, the beer world has experienced huge changes and its fair to say straight west-coast leaning pale ales do not excite to the same degree. Publicans are looking for consistent, fresh, flavourful and balanced pale ales and we feel if you’re in London, fresh Pale Fire is one of the best options.

Many of our Pale Fire pub accounts sell more than 500 pints a week and it is still our biggest selling beer, partly because we want it to be that way, but truth is we are selling more and more session IPA, or hazy pales with their lower bitterness and fruit forward flavour profiles. It’s important to us that Pale Fire lasts another 10 years and people continue to find a little bit of satisfaction, joy and memories in drinking it.

Godspeed Pale Fire: we will not let you down.