Tombland by C.J.Sansom x Foeder Beer (Nelson Sauvin) by The Kernel Brewery

“Was there ever such a year as this?”

What would you do if life as you knew it just stopped? If you were forced to remain in one place and all your projects, priorities and politics were turned on their heads?



Under the shadow of the ‘Oak of Reformation’, Matthew Shardlake, hunchbacked lawyer to a roll call of the British Tudor court's best characters, finds himself swept away by a peasant uprising.

Having been rushed out to Norfolk, C.J.Sansom’s quiet hero is supposed to oversee the murder trial of a family member that could leave Queen-to-be Elizabeth embarrassed. The crux of the crime appears to be about land rights; and land rights in Norfolk, Shardlake finds, are inexorably about human rights. The rich are getting richer by violating laws relating to common lands, passing on their taxes to their tenants and capitalising production work for themselves. The result is that the poor are getting poorer, unable to graze their livestock, pay their rents or find work.

While Shardlake investigates a crime related to the gentle classes, the peasants and serfs reach their limit and band together to take down the fences, and the gentlemen behind them.

They believe they are acting for the King and Protector, not as rebels. They are simply waiting for the Commissions to get to town and take over what they started, reinstating law and land to the community.

As we entered into the second month of lockdown, Shardlake, in the turn of a page, was swept up by the ‘rebels’ taken back to camp and sworn to join their cause. Thus began his own eight weeks/400 pages of confinement, personal soul searching, public service, resistance to conspiracy theories, quotidien briefings, obsession with haircuts, reduced outings, attempts to ignore gossip and politics, restricted contact, binge eating and furlough from work... all under the umbrella of a very stressful situation.

For a book as epic, exciting and amalgamous as this, I was craving a beer that would combine both the rich and the poor, town and country, a beer whose very fermentation draws in elements and influence that are outside of a beers ‘normal’ process. I wanted a sense of age, but also a sense of timelessness.

Tombstone’s complimentary beer must reflect the burning heat and hope and horror of those endless summer days on Mousehold Heath, as 8000 men waited for justice or battle 500 years ago. It also needed to satisfy my own mood on these long uncertain, unseasonably warm April afternoons camped out on the neighbours roof, engrossed in a historical fiction that reads like contemporary fact.

I am wishing for a beer full of wisdom that would pay homage to Shardlake himself, a favourite character of mine. And so I turn to a brewery whose respect for the tradition and art of brewing is reflected consistently in their meticulous technical craftsmanship, The Kernel.

I was lucky enough to stumble on a rare remaining bottle of their Foeder Beer, Nelson Sauvin edition and decided there’s not a jury on earth that wouldn’t let that pairing go. (Thanks to Brighton Bier for having an epicly stocked Lockdown fridge - buy local & buy craft if you can)

Foeder beers are either aged or fermented in ancient oak barrels, nicely nodding to a central and important location in Tombland, the rebels’ Oak of Reformation, a makeshift court erected to try the greedy landlords for their crimes.

These often immense barrels allow beer to take on the flavours and natural bacteria in the oak giving character and depth that otherwise couldn’t be achieved. My beer is fermented, rather than matured, in Foeders which means it’s actually in contact with the oak for a far shorter time, only picking up a light seasoning of the kind of elements we could expect from a full maturation… typically a considerable sourness. Instead I’m expecting a light roasty, estery quality, with a potentially sherry-like depth.

A shorter time in the barrel will also allow the hops to shine and not fade away, and when your hop is the fabled and much loved Nelson Sauvin, you really want to keep as much of that delightful and delicious New Zealand savvy-b fresh fruit gooseberry, lychee and white grape goodness as you can.

In the houses and offices of Shardlakes’ rich colleagues and friends he is always offered wine, but the proletariat of the camp are all on the beers. I’m excited to see this metaphor through beverages played out in a brew using a wine-like hop and fermentation process.

My Foeder Beer pours with a musty half-clarity, a little transparent in the same way the shallows of a stream can be, but definitely not cloudy or dull - almost like a nice rich chablis, creamy and oaky and lit from within. A delicate head forms then disperses quickly leaving elegant trails of bubbles working their way to the surface in ordered lines.

The robe, a rich golden straw-coloured yellow, reminds me of country cider allowing only mysterious and beguiling shadows to pass with the light through the glass to my eye. A big sniff reveals those Sauvin hops, releasing fading new world sauvignon rumours of grape and lychee into a crowd of more rustic farmyard truths.

Cool, refreshing, spritzy and so much fun to drink. As I sip and turn the page, I join Shardlake as he slips from one world to another and back again, he is a social shapeshifter and so is this beer. Estery Belgian yeasts are shouting “Saison” at me, although their funky bite doesn’t have the acidic tang their bark led me to expect. Instead I find a softness in the mouth, a quick attack of oaky fruity spritz softening quickly and drawing out into a long luxurious wave that coats the mouth in an almost fortified embrace. Under all the country chaos, The Kernel Foeder Beer is pure city class.

It’s been a strange experience to read this book at this time. The similarities between the issues and events of the day are so jarringly akin to our own. I don’t know whether I’m frustrated by the knowledge that people have been fighting for the same rights from the same social structure and making little headway for 500 years, or whether there’s comfort to be found in the fact that I suppose it hasn’t got any worse.

As the last of the bottle upends a dancing marble of fine sediment into my glass, I find that the bluster and confusion of the first few mouthfuls has faded. The fight has gone out of it, and with the warmth and air of the room, a little time, a little effort to understand, it has transformed into something much more balanced, a true blend of rich and poor, wine and beer, craft and science, a fermented commonwealth exists in my glass, even if it’s still a long way from our streets.