Manchester is an autumnal place, not least because of the incessant rain that characterizes its climate. Vast swaths of the city are populated by Victorian warehouses and industrial structures, all of which are built from red brick. In anything but the dreariest light, the city is a rain-soaked tableau of raw sienna and terracotta. During sunsets, it looks like a world on fire. As the year winds down, when rust-hued trees line the streets, the whole place is ablaze.
The last vestige of a Victorian terrace, the red-brick Marble Arch Inn stands on its Manchester street corner with the same presence of a castle on a hill. The pub, known locally as “the Arch”—or even, simply, as “The Pub”—is located just north of the thriving Northern Quarter, where cafes and bars turn to parking lots and high rises.
The Northern Quarter is known for its modernity, but the Marble Arch Inn feels reminiscent of a bygone era of Manchester, with its wrought-iron window railings and Doric columns. Its interior looks almost unchanged from Victorian times: there are faded, framed illustrations; vaulted ceilings; and glazed brick walls. Some say its famously sloping floor was designed to aid the movement of barrels toward the cellar, and some say it’s to persuade drunken customers to return to the bar. Those elements conjure a time-lost effect: the pub is old, and also warm, and homey.
It took many people by surprise when this Victorian hideaway accidentally gave birth to a boundary-pushing brewery—and later, a brewing dynasty—a little over two decades ago. Unlike the pub, Marble Brewery’s origin story isn’t exactly romantic.
“I came here for a drink, got involved in a lock-in, and came away with a job,” Marble’s founder, owner, and director Jan Rogers tells me over a pint. “That was it!”
Often found with her trusty vape in hand, Rogers is a woman with a firecracker wit and just as much energy—her calm is someone else’s boisterous; her excited is your or my whirlwind. She’s razor-sharp of both mind and expletive-laden tongue. In an industry dominated by men, she may not exemplify a “typical” brewery owner but, frankly, I can’t imagine her giving a flying fuck—and it’s not like that’s slowed her down. Since falling into her role some 30 years ago, she’s grown Marble into one of Manchester’s most influential breweries, and has cemented her influential standing in the U.K.’s beer industry.
[Disclosure: Lily Waite has collaborated with Marble Brewery on several projects, including her Dinosaurs Will Die beer launch.]
A sprawling metropolis in the northwest of England, Manchester vies with Birmingham for the title of the country’s second city. Built upon the rapid expansion of the Industrial Revolution, it’s busy, and hard-working: Manchester’s symbol is the worker bee, which is found emblazoned on walls, bollards, and trash cans. It’s also a city with a vivid beer culture, and more breweries, taprooms, bars, pubs, and festivals than nearly any other place in the country.
In the late 1980s, however, Manchester’s beer scene was virtually non-existent. Though the city has a long brewing history, most of its pubs were owned by pubcos or regional breweries, and independent watering holes were few and far between. “[There was] the Marble Arch, the Queen’s [Arms] up on Redbank, the Angel—which was called The Beer House in those days. There was the Crescent, and the King’s Arms in Salford,” recalls Rogers, counting on her fingers. “They were the independent pubs. That was my circle; I’m sure there were others—but those were the ones on the trail.”
The Marble Arch was taken over in 1988, and Rogers stumbled into the picture in 1990, when that fateful lock-in turned into something more. “About four in the morning I said, ‘Can I have a beer?’ They said, ‘Well, pour your own,’'' she recalls. “I poured my own and they said they needed bar staff. I said, ‘I’ve got a two-year-old, I don’t know how I’d work it,’ and they said to just work something out. That was it!”
Shortly after, Rogers became involved with then-owner of the Arch Vance de Bechevel, with whom she had her second son. Over the next 10 years, the pair would go on to own and run a number of venues across Manchester, of which only the Arch remains under Marble’s standard. “We got up to five premises at one stage: the Marble Arch, the Bar, the Bottle Shop—which became Marble Beer House—and we had joint ownership of the Fringe, and the Knott, so we had five pubs between three of us,” she says, in her distinctive, Belfast timbre. “Vance offered me the choice when we split: the Knott and the Bar, or here and the Beer House. I chose the Arch and the Beer House.”
“The joke is that they sat me down and said, ‘Jan, it’s either karaoke or a brewery.’ They knew I’d say we couldn’t afford a brewery, but they knew I hated karaoke. We put a brewery in.”
Though Rogers has always been able to rely on local workers to frequent the pub—the gas board and police station up the road, the black cab depot over the way, and the post office around the corner—the Arch has had its ups and downs over the years. In the late ’90s, during a particularly down patch, Rogers and de Bechevel were trying to make the Arch memorable, to make it stand out.
“The joke is that they sat me down and said, ‘Jan, it’s either karaoke or a brewery,’” she tells me over a second pint. “They knew I’d say we couldn’t afford a brewery, but they knew I hated karaoke. We put a brewery in.” Rogers throws her head back and cackles. Little did she know that the brewery they’d put in to help boost sales would eventually become one of her life’s projects.
Officially founded in 1997, Marble Brewery had a humble start. Tucked in a room in the back of the pub in what is now the dry store for the kitchen, its two-vessel system fed fermenters housed in the vast cellar. Installed by Brendan Dobbin, the renowned Manchester brewer, and set up by then-pub manager Mark Dade, the six-barrel kit would go on to serve Marble for 12 years, before being sold onto ex-Marble brewer Rob Hamilton when he left to found Blackjack Brewery. During that period, numerous brewers worked the kit: now-notable industry figures mashed in and mashed out, and the steep staircase leading to the low-ceilinged cellar took a beating from their weathered wellies.
In 2009, the brewery was moved down the hill behind the Arch, to, fittingly, a railway arch on Williamson Street. On the short walk down from the pub (or swift roll, if you’ve partaken of executive chef Kerry Rickett’s hearty fare), vistas of industrial Manchester sprawl above and below a railway viaduct. It was a chaotic space—complete with a twin sloping floor—but one that worked for the team. Heavy metal regularly blasted from speakers that sat on shelves above bubbling barrels, above which voices would strain to make themselves heard.
As we discuss Marble’s history, Rogers deftly sidesteps my questions about the brewery’s key role during the early days of British craft beer. “It’s always been about protecting the Arch,” she says. “I’ve had to change, to realize the Marble Arch—the most important bit—and the brewery run hand-in-hand now. I don’t think I understood what other people had been saying for a while: that the brewery’s prominence became more than the Marble Arch’s, and I think I took quite a while to catch up with that.”
Though the debates surrounding the definition of “craft” wouldn’t rage for a number of years, this unassuming Manchester brewery fit many of its interpretations from the beginning. Small? Tick. Independent? Tick. A focus on interesting beers and quality ingredients? Double tick. Even in Marble’s earliest days, head brewer James Campbell maintained a strong focus on ingredients, using only those that were vegetarian and organic. Later on, that focus shifted as the brewers realized non-organic hops were better-suited to the styles they were brewing, though the conscientious approach remained.
In much the same way that we look back at old technology and chuckle at how advanced it once seemed, many Marble beers that are now considered more traditional—in part due to style, but also perhaps because they’re, well, tamer than many contemporary beers—were once seen as downright adventurous.
“We were probably one of the only breweries in Manchester, if not the Northwest, who were spending more on hops than we were on malt, which was pretty unusual in those days,” says ex-brewer Colin Stronge. “That culture wasn’t there; Lagonda [IPA] was considered a heavily hopped beer—as well, at 5% [ABV]. People were like, ‘That’s rocket fuel, you can’t drink more than two of them.’ We were considered quite out-there.”
“When I got into brewing there were 500 breweries in the U.K.,” he continues. “Around the time more breweries started to hit the scene, they were definitely one of the ones that were trying to push the envelope and trying to do much bigger, flavor-led things instead of another Bitter or another Pale, because that’s what the local market wanted.”
Like Rogers, Stronge began by pulling pints at the Marble Arch. The beers he served back in early 2003 were N4 (or Northern Quarter), Manchester Bitter (“originally an attempt to recreate Boddingtons, or to brew an assertively bitter, relatively highly hopped Pale Ale,” he says), as well as “Ginger Marble, Lagonda, Chocolate Marble. I think that was it.”
Considering Manchester’s dearth of independence—both in terms of breweries and public houses—the creativity and innovation in Marble’s brewing was far from usual. And it didn’t go unnoticed.
“I think it's pretty difficult to understate Marble's influence on other breweries, particularly within the Manchester beer scene,” says Matthew Curtis, Good Beer Hunting’s former U.K. editor and a co-founder of Pellicle Magazine. “They're a titan, not just because they were brewing hop-forward, American-influenced styles years before they became fashionable, but because they are a marker of the strong, independent spirit that makes Manchester's beer culture so vital.”
“For me their biggest influence has been in the attitude they've passed on to the many small breweries that have followed in their wake,” Curtis continues. “One that dictates you really can remain small, and true to your values, while building a sustainable business loved by many. They are also demonstrative of the work it takes to remain relevant within a constantly evolving scene. They've worked their arses off to do that, and that's why they're loved by so many within the beer community.”
And loved they are. The Marble Arch is a favorite destination for many in and around the beer community, and when a big beer festival is underway in Manchester, you’ll often find brewers of note making a beeline for one of the Arch’s hand pulls. Ryan Witter-Merithew, Siren Craft Brew’s former head brewer, has told me how he’s often found Cigar City Brewing’s founder Wayne Wambles in the Arch, drinking “way too much with Jan.” And Cigar City is just one of the breweries with whom Marble enjoys a close relationship: the brewery’s friends stretch all around the globe, from Cycle Brewing in St. Petersburg, Florida, to Young Masters Brewery in Hong Kong and Anglo Japanese Brewing Company in Nagano, Japan.
“I think, retrospectively, a lot of brewers have said to us since that what we were doing at the time was quite influential,” says Stronge. “Even the scene in London changed. People like Brodie’s; James Brodie told us that he only opened the brewery because he liked Marble beers, and he liked what they could do. We’ve heard that from a few breweries.”
Marble’s influence goes beyond simple style, ethos, and attitude. The brewery has served as a valuable stepping stone for numerous young brewers. After leaving Marble, James Campbell went on to co-found Cloudwater Brew Co., and though Stronge jokes about being called the “grandfather of modern brewing”—“or the fat old prick of beer, as I have been described—by me,” he chuckles—he has since made waves as head brewer at both Black Isle Brewery and Buxton Brewery, as well as head of production at Northern Monk.
Then there’s ex-brewer Dominic Driscoll, who is now production manager at Thornbridge Brewery, and former head brewer James “JK” Kemp, who went on to lead New Zealand brewery Yeastie Boys’ operations in the U.K. Even Kim Sturdavant, the San Francisco-based brewer behind the Brut IPA, spent a couple weeks brewing at Marble.
“I think, retrospectively, a lot of brewers have said to us since that what we were doing at the time was quite influential. Even the scene in London changed.”
“Jan was very keen on us leading the brewing—there wasn't a sales and marketing team and she trusted us to come up with the goods. So we weren't constrained by worrying about beers that perhaps wouldn't sell and learnt through experience and actually brewing what worked and what didn't,” says Driscoll. “So by the time we all left, we'd brewed all the beers we really wanted to brew and had a good idea of what worked and what didn't. When it was James, Colin and me—we peaked about 2009 or 2010, had been invited to the De Molen fest [Borefts Beer Festival], and had done meet-the-brewer events in London—we've 10 years on most, really.”
“James, Colin and Dom are the obvious,” says Hamilton, when speaking about the brewery’s most visible protegees, “but are only three of many that have gone on to work at what would be in people's top-10 breweries in the country.”
Beyond the obvious vestigia rattling around the bones of the Arch, and the sheer weight of history in the place, the story of this Manchester institution is one of multiple generations—both familial and otherwise. Rogers’ own sons both grew up around the pubs, bars, and brewery—and are now important members of the Manchester beer scene, and part of Marble’s own dynasty. Roger’s eldest son Joe Ince is Marble’s current head brewer, and his younger brother Dan Whitehead de Bechevel runs another successful brewery, Wander Beyond Brewing, in central Manchester.
“You really have to look at who's come through Marble,” says Ince, his Basset-Dachshund cross, Daphne, on his lap. “I think it's very easy to forget, especially if you weren't a part of it, what the brewing scene in the U.K., let alone Manchester, was in 1998, 1999, 2000—you know—even up to 2005, 2006. Marble was producing some pretty fucking badass beers at that point, so it's not really a surprise that the guys who were doing that have gone on to do really successful things.”
Ince is a beanpole of a man, with long limbs, a serious face, and boyish cheek and charm. At times he can seem shy, though this shyness turns to good humor, then playfulness, as he warms to you. A competent brewer, he left Marble after doing odd jobs there over a decade ago to seek work experience elsewhere before gradually making his way back home. As the boss’s son, he disliked the ease of simply settling in to work there. It felt uncomfortable.
“He was helping out at [Marble’s Northern Quarter bar] 57 Thomas Street. He asked me one day, ‘Have you got any books on brewing?’” says Stronge. “Gone full circle have we now, Joe? He applied for the job at Buxton not long after that—when he went for it, that was when he really dedicated himself to brewing.”
At Buxton Brewery, roughly an hour southeast of Manchester in the Peak District, Ince’s interest in brewing really took off. It was here that he also struck up a close friendship with future Marble head brewer Kemp, who, in Rogers’ words, “taught Joe to brew.”
When Ince later got a job at Huddersfield’s Magic Rock Brewing, Kemp moved over to Marble, and after a period during which Ince worked his way up through the ranks at Magic Rock, the pair were reunited at the Williamson Street brewery. “I never particularly wanted to work here until the time was right,” says Ince. “[I had a] little chip on my shoulder about nepotism, and I wouldn’t want to come here until I was ready. Your little brother setting up his own brewery will give you the impetus to go and do something for yourself quite seriously.”
“I’m sure he said to me, when we worked at Buxton together, that he would never go [work at Marble], because he said, ‘Everyone will just think I got the job because of my mum,’” says Stronge. “Well, people will say that, but there’s a point where you’ll say, ‘Fuck it—people say shit.’” Ince moved back to Marble in early 2017, and roughly 18 months later, when Kemp moved on to work for Yeastie Boys, the role of head brewer fell to him.
“JK and Joe both said, ‘Your beers are 10 years out of date. We’ve got to up the game,’” says Rogers, in reference to Marble’s range. “So, JK upped it by a certain amount, and then I think maybe Joe’s upped it again. We’ve gone from 10 years out of date, to five, to now—though we’re not making now now now.”
“I've seen Joe develop under Joe's leadership,” says Curtis, when I ask about his perception of Marble’s evolution under Ince. “I always knew him as the guy who used to brew at Magic Rock, or the guy who used to brew at Buxton. But in stepping up to his head brewer role at Marble he's arguably stepped into the boots that have been waiting for him since the start of his brewing career.”
As part of taking over the head brewer role, Ince focused on developing predominantly hop-forward, contemporary beers—arguably of the “now now now.” The resulting range of often hazy releases, like Half Guard and Hip Escape (named for moves in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu—Ince’s favorite sport), has achieved a lot for Marble, especially in gaining the brewery attention from the NE IPA crowd. That said, Marble’s classics—such as Manchester, Pint, and Lagonda—remain well cared-for under his stewardship.
“From knowing [Ince] when he was a kid, I didn’t think he’d make it in this industry,” says Stronge, wistfully. “His attention to detail was shoddy, and he was a messy little bastard. But when I started at Buxton with him, I was amazed at his work ethic and how much he put into everything. His attention to timing and detail is [now] really, really good. I’d love to be able to slag him off a bit more, but he’s actually really good at what he does. I’ve got to doff my cap to him there.”
Over in Salford (an area of Greater Manchester that is very much a part of the city, in a way that nearby Stockport isn’t quite), amid the canals and national broadcasting companies, is a modern, utilitarian warehouse. New beers aren’t the only signifiers of a shift in Marble’s direction—not long after it entered its third decade of brewing, Marble upped sticks and moved into its third location, an unassuming unit that’s a far cry from opulent Victorian pubs and railway arches.
Though the move was necessary, that doesn’t mean it was unanimously welcomed. “The thing is, which may change as Joe steps in over about three years or so, but I’m not happy about getting bigger,” says Rogers. “That is my thing: that 5,000-hectoliter [4,300-BBL] thing that the government have put in [Small Breweries’ Relief] is my stability. You can’t go from 5,000, to 6,000, to 7,000. You have to go from 5,000 to, say, 15,000 to be steady. But I have no wish to keep chasing the tail.”
Luckily for Rogers, the brewery’s expansion wasn’t focused on upping output—well, not by much. “In terms of actual expansion, we're only increasing capacity of the brewhouse by 200 liters,” says Ince. “The smallest expansion ever. And fermentation capacity we're going to up ever so slightly, but it's gonna give us equipment that I think we need now.”
“We very much don’t worry about anyone else. Let’s keep our heads down. Let’s make beer. If we know it’s good, does it matter if anyone else does?”
As well as updating the entire brew kit—Marble installed a 25-hectoliter [21-BBL] Gravity Systems brew house, as well as new fermenters and other necessary pieces of equipment—it’s adding a cold store, and an updated laboratory. Marble also consolidated the brewery’s office space; previously spread across two sites at the brewery and 57 Thomas Street, the entire team (aside from bar and kitchen staff) now works under one roof. A taproom has also been installed on site. Although the Arch will likely remain the spiritual home of the brewery, the added retail space will play host to those who are interested in visiting the brewery site, and will also serve the hundreds of thirsty media workers in the surrounding offices.
At the new site, Ince and his team will continue to brew the old favorites, in cask and keg alike, as well as continue to experiment with new releases. “It gives me the ability to have that respect for tradition and history,” he says, “but also look to the future and apply modern techniques, modern methods, and modern process to brew amazing new beers and amazing older beers. As long as we can find the balance of both and one doesn't get more than another, I don't think that we'll see problems.”
“We very much don't worry about anyone else,” he continues. “Let's keep our heads down. Let's make beer. If we know it's good, does it matter if anyone else does? It's Marble. We aren't setting the world on fire, are we?” Self-deprecation aside, even if Marble isn’t itself radical, embers lit by the brewery 20 years ago are still smoldering across the industry today.
Though one could argue otherwise while sitting beside the grand fireplace in the Arch, pint of sparkled Pint in hand, there’s hardly anything traditional about Marble. Even the ostensibly classical Manchester Bitter—hand-pulled from a cask, with a sparkler, thank you very much—is distinguished by its use of organic ingredients. “I remember trying to sell Manchester,” says Stronge, “but no one wanted it—the moment you mentioned the price per cask, they were like, ‘You must be joking.’ Being organic, in fairness, we probably were quite expensive.”
My previous misconceptions about Marble’s place in the traditional wing of British brewing probably stem from beers such as Manchester Bitter and Pint (the brewery’s hugely popular and easygoing hoppy Blonde), plus that impressive old pub at the top of a hill. Those beers could seem a little dated in a sea of hype, homogeneity, and hubris, but some 15 or 20 years ago, they were considerably avant garde.
“I've battled with this thinking myself over the years, and have called Marble a ‘modern-traditional’ brewery. But I've been wrong,” says Curtis. “At 23 years [old], Marble are still young, their beers are innovative and often genre-defining, if not as widely talked about as some others because they were making beer before the Instagram generation could legally drink. The most traditional thing about them is that their taproom is a beautiful, old pub. One that often sells NE IPA alongside its beautifully conditioned cask ales. What's so traditional about that?”
Sitting in the Arch, sipping on a perfect pint of Pint while waiting for my train back to London, it seems that Marble really is the perfect example of British brewing: the brewery has one eye fixed firmly on the past—and the traditions and heritage inherent to it—and one keenly on the future.
“I think we’ll maintain,” muses Ince, on the subject of what comes next. “I can only do what I’m comfortable doing, which is keeping our heads down, making fucking great beers, and we’ll just tick. We’ll get a little bit bigger. I have no plans for world domination, and we’re not in it to get big enough to sell. We’re just here to do our thing, keep our heads down, and make some great beer.”
Before Rogers flits away for some reason or other, as she is wont to do, she pauses over her pint of Pint. “I think it’s a good thing to have a brewery like us, who are maybe not too worried that other people are taking the glory. You need someone rolling underneath being able to go, ‘We’re gonna weird this out a little bit.’ We’ll sit wherever people are happy with it.”
Words + PicturesLily Waite Language
