This weeks Desert Island Beers features the founder and owner of Compass Brewery, Oxford, Mattias Sjoberg.

Born and raised in a small town just south of Stockholm, Mattias started brewing at home when he was 16 years old. He quickly became fascinated with the chemistry and biology of beer and this led him to apply to a degree course in Brewing and Distilling at the International Center for Brewing and Distilling at Herriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Once in Edinburgh, he completely immersed himself in everything surrounding beer and whisky. As treasurer of The Water of Life Society, he started holding tastings, organising distillery trips and arranging talks by distillers and blenders from around Scotland. He also took up employment at Royal Mile Whiskies.

After graduating with a BSc(Hons), he secured a job at Munton’s Malt in Suffolk where he was involved with malt extract production, followed by a position at Scottish & Newcastle at their brewery in Reading. Working in the Quality department he was a regular member on their taste panel before he became a shift leader in the brew house.

Having wanted to set up his own brewery since he started as a home brewer, he got his chance in March 2009 when made redundant from the Scottish & Newcastle brewery due to its announced closure. Compass Brewery had been on Mattias’s mind for years and he set up the company in April 2009, first focusing on holding tastings in Oxford, and then launching the first brew, Baltic Night Stout, in November 2009.

In October 2011 the company doubled its staff — with Mattias plus one new partner now working full time in the brewery! Having initially set up as a cuckoo brewery, Compass is currently going through an expansion phase and obtaining their own premises and equipment.

As for the brewery name; Mattias says the compass is a simple tool that has been pointing people in the right direction since the 8th century, so what better name for a brewery that is dedicated to guiding you through the maze of beer flavours!

Mattias

Duvel...again!

Baltic Night

Deuchars - on cask!

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“It’s like something you’d see at a beer festival” Simon Cowell exclaims having watched Ashley Elliot perform in a Britain’s Got Talent semi-final.

No, Mr Cowell wasn’t watching ale guzzling slippers perform magic tricks or gravity defying beard-offs, but a seventeen year old teenager from Enniskillen who plays the xylophone.

To have young Ashley perform at a festival of any sort would be a treat (perhaps no headliner, but damn good at an impromptu jamming session with a harmonicist and a yukele player). His handiwork is fast and furious and, whilst not everyone’s cup of tea, David Walliams thought it was “pure joy”.

We tried Doncaster Beer Festival for a stag do a few weeks ago, and it was a success – they had an endless supply of comedy hats to choose from for the stag and plentiful supplies of beer. But a crazy xylophone player? Hell yeah, that would have added to the experience!

Cowell’s attitude perhaps shines a light on the perception of beer festivals. I doubt he’s a beer man let alone a cask ale drinker, but surely he’d be impressed with the folk bands at Norwich Town Hall, or the train shed at Haworth & Worth Valley, or the scale of Earls Court, or the uniforms at Brussels in September?

I guess there’s no pleasing some people…

We can understand why some beer festivals give off a bad impression, some are lots of fun, some are really not. What makes a good beer festival? Nothing but racks of cask ale and tasting notes or full on entertainment, food and activities? Good beer, good people? Let us know!

Cask ale only?

Fancy pant costumes?

Breadth of choice?

Welcome to the latest episode of Desert Island Beers which this week features Captain Cooker Manuka Beer, an Australian but now Chief Executive Officer at New Zealand Hops who as such is responsible for getting those wonderful kick ass hops, such as Nelson Sauvin, Riwaka and Rakau, to name just a few to these shores.

Doug says he has always had beer around him, growing up, beer was what his family drank, although usually only with meals and apart from the occasional bottle of fortified wine or a Christmas treat of whiskey or brandy, it was only ever beer in their house.

He can’t remember how old he was when he first tasted beer but as with many others, it was a sip of froth offered from his fathers’ glass at a fairly young age. What he does remember is that he was spontaneously intrigued and has remained so to this day. His work life started in kitchens and around food and after leaving a cooking apprenticeship he moved out of food and into beverage, starting as a cellar-man for Millers Hotels in Sydney after acquiring some basic cellar training at Resch’s brewery in Sydney.

With his brother Matt he started home brewing around the same time and then moved into pub and restaurant management amongst other things until 1986 when Matt convinced him they should tour the USA. Whilst not going there for the beer, that’s exactly what they found, and Doug says their lives were changed forever.

Doug hard at work

Devilishly good

Sniffing hops!

Captain Cooker

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English breakfast? No!
Spring along the cliffs to find
Sagres and seafood.

Sagres in the sun

Portuguese Cataplana

Fish lunch!

Tagus & Tapas

Welcome to the latest episode of Desert Island Beers which this week features Will Hawkes who works on The Independent’s sports desk and writes about beer in his spare time.

Born in London and brought up in sunny Kent, he has had an interest in ale since he could convince a barman he was 18 – but his real conversion to good beer came after a year spent living in Southern California in 1999-2000, when the craft beer revolution was just beginning to take effect.

He also loves cricket and writes about the county game. He lives in South London with his wife and eight-month-old son.

Will Hawkes

Brooklyn Lager

Kernel Brewery

Gadds No 3

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The inaugural North Leeds Charity Beer Festival starts this weekend, in no small part thanks to the efforts of our friend and occasional Real Ale Review’s contributor Sam Parker, and beer writer Barrie Pepper.

There’ll be beers from breweries all over the region (Wharfebank, Kirkstall, Revolutions, Great Heck, Ilkley, Leeds, Roosters, Ridgeside and more) plus some from further afield including Brooklyn Brewery in New York.

We will hopefully see you there!

North Leeds Charity Beer Festival

Name: North Leeds Charity Beer Festival
Date: Friday 27th April & Saturday 28th April 2012
Time: Friday 18:00-23:00 & Saturday 12:00-22:00
Venue: St Aidan’s Church Community Hall, Off Elford Place West, Roundhay Road, Leeds, LS8 5QD

Simon Jenkins started his career in Goole, but not even that hampered him. Cutting his teeth as a journalist in East Yorkshire and the vale of Calder, Simon landed at the Yorkshire Evening Post in 1991 and never looked back, working for fifteen years at Leeds’ flagship evening newspaper.

Though now working at Leeds University, Simon still writes the Taverner column for the paper and in 2010 he won Best Writing in the UK Regional Press for his contribution to beer. It was an award which ultimately led to the deserved crown of Beer Writer of the Year, and the ominous duties of representing the beer industry (not to mention writing a speech for the following years awards do!)

In his spare time Simon follows both Leeds United and Oxford United fan and has recently penned his first book, The Great Leeds Pub Crawl, a ramble around the history and character of every type of pub the city has to offer.

Near the Negev Desert

Jaipur IPA

Pint of Landlord...

...just as good bottled

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“I’m rat -arsed” our hero shouts to the whole pub. “And this is one of the greatest working class songs ever!” as the familiar block chords are joined by a familiar drum roll and a scrawling copycat voice. “Slip insiiiide the eye of youuur miiii-iii-iinnd…”

The pub is energised immediately: arms in air, hands aloft. White wine for the ladies, Carling Extra Colds for the men, a sprinkling of WKDs for those planning to make the most of the Bank Holiday tomorrow. Drinks are raised to Gallagher, Lennon, or Shane Meadows.

By the guitar solo – which Noel G spends rambling around the pub with the wireless mic and encouraging air strumming at each table – there’s a victorious feeling that the whole pub made the sing-along a success.

“A proper class working class director is Shane meadows” our hero explains when he triumphantly stumbles over to greet us and check that we know who Morrissey is. These things are important.

His mate calls him a wanker; he retorts “You’re just a fat Peter Kay”. Peter Kay wins the round with a “You just handed the league title to us” (they are both fans of Manchester you see, one of each club, and City have just thrown the towel in against Arsenal). Some sort of equilibrium is maintained until the next point of contention arises (less than sixty seconds away no doubt).

For a bank holiday Sunday, this West Yorkshire mill town is getting busy. Bouncers start in the afternoon, legs are on show, pitchers of cocktails accompany gaggles of girls from bar to makeshift dance floor. Men do the decent thing and stare for just.. long.. enough.

The bars are all about fun and the other sex. The pubs are about meeting and drinking, with the occasional splash of singing and eyeing up. This is on-trade pre-loading.

As we up to leave – and it’s because we have a train to catch not that we want to – we leave our comrades bouncing to A Town Called Malice just as a clown walks past from the toilets, quickly followed by a female Robin Hood.

Our hero won’t let us leave without handshakes, promises to never give up on good music and checking he can’t tempt us with the variety club after nightfall. “Ka-ree-oh-key!” There’s a moment of reckless doubt…

Waiting for the train, maybe we’re just a couple of marketing managers seeking a dose of Common People, enjoying a rough pub safari in a working class area. Neither of us have ambitions to be the karaoke hero when we grow up.

After all Homeland is on in an hour, and there’s a spare supermarket beer in the fridge.

By heck! This weeks Desert Island features the co-founder and owner of Great Heck Brewing Company, from the little villiage of Great Heck, North Yorkshire. Heart-throb Denzil was born in Bradford in the golden summer of 1970. He says his journey into brewing began with a sip of Double Diamond at the breakfast table in Pateley Bridge three short years later, but unfortunately that put him off English Ale for approximately thirty years until his interest was rekindled towards the end of his “spectacularly successful motorcycle racing career”. (His words.)

Fellow tarmac God Jason Hall used to attend barbecues at Denzil’s sprawling estate in Great Heck and took his very nice home brewed ales with him. One balmy summer evening talk turned to what use could be put to the part of Denzil’s manorial holdings which was then used as a workshop for his fleet of state of the art racing motorcycles. “Let’s turn it into a brewery” quoth Denzil and within a few short years, in May 2008, this had come to pass.

Thankfully the disappointment engendered in the hard core of regional club road racing spectators by their idol’s disappearance from the scene has since been more than offset by the delight of those stalwarts who consumed the 435 batches of ale which were produced in the original Great Heck brewery before production was moved, in March 2012 to a new facility on the opposite side of the road.

“My only regret is that I didn’t realise how awesome I was sooner, ” says Denzil, modestly.

By heck! It

Jarl, just think cask

Denzil likes bikes

The Beers

Welcome Denzil! Tell us, which five beers would you want to have with you if you were stranded on a desert island, and why?
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The bar is busy. The tables are full. The backroom is heaving and buoyant.

Welcome to the Sebright Arms, dimly light and vivacious.

We arrive from Soho at the fading of a sun drenched afternoon – four pubs, six pints, four hours.

Three and a half miles later, bellies demanding meat and bread and barley, we bundle over the threshold. A table is found, pale beers ordered, burger menus devoured by hungry eyes.

It’s a young crowd, an old crowd. It’s a quiet crowd and a rowdy crowd. Some here for the pub, some hunting out the resident Lucky Chip pop up kitchen.

Smokers tarnish the air outside, drinkers slop beer inside. The buzz is accentuated by beer (it’s a thin line between that and a booze buffer between the world and our senses, perhaps?)

The burgers perspire garnish, pint glasses soon sticky with the sweat of carnivorous satisfaction. And boy they taste good!

Another beer? Of course! The night is young, and the Sebright Arms is only just getting started.