Mr. Twit's Odious Ale
London microbrewery 40FT Brewing brewed the special beer to accompany an immersive theatrical production running in London from this past Sunday, September 4th, to October 30th. Entitled "Dinner with the Twits," theatre goers join Mr. and Mrs. Twit (from Dahl's classic novel The Twits) in a "windowless house with a ghastly garden" for a one-of-a-kind theatrical dining experience.
The theatre company, Les Enfants Terribles, employed a food design company to develop the courses for the meal. That food design company in turn asked 40ft Brewing to create something special for the diners. 40FT Brewing came up with the unusual idea of brewing a beer with yeast harvested from Roald Dahl's writing chair. The Dahl estate agreed and gave the brewers access to the famous writing chair, which Dahl had specially crafted to avoid writing at a desk after a lingering back injury from WWII.
"A fair number of our previous projects have been inspired by Roald Dahl in some way or other," said Harry Parr, of Bompas & Parr, the food designers involved in the theatrical production, "so it's been a delight to work directly with the Roald Dahl estate and, indirectly, one of the best-loved storytellers of all time, in his centenary year. By incorporating wild yeast cultured from inside Roald Dahl's writing chair in our beer to accompany Dinner at The Twits, it feels like we are injecting his own dark humour and effervescent sense of fun into the brew."
