We get asked all the time how the brewery got its name – there are two general starting points that enquirers have: “How on earth did you come up with such a weird word?” and, “It’s got something to do with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, hasn’t it?”
The answer to the first question is long winded and very much off-topic, so I won’t trouble you with it here (maybe one for another day). The answer to the second is, “Not really, but we’d be lying if babelfish sounding a bit like Beerblefish hadn’t influenced our decision to finally go with the name we have, and then in turn influenced some of our beer names.”
Back in February (or eleventy billion years ago, which is what it feels like now!), I wrote about our Infinite Improbability Saison, which was actually the second of our beers to have a H2G2 name. The first was Pan Galactic Pale Ale, named partly for the gargleblaster of Douglas Adams fame, but also in honour of the Galaxy hops that make up a large part of its hop bill.
Pan Galactic started out as an experiment. Our brewers wanted to try using the same recipe for two beers but treating the water in different ways to see what, if any, difference it made to the final product. Pan Galactic was given its name and the other beer was called Goldfish Pale.
Goldfish was treated very lightly – more or less London’s finest tap water – while Pan Galactic had lactic acid added to the strike water and the sparge water to lower the pH. We also treat our water with magnesium sulphate because the water in our area is low in magnesium, which is needed by the yeast for a healthy fermentation. We use sulphate instead of carbonate or chloride because the water already has a high carbonate level and a fairly high chloride ion level.
When the beers were ready, they were both good, but we each had our own opinion on which was better. So, to decide it, we entered both into the Drinks Business Global Beer Competition in 2018.
When the results came out, it was close – Goldfish was awarded a bronze and Pan Galactic was awarded a silver, and we decided to keep Pan Galactic in our range. In 2019, it went on to win a one-star award in the Guild of Fine Foods Great Taste Awards.
Pan Galactic Pale Ale has a typical pale malt bill. We use Crisp’s Maris Otter as the base and add a small amount of Weyermann’s CaraAroma for a slight caramel twist. We’ve been through a few variations of the hop bill since the first edition of this ale, but we’re currently using EKG as the bittering hop, with Galaxy and Ella providing the flavour and aroma. Galaxy really is the star of the show here, giving peach, passionfruit and citrus notes to the beer.
The imagery that “Pan Galactic” can conjure up in the mind was grasped upon by our friends at Art By Volume, who created a beautiful representation of the beer as an LP cover. I’ve always wondered what would be on that album!
We’ve had a few blips along the way with this one, as there was a period when it was very difficult to get hold of Galaxy hops, which are really central to both the recipe and the name! We also only very recently settled a two year “discussion” on whether the beer’s name should have a hyphen and/or a space between “Pan” and “Galactic”, as we have written it several different ways over the last couple of years.
We’ve finally settled on “Pan Galactic Pale Ale” and the next stage of its journey is a revamp of the bottle label and pump clip – watch out for those coming soon!
Pan Galactic Pale Ale is currently available in cask (firkin), 5 litre mini casks and 500ml bottles.
