MARBLE opened all their presents early this Christmas, unveiling an impressive new head brewer and reopening a revamped 57 Thomas Street bar even before Santa arrived, as usual carrying sacks of hops. These will no doubt hail for the most part from the southern hemisphere. You can take the Kiwi boy out of Te Awamutu but...
New brewmeister James Kemp’s family moved to New Zealand when he was 12 and his dad started home brewing because he couldn’t stand the local beer. All that’s changed nowadays, as you’d know if you had sampled at the New Zealand Beer Collective stand at IndyManBeer Con (TOM certainly did!) with the country’s fragrant hops an enticing export.
Indeed Kemp as a freelance brewer collaborated with Marble’s departing head brewer Matthew Howgate in 2013 to produce Howgate & Kemp, a 6.4 per cent NZ-hopped beer for Marble (he was also involved in brewing Marble’s 'black India saison IPA' Emancipation).
Previously, after his return to the UK, James worked for Fuller and Thornbridge before becoming head brewer at Buxton (his replacement there was an ex-Marble man Colin Stronge – welcome to the incestuous world of craft brewing). Will he bring with him his signature Baby Back Bacon Black IPA? And some variant on Buxton's powerhouse IPA Axe Edge? It helps us sleep.
The new showcase for his beers will be 57 Thomas Street, now extending upstairs to take it beyond quirky micro bar status, accommodating many more paying customers with a proper kitchen to feed them. When we dropped in the upstairs bit was still pending and we struggled to take in the downstairs reconstruction.
There’s more space around the bar because the bartop casks have gone (as have Laurence Halpern and most of the previous staff – there are still lots of beards about, which is reassuring, though). We were told cask versions of Marble Ale would return in the New Year. For now it’s all keg and the beer, the wonderful Lagonda and the like, was far too cold to savour.
It made us contemplate walking up a rainy Rochdale Road to the trad mothership, the Marble Arch. In the end, we supped up and compromised with the Smithfield, which looks set to replace 57 Thomas Street s the NQ’s hippified, ale-loving hang-out.
For no longer will the regulars gather round the Marble bar’s long rustic table, playing board games and nattering in a neighbourly way as if it were a friend’s kitchen. The big table’s gone, replaced by individual tables for four. The whole fit-out looks way smarter but, as with Common around the corner, initial impressions are of a chunk of its soul dispensed with. I’m coming round to fresh-look Common. Perhaps the shiny new Marble will grow on me.
Marble Beer House, 57 Thomas Street, Northern Quarter. @57thomasstreet